Global Research

ISIS terrorists have been able to seize toxic chemicals due to the irresponsible actions of the representatives of the Western countries, Lieutenant General Vladimir Savchenko, chief of the Russian center for the reconciliation of the conflicting sides in Syria, said on October 10.

According to Savchenko, on October 9, a group of ISIS-linked militants attacked the headquarters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) in the village of al-Lataminah.

He added that four militants and two members of the White Helmets organization were killed in the attack and two cylinders containing chlorine were taken out of the headquarters. The seized cylinders were transported to southern Aleppo and handed over to members of another terrorist group – Hurras al-Din.

“The Western countries, while planning provocations against Syrian government forces and employing their controlled bandit groups, do not take into account the complicated situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone. As a result of those irresponsible actions, poisonous chemicals ended up in the hands of Islamic State terrorists whose actions are hard to predict,” the Center head stated.

It is interesting to note that Savchenko described Hurras al-Din, which is known for its links to al-Qaeda, as an ISIS-associated group. This may indicate that in Idlib pro-al-Qaeda and pro-ISIS organizations are now working together to sabotage the Idlib demilitarization deal.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Defense Ministry stated that the demilitarized zone had been completely established around the province of Idlib. The defense ministry added that the withdrawal of all heavy weapons from the zone had been completed.

Earlier, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the establishment of the demilitarized zone around Idlib is “progressing quite well” and praised Turkey’s efforts to implement the agreement within the agreed-upon timeline.

Nonetheless, the Russian Defense Ministry has not released official comments on the Turkish statement so far. Thus, it’s still possible that this effort is yet to be finalized.

The Syrian Army and is allies eliminated 19 ISIS members in clashes in Qa’a al-Banat in the al-Safa area in the al-Suwayda-Damascus desert. 6 pro-government fighters were also killed in these clashes.

On October 10, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claimed  that they had eliminated 651 ISIS members and captured 6 others since the start of the SDF advance on Hajin. According to the SDF, the advance was supported by 215 airstrikes and 17 artillery strikes from the US-led coalition.

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, popularly known by his initials as MBS, is either one of the world’s most admired leaders or its most reviled depending on who one asks. His friends characterize him as a noble reformer while his foes denounce him as a bloody tyrant. In reality, however, MBS is actually both, and that’s why the leaders of the US, China, and even Russia are competing to court him for their own reasons.

To get the dirt out of the way first, MBS was single-handedly responsible for ordering the ongoing Saudi-led War on Yemen that’s contributed to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, and he’s so ruthless that he even imprisoned members of his own family last year in a de-facto “deep state” coup when his allied military-intelligence services detained them on supposed “anti-corruption” charges. Moreover, it’s recently come to light that he might have even ordered the gruesome assassination of a dissident in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

At the same time, however, there’s no denying the gradual progress that MBS has made in reforming the Wahhabi and oil-dependent socio-economic situation in the Kingdom through his ambitious legacy-defining Vision 2030. Although unstated for “politically correct” reasons, and whether for good or for bad, he seems intent on getting women out of their households and into the workforce as the country’s majority-youthful and comparatively “liberal” population attempts to transition to a post-oil future.

In terms of external politics, MBS pioneered his country’s fast-moving rapprochement with Russia which has seen Saudi Arabia consider purchasing S-400 anti-air defense systems after committing to a portfolio of other arms during King Salman’s historic visit to Moscow in October 2017. This led to the two Great Powers dominating the global oil industry through their OPEC+ partnership and cooperating in reaching a pragmatic solution to the War on Syria given their premier sponsorship of the opposing parties.

China can’t get enough of MBS after his country agreed to receive over $130 billion worth of Silk Road investments from the People’s Republic in two separate deals last year, predicated as they are on both Beijing’s pressing energy interests but also its desire to link the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) with Vision 2030. China considers Saudi Arabia to be a tri-continental pivot state at the crossroads of Afro-Eurasia, therefore making it an indispensable geostrategic partner, to say nothing of an economic one when it comes to the “petroyuan”.

As for America, it loves MBS’ insatiable hunger for arms and is eager to do all that it takes to get his country to go forward with the high-profile $110 billion arms deal that was signed last year. It also requires his stamp of approval on any forthcoming “deal of the century” for Palestine in order to at least “officially” deflect the expected opposition that this presumable sell-out arrangement will provoke among the international Muslim community (“Ummah”). In addition, there are obvious energy interests between the two, too.

It’s “politically incorrect” for anyone to openly say, but none of these three countries sincerely cares about the domestic situation in Saudi Arabia or the country’s alleged assassination of dissidents abroad, but the US at least sometimes speaks out on these issues from time to time in order to put more pressure on its counterpart in a bid to get a better deal on whatever it is that they’re negotiating for at the time. The same can be said of Russia if it chooses to ever comment on these topics.

MBS is so attractive to each of them precisely because he’s both a noble reformer and a bloody tyrant. The first-mentioned part is responsible for his country’s unprecedented but nevertheless imperfect geopolitical balancing act and structural complementarity with the New Silk Road, while the second is ultra-profitable for the Russian, American, and even Chinese military-industrial complexes. All of these Great Powers also like that he cooperates with them in the energy sphere too, albeit in different ways and towards different ends.

The confluence of interests that the US, Russia, and China share when it comes to MBS makes him “too important” for any of them to “discredit” and risk jeopardizing their win-win partnerships with his country. The US, and perhaps maybe even Russia, might occasionally “virtue signal” opposition to some Saudi actions, though it’s “normatively disingenuous” because such statements are only made for negotiating leverage. All three countries see the character behind the caricatures that realize that MBS’ mix of noble reformer and bloody tyrant is just the way he is.

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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.

All images in this article are from Oriental Review.

Trump’s Administration is putting its ‘all’ on red on the roulette wheel of a radically leveraged US trade and foreign policy.  It is a bet that a ruthless ‘no prisoners taken’ pursuit of naked US commercial interest can restore American economic hegemony.  But, as Vali Nasr has pointed out in The Atlantic, the radical, scorched-earth leverage now being pursued in Trump’s companion foreign policy lunge is aimed, not just at returning the US to its status quo ante, but is aimed rather at forcing the capitulation of all resistance to US hegemony (whether it is coming from friends, such as Canada, or from the so-called ‘revisionist’ powers and the nuclear states):

“It’s increasingly clear that what Trump hopes to achieve through a maximum-pressure campaign does not align with the vision of his national-security team: Judging by his behavior with Kim Jong Un and his statement on Iran, [Trump’s] goal is to bring North Korea and Iran into diplomatic talks. Members of his team speak as if they’d rather force the countries’ surrender. Pyongyang and Tehran understand this very well.” (emphasis added)

But the crux of it is that when you put ‘all’ on one colour or the other in roulette, you either win big, or lose all.

In trade policy, the earlier US claim to be correcting for ‘unfairness’ in international trade policy is now a sham: The policy is now simply the pursuit of US economic advantage à outrance. The US Department of Commerce, for example, recently  imposed restrictions on 12 Russian corporations that are “acting contrary to the national security, or foreign policy interests of the US.”  None of these twelve, however, have anything to do with Russia’s military sphere, or threaten US ‘security’.  They are simply building a new passenger airliner.

As Arkady Savitsky demonstrates, the real US target is Russian civil aviation:

“A closer look at the blacklist, shows the US has sanctioned those who are involved in the production of the Russian civilian airliner Irkut MC-21”.

The MC-21 is a next-generation passenger jet, geared towards the use of composite materials and advanced metal alloys. In short, these sanctions are all about protecting the mercantile advantage of Boeing (rather than US national security) – and undermining the plans to apply the MC-21 technology to the wide-body commercial jet CR929, being co-developed by China and Russia.

Of course, Russia has been determined by the US to be a ‘revisionist power’, but Canada is not. Yet, in the recently announced United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the Canadian government (in the words of the Canadian Globe and Mail) was bullied into signing away a vital part of Canadian sovereignty to the United States:

“Few have realized the killer clause that allows U.S. control over Canadian diplomacy in the rather explicit text buried in Article 32.10: “Non-Market Country FTA”… Contrary to Mr. Trudeau’s vague assurance that the article has very little effect, Canada is no longer free to pursue a free-trade agreement (FTA) with China under USMCA.

Ottawa now must notify other USMCA partners if it just intends to pursue a trade deal with a “non-market economy” (code name: China.) And Canada has no independence to classify China as a free-market economy… Ottawa’s trade and economic diversification drive will [now] be subject to Washington’s interference. This is an overall veto power given to the United States, literally forcing Beijing to negotiate with Washington if it intends to pursue an FTA with either Canada or Mexico.” 

By giving in on such a crucial issue, Canada has set the scene for the Trump Administration potentially to demand other trading partners such as the European Union and Japan, to insert similar clauses in their trade deals – thus polarising the globe into a US-linked, dollar-based sphere – precluded from doing business with China, except by US ‘waiver’ – and the marginalised ‘rest’.

This ‘going for broke’ approach on trade has begun to create a rift between Team Trump and Wall Street (which until recently, has been wholly sanguine that US has all the leverage, and that others have none). Markets are now worrying about the consequences for global trade – and US corporate earnings – were this Cold War to deepen: i.e. that the roulette ball does not happen to land on ‘red’.

So what might a Trump ‘win’ – now very much focused-in, on hobbling Russia and China – really mean?  Well, that question precisely underlines the uncertainty caused by schism that is embedding itself between Trump and his ideologically-driven, trade-warrior team.  We just don’t know what it means.  Trump probably would settle for President Xi just simply putting his hand up (like Trudeau) and asking a trade deal: It would, of course – even that – be one that would certainly come at the expense of China’s sovereignty, and its high expectations for its future.

Depending how far China was willing to abase itself, Trump’s Robert Lighthizer might go along with that. But there are obvious signs that his advisers are looking for more – much more. Steve Bannon, who says he was a direct participant in the genesis to Trump’s China Trade policy, is blunt:

“Trump’s strategy is to make the trade war with China ‘unprecedentedly large’ and ‘unbearably painful’ for Beijing; and he will not back down before victory”.  Bannon said (in an interview with South China Morning Post, that) the aim was not just to force China to give up on its “unfair trade practices” – the ultimate goal was to “re-industrialise America” – because manufacturing was the core of a nation’s power.

“It’s not just any tariff. It’s tariffs on a scale and depth that is previously inconceivable in US history,” Bannon said. He said Beijing had relied on “round after round of talks” to take the momentum out of the US punitive measures, but the delaying tactics would not work. “They always want to have a strategic dialogue to tap things along. They never envisioned that somebody would actually do this.”

Bannon, effectively, is saying that the goal is uproot US businesses from China, and to bring them back home: which is to say, to sever and disrupt extended US corporate supply-chains, and re-implant them – and the jobs – back into the US.  But plainly then, US corporations will lose precisely those cost advantages that took them to China in the first place.  To try to compensate for the additional costs through more corporate tax breaks (as is being mooted for October) though, risks a borrowing-requirement ‘Armageddon’ of high interest rates, and bond collapse.

So, this Trump-Lighthizer plan only works if the US stock-market keeps rising long enough for the tariffs hikes to make China bend.  But, Xi can’t bend so easily (even if so disposed).  China’s diverse plans are written into the CCP constitution, and this means that China collectively can only take the long view.  This about China’s self-esteem now. It is not any Art of the Deal stroke to insist your counterparty commits suicide – quickly, publicly, and humiliatingly. It is not Xi’s nature anyway. He has developed an ‘inner steel’ arising from coming from an ‘out of favour’ family, and he is not about to be the one to ‘cross-out’ the CCP’s definition of China’s ‘destiny’.

What China is inching toward is to make some moves to further open markets, reform regulation, and become more business-friendly.  Trump can proclaim this a ‘win’, and halt the war; but will he?  Bannon’s comments about China being adept at ‘tapping things along’ without making real change – and his comment that the re-industrialisation of America is the true goal, throw some doubt on the prospect that an end to the ‘truce’ will come soon.  His trade team is plainly after a scalp.

The two contrasting timelines – the US leverage being contingent on the continuing perception of its strong economy, and needing a quick win – versus China’s political need to play it long, will determine the outcome to this wrestling match.  US markets are experiencing a rush of dollars into safe-haven US equities that is buoying markets, but this is an ephemeral flow.  It will subside.  After that, other (adverse, possibly recessionary) ‘de-growth’ trends, may take a hold.

In the longer term – if there is to be a longer term – the ‘rest of the world’ will be working to build new conduits and frameworks to trade, precisely in order to by-pass the US – and its toxic, sanction-vulnerable, dollars.  Will Trump’s ‘red’ come up, before de-dollarising takes concrete form?

What all this latter analysis entirely omits, however, is that the prospects for a trade war ‘truce’, or contrived ‘win’, are being daily undercut from a different quarter: The Robert Lighthizer naked pursuit of America’s individual economic advantage has proved to be the perfect tent under which the foreign policy, war-hawks could gather to pursue their own foreign policy ‘nirvana’ – restoring Israel as the military hegemon in the Middle East, destroying Iran, disrupting the Eurasian project, and revenging themselves on Russia for earlier spoiling America’s unipolar moment through re-entering the Middle East.

“In April, the US president said the forces would leave Syria soon – with the decision taken “very quickly” on how long they will remain there”, writes Arkady Savitsky. “We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now,” Trump stated.  “Yet John Bolton said recently the US would remain in Syria “until Iran leaves … We’re not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders, and that includes Iranian proxies and militias”…

According to [US] Military Times, his statement was “signaling a fundamental shift from the current counter-terrorism operations to a mission focused more on geopolitical maneuvering and proxy warfare.”

This is the second misalignment (in Vali Nasr’s terminology), between Trump – and this time, with his ideological foreign policy hawks.

And – here is the point – this becomes the second component to the trade war calculus. We are talking here of a massive foreign policy mission creep, maneuvered by Bolton et al. “Clearly, Trump believes his strategy of maximum pressure will result in historic deals with North Korea and Iran”, writes Vali Nasr:

“But even if developments with North Korea have given Trump reason for hope, this is not going to be a winning strategy. At the United Nations last week… North Korea’s foreign minister, rejected any move toward denuclearization—the wholesale and unconditional surrender of nuclear and missile programs—unless it came with tangible U.S. concessions. Pressure, in other words, may have persuaded Kim Jong Un to engage, but pressure alone will not get Trump the deal he covets. Despite Trump’s charm offensive, his administration seems to be pursuing what John Bolton has called the “Libya outcome”, a reference to the 2003 deal, in which Muammar Qaddafi surrendered Libya’s nuclear program and shipped it out of the country.”

It is not just North Korea and Iran that are exposed to radical (foreign policy) leverage: So is everyone else. It has become contagious. US Interior Secretary, Zinke, last month threatened that the US Navy has the ability to blockade Russia from controlling energy supplies from the Middle East:

“The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open, and, if necessary, to blockade … to make sure that their energy does not go to market”.

And “Russia must halt its covert development of a banned cruise missile system or the United States will seek to destroy it before it becomes operational”, Washington’s envoy to NATO said last Tuesday.

This is the point: the trade ‘wars’, potentially could be alleviated if China would give Trump the trade deal he wants, and if Iran and North Korea would give Trump the nuclear deals he wants. But these outcomes are will not happen, because of the confrontational geopolitics, standing in the way.

Xi, almost certainly, is not opposed in principle, to making some trade concessions to the US (indeed, China may make some irrespectively); but the US’ leveraging of the Taiwan issue, America’s insistence to aggressively contest China in the South China Sea, its sanctioning of China for the purchase of Russian weapons systems; its imposition of Magnitsky-style sanctioning of Russian individuals and businesses (which China believes soon will be extended to them), now constitute another, militarised, and further financialised, dimension to the Cold War.

The move toward Magnitsky-style sanctions being imposed on China now seems inevitable, in the wake of Mike Pence’s claim that “China exerted influence and interference in US domestic policies and elections”, and his noting that noting that Russia’s interference in US domestic affairs paled in comparison with China’s actions. These are the real obstacles standing in the way.  They compellingly suggest to all observers that America does not want just ‘fairer trade’ with China; it also wants to cut it down to size militarily, in technology, in regional influence, and in its attempt to build the connectivity to mount its own supply chains (also known, as the Belt and Road Initiative.)

And if Trump’s ‘going for broke’ on red doesn’t come up, at the table? As one financial commentator wryly noted:

“Trump is doing everything he can to bring on the end of the days when the US can borrow whatever it wants – in whatever amounts it wants. To be sure, there is no recipe book … it’s not at all clear what you would do. But you’d start by doing everything that Trump is doing — pick fights with all your allies, blow the government deficit wide open at the peak of an economic recovery, abandon any notion of fiscal responsibility, threaten sanctions on anyone and everyone, who seeks to honor the deal Obama struck with Iran (thereby almost begging everyone to figure out some way to bypass the US banking system in order to do business), throw spanners into the works of global trade without any clear indication of what it is precisely you want (for a country that structurally… MUST run trade and current account deficits)”.

This is indeed what ‘one’ might do. In other words, one would end up on ‘black’.

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Alastair Crooke is former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

Featured image is from SCF.

The term “buffer zone” in land and at sea is used for land and sea areas, which were unilaterally and illegally declared by Israeli forces as areas with no access along the eastern and northern borders and in the sea of the Gaza Strip following the Israeli Disengagement Plan in 2005. In violation of the provisions of the international humanitarian law, the Gaza Strip’s population are denied access to their property in the “buffer zone” in land while the fishermen are prevented from sailing and fishing in the “buffer zone” at sea.

The area  of the buffer zone vary from time to time according to the Israeli forces declarations, without taking in consideration the international law that bans any changes to the occupied territories. According to Israeli forces instructions, the “buffer zone” extends to an area ranging between 100 to 1,500 meters in some eastern land borders, while ranges between 3 to 9 nautical miles in the Gaza Strip sea.

Israeli forces expanded the fishing area in the Gaza Strip from 3 to 6 nautical miles following the ceasefire agreement post November 2012 Israeli offensive. However, there is conflict over the Access Restricted Area (ARA) in land, which increases the risks endured by the Palestinian civilians. In a statement on his official website, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) declared that fishermen could now access the sea up to 6 nautical miles offshore, and that farmers could now access lands in the border area up to 100 meters from the border fence. However, both references have since been removed from the statement, which obviously indicates the Israeli forces retreat of the abovementioned ceasefire. On 21 March 2013, the Israeli forces’ spokesperson announced re-reducing the fishing area allowed for Palestinian fishermen from 6 nautical miles to 3 nautical miles. The same announcement also included the re-expansion of the “buffer zone” in land up to 300 meters. However, on 21 May 2013, the Israeli authorities decided to allow fishermen to sail up to 6 nautical miles.

Following the latest Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip in 2014, a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian armed groups was brokered by the Egyptian government, which allowed fishermen to sail up to 6 nautical miles. However, the Israeli naval forces have not allowed fishermen to sail up to this limit. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) observed that all the Israeli attacks have taken place within less than 6 nautical miles. On 07 March 2015, the Israeli naval forces declared via loud speakers that the allowed fishing area reduced to 4 nautical miles and warned Palestinian fishermen from approaching this area along the Gaza Sea. On 01 April 2016, the Israeli authorities expanded the fishing area from 6 to 9 nautical miles between the area from Gaza valley to the southern Gaza Strip, while denied access to more than 6 miles in the other areas. On 03 May 2017, the Israeli authorities allowed fishermen to fish up to 9 nautical miles, instead of 6 nautical miles in the Sea in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.

According to field updates followed up by PCHR, the Israeli occupation forces have escalated their attacks against the Palestinian civilians, including farmers and fishermen, and prevented them from safe and free access to their lands and fishing areas. This constitutes a violation of their rights according to the international human rights standards, including their right to security, personal safety and protection of their property, their right to work, the right to adequate standard of living, and the right to the highest attainable standard of health. Enforcing the “buffer zone” through the use of live fire which has often led to direct targeting of civilians, is a war crime, where killings under these circumstances constitute a wilful killing in grave violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Attacks

September 2018

Consequences of attacks from September 2018

1. Deaths and injuries

2. Property related violations

3. Detention

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“The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.” – Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.  But I repeat myself.” – Mark Twain

“All cats die. Socrates is dead. Socrates is a cat.” – Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros

If believability is your gauge for discerning truth, you are living in a fantasy world.  But that is the reality of life in the United States today. This is the land of make-believe in which actors and audiences are engaged in a vast folie à deux full of sound and fury signifying a nothingness that passes for intelligence.  Assertions made convincingly enough are the new facts for a population hypnotized by a stage-managed reality show.

The recently closed Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford Show that mercifully had a short run at the National Comedic Congressional Theater is the latest case in point.  The believability of the actors was said to be the key issue.  In other words, who seemed to be telling the truth.  Demeanor was determinative.  Facial expressions evidence.  The mass media, those paragons of truth-telling, entertained their audiences for a few weeks by marching out their puerile pundits to tell audiences who of the two primary actors was more believable, while the politicians, not willing to allow their media accomplices to outdo them in truthfulness, donned their masks and performed their usual public service of moral outrage and did the same in their unbiased ways.

There was no child to yell and tell the world that all the king’s sycophants, like the king, were naked – naked  liars whose jobs depended on disinformation and deceptions meant to amuse an entertainment-besotted and bored public hungry for a bit of truth in a society drowning in agitprop and propaganda.  A public watching the wrong show.

The words the real Frank Serpico, the honest and brave cop, not the actor, Al Pacino, who played him in the movie Serpico, come to my mind.  He told me that when he was lying in a pool of his own blood on the night of February 3, 1971, having been shot in the face in a set-up carried out by fellow cops, he heard a voice that said, “It’s all a lie.”

“It’s all a lie.”  

Those words sum up the spectacle that is American society today.  And while lies are nothing new – didn’t Aletheia, the Greek goddess of truth, flee into the wilderness just last week and say to a wandering searcher, “Among the people of old, lies were found among only a few, but now they have spread throughout all of human society”? – we are living in a time of unprecedented technological media mind manipulation difficult to penetrate.  Harold Pinter called it “a tapestry of lies” in which facts don’t matter.  What happened never happened; what never happened happened.  It’s all about believability in the national media’s hypnotic show, whose purpose Russell Baker described 25 years ago as being to “provide a manageably small cast for a national sitcom, or soap opera, or docudrama, making it easy for media people to persuade themselves they are covering the news while mostly just entertaining us.”

I know something about believability.  When I was a young teenager I appeared on a famous game show called “To Tell the Truth.”  Of course I lied, since lying was the name of the game then, as now.  I was not who I said I was.  When I walked out in front of millions of television viewers and the celebrities who would question my veracity, I knew (although I was an impostor and not the real Robert McGee – son of a U.S. Senator, by the way) how to put on a face to fool the faces that would scrutinize my smallest expressions for any sign of feigning.  Although these celebrities knew the game well, I beat them at the believability game, I am sorry to say.  My demeanor or mien (facial expression) was in sync with my words, an ability to act that I didn’t know I had.  I was an all-American boy – a student at an elite Jesuit boys’ prep school, the captain of the basketball team, my father (Edward) a lawyer – learning the national pastime of seemingly being “perfectly honest” as I lied.  And it worked, and the $250 that I won – I almost said earned – set me on a path that led to a fork in the road that I took.  When I picked this fork up, it hissed and tried to bite me with its poisonous forked tongue. So I quickly threw it down.  It was then I realized that my thirty pieces of silver ($250) were a betrayal that would haunt me forever if I didn’t try to become a genuine actor.

Soon I would come to realize that my Jesuit schooling was preparing me to be “a man for all seasons.” It had nothing to do with beer and girls. It was all about becoming a member of the ruling class.  In other words, a man with a forked tongue who could speak out of both sides of his mouth to suit the occasion.  Learning this skill would lead me to the social heights where I could smoothly move among Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, elites and regular people, defense attorneys and prosecutors, actors and audiences, alleged victims and alleged victimizers, etc.  Nothing would be foreign to me, except myself, for I could become a perfect hypocrite, a double-man, my own doppelgänger without a shadow.

I could become another judge-penitent like Albert Camus’ Jean-Baptiste Clamence in his novel, The Fall, and take up a double profession, become double-faced and rich in the process.  Perhaps I could join the CIA and “sincerely” follow its motto:

“And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).  

I could become a professor with nothing to profess but my innocence.  I could become a psychologist and specialize in lie detector tests.  I could learn how to lie while sincerely telling the truth while hooked up to one.  I could be confused and act confused and not know the difference

I could denounce torture while justifying it.  I could pretend impartiality while being partial.  I could claim independence while playing the puppet. I could remember to forget and forget to remember and remember that I forgot the details of what I remembered.  

And no matter how I acted or what I did I could always remain a “nice guy.” 

I could even say with Clamence that I am 100 % innocent, my case is exceptional, as I played the parts of victim and victimizer; could say: 

As I told you, it’s a matter of dodging judgment.  Since it is hard to dodge it, tricky to get one’s nature simultaneously admired and excused, they [we] all strive to be rich.  Why?  Did you ever ask yourself?  For power, of course.  But especially because wealth shields from immediate judgment, takes you out of the subway crowd to enclose you in a chromium-platted automobile, isolates you in huge protected lawns, Pullmans, first-class cabins.  Wealth, cher ami, is not quite acquittal, but reprieve, and that’s always worth taking.

I could become such a celebrated actor that I could make you believe my believability when I put on a tearful face or a devastated face or a confused face or an angry face. I could confess my vulnerability and make you my ally, and I could plead with you in a halting way to sympathize with how I was victimized so long ago or yesterday.  But even if you didn’t believe me, I could feel justified in knowing that I was playing my part in ShowTime in America, keeping you amused, and doing my part to advance the interests of those who accepted me for the role.  And I could always deny that I had been selected, and could always maintain I entered center stage of my own volition because I wished to fulfill my civic duty to see justice done.

But I promise, like Clamence, I would never reveal who stole the painting of “The Just Judges” that I keep hidden in my cupboard.  Some things must remain hidden.  After all, who wants to know the truth?

But I digress.  I’ll be quiet, and stop with the what-could-have-beens.  The show must go on.  We both know that.  It is what is.  I look forward to reading what will no doubt be a best-selling and most truthful exposé of the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford Show.  I imagine contracts have been signed, and the mini-series shouldn’t be far behind.

In the meantime, I would like to leave you laughing with a quote that has been disturbing me since I first read it after writing it:

Until we see through the charade of social life and realize the masked performers are not just the politicians and celebrities, not only the professional actors and the corporate media performers, but us, we won’t grasp the problem.  Lying is the leading cause of living death in the United States.  We live in a society built of lies; lying and dishonesty are the norm.  They are built into the fabric of all our institutions, into our psyches.  In America, there’s no business but show business, and we are sham actors, amusing ourselves to death while we spread death and destruction in our war theaters all around the world.  Theaters in which the tragic plays we direct hold no interest for us.  We prefer our Idiots’ Delight.

“It’s All a Lie.”  Maybe that should be the title of the next show.

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Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Much of what Israel and the Palestinians are experiencing today has befallen them under Netanyahu’s leadership. He believes that the Palestinians will always pose an existential threat to Israel, which led him to pursue domestic policies that dangerously undermined the country’s founding principles of freedom and equality. Concurrently, he has taken extreme measures to suppress the Palestinians and maintain the occupation to keep them at bay. This has resulted in the disintegration of the social fabric of both societies, and prevented the rise of new political leadership to change course.

Notwithstanding Israel’s remarkable military, economic, and technological achievements and the dramatic expansion of its trade and diplomatic relations since its creation in 1948, Israel failed to live up to its promise. Under Netanyahu’s watch, Israel’s democracy is tearing apart at the seams, the unity of purpose between Israeli and diaspora Jewry is crumbling, the social and political divide among Israelis is dangerously widening, and the prospect of living in peace and security is becoming increasingly untenable.

During the same period, the Palestinians’ situation has become ominously worse. They remain dependent on handouts, millions of refugees still languish in camps, and they are socially and politically disintegrating, insecure, and despairing. The hopelessness of young Palestinians and the self-resignation of old, with diminishing prospects of escaping the harsh reality of the occupation, further intensified their hatred and resentment toward Israel. And the Palestinians’ distant dream of establishing their own state is rapidly fading away.

Netanyahu seems to forget that the historic survival of the Jews and the secret behind it did not rest on military prowess or financial dexterity or the most advanced technology, but on an unwavering moral commitment to human and civil rights and the brotherhood of man. They stood steadfastly behind the poor and the despairing, and championed the causes of freedom, liberalism, and equality. These attributes were engrained in the minds and souls of the Jews, due, in the main, to their horrifying experiences throughout the millennia of dispersement, persecution, expulsion, discrimination, and death.

One might think that these terrifying historical experiences would influence Netanyahu and his followers to fully adhere to human rights, and exhaust every conceivable way not to betray these principles in dealing with the Palestinians. But sadly, Netanyahu has capitalized on a certain segment of Palestinians that still resist Israel’s existence to legitimize Israel’s actions against the Palestinians.

Netanyahu pushed for the passing of the Nation State Law, which degrades non-Jews to second-class citizens. The law affirms that

“The state of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historic right to self-determination.”

The law discriminates against Israeli Arab citizens, intensifies their resentment toward and hatred of the state, and widens the gap between the two sides, which dangerously increases Israel’s vulnerability from within.

Netanyahu supported Trump’s cuts of US funding to organizations that promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, and barred scores of other Israeli organizations dedicated to peace from raising money in foreign countries. Netanyahu is denying the necessary process of reconciliation between the two sides, which is central to peaceful coexistence and the only way to resolve the conflict. To be sure, Netanyahu is tearing down instead of building bridges to promote peace.

Additionally, Netanyahu is destroying Israel’s democracy brick by brick, starting with the judiciary, which is the most revered and independent institution in Israel. He is supporting an amendment that transfers jurisdiction of certain cases regarding the West Bank away from the Supreme Court, which will complicate its decrees to remove illegal outposts and settlements, and another law that would allow Members of the Knesset to reinstate laws struck down by the Supreme Court.

In the words of the Court’s President Esther Hayut, the proposed legislation “would bypass the human rights of every individual in Israeli society”, adding that “[i]t [the amendment] voids the Basic Law. The cynical use made of the problem of infiltrators as an excuse to legislate such a bill cannot hide its destructive significance.”

Under Netanyahu, the growing power of the Orthodox religious institution and the steady shift of the country to the extreme right are effectively blurring the lines of separation of power between ‘church and state.’ He supported the Religious Services Ministry’s threats to bar the “Women of the Wall” from praying at the Western Wall, warning that if they do not obey, they will not be allowed to worship at all. Sadly and tellingly, the police did nothing to stop verbal and physical attacks against women praying at the Kotel in July.

He further alienated diaspora Jewry, especially in the US, by caving in to the rabbinical institutions. He reneged on his decision to allow men and women to pray together at the Western Wall, what would have been a historic agreement with liberal Jewish denominations. This was not only a slap in their face, but defiance of one of the most critical aspects of Jewish survival, which is maintaining their powerful and uncompromising affinity despite being dispersed in over 100 countries.

Finally, Netanyahu is gradually chipping away at one of the central pillars of democracy—freedom of the press. He has become increasingly critical of the free press and has meddled with no less than 13 media outlets. As being investigated in corruption Cases 2000 and 4000, he constantly attempts to manipulate the media to receive favorable coverage, increases political interference, and actively uses the courts to propagate libel and defamation lawsuits, while further extending the military censure into social media.

Every measure Netanyahu has taken is acutely undermining Israel’s very existence. But the biggest threat as we know it is its leaders, especially Netanyahu’s unwillingness to realistically face the conflict with the Palestinians while acting to destroy the Palestinians’ aspiration for statehood. Instead of remaining relentless in the search for a solution dictated by the unimpeachable reality of coexistence, he chose to suppress the Palestinian national movement by whatever means necessary, including force.

Every punitive measure that has been taken against the Palestinians, be that administrative detentions, demolishing Palestinian villages such as Khan al Ahmer in favor of new Israeli settlements, expropriating private land to build Israeli outposts, night raids, limiting mobility, denying building permits, uprooting olive trees, and arbitrary incarcerations, have led to the gradual destruction of the Palestinians’ social fabric and cohesiveness, prolonging the occupation and displacement for decades. The humiliation of the Palestinians for three generations has rendered their present leadership helpless, with little or nothing to offer to change their plight.

To be sure, Netanyahu betrayed the very reason behind Israel’s creation—to live in peace, provide a safe refuge for the Jews, and foster strong and unwavering ties with diaspora Jewry, while feeding into one another to maintain their strength, harmony, and purpose.

Netanyahu could have been the prime minister to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians, but did not because he was and still is determined not to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state as long as he is in power.

He will leave behind a garrison pariah state and shattered Palestinian community, while setting back the prospect of peace for another generation.

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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. [email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com

Consider Making a Donation to Global Research

While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.

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Today, more than ever before, war depends on deception. To oppose war without seeing through the deceptions currently being practiced by governments of the West is to act in vain. I have visited many websites that attempt to offer alternatives to the mainstream media, but I have been disappointed repeatedly by their inability or refusal to challenge these myths and deceptions.

Global Research bravely takes on this task, and that is why it is a vital resource for us all. This is why I have made its website my homepage and why I have taken out a membership. I hope you will do the same. – Prof. Graeme MacQueen (for list of articles, click here), Co-editor, Journal of 9/11 Studies

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History of the Third Reich: Hitler’s Armaments Minister Albert Speer’s Complicity in the Nazi Genocide

By Shane Quinn, October 12, 2018

In reality, Speer had knowledge at least months before the Hanke meeting that killings on a vast scale were being committed in Upper Silesia, and in other Nazi-occupied regions. Historians such as veteran author Martin Kitchen have asserted that Speer, and his team, were involved in concentration camp construction alongside the SS, and therefore had a role in implementing the “Final Solution”.

The Electric Revolution: Move Aside Lithium, Vanadium Is the New Super-Metal for Bigger Batteries

By James Burgess, October 12, 2018

The lithium ride was a great one. Cobalt, too. All they needed was their Elon Musk moment, which came in the form of the Nevada battery gigafactory. The next Elon Musk moment won’t be about lithium at all—or even cobalt. It will be for an element that takes everything electric to its revolutionary finish line: Vanadium.

Missing Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi Rejiggers the Middle East

By James M. Dorsey, October 12, 2018

A US investigation into Mr. Khashoggi’s fate mandated by members of the US Congress and an expected meeting between President Donald J. Trump, and the journalist’s Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, could result in a US and European embargo on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and impact the kingdom’s brutal proxy war with Iran in Yemen.

Monsanto Seeks to Undo $289M Roundup Verdict as 8,700 Similar Lawsuits Await

By Lorraine Chow, October 12, 2018

Monsanto will ask a San Francisco judge on Wednesday to throw out a jury’s $289 million award to a former school groundskeeper who claimed the company’s glyphosate-based weedkillers, Roundup and Ranger Pro, caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The Two Brett Kavanaugh Stories

By Philip Giraldi, October 11, 2018

The failure of Congress to carry out its duty to review Kavanaugh’s ability or lack thereof to interpret the constitution impartially was the more important story line in the confirmation process but it was ignored by the media.

Russian ‘Collusion’ Is a Red Herring, Emergence of the Far Right, New Wave of Fascism

By Max Parry, October 11, 2018

As the 2018 U.S. midterm elections approach, there is still no evidence of ‘collusion’ between the campaign of President Donald J. Trump and the Russian government after nearly two years of inquiry. Thus far in the Department of Justice’s investigation led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, only a trail of corruption involving Trump associates has been discovered. None of their wrongdoings connect to the Russian nationals also indicted in the probe, including the illicit lobbying by former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine which actually went against Russia’s interests on behalf of the EU.

Over the past two weeks, with next to no media coverage, the United States has moved substantially closer toward open military confrontation with both Russia and China, the second- and third-ranked nuclear powers in the world.

On October 3, the United States threatened, for the first time since the Cold War, to directly attack the Russian homeland. UN Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison accused the country of violating the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty by developing a nuclear cruise missile and said that Washington was preparing to “take out” the weapon with a US strike.

This statement came just three days after a Chinese warship set a collision course with a US destroyer carrying out a so-called “freedom of navigation” operation in the South China Sea, forcing the American ship to maneuver to avoid a collision and the potentially deadliest military clash in the Pacific in decades.

Behind such hair-raising incidents, the United States is undertaking serious, long-term preparations to restructure the American economy to fight a major war with a “peer” adversary, entailing radical changes to American economic, social and political life.

This is the essential content of a 146-page document released by the Pentagon last Friday, titled “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States.” It makes it clear that Washington is preparing not just for isolated regional clashes, but rather for a massive, long-term war effort against Russia and China under conditions of potential national autarchy.

Martin employees work on the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter production line in Fort Worth, Texas (Source: Defense Contract Management Agency)

The document made clear that a major restructuring of the American economy will be necessary to reach the United States military’s stated goal of being prepared to “fight tonight” against a “peer adversary.” The United States must “retool” for “great-power competition,” the document declared.

“America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base,” observes the report, creates the “platform and systems” upon which “our Warfighter depends.” This complex encompasses not just the government, but the private sector, as well as “R&D organizations” and “academic institutions.” In other words, the entire economy and society.

It warns that “The erosion of American manufacturing over the last two decades… threatens to undermine the ability of U.S. manufacturers to meet national security requirements. Today, we rely on single domestic sources for some products and foreign supply chains for others, and we face the possibility of not being able to produce specialized components for the military at home.”

Correcting this strategic deficiency, the report concludes, means that “support for a vibrant domestic manufacturing sector, a solid defense industrial base, and resilient supply chains is a national priority.”

The report squarely targets China, declaring,

“China’s economic strategies, combined with the adverse impacts of other nations’ industrial policies, pose significant threats to the U.S. industrial base and thereby pose a growing risk to U.S. national security.”

The promotion of US manufacturing dominance, in other words, is vital for promoting military dominance.

The protection of heavy industry goes together with the administration’s efforts to defend America’s high-tech sector, the source of a vast portion of US profitability.

As the report notes,

“One of the Chinese Communist Party’s primary industrial initiatives, Made in China 2025, targets artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, autonomous and new energy vehicles, high performance medical devices, high-tech ship components, and other emerging industries critical to national defense.”

It warns that “Chinese R&D spending is rapidly converging to that of the U.S. and will likely achieve parity sometime in the near future,” and worriedly points to the fact that the Chinese manufacturer DJI dominates the commercial aerial drone market.

The Pentagon’s plans for protecting and expanding the US high-tech sector include its backing for the administration’s efforts to limit the admission of Chinese students to US universities through visa restrictions. The report complains that, with as many as 25 percent of “STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] graduates in the U.S. being Chinese nationals… American universities are major enablers of China’s economic and military rise.”

The vision in the document, in other words, is the concrete expression of the conception outlined in the latest US national security strategy, calling for “the seamless integration of multiple elements of national power—diplomacy, information, economics, finance, intelligence, law enforcement and military.”

A leading element of this equation is the American corporate technology sector, which has scrambled for fat Pentagon contracts to develop the latest generation of weapons systems. In exchange for these payouts, and aggressive protection from their international rivals, they have worked closely to implement what one leaked internal Google document called a “shift towards censorship” in cooperation with the demands of the US military and intelligence agencies.

The logic of this growing fusion between the repressive apparatus of the state and increasingly powerful monopolies is the necessary correlation between “total war” and a “totalitarian” society, in which key constitutional provisions are rendered effectively meaningless.

The central target of such measures will be the forcible suppression of the class struggle in the name of promoting “national security.” The escalation of global US militarism has coincided with a major upsurge in the class struggle, including the rejection of a concessions contract by workers at UPS, the logistics giant whose powerful workforce is capable of crippling not just America’s industrial base, but substantial sections of the wartime economy.

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One summer day in 1944, the Nazi armaments chief Albert Speer had a visit from his old friend Karl Hanke, the Gauleiter of Lower Silesia. Twelve years before, Hanke had “discovered” Speer when recommending the precocious architect to Joseph Goebbels, in order to refurbish the Nazis’ ill-decorated Berlin headquarters.

Hanke now cut a desolate figure before Speer. The Gauleiter had just returned from an “invitation” to see a concentration camp in Upper Silesia, located in Nazi-occupied Poland. The death camp Hanke saw was Auschwitz, where prisoners were being systematically killed from September 1941, as Hitler’s war machine marched towards a seemingly certain victory in the USSR.

When Hanke visited Auschwitz in mid-1944, hundreds of thousands had already been murdered there by the SS. Sitting opposite him, Speer wrote that Hanke “seemed confused” and “spoke falteringly”, advising the war minister “never to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper Silesia… He [Hanke] had seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe”.

What the Nazi official may have observed were rows of corpses, or perhaps he had witnessed the gassing of innocent victims. When the Soviet army finally liberated Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, over one million people had been killed there. About 90% of those murdered were Jewish peoples, while also among the dead were Poles, Soviet POWs, along with ethnic groups like Roma and Sinti.

Following Hanke’s warning, Speer wrote a quarter of a century later that,

“I did not query Himmler, I did not query Hitler… I did not investigate – for I did not want to know what was happening there. Hanke must have been speaking about Auschwitz”.

All is not as it appears, however. It is unimaginable that, during Speer’s many years at the core of the Third Reich, he was somehow unaware of the Nazis’ crimes until summer 1944.

In reality, Speer had knowledge at least months before the Hanke meeting that killings on a vast scale were being committed in Upper Silesia, and in other Nazi-occupied regions. Historians such as veteran author Martin Kitchen have asserted that Speer, and his team, were involved in concentration camp construction alongside the SS, and therefore had a role in implementing the “Final Solution”.

During the postwar Nuremberg trials, Speer denied being present at the Posen Conference of October 1943, where SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler said of Jewish populations that,

“The grave decision had to be taken to cause this people to vanish from the earth”.

Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer in 1943. (Source: Wikipedia)

It is in fact certain Speer was in attendance at the Posen Conference. Himmler addresses him personally during the speech and, crucially, it was discovered that Speer wrote in December 1971,

“There is no doubt; I was present as Himmler announced on October 6, 1943 that all Jews would be killed”.

Previously, on 20 January 1942, a separate notorious meeting was organized in Wannsee, south-west Berlin. It was chaired by the SS commander Reinhard Heydrich who said that

“Europe would be combed of Jews from east to west”.

Speer was not in attendance at the Wannsee Conference – yet it is likely he was informed of this order for genocide, as Speer was well acquainted with some of those present at Wannsee like Heydrich himself, the Gestapo’s Gerhard Klopfer, Reich Minister Georg Leibbrandt and Gauleiter Alfred Meyer.

Hitler had in 1937 assigned Speer as General Building Inspector of the Reich. In the late 1930s and early 40s, the architect was at least partially culpable in the eviction of Jewish tenants in Berlin, to be replaced by “Aryan” dwellers. Speer even inquired as to how the expulsions were progressing, with 75,000 Jewish tenants eventually evicted.

In early February 1942, Speer was appointed as armaments minister by Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair headquarters, following the mysterious death of Fritz Todt in a plane crash. From 1942 onward, Speer was directly complicit in sustaining Hitler’s increasingly criminal dictatorship. He poured all his energy into the challenges ahead, quickly becoming one of Nazi Germany’s most powerful men.

Speer had no experience in the field of armaments, he had not even fired a gun before. Regardless, Speer was remarkably adept in his new role, using his organizational skills and intelligence to produce weapons on a massive scale – despite the indiscriminate Allied bombing from above. The results Speer achieved saw his stock rise even further with Hitler, who was soon addressing him as “My dear Speer”.

In the time ahead, Speer cast away further scruples by extensively exploiting slave labor, with the final aim of turning the war around and preserving the Third Reich. Speer’s policies prolonged the global conflict by many months, thereby allowing the extermination camps to remain in existence for longer, while Hitler’s military could continue fighting across various fronts.

As Soviet and Allied forces closed in from east and west, the discovery of the death camps sent waves of horror across the world. Yet on 30 January 1939, Hitler had explicitly remarked during a Reichstag speech of “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” should Germany enter “once more into a world war”.

Britain and France may have declared war on Germany two days after Hitler’s invasion of Poland, but it was almost a token gesture. British and French elites cared little for the fate of Poland, as the country was dissected by Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Almost three decades after the war, Britain’s Conservative MP Robert Boothby candidly commented that,

“We’d gone to war for the defense of Poland. In the event, we did nothing to help Poland at all. We never lifted a finger… we confined our war efforts [in 1939] to dropping leaflets on the German people”.

This dismal inaction had major consequences for millions of people. At the start of hostilities in September 1939, Poland’s Jewish population was 3.3 million, the second largest such community in the world (behind the Soviet Union’s Jewish populace). Hitler’s address the previous winter outlined precisely what fate lay in store for them.

By 1945, over 1.8 million Polish Jews would be killed, about half of whom were murdered at the Treblinka extermination camp in eastern Poland. Altogether, about six million Poles lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis.

During Speer’s collaboration with Hitler, which included their enacting of vast architectural aims and ambitions, he claims that

“scarcely any anti-Semitic remarks of Hitler’s have remained in my memory… Hitler’s hatred for the Jews seemed to me so much a matter of course that I gave it no serious thought. I felt myself to be Hitler’s architect. Political events did not concern me”.

Political events may not have concerned Speer in the Reich’s early years when he was a naive, reserved young architect “completely under the sway of Hitler”. As time moved by, however, Speer’s character was inevitably corrupted by the all-consuming nature of Hitler’s dictatorship, along with the personalities that surrounded him.

From late 1933 onward, Speer was in close contact with Hitler on an almost daily basis. The relationship included morning walks and conversations, dinner outings and tea parties. This incredibly intimate association with the Nazi leader – who was 16 years older than Speer – must have profoundly impacted the latter’s still developing disposition.

Hitler was known for his remote nature with people, yet he spoke of “the warmest human feelings” for Speer who represented a “kindred spirit” for him. Speer later admitted that, “All I wanted was for this great man [Hitler] to dominate the globe”.

Speer was, in the meantime, increasingly in the presence of figures like Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. Sustained relations with nefarious men such as these was bound to have further detrimental effects upon him.

Speer had been a latecomer to the Nazi Party having applied for membership on 1 March 1931, when he was aged almost 26. Speer had only seen Hitler for the first time four months previously, when the aspiring dictator was delivering a speech in Berlin at a dilapidated beer hall. About five thousand people were in attendance that evening, mostly students, and Speer wrote that Hitler “spoke urgently and with hypnotic persuasiveness” which “swept away any skepticism, any reservations”.

Despite hailing from an upper class background in Mannheim, south-west Germany, Speer had lived through challenging times. In his late teens, he struggled through the hyperinflation years of the Weimar Republic, which reached crippling levels in the early 1920s. By 1929 and the early 1930s Speer’s architectural dreams lay in apparent ruins, with the Great Depression resulting in unprecedented hardship in Germany.

Overlooking his travails, Speer’s driving force remained finding a master who would bestow upon him the architectural tasks he desired. He confessed that, “For the commission to do a great building, I would have sold my soul like Faust”.

Capitalizing on his contact with Hanke, Speer finally met Hitler in person during July 1933, when he was invited to the Nazi leader’s modest apartment in Munich.

Having impressed Hitler with his architectural style, speed and efficiency, Speer was admitted to his inner circle by the autumn of 1933, and soon sat beside the dictator at dinner. Some years later Hitler informed Speer that,

“You attracted my notice during our rounds. I was looking for an architect to whom I could entrust my building plans. I wanted someone young, for as you know these plans extend far into the future”.

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

The lithium ride was a great one. Cobalt, too. All they needed was their Elon Musk moment, which came in the form of the Nevada battery gigafactory. The next Elon Musk moment won’t be about lithium at all—or even cobalt. It will be for an element that takes everything electric to its revolutionary finish line: Vanadium.

The one moment that will change everything … and that moment may be near.

Vanadium is lithium on steroids—wildly bigger and the only way forward from here. We may have already reached the peak of our electric revolution through batteries with lithium.

We need bigger batteries, preferably the size of a football field—or 20.

That’s vanadium—Element 23. The answer to our issue of scale.

“It’s no longer a technological maybe,” says Matt Rhoades, president and CEO of United Battery Metals, a Colorado vanadium explorer sitting on one of the few known sources of the next big battery metal in the entire United States.

Rhoades should know … his company is behind the discovery that hopes to put America definitively on the vanadium map. UBM’s Wray Mesa Project in Colorado has a mineral resource base estimate indicating resource of around 2.7 million pounds of vanadium—not to mention all the uranium they already know is there for additional upside.

“Vanadium is here, and lithium is scared because the $13-billion energy storage market has already found its new poster boy,” Rhoades told Oilprice.com.

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China, followed by Russia and South Africa, have the largest reserves of Vanadium, which has become a strategic raw material in electric energy technology

Screenshot from Investingnews.com report

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The Moment of Truth

Indeed, Rhoades is an expert at timing.

The worldwide battle for vanadium is ramping up …

The Chinese have already had their Elon Musk moment …

The U.S. has none …

And vanadium was the best-performing battery metal last year, beating out even lithium and cobalt.

The truth is that it’s been a long road for vanadium to not only break into the energy storage market, but to actually become the future of the energy storage market.

The next ‘moment’ will be when someone in the U.S.—always one step behind the Chinese—announces plans for an American vanadium battery gigafactory. Anyone who hasn’t gotten in before that moment will be nursing their lithium hangover.

China is already building the world’s largest vanadium flow battery (VFB) gigafactory in Dalian, with the massively powerful (200MW/800MWh) batteries to be manufactured by Rongke Power.

Source: Electrek

It covers an area bigger than 20 soccer fields.

And thanks to the Chinese, vanadium was the best-performing battery metal last year.

Source: Bloomberg

And this year is the kicker. In just the past month, ferro vanadium prices have soared 33%. A month ago, ferro vanadium prices were at $79 per kilogram. Now we’re looking at $105 per kilogram.

(Click to enlarge)

Vanadium pentoxide flake is following the same speedy upward mobility:

(Click to enlarge)

And it’s vanadium pentoxide that is the main ingredient in vanadium redox flow batteries used for grid energy storage.

For a junior minor like UBM with a market cap of just over $10 million—that potential 2.7 million pounds of vanadium begins to sound like strategy at its best and brightest.

Why Vanadium Changes Everything

But let’s back up a bit …

If you were just getting the hang of lithium and cobalt in the battery mix, vanadium might sound complicated—but it’s not.

It’s as simple as size. This is where we get to scale up because when it comes to energy storage, bigger is better. In fact, bigger is the only way forward in this game.

This is possible because vanadium flow batteries store their energy in tanks. The fluid (electrolyte) that transfers charges inside a battery flows from one tank through the system and back again, making a closed circuit. They can charge and discharge simultaneously.

We’re talking tanks that can be as big as you want them: an aquarium, a shipping container or even an Olympic swimming pool—as big as your imagination can take you.

For renewable energy it is a game-changer. VRBs will forever change the capacity of wind and solar energy, making it limitless and cheap.

Vanadium is superior to lithium in every way. Not only does it have eternal life (unlike lithium), it’s not explosive, flammable or toxic.

Not only can it be scaled up cheaply, but it’s actually cheaper to scale it up, making it the antithesis of lithium.

Put in another way: It’s tough to scale up a lithium-ion system. If you double the size, you double the cost. Not so with vanadium: All you have to do is make the tank bigger, and the bigger the scale the lower the cost.

And that scaling up is already happening. Vanadium batteries are already providing complete energy storage system for $500 per kilowatt hour. In less than a year, that is expected to be down to $300. By 2020, we could be looking at $150/kilowatt hour.

A lithium-ion battery gigafactory couldn’t come close to this fast-paced cost reduction.

Vanadium: Finally, America Gets A Piece of the Pie

Even though this is the biggest energy story right now, vanadium isn’t just a bet on batteries—that’s why Mining.com calls it “the metal we can’t do without and don’t produce”.

Just as UBM’s new vanadium discovery is also an original uranium resource, vanadium can also be used in nuclear energy. By 2025, analysts estimate that 85 percent of all vehicles will incorporate vanadium alloy to reduce their weight and increase fuel efficiency.

Still, strategic as it is, America has fallen behind, and now that the global race for vanadium is on in the battery game, that will hurt.

In China, vanadium is already becoming the alternative to lithium. The next big moment will be this:

“If a vanadium battery producer steps forward with bold plans to produce vanadium flow at mass scale, giving the industry its Elon Musk or lithium ion moment, the potential for the technology to be the second most deployed ESS battery in the world is there,” says Simon Moores of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a battery materials research and price discovery provider out of London.

Rhoades certainly agrees and UBM is in that wonderful position of potentially becoming the only American source for the key rare earth metal that will power our scaled-up “liquid electricity” breakthrough.

“The vanadium flow battery scale-up for massive energy storage makes the electric vehicle push look like child’s play,” he said. “Lithium was a teaser. Vanadium is where it all gets huge.”

We watched lithium take center stage, but that may be just the prologue. Vanadium could be the conclusion.

Other companies in the booming commodity space you should keep an eye on:

Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA): No large cap company has dazzled over the past couple of years like Tesla, which overtook giant GM this year in market cap—a major, unexpected feat. Tesla is the future, and its stock price agrees.

Tesla’s electric cars will eventually be more profitable than traditional cars, and easier to produce. Costs will keep coming down, especially now that Tesla’s has launched its battery gigafactory in Nevada, and when it gets battery (and lithium) prices down.

It is entirely feasible that Tesla will be selling over 2 million cars annually in less 6-7 years from now, despite recent management issues.

General Motors (NYSE:GM) is a household name. GM was born at the turn of the 20^th century and has been a leading innovator in the automotive industry ever since. Even though it’s been surpassed in market cap by Tesla (of all companies), it is still the furthest ahead of the Big 3 car makers from Detroit in terms of EVs and self-driving cars.

Recently, GM acquired Cruise Automation—a self-driving car company, and it seems determined to forge ahead even faster to play catch-up with the future. Additionally, GM is a leader in the booming electric vehicle market. As countries across the world begin to pass regulations on combustion engines, GM stands to gain significantly as an early adopter in the EV game.

Cameco Corporation (NYSE:CCJ) Cameco is one of the largest global producers and sellers of uranium and nuclear fuel. Its operating uranium properties include the McArthur River/Key Lake, Cigar Lake, and Rabbit Lake properties located in Saskatchewan, Canada; the Inkai property situated in Kazakhstan; the Smith Ranch-Highland property located in Wyoming, the United States; and the Crow Butte property situated in Nebraska.

While many analysts see low uranium prices as a problem for miners, the OPEC like move from world uranium leader Kazakhstan to bump prices has benefited Cameco and its peers significantly.

FMC Corp. (NYSE:FMC) founded in 1883, FMC has been around the block and back. FMC has a long history stretching between many different industries, but within all of them, FMC has remained a leader in innovation.

FMC’s involvement in the lithium industry is particularly notable. The company is one of the top three in lithium and associated technologies. And recently, the company announced that it will be launching a new company, Livent, which aims to raise $100 million in an initial public offering to establish its place as a dominant lithium supplier.

Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ:BLPD) Ballard develops and produces hydrogen fuel cell products for markets such as heavy-duty motive, portable power, material handling and transportation. In addition to its production and development of fuel cell products, Ballard also holds over 2,000 patents/applications.

At the end of August, Ballard announced a huge divestment agreement, releasing non-core assets to Revision Military Ltd., for up to $16 million in cash to provide a hefty boost to its fuel cell business.

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This article was originally published on OilPrice.com.

James Burgess studied Business Management at the University of Nottingham. He has worked in property development, chartered surveying, marketing, law, and accounts. He has also studied journalism and has written many articles over the years for a wide variety of sources. James is the Deputy Editor of Oilprice.com

For the first time in recorded history, a Category 4 hurricane is striking the Florida Panhandle.

Hurricane Michael made landfall today, packing winds of 145 miles per hour — strong enough to collapse houses and cause massive damage to other infrastructure. Forecasts have also warned of a storm surge that could reach a stunning 14 feet in height.

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Hurricane Center describes a Category 4 hurricane’s winds thus:

Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

The storm is powerful enough that it will remain a hurricane long after it is far inland: Models show it will still have hurricane-force winds by the time it reaches as far inland as Albany, Georgia.

The storm exploded in intensity in the 24 hours before making landfall. Reuters reported on Weather Underground meteorologist Bob Hensen’s assessment of this phenomenon: “Satellite images of Michael’s evolution on Tuesday night were, in a word, jaw-dropping.”

Experts are warning that damage is expected to be “catastrophic,” and rainfall of up to half a foot could be dumped across much of the Carolinas, which are still recovering from Hurricane Florence.

Truthout has reported repeatedly on how human-caused climate change is super-charging the amount of rainfall potential for hurricanes. The current storm is displaying what scientists have been warning us about for years.

Hurricane Michael Is Not a Surprise

NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory has been warning us for years that human-caused climate change would increase key variables of hurricanes, including wind strength, the amount of rainfall, and storm surge levels.

The lab’s main conclusions on “detectable” changes are clear: Sea-level rise should be causing higher storm surge levels, rainfall rates will likely increase, tropical cyclone intensities around the globe will increase, and the proportion of storms being either Category 4 or 5 will increase.

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Rick Scott, who made a name for himself as a world-class climate change denialist by forbidding state employees from using the words “climate change” or “global warming,” is warning state residents of the ferocity of the current storm.

In 2017, Gov. Scott approved Florida’s “anti-science law,” which The Guardian reported as being “aimed at allowing legal challenges to the teaching of the realities of climate change and global warming in the state’s classrooms.”

Last year, the Tampa Bay Times reported that Gov. Scott’s personal investments in the energy industry actively helped shape Florida’s lack of adequate policies towards dealing with climate change impacts. The report showed how parts of Gov. Scott’s quarter-billion-dollar fortune were invested in petroleum and power-generating companies that are directly opposed to restricting greenhouse gas emissions, as well as environmental regulations.

More importantly, given his denialism, Gov. Scott has not committed state resources to relocating people in flood zones, or preparing communities for storms like Hurricane Michael.

Given that we know human-caused climate change impacts will only continue to intensify from now on, and damage from hurricanes such as this one will increase right along with them, Florida is the micro of the macro of a country led by a climate change-denying president.

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Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last 10 years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

Featured image is from Live Science.

The fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, assuming that his disappearance was the work of Saudi security and military officials, threatens to upend the fundaments of fault lines in the Middle East.

At stake is not only the fate of a widely respected journalist and the future of Turkish-Saudi relations.

Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, whether he was kidnapped by Saudi agents during a visit to the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul to obtain proof of his divorce or murdered on its premises, threatens to severely disrupt the US-Saudi alliance that underwrites much of the Middle East’s fault lines.

A US investigation into Mr. Khashoggi’s fate mandated by members of the US Congress and an expected meeting between President Donald J. Trump, and the journalist’s Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, could result in a US and European embargo on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and impact the kingdom’s brutal proxy war with Iran in Yemen.

It also would project Saudi Arabia as a rogue state and call into question US and Saudi allegations that Iran is the Middle East’s main state supporter of terrorism.

The allegations formed a key reason for the United States’ withdrawal with Saudi, United Arab Emirates and Israeli backing from the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program and the re-imposition of crippling economic sanctions.

They also would undermine Saudi and UAE justification of their 15-month old economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar that the two Gulf states, alongside Egypt and Bahrain, accuse of supporting terrorism.

Condemnation and sanctioning of Saudi Arabia by the international community would complicate Chinese and Russian efforts to walk a fine line in their attempts to ensure that they are not sucked into the Saudi-Iranian rivalry.

Russia and China would be at a crossroads if Saudi Arabia were proven to be responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and the issue of sanctions would be brought to the United Nations Security Council.

Both Russia and China have so far been able to maintain close ties to Saudi Arabia despite their efforts to defeat US sanctions against Iran and Russia’s alliance with the Islamic republic in their support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

A significantly weakened Saudi Arabia would furthermore undermine Arab cover provided by the kingdom for Mr. Trump’s efforts to impose a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would favour Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.

Finally, a conclusive determination that Saudi Arabia was responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s fate would likely spark renewed debate about the wisdom of the international community’s support for Arab autocracy that has proven to be unashamedly brutal in its violation of human rights and disregard for international law and conventions.

Meanwhile, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has suffered significant reputational damage irrespective of Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, raising the question of his viability if Saudi Arabia were condemned internationally and stability in the kingdom, a key tenant of US, Chinese and Russian Middle East policy, were to be at risk.

The reputational damage suffered by Prince Mohammed embarrasses UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, who together with his aides and representatives in world capitals, worked hard to project his Saudi counterpart as the kingdom’s future.

Saudi Arabia has so far done itself few favours by flatly rejecting any responsibility for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance with no evidence that the journalist left the consulate at his own volition; asserting that claims that it was involved were fabrications by Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood; seeking to defame Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancé and supporters; and refusing to fully cooperate with Turkish investigators.

Saudi reluctance to cooperate as well as the US investigation and Ms. Cengiz’s expected meeting with Mr. Trump complicate apparent Turkish efforts to find a resolution of the escalating crisis that would allow Saudi Arabia to save face and salvage Turkey’s economic relationship with the kingdom.

Turkey, despite deep policy differences with Saudi Arabia over Qatar, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood, has so far refrained from statements that go beyond demanding that Saudi Arabia prove its assertion that Mr. Khashoggi left the Istanbul consulate at his own volition and fully cooperate with the Turkish investigation.

Reports by anonymous Turkish officials detailing gruesome details of Mr. Khashoggi’s alleged murder by Saudi agents appear designed to pressure Saudi Arabia to comply with the Turkish demands and efforts to manage the crisis.

Widely acclaimed, Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, irrespective of whether he as yet emerges alive or is proven to have been brutally murdered, is reshaping the political map of the Middle East. The possibility, if not likelihood is that he paid a horrendous price for sparking the earthquake that is already rumbling across the region.

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

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

France’s Sahel-wide “Operation Barkane” has recently been forced to pay increasing attention to the upsurge of terrorism in Burkina Faso, which is quickly turning into another flashpoint in the War on Terror.

The G5 Sahel & “Operation Barkhane”

Most of the world missed it last week because of the global hysteria surrounding Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in the US, but France was forced to launch an airstrike against terrorists in the eastern part of Burkina Faso, one of the G5 Sahel countries that Paris has partnered with as part of its Sahel-wide “Operation Barkhane”. The former colonial power launched this open-ended mission following the conclusion of “Operation Serval”, which is the name that was given to its January 2013 military intervention in Mali that it organized in response to Islamic terrorists hijacking a fast-moving Tuareg separatist movement that swept across the country the year prior. In the years since, the regional terrorist threat has only increased as Daesh expanded to West Africa and dethroned Al Qaeda as the most notorious armed actor in the area, though the latter isn’t hasn’t been “put out of business” just yet.

In fact, it’s thought a new Al Qaeda cell is responsible for the recent spate of violence in eastern Burkina Faso, a sparsely populated and extremely poor part of the country that borders eastern Mali and western Niger, both of which have been afflicted by serious terrorist violence over the past couple of years. Casual news consumers might remember the deadly attack that took place in western Niger last year against American special forces there and which was described by some as “Trump’s Benghazi” because of the alleged cover-up that followed, while others might vaguely recall the Mainstream Media occasionally talking about the never-ending destabilization of Mali, to which Canada has recently dispatched its military forces to aid its NATO allies. For the most part, however, this corner of the world is largely unknown to all but the locals themselves and any interested foreigners who follow its developments.

Strategic Significances

Most of the global public is therefore unaware of how serious the terrorist threat in West Africa is. Apart from Niger’s uranium deposits and China’s long-term bi-coastal Silk Road plans that traverse through the Sahel, there admittedly isn’t much of strategic significance here to warrant many people’s attention, though that’s not to say that the aforementioned aren’t important at all. Probably the most pressing reason why West Africa is so significant to European interests, however, is because it’s both an origin and transit country for EU-destined migrants whose numbers are only expected to continue growing to the point of possibly unleashing a large-scale Migrant Crisis 2.0in the future that could dwarf the previous one from the Mideast. Even with this impending out-of-control threat, many people have no idea what’s really going on in West Africa, partly due to the adage of “out of sight, out of mind”.

France’s War on Terror in West Africa, which isn’t solely driven by anti-terrorist objectives but is also motivated by anti-migrant and other ones too, is rapidly heating up and turning into a quagmire as the scale and scope of asymmetrical Hybrid War threats spread throughout the entire Sahel region and begins to destabilize this part of the African continent at large. Burkina Faso is but the latest flashpoint in this transnational conflict after NATO’s destruction of Libya in 2011 contributed to Mali’s 2012 Tuareg separatist insurgency that in turn was hijacked by the Salafists who France intervened to depose in 2013. The chain reaction of unrest eventually spread to Niger after terrorists started using the unguarded and largely ungoverned border region with Mali to set up a base of operations that has since also enveloped parts of eastern Burkina Faso as well.

Burkinabe Rumblings

About that, the subject of this analysis was previously known (if at all by anyone outside of the region) as the homeland of famous late-Old Cold War African socialist visionary Thomas Sankara and used to be called Upper Volta, a name that some in the West might remember for its use in mocking the Soviet Union as “Upper Volta with nukes/missiles/rockets” (the variation changes depending on who’s employing the phrase). It was ruled with an iron fist by Blaise Compaoré following the coup that he committed against his former friend Sankara in 1987 until his own overthrow in 2014, after which terrorist attacks became more frequent because of a combination of the regional and domestic situations. The author realized in August 2017 that “Burkina Faso Is Becoming A Battlefront In The War On Terror” after terrorists seized a restaurant in the capital of Ouagadougou and killed over a dozen people.

That dramatic event proved that Burkina Faso was at risk of falling victim to the region’s terrorist spillover, which appears to have already quietly happened judging by the recent French airstrike in the east after that part of the country unofficially became part of the “Sahel Triangle of Terror” between eastern Mali and western Niger. This is significant not just for the fact that yet another country in the world is facing a pronounced terrorist threat, but because of the potential that it could spread further throughout West Africa due to the prevalence of the country’s labor migrants in neighboring Ivory Coast, whose 2002-2007 civil war was caused in part (though importantly not in full) by the fear that many Christian citizens had of Muslim Burkinabe migrants taking over the north. Whether based in truth or not, fearmongering about terrorist infiltrators among Burkinabe migrants in Ivory Coast and even Ghana could raise regional tensions.

Concluding Thoughts

Burkina Faso is therefore so important because it functions as a geo-demographic pivot between the Sahel and the jungled regions of West Africa, meaning that its terrorist-driven destabilization (influenced as it is by the security dynamics in neighboring Mali and Niger) could spread further throughout this part of the continent if left unchecked. The country could thus be perceived as an anti-terrorist “firewall” protecting the states along Africa’s Atlantic coast from falling victim to this scourge, which is why events in this landlocked and seemingly godforsaken land are so crucial to continental affairs. The failure of the Burkinabe “firewall” to hold back Sahel-originating destabilization processes could catalyze a chain reaction of state fragmentation in the vulnerable post-civil war countries of the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and possibly even Sierra Leone given how interconnected their strategic situations have been since the end of the Old Cold War, which might make the EU’s African Migrant Crisis much worse in the coming future.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Sixteen years ago this week, 77 U.S. senators and 296 members of the House of Representatives gave President George W. Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq.

That monumental vote enabled what is arguably the biggest strategic foreign policy blunder in American history, needlessly killing hundreds of thousands and costing trillions of dollars. To this day, the United States is still militarily engaged in Iraq and Syria, dealing with the continued fallout of Bush’s decision to invade back in 2003. For decades to come, the United States will spend tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars caring for American service members wounded both mentally and physically in that conflict.

If you think the U.S. government learned its lesson from this tragedy, think again. 

Former Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) was one of just 29 senators—all Democrats—who voted against the Iraq war authorization in October 2002. Last year, he issued a stark warning:

If an administration again pounds the drums for war and the media reacted as they did [during the run-up to the Iraq war], without serious thought, with just a visceral emotional response rather than thinking critically and seriously and responsibly, I don’t think what happened in Iraq will unfortunately matter very much. I wish I could say to you something else.

Well it just so happens that an administration is pounding the war drums again, and the media is playing right along.

Trump’s Approach to Iran

Team Trump showed its hand in the early days of the administration when then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn randomly stormed into the White House press room to put Iran “on notice” (for what, it was unclear, but in any event, Iran was on notice). Soon after, the Trump administration began its quest to dismantle the Obama administration’s legacy of working through differences with Iran diplomatically and to put the United States back on the path to war.

While Trump began signaling his desire to leave the historic nuclear deal, administration officials started dialing up the bellicose rhetoric. Later that year, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo pushed the baseless narrative that Iran is in cahoots with al-Qaeda. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley later put on a flashy show accusing Iran, without evidence, of violating UN resolutions in Yemen. That episode led one former Bush administration official involved in selling the Iraq War to sound the alarm that Team Trump was applying the same approach to Iran.

Trump then dismissed two senior officials—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster—who favored remaining in the Iran nuclear deal, and replaced them with uber Iran hawks Pompeo and John Bolton, both of whom hated the agreement and have pushed for war with Iran.

After Trump finally announced that the United States would violate the deal and reimpose sanctions, Pompeo again went on the offensive in a series of speeches outliningwhat everyone (even the right wing) knows but Trump officials won’t say outright: a policy of regime change in Iran.

Let’s not underestimate the impact of withdrawing from the Iran deal. The agreement is currently on life support. If the Europeans can’t make it worthwhile for the Iranians to stay in it once U.S. oil sanctions go into effect this November, the Iran deal is likely dead, leaving Iran free to restart its nuclear program and raising the prospect for war.

But the last couple weeks have been particularly alarming. Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton used their spotlights on the world stage last month during the UN General Assembly and a U.S.-hosted UN Security Council meeting to lash out at Iran “with unusual venom,” as the Associated Press put it. The administration is also increasing the likelihood of military confrontation with Iran in the region, announcing plans to keep U.S. troops in Syria to counter Iranian forces and, more recently, blaming Iran for attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Iraq.

Media Mistakes

On the media side, there are some differences between now and the run-up to the Iraq War. For example, the Bush administration’s case for war was a conversation that started shortly after 9/11 and was a primary media topic for the next year and a half. The country was still reeling in the aftermath of the attacks.

The context is different today, but the media is still making the same mistakes.

First, the Trump administration’s sharp focus on Iran has been covered here and there but it’s by no means the topic of conversation on a day-to-day basis. That’s largely because there’s just so much distraction, whether from the Mueller investigation, the many destructive policy decisions made by this White House, or just the ongoing ridiculousness of Trump himself.

Second, media outlets are beating the Iran war drums themselves now too, particularly Fox News and right-wing media.

But there’s a mainstream media element too. Iran hawk columnists masquerading as hard-news reporters hold high perches at the some of the nation’s most elite media outlets, while others have promoted baseless claims about the Iran deal to help lay the groundwork for Trump to withdraw. And those who advocated for war in Iraq are getting plenty of air time these days to talk about confronting Iran.

On that front, there’s also a newer game in town. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, while not a player during the run-up to the Iraq War, is the most prominent and influential hawkish “think tank” in DC pushing for war and regime change in Iran. Whether in the op-ed pages of the nation’s most widely read newspapers, on major TV and radio news, or even in newer media puff pieces, mainstream outlets regularly give FDD’s staffers wide latitude to trash the Iran deal or make the case for war and/or regime change. And they’re usually presented as neutral experts and analysts without giving any sense of what FDD is actually pushing for. They sometimes even get happy birthday wishes.

Just last week, mainstream outlets largely ignored the fact that Pompeo and Bolton were delivering their hostile Iran speeches before a shady but influential and well-funded group with ties to Gulf countries urging a more aggressive U.S. approach to Iran.

This march to war with Iran is happening. Because of the chaos that is this Donald Trump presidency, it’s not getting the widespread attention it needs. Indeed, as if reading right from the Iraq-War playbook, and without offering any evidence, Pompeo said last week he has “solid” intelligence that Iran is responsible for attacks on Americans in the Middle East. “We can see the hand of the Ayatollah and his henchmen supporting these attacks on the United States,” he said. Given the widespread media attention on the Supreme Court nomination circus, Pompeo’s remarks barely made a blip in the national media.

Although some in Congress have recognized that Trump has put the United States back on the path to war, the alarm bells aren’t as loud as they should be. And that recalls Kent Conrad’s disturbing warning: “If the president of the United States wants to take this nation to war, he can take this nation to war. And stopping that is incredibly difficult.”

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Ben Armbruster is the communications director for Win Without War and previously served as national security editor at ThinkProgress.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Monsanto will ask a San Francisco judge on Wednesday to throw out a jury’s $289 million award to a former school groundskeeper who claimed the company’s glyphosate-based weedkillers, Roundup and Ranger Pro, caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos, who oversaw the trial, has the power to overturn the verdict, reduce the award amount or order a new trial.

The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, was the first among 8,700 people in the U.S. who have made similar cancer claims against Monsanto, which is now owned by Germany’s Bayer.

The Associated Press reported:

Attorneys for the company say Johnson failed to prove that Roundup or similar herbicides caused his lymphoma, and presented no evidence that Monsanto executives were malicious in marketing Roundup. Bolanos was not expected to rule immediately.

Regulators around the world have concluded on “multiple occasions” that the active ingredient in Roundup — glyphosate — is not a human carcinogen, the attorneys said in court documents. They called the jury verdict “extraordinary” and said it requires “exceptional scrutiny.”

A judgement in favor of the company could discourage the other lawsuits and allow Bayer to avoid a “rush to trial after trial,” Bloomberg reported. More trials over the controversial herbicide are scheduled for February.

A San Francisco jury's $289 million verdict in favor of a school groundskeeper who says Roundup weed killer caused his cancer faces first court test. https://t.co/ffdYw9afwC see court dox here: https://t.co/4fYkepgun9

— carey gillam (@careygillam) October 10, 2018

Jonas Oxgaard, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., estimated to Bloomberg that Bayer’s market value is discounted by as much as $15 billion due to the jury’s verdict.

“Getting the first ruling overturned would be huge for Bayer—likely reversing most of the discount,” Oxgaard told the publication.

Johnson’s lawyer, Brent Wisner, said the jury made the right decision in August when they awarded his client with $289 million in damages.

“This was a considerate, thoughtful and well-educated jury that looked at the science to conclude glyphosate causes cancer,” Wisner told Reuters in August.

“Mr. Johnson’s story is tragic and could have been prevented if Monsanto actually showed a modicum of care about human safety,” Johnson’s lawyers also responded in court documents cited by the AP.

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Featured image is from EcoWatch.

When the global financial crisis resurfaces, we the people will have to fill the vacuum in political leadership. It will call for a monumental mobilisation of citizens from below, focused on a single and unifying demand for a people’s bailout across the world.

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A full decade since the great crash of 2008, many progressive thinkers have recently reflected on the consequences of that fateful day when the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, foreshadowing the worst international financial crisis of the post-war period. What seems obvious to everyone is that lessons have not been learnt, the financial sector is now larger and more dominant than ever, and an even greater crisis is set to happen anytime soon. But the real question is when it strikes, what are the chances of achieving a bailout for ordinary people and the planet this time?

In the aftermath of the last global financial meltdown, there was a constant stream of analysis about its proximate causes. This centred on the bursting of the US housing bubble, fuelled in large part by reckless sub-prime lending and an under-regulated shadow banking system. Media commentaries fixated on the implosion of collateralised debt obligations, credit default swaps and other financial innovations—all evidence of the speculative greed and lax government oversight which led to the housing and credit booms.

The term ‘financialisation’ has become a buzzword to explain the factors which precipitated these events, referring to the vastly expanded role of financial markets in the operation of domestic and global economies. It is not only about the growth of big banks and hedge funds, but the radical transformation of our entire society that has taken place as a result of the increasing dominance of the financial sector with its short-termist, profitmaking logic.

The origins of the crisis are rooted in the early 1970s, when the US government decided to end the fixed convertibility of dollars into gold, formally ending the Bretton Woods monetary system. It marked the beginning of a new regime of floating exchange rates, free trade in goods and the free movement of capital across borders. The sweeping reforms brought in under the Thatcher and Reagan governments accelerated a wave of deregulation and privatisation, with minimum protective barriers against the ‘self-regulating market’.

The agenda was pushed aggressively by most national governments in the Global North, while being imposed on many Southern countries through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s infamous ‘structural adjustment programmes’. A legion of books have examined the disastrous consequences of this market-led approach to monetary and fiscal policy, derisorily labelled the neoliberal Washington Consensus. As governments increasingly focused on maintaining low inflation and removing regulations on capital and corporations, the world of finance boomed—and the foundations were laid for a dramatic dénouement in 2008.

Missed opportunities

What’s extraordinary to recall about the immediate aftermath of the great crash is the temporary reversal of those policies that had dominated the previous two decades. At the G20 summit in April 2009 hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, heads of state envisaged a return to Keynesian macroeconomic prescriptions, including a large-scale fiscal stimulus in both developed and developing countries. It appeared that the Washington Consensus had suddenly lost all legitimacy. The liberalised global financial system had clearly failed to provide for a net transfer of resources to the developing world, or prevent instability and recurrent crisis without effective state regulation and democratic public oversight.

Many civil society organisations saw the moment to call for fundamental reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, as well as a complete rethink of the role of the state in the economy. There was even talk of negotiating a new Bretton Woods agreement that re-regulates international capital flows, and supports policy diversity and multilateralism as a core principle (in direct contrast to the IMF’s discredited  approach).

The United Nations played a staunch role in upholding such demands, particularly through a commission set up by the then-President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. Led by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the ‘UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development’ proposed a number of sensible measures to protect the least privileged citizens from the effects of the crisis, while giving developing countries greater influence in reforming the global economy.

Around the same time, the UN Secretary-General endorsed a Global Green New Deal that could stimulate an economic recovery, combat poverty and avert dangerous climate change simultaneously. It envisioned a massive programme of direct public investments and other internationally-coordinated interventions, arguing that the time had come to transform the global economy for the greater benefit of people everywhere, including the millions living in poverty in developing and emerging industrial economies.

This wasn’t the first time that nations were called upon to enact a full-scale reordering of global priorities in response to financial turmoil. At the onset of the ‘third world’ debt crisis in 1980, an Independent Commission on International Development Issuesconvened by the former West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, also proposed far-reaching emergency measures to reform the global economic system and effectively bail out the world’s poor.

Yet the Brandt Commission proposals were widely ignored by Western governments at the time, which marked the rise of the neoliberal counterrevolution in macroeconomic policy—and all the conditions that led to financial breakdown three decades later. Then once again, governments responded in precisely the opposite direction for bringing about a sustainable economic recovery based on principles of equity, justice, sharing and human rights.

A world falling apart

We are all familiar with the course of action taken from 2008-9: colossal bank bailouts enacted (without public consultation) that favoured creditors, not debtors, despite using taxpayer money. Quantitative easing (QE) programmes that have pumped trillions of dollars into the global financial system, unleashing a fresh wave of speculative investment and further widening income and wealth gaps. And the perceived blame for the crisis deflected towards excessive public spending, leading to fiscal austerity measures being rolled out across most countries—a ‘decade of adjustment’ that is projected to affect nearly 80 percent of the global population by 2020.

Source: eyewashdesgin: A. Golden, flickr creative commons

To be sure, the ensuing policy responses across Europe were often compared to structural adjustment programmes imposed on developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s, when repayments to creditors of commercial banks similarly took precedence over measures to ensure social and economic recovery. The same pattern has repeated in every crisis-hit region, where the poorest in society pay the price through extreme austerity and the privatisation of public assets and services, despite being the least to blame for causing the crisis in the first place.

After ten years of these policies a new billionaire is created every second day, banks are still paying out billions of dollars in bonuses each year, and the top 1% of the world population are far wealthier than before the crisis happened. At the same time, global income inequality has returned to 1820 levels, and indicators suggest progress is now reversing on the prevention of extreme poverty and multiple forms of malnutrition.

Indeed the United Nations continues to face the worst humanitarian situation since the second world war, in large part due to conflict-driven crises that are rooted in the economic fallout of the 2008 crash—most dramatically in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Countries of both the Global North and South remain in the grip of a record upsurge of forced human displacement, to which governments are predictably failing to respond to in the direction of cooperative burden sharing through agreements and institutions at the international level.

Not to mention the rise of fascism and divisive populism that is escalating in almost every society, often as a misguided response to pervasive inequality and a widespread sense of unfairness among ordinary workers. It is surely reasonable to suggest that all these trends would not be deteriorating if the community of nations had seized the opportunity a decade ago, and acted in accordance with calls for a just transition to a more equitable world order.

The worst is yet to come

We now live in a strange era of political limbo. Neoclassical economics may have failed to predict the great crash or provide answers for a sustained recovery, yet it still retains its hold on conventional academic thought. Neoliberalism may also be discredited as the dominant political and economic paradigm, yet mainstream institutions like the IMF and OECD still embrace the fundamentals of free market orthodoxy and countenance no meaningful alternative. Consequently, the new regulatory initiatives agreed at the global level are largely voluntary and inadequate, and governments have done little to counter the power of oligopolistic banks or prevent reckless speculative behaviour.

Banks may be relatively safer and possess a bigger crisis toolkit, but the risk has moved to the largely unregulated shadow banking system which has massively increased in size, growing from $28 trillion in 2010 to $45 trillion in 2018. Even major banks like JP Morgan are forewarning an imminent crisis, which may be caused by a digital ‘flash crash’ in which high frequency investments (measuring trades in millionths of a second) lead to a sudden downfall of global stock markets.

Another probable cause is the precipitous rise in global debt, which has soared from $142 to $250 trillion since 2008, three times the combined income of every nation. Global markets are running on easy money and credit, leading to a debt build-up which economists from across the political spectrum agree cannot last indefinitely without catastrophic results. The problem is most acute in emerging and developing economies, where short-term capital flowed in response to low interest rates and QE policies in the West. As the US and other rich countries begin to steadily raise interest rates again, there is a risk of a mass exodus of capital from emerging markets that could trigger a renewed debt crisis in the world’s poorest countries.

Of most concern is China, however, whose credit-fuelled expansion in the post-crash years has led to massive over-investment and national debt. With an overheating real-estate sector, volatile stock market and uncontrolled shadow banking system, it is a prime candidate to be the site for the next financial implosion.

However it originates, all the evidence suggests that an economic collapse could be far worse this time around. The ‘too-big-to-fail’ problem remains critical, with the biggest US banks owning more deposits, assets and cash than ever before. And with interest rates at historic lows for many G-10 central banks while the QE taps are still turned on, both developed and developing countries have less policy and fiscal space to respond to another shock.

Above all, China and the US are not in a position to take the same decisive central bank action that helped avert a world depression in 2008. And then there all the contemporary political factors that mitigate against a coordinated international response—the retreat from multilateralism, the disintegration of established geopolitical structures and relationships, the fragmentation and polarisation of political systems throughout the world.

After two years of a US presidency that recklessly scraps global agreements and instigates trade wars, it is hard to imagine a repeat of the G20 gathering in 2009 when assembled leaders pledged never to go down the road of protectionist tariff policies again, fearing a return to the dire economic conditions that led to a world war in the 1930s. The domestic policies of the Trump administration are also especially perturbing, considering its current push for greater deregulation of the financial sector—rolling back the Dodd-Frank and consumer protection acts, increasing the speed of the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, D.C., and more.

Mobilising from below

None of this should be a reason to despair or lose hope. The great crash has opened up a new awareness and energy for a better society that brings finance under popular control, as a servant to the public and no longer its master. Many different movements and campaigns have sprung up in the post-crash years that focus on addressing the problems wrought by financialisation, which more and more people realise is the underlying source of most of the world’s interlinking crises. All of these developments are hugely important, although the true test of this rising political consciousness will come when the next crash happens.

After the worldwide bank bailouts of 2008-9—estimated in excess of $29 trillion by the US Federal Reserve alone—it is no longer possible to argue that governments cannot afford to provide for the basic necessities of everyone. Just a fraction of that sum would be enough to end income poverty for the 10% of the global population who live on less than $1.90 a day. Not to mention the trillions of dollars, euros, pounds and yen that have been directly pumped into financial markets by central banks of the major developed economies, constituting a regressive form of distribution in favour of the already wealthy that could have been converted into some form of ‘quantitative easing for the people’.

A reversal of government priorities on this scale is clearly not going to be led by the political class. They have already missed the opportunity, and are largely beholden to vested interests that are unduly concerned with short-term profit maximisation, not the rebuilding of the public realm or the universal provision of essential goods and services. The great crash and its aftermath was a global phenomenon that called for a cooperative global response, yet the necessary vision from within the ranks of our governments was woefully lacking. If the financial crisis resurfaces in a different and severer manifestation, we the people will have to fill the vacuum in political leadership. It will call for a monumental mobilisation of citizens from below, focused on a single and unifying demand for a people’s bailout across the world.

Much inspiration can be drawn from the popular uprisings throughout 2011 and 2012, although the Arab Spring and Occupy movements were unable to sustain the momentum for change without a clear agenda that is truly international in scope, and attentive to the needs of the world’s majority poor. That is why we should coalesce our voices around Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims the right of everyone to the minimal requirements for a dignified life—adequate food, housing, medical care, access to social services and financial security.

Through ceaseless demonstrations in all countries that continue day and night, a united call for implementing Article 25 worldwide may finally impel governments to cooperate at the highest level, and rewrite the rules of the international economic system on the basis of shared mutual interests. In the wake of a breakdown of the entire international financial and economic order, such a grassroots mobilisation of numberless people may be the last chance we have of resurrecting long-forgotten proposals in the UN archives, as notably embodied in the aforementioned Brandt Report or Stiglitz Commission.

The case of Iceland is widely remembered as an example of how a people’s bailout can be achieved, following the ‘Pots and Pans Revolution’ that swept the country in 2009—the largest protests in the country’s history to date. As a result of the public’s demands, a new coalition government was able to buck all trends by avoiding austerity measures, actively intervening in capital markets and strengthening social programs for the less privileged. The results were remarkable for Iceland’s economic recovery, which was achieved without forcing society as a whole to pay for the blunders of corrupt banks. Yet it still wasn’t enough to prevent the old establishment political parties from eventually returning to power, and resuming their support for the same neoliberal policies that generated the crisis.

So what must happen if another systemic banking collapse occurs of even greater magnitude, not only in Iceland but in every country of the world? That is the moment when we’ll need a global Pots and Pans Revolution that is replicated by citizens of all nationalities and political persuasions, on and on until the entire planet is engulfed in a wave of peaceful demonstrations with a common cause. It will require a huge resurgence of the goodwill and staying power that once animated Occupy encampments, although this time focused on a more inclusive and universal demandfor implementing Article 25 and sharing the world’s resources.

It may seem far-fetched to presume such an unprecedented awakening of a disillusioned populace, as if we can expect a visionary leader of Christ-like stature to point out the path towards resurrecting the UN’s founding ideals of “better standards of life for everyone in the world”. However nothing less may suffice in this age of economic chaos and confusion, so let us all be prepared for the climactic events about to take place.

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This article was originally published on Share The World’s Resources.

Adam Parsons is STWR’s editor and can be contacted at [email protected].

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Kuwait has not sent any crude oil to the United States for at least four weeks, EIA’s weekly petroleum reports for the last four weeks, which also include a weekly comparison, have revealed.

The last week that saw Kuwaiti crude coming into the United States was August 24th, when 49,000 bpd were received at U.S. ports. This compares with 214,000 bpd a year earlier, suggesting that Kuwait is reorienting itself to the more lucrative Asian markets, Bloomberg reports, having calculated that Kuwaiti crude costs an average of US$80 a barrel in Asia, which is a dollar more than it costs in the United States.

Kuwaiti oil is predominantly high-sulfur, which is what a lot of Asian refineries prefer to process and are willing to pay more for it, a source in the know told Bloomberg, asking to not be identified.

So far so good for Kuwait, which is a relatively small producer, but the emirate is facing a production cap, Bloomberg notes, because of an ongoing dispute with ally Saudi Arabia about the fields that they share in the so-called neutral zone. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed went on a visit to Kuwait to discuss the topic in light of growing pressure on Middle Eastern producers to ramp up production to offset a loss of supply caused by the U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Joint oil production in the neutral zone was suspended in 2015, but earlier this month the Financial Times reported that the two countries were mulling over a restart amid rising oil prices and the matching rise in worry among large oil buyers.

The neutral zone, the FT reported at the time, could be pumping half a million barrels daily in a few months, according to the International Energy Agency, which would add to more than 10 million bpd of Saudi production and almost 3 million bpd on Kuwaiti production based on the latest figures for July.

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Irina Slav is a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

Featured image is from OilPrice.com.

In their long recapitulation of the case that Russia subverted the 2016 election, Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times painted a picture of highly effective Russian government exploitation of social media for that purpose. Shane and Mazzetti asserted that “anti-Clinton, pro-Trump messages shared with millions of voters by Russia could have made the difference” in the election.

“What we now know with certainty: The Russians carried out a landmark intervention that will be examined for decades to come,” they write elsewhere in the 10,000-word article.

But an investigation of the data they cite to show that the Russian campaigns on Facebook and Twitter were highly effective reveals a gross betrayal of journalistic responsibility. Shane and Mazzetti have constructed a case that is fundamentally false and misleading with statistics that exaggerate the real effectiveness of social media efforts by orders of magnitude.

‘Reaching’ 129 Million Americans

The Internet Research Agency (IRA), is a privately-owned company run by entrepreneur Vevgeny V. Prigozhin, who has ties with President Vladimir Putin. Its employees poured out large numbers of social media postings apparently aimed at stoking racial and cultural tensions in the United States and trying to influence U.S. voters in regard to the presidential election, as Shane and Mazzetti suggest. They even adopted false U.S. personas online to get people to attend rallies and conduct other political activities. (An alternative explanation is that IRA is a purely commercial, and not political, operation.)

Whether those efforts even came close to swaying U.S. voters in the 2016 presidential election, as Shane and Mazzetti claimed, is another matter.

Shane and Mazzetti might argue that they are merely citing figures published by the social media giants Facebook and Twitter, but they systematically failed to report the detailed explanations behind the gross figures used in each case, which falsified their significance.

Their most dramatic assertions came in reporting the alleged results of the IRA’s efforts on Facebook.

“Even by the vertiginous standards of social media,” they wrote, “the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone.”

Then, to dramatize that “eventual audience” figure, they observed, “That was not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential elections.”

But as impressive as these figures may appear at first glance, they don’t really indicate an effective attack on the U.S. election process at all. In fact, without deeper inquiry into their meaning, those figures were grossly misleading.

A Theoretical Possibility

What Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch actually said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last October was quite different from what the Times reporters claimed.

“Our best estimate is that approximately 126,000 million people may have been served one of these [IRA-generated] stories at some time during the two year period,” Stretch said.

Stretch was expressing a theoretical possibility rather than an established accomplishment. Facebook was saying that it estimated 126 million Facebook members might have gotten at least one story from the IRA –- not over the ten week election period but over 194 weeks during the two years 2015 through 2017. That, figure, in turn, was based on the estimate that 29 million people might have gotten at least one story in their Facebook feed over that same two-year period and on the assumption that they shared it with others at a particular rate.

The first problem with citing those figures as evidence of impact on the 2016 election is that Facebook did not claim that all or even most of those 80,000 IRA posts were election–related. It offered no data on what proportion of the feeds to those 29 million people was, in fact, election-related. But Stretch did testify that IRA content over that two–year period represented just four thousandths (.0004) of the total content of Facebook newsfeeds.

Thus each piece of IRA content in a twitter feed was engulfed in 23,000 pieces of non-IRA content.

That is an extremely important finding, because, as Facebook’s Vice President for News Feed, Adam Moseri, acknowledged in 2016, Facebook subscribers actually read only about 10 percent of the stories Facebook puts in their News Feed every day. The means that very few of the IRA stories that actually make it into a subscriber’s news feed on any given day are actually read.

Facebook did conduct research on what it calls “civic engagement” during the election period, and the researchers concluded that the “reach” of the content shared by what they called “fake amplifiers” was “marginal compared to the volume of civic content shared during the U.S. elections.” That reach, they said, was “statistically very small” in relation to “overall engagement on political issues.”

Shane and Mazzaetti thus failed to report any of the several significant caveats and disclaimers from Facebook itself that make their claim that Russian election propaganda “reached” 126 million Americans extremely misleading.

Tiny IRA Twitter Footprint

Shane and Mazzetti’s treatment of the role of Twitter in the alleged Russian involvement in the election focuses on 3,814 Twitter accounts said to be associated with the IRA, which supposedly “interacted with 1.4 million Americans.” Although that number looks impressive without any further explanation, more disaggregated data provide a different picture: more than 90 percent of the Tweets from the IRA had nothing to do with the election, and those that did were infinitesimally few in relation to the entire Twitter stream relating to the 2016 campaign.

Twitter’s own figures show that those 3,814 IRA-linked accounts posted 175,993 Tweets during the ten weeks of the election campaign, but that only 8.4 percent of the total number of IRA-generated Tweets were election-related.

Twitter estimated that those 15,000 IRA-related tweets represented less than .00008 (eight one hundred thousandths) of the estimated total of 189 million tweets that Twitter identified as election-related during the ten-week election campaign. Twitter has offered no estimate of how many Tweets, on average were in the daily twitter stream of those people notified by Twitter and what percentage of them were election-related Tweets from the IRA. Any such notification would certainly show, however, that the percentage was extremely small and that very few would have been read.

Research by Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren of Clemson University on 2.9 million Tweets from those same 3,814 IRA accounts over a two year period has revealed that nearly a third of its Tweets had normal commercial content or were not in English; another third were straight local newsfeeds from U.S. localities or mostly non-political “hashtag games”, and the final third were on “right” or “left” populist themes in U.S. society.

Furthermore, there were more IRA Tweets on political themes in 2017 than there had been during the election year. As a graph of those tweets over time shows, those “right” and “left” Tweets peaked not during the election but during the summer of 2017.

The Mysterious 50,000 ‘Russia-Linked’ Accounts

Twitter also determined that another 50,258 automated Twitter accounts that tweeted about the election were associated with Russia and that they have generated a total to 2.1 million Tweets — about one percent of the total of number election-related tweets during the period.

But despite media coverage of those Tweets suggesting that they originated with the Russian government, the evidence doesn’t indicate that at all. Twitter’s Sean Edgett told the Senate Intelligence Committee last November that Twitter had used an “expansive approach to defining what qualifies as a Russian-linked account.” Twitter considered an account to be “Russian” if any of the following was found: it was created in Russia or if the user registered the account with a Russian phone carrier or a Russian email; the user’s display name contains Cyrillic characters; the user frequently Tweets in Russian, or the user has logged in from any Russian IP address.

Edgett admitted in a statement in January, however, that there were limitations on its ability to determine the origins of the users of these accounts. And a past log-in from a Russian IP address does not mean the Russian government controls an account. Automated accounts have been bought and sold for many years on a huge market, some of which is located in Russia. As Scott Shane reported in September 2017, a Russian website BuyAccs.com offers tens and even hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts for bulk purchase.

Twitter also observed that “a high concentration of automated engagement and content originated from data centers and users accessing Twitter via Virtual Private Networks (“VPNs”) and proxy servers,” which served to mask the geographical origin of the tweet. And that practice was not limited to the 50,000 accounts in question. Twitter found that locations of nearly 12 percent of the Tweets generated during the election period were masked because of the use of such networks and servers.

Twitter identified over half of the Tweets, coming from about half of the 50,000 accounts, as being automated, and the data reported on activity on those 50,000 accounts in question, indicates that both the Trump and Clinton campaigns were using the automated accounts in question. The roughly 23,000 automated accounts were the source of 1.34 million Tweets, which represented .63 percent of the total election-related Tweets. But the entire 50,000 accounts produced about 1 percent of total election-related tweets.

Hillary Clinton got .55 percent of her total retweets from the 50,000 automated accounts Twitter calls “Russia-linked” and .62 percent of her “likes” from them. Those percentages are close to the percentage of total election-related Tweets generated by those same automated accounts. That suggests that her campaign had roughly the same proportion of automated accounts among the 50,000 accounts as it did in the rest of the accounts during the campaign.

Trump, on the other hand, got 1.8 percent of this total “likes” and 4.25 percent of his total Retweets for the whole election period from those accounts, indicating his campaign was more invested in the automated accounts that were the source of two-thirds of the Tweets in those 50,000 “Russia-linked” accounts.

The idea promoted by Shane and Mazzetti that the Russian government seriously threatened to determine the winner of the election does not hold up when the larger social media context is examined more closely. Contrary to what the Times’reporters and the corporate media in general would have us believe, the Russian private sector effort accounted for a minuscule proportion of the election-related output of social media. The threat to the U.S. political system in general and its electoral system in particular is not Russian influence; it’s in part a mainstream news media that has lost perspective on the truth.

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on US national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February of 2014. Follow him on Twitter: @GarethPorter.

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There were two simultaneous Brett Kavanaugh stories. Together, as part of the confirmation process regarding his nomination as Supreme Court Justice, they revealed how political discourse in the United States has reached a new low, with debate over the man’s possible predilection to make judgments based on his own preferences rather than the US Constitution being ignored in favor of the politically motivated kabuki theater that was deliberately arranged to avoid that issue and instead go after his character.

Consider first of all, his flaws as a candidate. He was regularly framed as a “conservative,” but what did that mean in the context of his career? Some of the critics are referring to his time spent as a government lawyer, specifically for the George W. Bush Administration, where he was a supporter of wide executive authority in the context of the war against terror while others point to his decisions and writings during his time as a US Circuit judge from 2006 until the present. That meant essentially that Kavanaugh then supported and apparently continues to support what is now referred to as the John Yoo doctrine, named after the Department of Justice lawyer who penned the memo that made the case for the president to act unilaterally to do whatever is required in national security cases even if there be no direct or immediate threat. Yoo specifically argued that the president, by virtue of his office, is not bound by the War Crimes Act. This theory of government, also more broadly dubbed the unitary executive, was popularized by Yoo, fellow government lawyer Jay Bybee and Eric Posner of the University of Chicago.

For those who find Kavanaugh unacceptable in terms of his judicial philosophy, this repudiation of the constitutional principle of three branches of government that check each other was enough to disqualify him from a position on the Supreme Court, principally as it impacts on both the first and second articles of the constitution by granting to the president the authority to both begin and continue a war on his own recognizance. It also means that the president on his own authority can suspend first and fourth amendment rights to freedom of speech and association as well as freedom from illegal search. He supported, for example, the government’s “right” to conduct mass searches of private data such as was conducted by the NSA. Kavanaugh supports government authority to legitimize incarceration without trial and to order assassinations and torture. Kavanaugh is also on record as favoring limiting the public’s right to use the courts to redress government overreach.

But curiously enough, or perhaps not so curiously, Kavanaugh was treated with kid gloves on those critical issues, basically because both major parties are now supportive of the unitary executive concept even if they would not admit that to be the case. Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan on his own authority and involved the US in a war in the Balkans. George W. Bush did the same in approving torture and expanding the war on terror to Iraq and also globally, while Barack Obama attacked both the Syrian and Libyan governments and assassinated US citizens abroad, all acts of war or war crimes carried out without a congressional declaration of war or without any real pushback by the judiciary.

The failure of Congress to carry out its duty to review Kavanaugh’s ability or lack thereof to interpret the constitution impartially was the more important story line in the confirmation process but it was ignored by the media. The other narrative that ran simultaneously, the purely political attempt made by the Democrats and some Republicans to destroy Kavanaugh as a person through the exploitation of random claims of sexual assault dating from more than thirty-five years ago, was an attempt to discredit the candidate that everyone knew right from the beginning could not be substantiated.

This all means that the important issue of Kavanaugh’s likely comportment as a judge was subjected to too little inquiry while his character as evidenced by tales from his past life received far too much attention. Ironically, the media, which has been frantically searching for an explanation for the breakdown of democracy in the United States, has been pillorying the Russians and more recently the Chinese for outside interference in the process, while ignoring the intense public dissatisfaction with the government it has been allowed to have by the Establishment, which is exemplified by the dystopic reality demonstrated by Kavanaugh. Some Americans would have rejected him based on his merits as a judge, but the case was not clearly made. Many instead came to view him as a victim of a vicious personal campaign and that was apparently enough to win confirmation, at least as reckoned by the calculus of those in Congress who cast the actual votes. In either case, the system failed to produce a good result and we only have our polarized and dysfunctional government to blame for that failure.

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

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As the 2018 U.S. midterm elections approach, there is still no evidence of ‘collusion’ between the campaign of President Donald J. Trump and the Russian government after nearly two years of inquiry. Thus far in the Department of Justice’s investigation led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, only a trail of corruption involving Trump associates has been discovered. None of their wrongdoings connect to the Russian nationals also indicted in the probe, including the illicit lobbying by former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine which actually went against Russia’s interests on behalf of the EU. One can anticipate that more misdeeds by his cronies will be uncovered given that corruption in Washington grows on trees, some of which may even implicate Trump himself. However, if there were anything incriminating at the level of high treason, the likelihood that it wouldn’t have been unearthed already after such an exhaustive inquest relying on splitting hairs for indictments is slim.

The Kremlin has also fulfilled the need of a scapegoat across the Atlantic for the UK’s Brexit referendum. Mueller has examined emails from the shadowy British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, but seemingly only to scrutinize whether they contain evidence of intrigue between Trump and Russia. The UK-based voter profiling company, chaired by former Trump campaign and Breitbart CEO Stephen K. Bannon and owned by the mysterious right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer, provided services for both the Trump and Brexit campaigns using the collected data of more than 80 million Facebook users for ‘electoral engineering.’ After the scandal broke, the firm was suspended by Facebook and then reported to have shut its doors. It quickly came to light that the company had merely re-branded itself under the handle Emerdata Ltd., now under the management of Mercer’s daughters Rebekah and Jennifer. It is even operating out of the same headquarters in London and although it is still under federal investigation, no criminal charges appear imminent against its previous incarnation. Cambridge Analytica denies breaking any laws but it is widely believed to have done so by electoral watchdog groups. Have there been no legal proceedings because the DOJ is prioritizing finding connections between Trump and Moscow?

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie made several admissions about its activities. One significant disclosure was that its database building of social media users was assisted by employees of Palantir Technologies, the software company owned by pro-Trump billionaire, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel.

A GOP mega-donor and Silicon Valley venture capitalist with close ties to Robert Mercer, Thiel was rewarded with a spot on the executive committee of Trump’s transition team after his surprising victory.

Palintir employees aided the firm in constructing ‘psychographs’ of voters based on their preferences, behavior, and internet activity in order to target them with advertising. Why on earth is Russia the center of the investigation and not the multiple private intelligence and data mining firms hired to stage-manage the election?

One possibility is because Palintir’s expertise has previously been employed for data scraping services by a range of powerful clients, including predictive-policing software for law enforcement and even the National Security Agency for developing its XKEYSCORE internet surveillance database. If election manipulation by the Trump campaign was facilitated by a company previously contracted by the Pentagon to weaponize data using social media as a global spy tool, it is easy to conclude why Russia would be a preferred suspect in the investigation. Only the naive could believe the Mueller inquiry represents anything other than the interests of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. After all, it is their unsubstantiated word alone that has been the entire source for the claims of Russia’s alleged interference.

Palintir also has an outpost in Tel Aviv, Israel. One of Trump’s most controversial foreign policy moves has been the abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal accord and it just so happens that the inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency used Palintir’s Mosaic software to ensure Tehran was in compliance.

If the President of the United States is openly supported by the billionaire supplying the technology to verify Iran is in accordance with the agreement and has campaigned vowing to sabotage it, how in the world is this ethical and not a conflict of interest? Shortly before the U.S. withdrawal, Trump even met with Thiel just hours after speaking with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about Iran. Cambridge Analytica is also tied to Israel through private intelligence firm Wikistrat Inc. which offered the Trump campaign social media election manipulation services in a partnership. It is clear that any loose associations between the Kremlin and Trump have been overplayed in order to soft pedal the overwhelming influence by Israel. Meanwhile, Putin cannot even appear to rig the vote in his own country, as following Russia’s recent unpopular pension reforms his political party suffered losses in regional elections.

Christopher Wylie indeed testified that it was a Russian data scientist who authored the survey app which gathered the information used by Cambridge Analytica from millions of Facebook profiles. The psychology professor, Aleksandr Kogan, provided the data to Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL). Evidently, his research for the app through the University of St. Petersburg was funded using Russian government grants but Kogan, who is actually a Moldovan-born U.S. citizen, has done academic studies subsidized by the U.S., UK, Chinese and Canadian governments as well. The dots that have been connected to Russian intelligence possessing access to Kogan’s data are pure speculation, as are the claims that Kogan is a spy, a highly unlikely possibility considering he is still currently employed by the University of Cambridge.

What is more certain is Cambridge Analytica’s nefarious use of private information to target voters for the Trump and Leave.EU campaigns, but the Mueller team remains fixated on Moscow.

What are the consequences of this smokescreen? Steve Bannon has been free to move on from his ouster in the Trump administration to offer his prowess to far rightists around the world with the formation of an organization dubbed “The Movement.” Based in Belgium and co-founded with the country’s populist demagogue Mischaël Modrikamen, its stated aim is to prop up ultra nationalism across the EU before next year’s European Parliament elections. The shady organization is intended to be a right-wing equivalent of the Open Society Foundation by bolstering far right political movements from behind the scenes. Bannon’s modus operandi is in giving a businesslike and accessible polish to right-wing populism while placing greater emphasis on anti-immigration, the refugee crisis and Islamophobia. The Movement is consulting parties such as:

• Fidesz, party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
• The Italian League, party of Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini
• Alternative for Germany / Alternative  fur Deutschland (AfD)
• Sweden Democrats, third place in last month’s general election
• Dutch Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders and is the second largest party in the Netherlands House of Representatives
• Freedom Party of Austria
• Swiss People’s Party
• UK Independence Party (Ukip), Bannon is close colleagues with leader Nigel Farage
• National Front/National Rally (France) led by Marine Le Pen
• Belgium People’s Party
• VOX (Spain)

Prior to the Great Recession, far right political organizations had remained on the periphery for decades following the Second World War until the 2008 financial crash reintroduced the economic circumstances that gave rise to fascism in the 1930s. Suddenly, the far right began to flourish in countries hit hardest by the Eurozone’s debts. This development was simultaneous with the emergence of the Tea Party in the U.S. resurrecting the Gadsden banner. Golden Dawn made notable gains in the Greek parliament but their brand still resembled the anti-Semitic nationalists of Eastern Europe, a hard sell in the rest of the continent. When a further destabilized Middle East facilitated by Western interventionism led to a flux of migrants seeking refugee status in the EU, an opportunity arose for transformation of nationalism in Western and Southern Europe to an ‘accessible’ Islamophobic variety.

The distinguishing characteristic of this new wave of fascism is not just jettisoning of anti-Semitism, but strong support of the state of Israel. For instance, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) which is now the largest opposition party in the Bundestag is bankrolled by the pro-Israel Gatestone Institute and closely aligned with Netanyahu’s Likud party. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front (now known as National Rally) is historically anti-Semitic but has gradually shifted its agenda toward attacking Islam in recent decades as well. Steve Bannon himself even boasted he is an avowed “Judeo-Christian Zionist.” On the surface this disturbing alliance between Holocaust-denying figures like Viktor Orban and Israel may seem unlikely, it also makes perfect sense considering both Zionists and the extreme right hold the historical view that Jews are fundamentally non-native to Europe and they have a common civilizational ‘enemy’ in Islam.

Jair Bolsanaro with Steve Bannon

Bannon isn’t limiting his enterprise to the Northern Hemisphere either and has already exported it to the global south. It was recently reported that the former White House Chief Strategist is advising the campaign of the runoff winner for Brazil’s presidency, Jair Bolsanaro, who has been described as a “Brazilian Trump” and “Tropical Hitler” for his disparaging statements about women, gays, blacks and the country’s indigenous minority. Bolsanaro has also expressed nostalgia for the military dictatorship that lasted more than two decades in Brazil after a 1964 U.S.-backed coup. Bolsanaro has been such a paralyzing figure in Brazilian politics, he was hospitalized after a knife stabbing at a campaign event last month. Historically, fascism and South America are no strangers — following WWII, it was Argentina under Juan Perón which provided secret safe harbor to Nazi war criminals such as Adolf Eichmann and Auschwitz physician Josef Mengele.

With no end or likely impeachment in sight, it is clear that the media and public have been diverted toward a ruse contrived by the U.S. intelligence community. The entire premise of the Russia investigation ostensibly presumes its own conclusion, searching for the missing pieces to a preconstructed narrative rather than determining what actually transpired. It has all the hallmarks of a counterintelligence PSY-OP, designed to commandeer public disapproval of Trump into serving the State Department’s objective of undermining Russia and sabotaging even the most modest efforts to be diplomatic with Moscow. The media and establishment can hardly contain their contempt for the working class in the theft of their agency, as if none of their grievances which the extreme right has capitalized on could be legitimate. Still, if it were to be determined that the election was compromised by the likes of Cambridge Analytica and Palintir instead of the Kremlin, it would remain a distraction from underlying causes.

The global economic downturn is what has nurtured the far right, but its rebirth in Europe truly originates with the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1989, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously hypothesized in The End of History and the Last Man that Karl Marx had been proven wrong that communism would replace capitalism with the advent of liberal democracy. Fukuyama wrote:

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

If socialism failed, almost thirty years later it appears that so too are capitalism and liberal democracy. We were told the fall of communism was the ‘end of history’, and there were no longer any further steps in humanity’s evolutionary process. Once a celebrated figure, what Fukuyama wrote then can only be interpreted today as a colossally failed prediction by an intellectual charlatan. Both a resurgence of socialism as well as a potential descent into fascist barbarism are back on the table in our present historical moment.

Last month, the media was enthralled by the collective laughter of the international community at Trump’s embarrassing speech to the United Nations General Assembly that seemed to all but confirm the dismantling of U.S. hegemony. While Trump made clear his ultra-nationalist departure from his predecessors in denouncing “the ideology of globalism”, per usual the presstitutes overlooked one of the address’s most significant moments when he stated:

“Virtually everywhere socialism or communism has been tried, it has produced suffering, corruption, and decay. Socialism’s thirst for power leads to expansion, incursion, and oppression. All nations of the world should resist socialism.”

That Trump devoted a portion of his tirade to denounce socialism is remarkable and a virtual admittance that the ruling classes are trembling that it is no longer a dirty word in the Western lexicon. On the one hand, because capitalism is in a crisis large sections of the working class are desperately turning to a far-right appealing to their popular anger at the elite and prejudices against migrants. Capitalism has historically kept the far right on life support in reserve for absorbing revolt in its periods of crisis to be misdirected into jingoism and scapegoating, an opposition much easier to control. If the far right today is ascendant, so too is socialism which must seize upon the class struggle that has once again returned to the forefront determining political life. If liberal democracy speaks of the ‘end of history’, fascism represents the end of humanism in its hostility to culture and civilization, no matter how new and improved its image. History is indeed repeating itself. As the great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once said in what could have been a rebuttal to Fukuyama’s thesis —“History never really says goodbye. It says, ‘see you later.’”

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Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His work has appeared in publications such as The Greanville Post, Global Research, OffGuardian, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Signs of the Times, and more. Read him on Medium. Max may be reached at [email protected]

The Mainstream Media is approaching a very slippery slope after insinuating that Chinese citizens are loyal to the Communist Party of China first and foremost above any and all of their other duties, and that failure to obey Beijing could lead to them “disappearing” regardless of how high-profile of an international individual they may be.

Details are still emerging about the case of former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei who Chinese officials finally confirmed was detained in his home country late last month and is being investigated for corruption. He also supposedly resigned from his post despite not (at least yet) being found guilty of anything, which has led to speculation that he might have been pressured to do so by the authorities. Whatever it is that may or may not be going on, and it’ll probably take some time for all of the facts to be released, the Mainstream Media wasted no time in spreading dangerous insinuations that could quickly lead down the slippery slope of discrimination or worse.

ABC News ran a report from the Associated Press that quoted Willy Lam, a Chinese politics expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who went on record as saying that

“Meng’s case shows how Chinese officials, no matter where they are, have to obey the Communist Party first and foremost.”

This came out the same day as a New York Times piece that cited Michael Caster, a researcher and human rights advocate in Bangkok who studies China’s legal system, who encouraged the reader to “Imagine if China were to somehow, someday, get a U.N. secretary general, and then he too one day disappeared”. The innuendo is that all Chinese citizens across the world have to follow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or else.

Taken to its “logical conclusion”, this narrative could be expanded to include anyone with family living in China too, including members of the Chinese diaspora born abroad who aren’t citizens of their ancestors’ homeland. The implied idea is that the Chinese are just as “untrustworthy” as Catholics and Jews, both of whom persistent stereotypes paint as being “secretly loyal” to the Vatican and “Israel” above all else, just like the developing one seeks to do regarding Chinese and the CCP. This sentiment was already practiced to genocidal effect during the Old Cold War when Indonesian usurper Suharto presided over the killing of at least half a million Chinese on the alleged basis that they were all “communist subversives”.

Nobody needs to be reminded of the dangers of irresponsibly attaching a label to any identity group simply because some of their representatives might conform to a prejudiced stereotype, but that’s precisely what might be about to happen to the Chinese after the Mainstream Media’s insinuations. The Trump Administration even reportedly considered banning Chinese students from the country out of fear that they’re infiltrating America as spies, and this initiative might receive a second wind if neoconservative officials exploit Meng’s situation to argue for its revival on national security grounds. Last week’s accusations about an unprecedentedly expansive Chinese espionage operation could also add fuel to this fire.

The end result is that the Chinese are at risk of being treated as second-class citizens in the West simply because of the insinuations that are being levelled against them for purportedly being susceptible to blackmail by the CCP. The anti-communist McCarthyism of the Old Cold War is giving rise to an anti-Chinese variant in the New Cold War that also combines with the legacy of its predecessor to form an ethno-ideological cocktail of potential discrimination in the future. History is replete with regrettable examples of what happens whenever an entire people are targeted based on their identity, and while it’s unlikely that an Indonesian-like genocide of the Chinese will ever repeat itself, the world would do well to not run that risk again.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

After votes were counted last Sunday and confirmed a second round between Brazilian presidential candidates Fernando Haddad (Workers’ Party – PT) and Jair Bolsonaro (Social Liberal Party – PSL), a member of the national board of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) João Pedro Stedile spoke with Brasil de Fato Radio about the next steps in Brazil’s presidential elections, saying voters will now have the opportunity to learn more details about the platforms and interests each candidate represents.

Stedile argued it is necessary to show people that Bolsonaro’s economic plan, devised by ultra neoliberal economist Paulo Guedes, includes raising taxes on the poor and reducing them on the weathy.

He said Bolsonaro is getting a lot of votes because he claims to be an “anti-system candidate,” even though, right now, he is the one representing capital the most.

Even in case of a democratic defeat, Stedile believes it will be possible to carry on a progressive political struggle. “In case of an eventual Bolsonaro administration, there is no reason for despair. Contradictions will increase, problems will increase. We must strengthen our grassroots work, our ideological work. Strengthen the work toward resistance.”

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Brasil de Fato (BdF): What is your take on this Sunday’s elections?

João Pedro Stedile (JPS): Well, there was a scenario where voters wanted change. To change what they saw in old politics. Old politicians. And, in a way, the elections did not follow so much the strength of traditional parties. And that change was found in Lula [da Silva]. Unfortunately, the dictatorship of the court system, clearly breaking the laws of this country, barred Lula from running. [If it hadn’t done that], at this point, we would be celebrating his outright victory in the first round.

Bolsonaro, in a way, was appealing to these nonpolitical, nonpartisan voters who wanted change from the beginning. So he managed to galvanize the idea that he is the anti-system candidate, even though, right now, he is the one representing the Brazilian bourgeoisie, capital, and this political system of domination.

He made it into the second round exactly because he has the ideological skill to fool the poor and say, “I’m against the rich.” He replicates, in a way, the role [Fernando] Collor played in 1989, when, as a legitimate representative of Globo [Brazil’s largest media conglomerate], he made that speech against the ‘maharajahs,’ fooled the poor and defeated Lula in the elections.

There were surprises, especially unpleasant ones, in [the elections for] the Senate, because we lost several valuable [candidates for] senators that proved to be, in the latest term, fighters against the coup and all this attack against national sovereignty. But, on the other hand, they also lost [names] that represented the oligarchy.

BdF: Haddad won in most northeastern states. How do you see this victory?

JPS: There is no surprise in the Northeast. When we look back at previous elections, that happened with Lula as well. I think that, in the runoff, it is not going to be about parties. Of course Haddad will have to negotiate with parties, especially the PDT [Ciro Gomes’ party]. Of course there will be conversations between parties, but that is not what is going to make up voters’ minds.

Fernando Haddad, presidential candidate for the Workers’ Party, election night rally in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2018.

I think that, in the runoff, it is not going to be about regions. What it is going to be about is a battle between projects and classes. Haddad won in the Northeast, but not because they live in the Northeast. It’s because there are poor people there whose lives changed with the Lula and Dilma [Rousseff] administrations, and therefore they raised their class consciousness.

As now it’s only two candidates [running in the second round], it is clear that it’s about two projects. Bolsonaro, despite his hypocritical speech, obviously represents this country’s reactionary forces. It’s not a coincidence that most of the armed forces support him, most members of the military police support him, most bankers, represented by [his economic guru] Paulo Guedes – who is a partner at the investment bank Bozano. So I think it will become clearer to the people. And that is what I hope Haddad can explain to the people. More than being a spokesman for Lula, he has to be a spokesman for the working class.

BdF: Will this argument, showing the project that Bolsonaro represents, produce results on the ballot?

JPS: It has to. After all, in the first round, Bolsonaro hid behind the stabbing incident.

BdF: And what is the role of the activists in this process?

JPS: First, let’s keep showing the powers that are behind Bolsonaro. He is being provided intelligence services from abroad, which means the power of international capital is backing him. Just like it is necessary to expose all these bots, which we know cost a lot of money, and which he is using to make a media warfare online.

We have to show the people, we have to engage with workers, with the poor. And to do that, we have to use arguments, facts. We have to tell people not to fear – because they are using fear a lot – and show that, even though Bolsonaro has fascist ideas, there is no fascist movement in Brazil. There is no grassroots movement in society for fascism in Brazil.

BdF: Is it surprising that Bolsonaro won in the North? Is that connected to his alliances with the ruralist lobby?

JPS: The Center-West and North regions of Brazil are where latifundia [system of large estates and big monoculture] are very hegemonic in society. It’s not just that they win the elections: they rule the churches, it’s where security forces barracks are, they rule society’s life. It’s very hard for the Left to thrive there, because there is no working class. The working class migrates, they come looking for jobs in the Southeast or other regions.

That does not worry me. What worries me is that, now, in the second round, we have to do grassroots work, go door to door, hold meetings at parishes, at churches, call progressive ministers to explain to the people that voting for Bolsonaro is voting for LP gas price hikes, rental price hikes, bus fare hikes. And, looking at Brazil’s map to see how contradictory that is, most governors [who won outright majority in the first round] are progressive. So we are good with candidates for governor. That does not mean that people drank a ‘fascism tea’ and is now voting for fascism.

BdF: Most people who vote for Bolsonaro are thinking about change, but it’s only a small part that really agrees with his more aggressive views.

JPS: You’re right. Bolsonaro’s big strength is that he was able to mobilize activists, military police officers, the Armed Forces, especially retired officers, most of the Freemasonry, and these intelligence services that helped him online [with a strong campaign on social media and messaging apps]. Just like they managed to convince some ministers, who are not evangelical at all in the sense of the gospel, who are spreading fake news, [talking about] topics such as gay marriage to terrorize people who have conservative values, and ministers who openly campaigned for Bolsonaro. That explains why Marina [Silva]’s campaign melted down.

BdF: What are the possible challenges of a Bolsonaro or Haddad administration?

JPS: In case we have a Bolsonaro-led government, there is no reason for us to despair. On the contrary. We must strengthen our grassroots work, strengthen our ideological work, strengthen our political power in other spaces in order to be in opposition. So, if we lose space in the executive branch, that will be a reason for us to be more careful in the political struggle: replenish our energy to develop people’s communication outlets, to be able to convey the ideas of the working class and how the working class collectively understands the political scenario. They don’t have a platform for Brazil. A Bolsonaro-led government will mean four years of deep crisis.

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Featured image is from Brasil de Fato.

Our good friend Dave Hooper, who created the 2014 hit documentary The Anatomy of a Great Deception, is making a “Part 2.” He’s already filmed most of it, and it’ll be released in September 2019!

Millions of people around the world have seen “AGD 1.” If you’re one of them, you probably agree that it’s one of the best films ever made for waking up new audiences to the truth about the events of September 11, 2001.

Its power lies in Dave’s heartfelt tale of how he learned the awful truth that he’d been deceived about 9/11 — the most seminal event of the 21st century. He uses his personal process of discovery to guide viewers through an accessible but technically sophisticated presentation of the World Trade Center evidence.

Watch the trailer of The Anatomy of a Great Deception – Part 1

In AGD 2, Dave steps up his analysis by digging even deeper into how such a massive deception was pulled off. He also updates viewers on his personal struggles and victories, providing a powerful cathartic experience for 9/11 activists and a sympathetic, relatable portrait for people who have yet to go down this rabbit hole.

Dave’s first film was a smash hit by any measure. It received 30 million views on the Internet and sold tens of thousands of DVDs. But he’s aiming even higher for the sequel: theatrical, digital, and guerilla DVD distribution that will reach an audience of millions even before it’s posted online in 2020.

Watch the trailer of The Anatomy of a Great Deception – Part 2

Today, I’m urging you, as a fellow 9/11 Truth activist, to help Dave complete Part 2 and make its release next September a resounding success.

Please go to Dave’s Indiegogo page, check out the new trailer videos, and donate whatever you can. With a contribution of $29 or more, Dave will send you an autographed DVD before the 9/11 anniversary. Invest $109 in his vision, and he’ll send you six autographed DVDs to share with friends and family — just as the film is premiering in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco next September.

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This article was originally published on ae911truth.org.

The CDC (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) was born, just like the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), as an important regulatory agency of the United States government that was intended to regulate various corrupt and monopoly-seeking industries that could harm the environment and/or the health of individuals and other weaker entities that had no other way to protect themselves from the dangerous practices of any number of powerful industries.  

Tragically, over the past couple of generations (particularly since the presidency of Ronald Reagan), both the CDC and the FDA have come under the tight control of many Big Pharma and Big Vaccine corporations (and their Big Bank lenders and lobbying groups) while at the same time abandoning their original charge of protecting the people from the consequences of corporate greed. 

The multibillionaire and multimillionaire owners, investors, lobbying groups and think tanks have become grotesquely wealthy and powerful because of their ownership and/or investments in a multitude of profitable, highly secretive, non-elected and anti-democratic entities that are over-charging for their often toxic and often addictive products that often sicken the users with toxic side effects, drug-drug or vaccine-vaccine interactions, all of which are actually iatrogenic disorders (= doctor- or drug-caused).

The control that those private/corporate/non-elected entities have acquired is easily seen in the day-to-day actions of the corporate-influenced Presidency, the corporate-influenced Congress and the corporate-influenced Supreme Court, all of which seem to be doing the biding of whatever entities will sustain Wall Street’s and War Street’s grotesque profit-making actions. 

There should be no surprise why many governmental entities, many of our regulatory agencies, Big Pharma, Big Vaccine, Wall Street, etc have lost a lot of credibility among the populace. But in today’s column I want to focus on the CDC, which annually deals in 4 billion dollar’s worth of vaccines every year and owns dozens of vaccine-related patents that might make the CDC a lot of money in the future. 

The CDC is no longer an un-biased entity that is supposed to protect the citizenry from sociopathic corporations. As a matter of fact, the CDC actually acts a lot like such a corporation. A good example is the annual push by the CDC to get everybody in America to get their influenza vaccines, despite the powerful (and often censored-out) evidence that influenza vaccines can be harmful while offering little or no benefit.

One starting point in the debate over the logic of getting annual intramuscular injections of flu vaccines is the reality of Influenza-Like Illnesses (ILI), which comprise 80% of all “flu-like” illnesses that the CDC, Big Medicine and the mainstream media call “the flu” but is actually only “the flu” less than 20% of the time. 

ILI is a transient respiratory illness that can be mild, moderate or severe and is usually accompanied by a body temperature (sometimes with chills) greater than 100˚F, a cough and/or sore throat, a runny or stuffy nose, muscle aches, headaches, fatigue and no other known causes for the symptoms. Diarrhea or other gastrointestinal symptoms are not part of an ILI. 

ILI is an intermittently-common seasonal syndrome that is best prevented by a combination of good nutrition, good hygiene and avoidance of exposure to virus-shedding individuals. Only in a small minority of instances (see chart below) is the illness prevented by “getting your damn flu shot”. 

The actual viruses that cause ILI (usually NOT actual influenza viruses) can only be positively-identified when appropriate costly laboratory tests are done, which doesn’t often happen outside of hospital ER settings because of the high costs. In 2017, Blue Cross reimbursed Medicare $571 (!) for a single Multiplex PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) Viral Panel test (CPT code = #87633). Since failure to do a PCR test precludes making a precise diagnosis, the CDC and state Departments of Health take the easy data-gathering route by “assuming” (and then readily publishing) that every ILI is actually a case of influenza! GIGO (Garbage In/Garbage Out) 

GIGO: Comparing ILIs (influenza-like illnesses) with MLIs (measles-like illnesses)

The same GIGO reality happens whenever there is a mini-epidemic of any illness that the CDC wants to propagandize. A good example was the “measles” outbreak that happened a few years ago at California’s Disney Land. The cluster of cases was actually a group of “measles-like illnesses” (MLI).  PCR tests apparently were not done on all the subjects and so the CDC falsely “assumed” (and then published) that whatever MLIs occurred were “vaccine-preventable” illnesses. PCR tests are not often thoroughly done before the CDC makes use of such propaganda-worthy opportunities that will benefit the CDC and its corporate partners. And the media happily goes along with the charade by over-reporting and over-emphasizing the story. 

When PCR studies are actually done in any ILI outbreak, influenza viral infections are usually only identified in less than 25% of patients. The differential diagnosis for ILI syndromes is large. Some of the possibilities, most of which are not even theoretically “vaccine-preventable” – much less medically-treatable – include the following conditions:

Adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, human metapneumovirus, HIV, EBV, CMV, viral meningitis or viral or inflammatory encephalitis, West Nile virus, Chickungunya virus, Dengue virus and non-infectious causes such as arthritis, myositis, dermatitis, and oral ulcers.

Of course, no differential diagnostic list on a patient chart is complete until the possible iatrogenic causes of ILI are listed. 

Iatrogenic illnesses can be caused by any number of prescription drugs and prescribed vaccines, especially when they are used in drug-drug combinations or vaccine cocktails, none of which have ever been adequately tested for safety or even efficacy. 

The potentially toxic ingredients (such as mercury, aluminum, live viruses, etc.) that are in many vaccines are known to actually cause influenza-like symptoms. Here is a list of some of the published adverse effects of typical CDC-approved influenza vaccines: 

Headache, fever, nausea, muscle aches, weakness, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, dizzyness, hoarseness, wheezing, hives and soreness, redness, and/or swelling from the shot.”

There are many “white lies” that most “healthcare” reporters tell their readers when their editors order them to help the CDC promote its annual “get your damn flu shot” campaign every fall. Among the many untruths is the lie that 36,000 Americans die of influenza every year. The truth of the matter is that the CDC has always lumped the much larger number of pneumonia deaths with the small number of influenza deaths and then mis-represented the number as influenza deaths!! Just another example of GIGO as investigative reporter Jon Rappaport has written: 

“The CDC says that 36,000 people die from the flu every year in the US, but actually, it’s closer to 20. However, we can’t admit that, because if we did, we’d be exposing the (CDC’s) gigantic psy-op. The whole campaign to scare people into getting a flu shot would have about the same effect as warning people to carry iron umbrellas, in case toasters fall out of upper-story windows.”

Another “white lie” that promotes the flu shot campaign is the use of the vaccine efficacy (VE) figure. When such figures are used, percentages like “50% effective” are used to make the vaccine sound good, whereas that number is a miserably low, deceptive “relative risk” figure. Big Pharma corporations, sociopathic entities that they are, always use RRR when they want to make a new drug sound far more effective to its physician-prescribers than it actually is. Check out this common subterfuge by reading an article that I wrote on the subject here.

In that article I revealed how Big Pharma’s common use of the relative risk reduction (RRR) allowed Merck to fooled everybody – especially us physicians – by claiming that their block-buster osteoporosis drug Fosamax (and probably all the “me-too” drugs as well) was 50% effective (an RRR statistic) in reducing bone fractures. 

However, in Merck’s own raw statistics, it was clear that patients who took the drug for 4 years actually had a miniscule 1-2% absolute risk reduction (AAR) in the incidence of fractures. The 1-2% figure, which would have sunk the product (and the related bone density screening industry) if it was ever revealed, is actually a negative number, especially when the high cost of the drug and its unadvertised risks are considered – such as the incurable, iatrogenic, Fosamax-induced, disastrous osteonecrosis of the jaw.

The most important white lie that is told to us naïve consumers of vaccines is actually the censored-out facts about how the ingredients of America’s annual flu vaccine are chosen. A committee of the CDC meets every early spring to look at the strains of influenza that were most commonly identified in Australia’s “flu season” the year before (the southern hemisphere’s winter flu season occurs during our northern hemisphere’s summer season).

The unproven supposition is that the flu viruses that infected Australians the year before will be the same ones that we Americans will be facing. Then samples of the 3 or 4 live influenza viruses most likely to be epidemic (out of over 100 known viruses that could have been chosen) will be collected and grown in Big Vaccine’s chicken egg labs until enough of the viruses is obtained and then added to the toxic brew that will be included -with finger’s crossed – in next fall’s vaccine vials. Of course, there is never any assurance to potential vaccines that there will be a match. In fact, the odds are against any match in any given year.

So I suppose the lesson to any given patient or parent of a potential vaccine (or a physician, nurse practitioner or nurse) is to know everything possible about the actual risks and benefits of any intramuscular vaccination by studying the information above and below before going to the pharmacy or clinic and offering your arm (or thigh, in the case of small infants). 

Definitions (from GGK):

Vaccine efficacy (VE) is the percentage reduction in a particular disease outcome in vaccinated compared to unvaccinated individuals. (For example, a VE of 60% means that vaccinated people have a 60% (relative) reduction in their risk of a given outcome compared to unvaccinated people. Ex: After last year’s flu season was over, the VE for flu shots was calculated in one study as being a miserable 9%, and that is a relative risk reduction figure.!!

The Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNV) is the number of individuals that must be vaccinated for an expected benefit to be attained in one individual. Mathematically, the NNV is expressed as a ratio of 1 divided by the Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR). 

The very similar Number Needed to Treat (NNT) is the number of individuals that must be treated with a drug or surgery that results in benefit to one individual. It is the inverse of ARR. The larger the NNV (or NNT) is, the more useless is the vaccine (or drug).

The Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) signifies the true difference in the reduction in risk between unvaccinated (or untreated) and vaccinated (or treated) individuals. (The ARR is vastly more meaningful than the widely used and very deceptive Relative Risk Reduction [RRR] figure., which is seriously deceptive.) 

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(More helpful information:  From the American Academy of Pediatrics journal Pediatrics – September 2014, Volume 134 / Issue 3)

Severe Complications in Influenza-like Illnesses

By Rakesh D. Mistry, Jason B. Fischer, Priya A. Prasad, Susan E. Coffin, Elizabeth R. Alpern

Below is a pie graph depicting the PCR results that were published in the above journal article about Influenza-like Illnesses. Note that actual influenza was only diagnosed in 19% of the patients represented in the graph: 

Only 19% of the patients with “influenza-like illnesses” in the study actually had influenza. Interestingly, 57% of the patients with actual influenza had had their routine seasonal influenza vaccinations but had not been protected by the shot.

55% of the study patients that had influenza-like illnesses (but not actual influenza) had likewise not been protected by the flu shot. And of course, every person in the above study that had been intramuscularly-injected with the vaccine could have suffered significant adverse effects.

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Relevant quotes

“6000 to 32,000 hospital workers would need to be vaccinated (with an influenza vaccine) before a single patient death would be averted.” (That is, the Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNV) for hospital healthcare workers to prevent one patient from dying because of influenza contagion from an un-vaccinated worker is as high as 32,000!) — see this

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair

“If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been “taken”. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” — Carl Sagan, – author of “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”

The Semmelweis Reflex: “The reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.” — see this

“A recent study by the world-renowned immunologist Dr. H. Hugh Fudenberg found that adults vaccinated yearly for five years in a row with the flu vaccine had a 10-fold increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. He attributes this to the mercury and aluminum in the vaccine. Interestingly, both of these metals have been shown to activate microglia and increase excitotoxicity in the brain.” — Russell Blaylock, MD

“We already know that the aluminum content of brain tissue in late-onset or sporadic Alzheimer’s disease is significantly higher than is found in age-matched controls. So, individuals who develop Alzheimer’s disease in their late sixties and older also accumulate more aluminum in their brain tissue than individuals of the same age without the disease.

“Even higher levels of aluminum have been found in the brains of individuals, diagnosed with an early-onset form of sporadic (usually late onset) Alzheimer’s disease, who have experienced an unusually high exposure to aluminum through the environment (e.g. Camelford) or through their workplace. This means that Alzheimer’s disease has a much earlier age of onset, for example, fifties or early sixties, in individuals who have been exposed to unusually high levels of aluminum in their everyday lives.”  – Christopher Exley, PhD

“In the field of chemical toxicology it is universally recognized that combinations of toxins may bring exponential increases of toxicity; ie, a combination of two chemicals may bring a 10-fold increase in toxicity, three chemicals 100-fold increases. This same principle almost certainly applies to the immunosuppressive effects of viral vaccines when administered in combination, as with the MMR vaccine, among which the measles vaccine is (known to be) exceptionally immunosuppresive.” – Harold Buttram, MD

“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001 – 61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.” – Dr Peter Doshi, from in his 2005 BMJ report, titled, “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” (BMJ 2005; 331:1412)

“The most lucrative areas of medicine are the most corrupted by financial (and academic) conflicts of interest. So-called ‘authoritative’ sources of medical information are thoroughly corrupted not only by pharmaceutical industry manipulation but also by government officials and financially conflicted academic gatekeepers of medical science, ’expert’ panels, medical journal editors and the largely corrupted vaccine information base.” – Vera Sharav, MD

“For a long time no one considered the effect of repeated vaccinations on the brain. This was based on a mistaken conclusion that the brain was protected from immune activation by its special protective gateway called the blood-brain barrier. More recent studies have shown that immune cells can enter the brain directly, and more importantly, the brain’s own special immune system can be activated by vaccination.” – Russell Blaylock, MD

More important quotes about vaccine effectiveness are posted here)

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Dr. Kohls is a retired family physician from Duluth, MN, USA. Since his retirement from his holistic mental health practice (in 2008), he has been writing his weekly Duty to Warn column for the Duluth Reader, northeast Minnesota’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns, which are re-published around the world, deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s over-drugging and Big Vaccine’s over-vaccination agendas, as well as other movements that threaten human health, the environment, democracy, civility and the sustainability of all life on earth.  Many of his columns have been archived at a number of websites, including

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls; and

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

Update: Hurricane Michael made landfall at 2 pm EDT October 10, 2018 near Mexico Beach, FL with top sustained winds of 155 mph and a central pressure of 919 mb. This makes Michael the strongest landfalling mainland U.S. hurricane (by pressure) since Camille of 1969, which had a 900 mb pressure, and the strongest by wind speed since Hurricane Andrew of 1992, which had 165 mph winds. Note that Hurricane Maria of 2017 hit Puerto Rico with winds of 155 mph and a central pressure of 920 mb, and was virtually identical in intensity to Michael.

Hurricane-force wind gusts, torrential rains, and a massive storm surge are belting Florida’s Panhandle as extremely dangerous Hurricane Michael closes in on an afternoon landfall. At 1 pm EDT, the hurricane hunters found that Michael was still intensifying, with sustained winds of 150 mph and a central pressure of 919 mb. A storm surge of over eight feet was already affecting the Panhandle, inundating many escape routes. Michael is poised to be one of the most top-ten most intense hurricanes on record to make landfall in the U.S.

If you are in the hurricane’s impact zone, now is the time to hunker down in your safe shelter and not be out driving. Remember that winds are stronger the higher up you go; if you are sheltering in a high-rise building, the lower floors will be safer than the upper floors. According to the National Hurricane Center’s classification of Category 4 wind damage, this is what can be expected where the eastern eyewall of Michael comes ashore:

Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

Figure 1. GOES-16 visible satellite image of Hurricane Michael at 10:45 am EDT October 10, 2018. Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB.

Another bumpy flight in #HurricaneMichael. What a monster. One of the most dynamically active storms I have ever seen, with eyewall mesovortices inside a small, steep eye. pic.twitter.com/5A3atKZPrZ

— Andy Hazelton (@AndyHazelton) October 10, 2018

At 2:12 pm EDT, the storm tide at Apalachicola, FL peaked at 7.72’ above high tide (Mean Higher High Water, or MHHW), which was the highest water level on record there (going back to 1967). Hurricane Dennis of 2005 (a 6.43’ storm tide) held the previous record. The highest storm surge at the site (height of the water above the normal tide) was 8.53′. NHC predicted a storm surge of 8 – 14 feet for this portion of the coast.

At 2:06 pm EDT, the storm tide at Panama City, FL peaked at 5.31’ above MHHW, which was the second highest water level on record. The record was 5.72’ above MHHW, set on October 4, 1995 during Hurricane Opal. The highest storm surge at the site (height of the water above the normal tide) was 5.62′. Records extend back to 1973 at the site.

At 2:54 pm EDT, the storm tide at Cedar Key, FL peaked at 4.05’ above MHHW, their 6^th highest water level on record.

NOAA buoy 42039, located about 90 miles (145 km) south-southwest of Panama City, Florida, reported sustained winds of 60 mph (97 km/h) and a wind gust of 76 mph (122 km/h) at 5:50 am, before the buoy stopped transmitting data. The highest significant wave heights were 30.8 feet at 4:50 am EDT.

Tyndall Air Force Base, which got the western eyewall winds of Michael, reported sustained winds of 86 mph, gusting to 129 mph, at 12:19 EDT, five minutes before the station stopped sending data. This measurement was taken at 30 meters, so is higher than the winds that would be reported from the standard 10-meter measuring height.

According to NHC, a wind gust of 130 mph was reported between 1 – 2 pm EDT at a University of Florida/Weatherflow observing site near Tyndall Air Force Base before the instrument failed. A wind gust of 129 mph (207 km/h) was reported at the Panama City Airport.

Figure 2. Table of landfalling mainland U.S. Category 4 and 5 hurricanes since 1851. Image credit: Dr. Phil Klotzbach. To convert from knots to mph, multiply by 1.15. Rounded to the nearest 5 mph, 115 knots = 130 mph, 120 knots = 140 mph, etc.

Strongest U.S. landfalling hurricane on record so late in the year

Michael made landfall more than a month later than all of the historic storms that were stronger, and is the strongest landfalling U.S. hurricane so late in the year. One good reason for this is the exceptionally warm ocean waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico which powered Michael; Florida had its warmest September on record last month, and this helped heat up the waters of the eastern Gulf to 2 – 4°F (1 – 2°C) above average. Global warming makes record-warm Septembers like Florida experienced more likely to occur, and thus made a record-strong late-season hurricane like Michael more likely to occur.

Landfalling Category 4 hurricanes are rare in the mainland U.S., with just 24 such landfalls since 1851—an average of one every seven years. (Category 5 landfalls are rarer still, with just three on record). Only four Category 4 hurricanes have made landfall in October or later, and just two of these made landfall later than October 10: Hurricane King (October 18, 1950 in Florida), and Hurricane Hazel (October 15, 1954 near the NC/SC border). Both hit with top winds of 130 mph.

In records going back to 1851, only nine hurricanes have struck the Panhandle with Category 3 or stronger winds. The strongest were the 1882 Pensacola hurricane and 1975’s Hurricane Eloise, both of which came ashore with winds of 125 mph. Since 1900, there has been only one Category 4 or 5 landfall anywhere on the northern Gulf Coast (from Beaumont to Cedar Key): Category 5 Hurricane Camille in 1969.

Michael is the strongest landfalling mainland U.S. hurricane (by pressure) since Camille of 1969, which had a 900 mb pressure, and the strongest by wind speed since Hurricane Andrew of 1992, which had 165 mph winds. Note that Hurricane Maria of 2017 hit Puerto Rico with winds of 155 mph and a central pressure of 920 mb, and was virtually identical in intensity to Michael. According to NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division, only two landfalling mainland U.S. hurricanes have hit at a lower pressure–the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys (892 mb) and Hurricane Camille in Mississippi (900 mb), both Category 5 storms. Michael surpassed the landfall intensity of Category 5 Hurricane Andrew of 1992 in Florida (922 mb), Category 3 Hurricane Katrina of 2005 in Mississippi (920 mb) and Category 4 Hurricane Maria of 2017 in Puerto Rico (920 mb).

Table of the 6 continental US #hurricane landfalls on record (since 1851) with lower pressure than #Michael's current pressure of 928 hPa. All of these systems were devastating: Indianola (1886), Florida Keys (1919), Labor Day (1935), Camille (1969), Andrew (1992), Katrina (2005) pic.twitter.com/blKIsmwGOo

— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) October 10, 2018

Integrated Kinetic Energy: a better measure of storm surge potential

The Saffir-Simpson wind scale is an imperfect ranking of a hurricane’s storm surge threat, since it does not take into account the size of the storm and over how large an area the storm’s strong winds are blowing. At 5 am EDT Wednesday, Michael was an average-sized hurricane, with tropical storm-force winds that extended out up to 185 miles from the center, and hurricane-force winds that extended out 45 miles from the center. If we sum up the total energy of this wind field, we come with an Integrated Kinetic Energy (IKE) of 42 Terajoules, according to RMS Hwind. At this level of wind energy, Michael will be able to generate a storm surge characteristic of a typical of a Category 3 or 4 storm. Factors such as the shape of the coastline can lead to considerably higher or lower surge at a given spot than suggested by overall IKE values.

For comparison, here are the peak IKE vales of some historic storms at landfall:

Sandy, 2012: 330
Ivan, 2004: 122
Irma, 2017: 118
Ike, 2008: 118
Katrina, 2005: 116
Rita, 2005: 97
Maria, 2017: 78
Frances, 2004: 70
Matthew, 2016: 45
Michael, 2018: 42
Dennis, 2015: 42
Harvey, 2017: 27
Andrew, 1992: 17
Charley, 2004: 10

Figure 3. Most of the area between the southern Appalachians and the South Carolina coast has a better-than-even chance of experiencing tropical-storm-force winds from Michael. The odds are greater than 90% across the southeast half of Georgia. Image credit: NOAA/NHC.

Michael after landfall: Widespread wind damage a serious threat

Landfall will be only the start of Michael’s expected multi-state rampage. As it accelerates to the northeast, Michael will bring tropical-storm-force winds much further inland than usual for a typical landfalling hurricane. These will be capable of downing trees and power lines in deadly fashion across a vast swath of southern Georgia into South Carolina and even North Carolina. Power outages will affect hundreds of thousands of people, and the huge, simultaneous toll on the power grid tells us that some of those outages will take a week or more to repair.

Tropical storm warnings extend all the way up the coast from northern Florida (Fernandina Beach) to southern North Carolina (Surf City), and a tropical storm watch extends further north to Duck, NC, including Palmico and Albemarle sounds.

Intensity models agree in projecting Michael to remain a tropical storm all the way to the coast of North Carolina and Virginia, as predicted by NHC. It will pop back offshore late Thursday or early Friday near the NC Outer Banks or southeast Virginia. Rains of 4” – 8” (locally higher) along and near Michael’s path all the way to southeast Virginia may trigger flash floods, especially where soil is saturated in the wake of Hurricane Florence and other rains of recent weeks. Rivers have receded well below flood stage, so widespread river flooding is not expected. Michael may lash the NC/VA coasts with a parting shot of high wind on Friday as it re-intensifies offshore, en route to becoming a powerful post-tropical storm over the open Atlantic.

See weather.com’s comprehensive coverage for more detail on Michael’s landfall and post-landfall impacts.

Quick and dirty maps illustrating the change in housing exposure from 1970-2018 for #HurricaneMichael . Dangerous situation and residents in the #FloridaPanhandle, as well as parts of southern AL and GA should take protective action. #DisastersAreHumanConstructs pic.twitter.com/lfXdBj0CrP

— Stephen M. Strader (@StephenMStrader) October 10, 2018

Other tropical cyclones spinning around the world

It’s an extraordinarily busy week for mid-October in the Northern Hemisphere tropics.

—Tropical storm watches are up for the central coast of Baja California ahead of Tropical Storm Sergio, which will be approaching from the Pacific on Thursday night. Sergio will accelerate through northwest Mexico as a weakening storm, and it may still be identifiable on Saturday as a tropical depression or remnant low in Texas or Oklahoma. Heavy rains are the main threat, spreading across northwest Mexico (more than 10” could fall over parts of the Baja California peninsula) and into New Mexico and the Southern Plains, where 2” – 4” will be possible atop saturated ground.

—Long-lived Hurricane Leslie continues to spin in the remote central North Atlantic. Leslie may get hauled northeastward by the end of the week, but it’s also possible that Leslie will take a very unusual path, getting close to the Canary Islands before making a U-turn westward. If that happens, cooler waters should take an increasing toll on the storm, but Leslie could still end up among the longest-lived Atlantic named storms on record.

—Tropical Storm Nadine continues to gain strength in the eastern tropical Atlantic. Nadine is expected to weaken and dissipate over the next several days without threatening any land areas.

—In the Bay of Bengal, rapidly intensifying Tropical Cyclone Titli will make landfall early Thursday on the coast of northeast India, perhaps at Category 3 strength. Torrential rains, perhaps topping 12” locally, will pose a serious threat.

—In the Arabian Sea, Tropical Cyclone Luban—now a Category 1 equivalent—will weaken as it approaches the coast of Yemen or southern Oman, but it may still make landfall as a tropical storm on Friday. Tropical cyclones are not very common on either coast, but the last several years have brought several destructive ones, including Chapala—which became Yemen’s first hurricane-strength landfall in November 2015—and Mekenu, which struck Oman as a Category 3 storm in May 2018, causing 31 deaths.

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Dr. Jeff Masters co-founded Weather Underground in 1995, and flew with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990.

The Iranian economy is mired in a deep recession. The real or productive sector of the economy is paralyzed, largely by out-of-control (and often illicit) imports that have replaced domestic production. Rent seeking, corruption and the looting of national resources is pervasive. Both unemployment and inflation are extremely high. National currency is on the verge of collapse, and financial resources of the country are disproportionately invested in unproductive or parasitic activities such as buying and selling of precious metals, foreign currencies, real estate, and the like. 

What factors or forces have contributed to this wretched state of Iran’s economy?

Two major sets of culprits account for most of the economic disaster in Iran: one external, the other internal. External factors consist largely of the U.S.-sponsored economic sanctions.

Internal factors are rooted primarily in the appalling mismanagement of Iran’s economy. Debilitating mismanagement and lack of a guiding macroeconomic plan are, in turn, rooted in President Rouhani’s and his advisors’ economic outlook or philosophy. According to this philosophy, economic affairs must be delegated to the “invisible hand” of the market mechanism: there is no role or room for the government to intervene, monitor or guide the economy. This irresponsible, out-of-date, and out-of-place doctrine is succinctly epitomized in the old aphorism that “The best government is that which governs least.” 

Since adverse effects of sanctions on Iran’s economy are relatively well-known, I would rather focus here on the destructive consequences of the Rouhani administration’s laissez faire, or hands-off, economic outlook—an ill-conceived outlook that has aggravated, intensified or multiplied the baleful effects of sanctions. 

To be sure, the laissez faire economic outlook in Iran started around 1988 when the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran came to an end and the late Hashemi Rafsanjani rose to the presidency of the country. President Rafsanjani and his co-thinkers played a major role in Iran’s transition from the state-guided war economy to the economic model of neoliberalism. In pursuit of this fundamental transition, the president surrounded himself by a number of West/U.S-oriented neoliberal economists who established a “free market” think thank called “Institute of Planning and Management Education and Research.”

The circle of like-minded economists who helped found and manage the institute came to be known as the Niavaran Circle, or Halgha-ye Niavara in Farsi. (Niavaran is the name of a district in Tehran where the think tank was established.) Relatively well-known founders and/or participants in the Niavaran think-thank included Messrs. Mohammad Nahavandian, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, Masoud Nili, Abbas Akhondi, Bizhan Namdar Zangeneh, Masoud Karbasyan, Mohsen Noorbaksh, Mohammad Tabibian, and Mohammad Hosein Aadeli. 

A glance at the roster of President Rouhani’s economic team shows that most of its members come from the Niavaran Circle of economists who, incidentally, also served as members of President Rafsanjani’s economic team. Niavaran “free market” think tank was officially directed by Mr. Hasan Rouhani, the current president of Iran, who was a loyal protégé of Mr. Rafsanjani and an avid proponents of neoliberal model of capitalism (reference). 

Not only did Mr. Rafsanjani surround himself by liberal-neoliberal economic advisors, he also sought (and received) advice and expertise from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help his administration carry out a relatively extensive version of the IMF’s notorious Structural Adjustment Program (SAP).

The IMF-sponsored Adjustment Program was instrumental to President Rafsanjani’s curtailment of Iran’s social and/or safety-net programs. It was also instrumental in the implementation of extensive (and often illicit) privatization schemes, as well as in the subsequent re-distribution of national income and other economic resources from the bottom up, that is, from the poor to the wealthy. 

The abandonment of the war economy (and of the revolutionary socio-economic agenda in general) was accompanied by an extensive campaign to propagate the alleged benefits of laissez-faire economics, as well as to instill the principles or ethos of neoliberalism in the psyche of the Iranian people. These principles or presuppositions included the following: 

1. Big government is always and everywhere wasteful and inefficient. 

2. Government spending in favor of the poor and working classes leads to waste and inefficiency. It also leads to the moral hazard of nurturing laziness and dependency, that is, to gadaparvari (nurturing poverty), as Rafsanjani put it. 

3. Free enterprise, unchecked business activities and market deregulation lead to efficiency and prosperity. 

4. Free trade and integration into the U.S.-Western economics and financial markets are essential to economic development and social progress. 

5. Abundant liquidity always and everywhere leads to inflation. 

These laissez-faire ethos of neoliberalism, repeated ad-nauseam by the pundits and ideologues of neoliberal capitalism, are essentially specious presuppositions that are designed to justify curtailment of government-sponsored social and developmental programs. For example, these pundits routinely argue that government spending is the source of excess liquidity; excess liquidity is the source of inflation; therefore, government spending is the source of inflation. The policy conclusion of this argument is unmistakable: containment of inflation requires curtailment of government spending. It further follows that traditional public-sector social and developmental programs must be restricted, outsourced to the private sector, or privatized altogether. It is clear from these postulates and projections that neoliberal policy conclusions, which are essentially austerity prescriptions, follow not from real-world economic circumstances but from self-serving assumptions that are designed to reach the projected conclusions. 

Contrary to neoliberals’ self-interested, spurious assumptions and their dubious policy conclusion, an abundance of liquidity does not necessarily lead to inflation. Whether it would lead to inflation or not is altogether a matter of economic policy: if it is used (invested) judiciously on social and developmental programs, it could lead to industrialization, economic development and social progress. Most of the core capitalist countries that were devastated by the Great Depression of the 1930s and, then, by World War II were rebuilt largely by virtue of government-sponsored money creation and deficit spending, that is, by (temporarily) creating excess liquidity and using it productively. 

The experience of Germany is especially instructive in this respect: Evidence shows that while in this country the volume of money supply (liquidity) rose more than ten-fold in the 1948-54 period, this significant rise in liquidity not only did not lead to a rise in the level of prices but it was, in fact, accompanied by a decline in the general level of prices—the consumer price index declined from 112 to 110 during that period. Why? Because the increase in liquidity was accompanied by an even bigger increase in production, or output. 

President Rouhani’s and his team of neoliberal economists’ argument that big government is necessarily synonymous with waste and inefficiency is, likewise, questionable. Even a cursory look at the history of economic development shows that most of the currently developed capitalist countries used massive public-sector resources in the early stages of their industrialization for purposes of economic development. This history also shows that, as just mentioned in the previous paragraph, many of the countries that were devastated by the Great Depression and WW II were able to rebuild their shattered economies largely by virtue of extensive support provided by the big governments of the time. 

Although Rafsanjani’s liberal-neoliberal economic doctrine was somewhat tempered after he left the office, it was picked up (and, indeed, escalated) by his long-time co-thinker Mr. Hasan Rouhani when he ascended to Iran’s presidency in 1992. The laissez Faire, or hands-off, economic outlook of President Rouhani and his economic advisors, along with their belief that the salvation of Iran’s economy lies with its integration into Western/American economic and financial markets, have played an even more devastating role in precipitating Iran’s economic paralysis than economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies. 

The Rouhani administration’s blind faith in the perceived magic of free enterprise explains why the administration lacks some badly-needed macroeconomic objectives, guidelines or policies. It also explains why the administration has no control over the nation’s money supply, its foreign exchange market, its financial system and institutions, its exports and imports, and the like. The hands-off economic doctrine, which is tantamount to shirking duty, or responsibility, in the face of mounting economic problems, is justified under the guise of the “sanctity” of private property and the “magic” of free enterprise. Neglect of the public-sector programs, both social services and developmental projects, is reflected in a drastic decline in the share of national budget that is allocated to such services and projects—from 22 percent of the national budget in 1991 to the currently less-than 10 percent. 

This sense of irresponsibility and the wanton abandonment of many of the state-sponsored macroeconomic objectives lie at the core of most of the evils that have come to suffocate the Iranian economy and its people. Lack of macroeconomic objectives and guidelines, combined with a dire lack of accountability, have left the fate of economic activities to profiteers, rentiers, parasitic financial speculators, contraband importers, and outright economic mafias—mafias who are often connected to shadowy sources of power and high level corrupt officials (reference). 

The Banking system, with active collaboration of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), has become a vehicle for the transfer of economic/financial resources to the well-connected big financial speculators. Banking institutions grant huge sums of credit to powerful but faceless financial oligarchs, often under the guise of productive investment and job creation. These financial speculators, however, routinely invest the monies thus acquired in unproductive or parasitic enterprises such as buying and selling of precious metals, of foreign currencies, of real estate and the like. Furthermore, these financial gamblers rarely payback the cheap monies they have illicitly acquired from the banking system. 

There is irrefutable evidence, reported daily by the national media outlets, that the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has deliberately plundered its gold and foreign currency reserves. In early 2018 (or late 1396 of the Iranian calendar year), the bank announced the sale of 7,650,000 gold coins, which amounted to 62 tons of gold (each gold coin, called sekeh in Farsi, weighs nearly 8.2 grams of gold). Soon after the bank’s announcement of the sale of gold, its price began to escalate; it is now nearly four times what it was prior to the announcement of the sale. Although in theory the potential buyers had equal opportunities to buy the gold coins thus put up for sale, it soon became clear that, in practice, a small number of buyers had managed to appropriate the lion’s share of the coins. The lopsided sales distribution among the buyers, along with the skyrocketing price of gold soon after the sale announcement, have led to rampant rumors of collusive deals between the sellers (i.e. Central Bank authorities) and the big buyers. 

The apparent justification of the looting of the national gold reserves was based on the flimsy notion that the injection of gold into the market could absorb the “over-abundance” of liquidity, thereby serving as a mechanism to temper inflation. Contrary to such a theoretical mumbo-jumbo, not only has the sale robbed Iran of its gold reserves, which is a huge crime committed against national interests, it has also created a highly active, indeed feverish, black market in gold (reference). 

Another equally scandalous policy of the central bank authorities has been the looting of the nation’s foreign currency reserves. Around the same time that the bank put up 62 tons of its gold reserves for sale, President Rouhani’s most influential vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, announced that henceforth the central bank would sell the U.S. dollar to anyone interested at a fixed rate of 42,000 rials per dollar. Although one of the ostensible purposes of Jahangiri’s announcement was to import essential consumer goods at a relatively reasonable fixed exchange rate in order to control price inflation, in reality the major bulk of the dollars thus supplied by the bank was purchased by big financial speculators and importers of luxury products. 

Like the case of the sale of gold coins, the price of the dollar began to escalate soon after Jahangiri’s announcement of the sale of dollars. It has since skyrocketed to nearly five times the original price of 42,000 rials. The net results of this policy have been (a) the hollowing out of Iran’s foreign currency reserves to the tune of tens of billion dollars; (b) the insane self-enrichment of financial speculators; (c) the hoarding of the illicitly-imported products; and, therefore, (d) further escalation of price inflation. Again, like the case of the sale of gold coins, rumors are flying around among the Iranian people that there may have been dubious or collusive deals between the sellers and buyers of dollars at the original fixed rate of 42,000 rials (reference). 

This is all reminiscent of the looting of the Russian economy under Boris Yeltsin. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Boris Yeltsin to the presidency of the Russia, a cabal of bureau-technocratic profiteers in and around the Yeltsin administration, in collusion with a well-orchestrated foreign partners-in-crime, including the CIA operatives and academic financial experts from Harvard University and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), rapaciously privatized Russia’s massive public properties of the Soviet era at fire-sale prices, thereby handsomely enriching themselves at the expense of the  Russian people—hence, the nearly overnight emergence of the notorious Russian billionaire oligarchs. The robbery included the theft and transport of 2600 tons of the Russian gold reserves out of the country (reference). 

The looting of the Iran’s riches and resources under President Rouhani may not be as appalling as the case of Yeltsin’s Russia, it is appaling enough. In a real sense, President Rouhani can reasonably be called the Boris Yeltsin of Iran (reference). He is so deeply in the grip of liberal-neoliberal economic doctrine that he dismisses critics of his hands-off economic policies as opponents of free enterprise, or proponents of statist/command economics, who do not understand the magic of the “invisible hand” of the market mechanism, or the “advantages” of integrating the Iranian economy into the American/Western economic and financial system. 

This economic outlook is clearly reflected in his book, National Security and Economic System of Iran [امنیت ملّی و نظام اقتصادی ایران] (2010). The book is written in collaboration with a group of like-minded economists who served earlier as economic advisors of the late President Rafsanjani and now serve as his own economic advisors and members of his cabinet. Although the authors claim that the book is written from a “Neo-Keynesian” perspective, in reality it is a confused and eclectic amalgamation of perspectives whose primary purpose is to systematically move the Iranian economy away from the pattern of a guided capitalism and welfare state to that of laissez-faire capitalism and a hands-off, or unresponsive, government. This agenda include privatization of public properties and resources, deregulation of market or business activities, reduction of government-sponsored social and developmental programs, minimization of protection of domestic industries and, by the same token, encouragement of importation of foreign products into national markets. 

This hands-off attitude has played havoc on Iran’s economic and foreign policies under the Rouhani administration. Economically, the administration’s misguided outward- or Westward-looking view has led to a regrettable neglect or rejection of inward-looking economic perspectives that call for taking advantage of economic sanctions, relying on domestic talents and resource in order to become self-sufficient by producing as many of the consumer goods and other industrial products as possible. Indeed, prior to the rise of Mr. Rouhani to presidency Iran made considerable progress in scientific research, technological know-how and manufacturing industries by following, more or less, the philosophy of resistance economics, or the inward-looking policy of industrialization. 

Not only has the debilitating outward-looking mentality, which maintains that Iran’s economic development dependents on Western capital and economic relations (in effect, making national economic development hostage to the mercy of Western powers), crippled Iran’s economy, it has also turned its foreign policy into a policy of compliance with imperialistic demands of the United States and its allies. The U.S. and its allies have correctly viewed this mentality as a weakness or lack of resolve on the part of the Rouhani administration to resist their one-sided, selfish demands. Not surprisingly, they successfully took advantage of this soft, submissive, or pleading attitude during the so-called nuclear negotiations, thereby achieving all their objectives of the negotiations—reducing Iran’s technological capability of producing 20 percent enriched uranium to 3.5 percent, taking out of service some 14000 of its advanced (IR-M2) centrifuges for enrichment, pouring concrete into the heavy-water reactor in Arak, transporting most of its enriched uranium abroad, and obtaining Iran’s consent to highly intrusive IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections of its research facilities—without an appreciable reciprocity in terms of sanctions relief. 

The zeal or enthusiasm to be included in the financial/economic orbit of the core capitalist powers of the West also explains why, having effectively crippled its nuclear technology, these powers are now making additional imperialistic demands of Iran—demands and provocations that are tantamount to trampling upon Iran’s right to national sovereignty. Such demands, as frequently voiced by President Trump and his Secretary of State Pompeo, include the following: 

• Stop uranium enrichment altogether, never pursue plutonium reprocessing, and provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country. 
• Drastically curtail its defense capabilities, especially its missiles technology. 
• End support to resistance organizations, which they call “terrorist” groups, in the region. 
• “End its threatening behavior against its neighbors, many of whom are US allies.” 
• “Respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and permit the disarming, demobilization and reintegration of Shia militias.”
• “Withdraw all forces under Iran’s command throughout the entirety of Syria” (reference). 

Provocations and illegitimate/illegal demands of this sort will continue until Iran’s only option is surrender or war. However, Iran could avert those undesirable outcomes if it changes course of its own. Such a proactive change of course or direction would require, first and foremost, a clear-cut liberation of its economic policies from the grip of its foreign policy. Ever since the rise of Mr. Rouhani to its presidency, Iran’s economic policies have been made subordinate—indeed, hostage—to its West-centric foreign policy. The apparent rationale behind this bizarre strategy is a misguided perception that makes Iran’s economic development dependent on its integration into Western economic/financial markets. This explains why the administration has wasted most of its time in office on the so-called nuclear negotiation with Western powers. By thus placing all its economic eggs in the basket of a misguided foreign policy, the administration has played havoc on Iran’s economy. The sooner this disastrous policy is changed, the better. To be effective, the urgently needed change requires a drastic shift away from the current West-centric, hands-off austerity economic model of neoliberalism to that of a guided, resistance, or war economy. (In a follow-up to this essay, I shall explain why such a drastic change of course is necessary, and why it would very likely be beyond the ability and the willingness of the current administration.) 

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Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. 

Is Nimrata “Nikki” Haley (nee Randhawa), Netanyahu’s ‘candidate’ as Israel makes plans to have AIPAC use its powerful organisation to install her as the 46th President of the United States?

In a transparent move to infiltrate and control American politics, does the de facto head of AIPAC (the US Zionist Lobby in Washington), Binyamin Netanyahu have plans for the former US Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, to be a ‘shoo-in’ as the next American President, to succeed Trump?

The price demanded by Netanyahu would be the formal US endorsement of its proposed annexation of the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to form the new official borders of the Israeli state plus, of course, a massive increase in US annual aid from the existing $38 billion.

This would possibly also entail the implementation of the Likud agenda for a Greater Israel with Jerusalem as its capital city and the permanent expulsion of all indigenous Arabs to adjoining states.

Background:

Nikki Randhawa met her husband Michael Haley when they were both undergraduates at Clemson University, South Carolina and Haley subsequently worked at Exotica International, the clothing store founded by his mother-in-law, Raj Randhawa, before becoming a full-time federal military technician with the South Carolina Army National Guard in 2006.

More significantly, Michael Haley is an ardent admirer of US VP Mike Pence, the evangelical Christian sidekick of Donald Trump. The Evangelical Movement, (aka Christian Zionists of America), is a potent religious force numbering between 40 and 50 million (14% of population) who support the AIPAC lobby and the Likud Zionist agenda of Binyamin Netanyahu.

To have Nikki Haley installed as the next President of the United States of America would be the greatest coup of any Israeli government since its establishment in 1948, but would provoke an instability in the Middle East.

As for the United States. Is it really possible that the Israeli tail would have the chutzpah and the power to wag the American dog?  In the light of current experience, that answer could be  ‘Yes’!

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is a political analyst from the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) carried out a new attack on Turkish-backed forces in the region of Afrin. According to the YPG, 4 members of Turkish-backed groups were killed by the YPG in the village of Mariam.

This was the first YPG attack in Afrin, which became public in October. In September, the Kurdish group carried out about 20 attacks. Most of them took place in the first part of the month.

The decrease of the YPG military activity in the region of Afrin is most likely linked to additional security measures employed by the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and their proxies.

On October 9, President Bashar al-Assad issued the legislative decree No. 18 for 2018 granting a general amnesty for military deserters inside and outside the country. This amnesty does not include fugitives from justice unless they turn themselves in within 4 months for those inside the country and 6 months for those outside the country.

This development is another step by the Damascus government aimed at supporting the reconciliation process in the war-torn country. It may also impact positively on the return of the Syrian refugees from the nearby states.

Moscow has information on the attempts to re-deploy terrorists from Syria’s Idlib to Iraq but these actions are being cut off, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said on October 10. He added that

“Iraq is dealing with that and it clearly does not need extra terrorists”.

Iran, Syria and Russia have repeatedly voiced concern on redeployment of members of terrorist groups, mostly ISIS and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra). Reports about helicopters of the US-led coalition evacuating ISIS members from the province of Deir Ezzor to the coalition’s bases appear in the Syrian state-run media on a constant basis.

It is interesting to note that the Russian Foreign Ministry has also pointed out activity of “unidentified helicopters” in Afghanistan, where they provide supplies and other logistic support to ISIS members.

The US-led bloc is actively denying these reports denouncing them as “misinformation” and “propaganda. Nonetheless, according to multiple experts and security sources, at least a part of ISIS members successfully redeployed from the Syria-Iraq battleground to Afghanistan and Libya.

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Nothing less than the future of politics across the West – and across the Global South – is being played out in Brazil.

Stripped to its essence, the Brazilian presidential elections represent a direct clash between democracy and an early 21^st Century, neofascism, indeed between civilization and barbarism.

Geopolitical and global economic reverberations will be immense. The Brazilian dilemma illuminates all the contradictions surrounding the Right populist offensive across the West, juxtaposed to the inexorable collapse of the Left. The stakes could not be higher.

Jair Bolsonaro, an outright supporter of Brazilian military dictatorships of last century, who has been normalized as the “extreme-right candidate,” won the first round of the presidential elections on Sunday with more than 49 million votes. That was 46 percent of the total, just shy of a majority needed for an outright win. This in itself is a jaw-dropping development.

His opponent, Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party (PT), got only 31 million votes, or 29 percent of the total. He will now face Bolsonaro in a runoff on October 28. A Sisyphean task awaits Haddad: just to reach parity with Bolsonaro, he needs every single vote from those who supported the third and fourth-placed candidates, plus a substantial share of the almost 20 percent of votes considered null and void.

Meanwhile, no less than 69 percent of Brazilians, according to the latest polls, profess their support for democracy. That means 31 percent do not.

No Tropical Trump

Dystopia Central does not even begin to qualify it. Progressive Brazilians are terrified of facing a mutant “Brazil” (the movie) cum Mad Max wasteland ravaged by evangelical fanatics, rapacious neoliberal casino capitalists and a rabid military bent on recreating a Dictatorship 2.0.

Bolsonaro, a former paratrooper, is being depicted by Western mainstream media essentially as the Tropical Trump. The facts are way more complex.

Bolsonaro, a mediocre member of Congress for 27 years with no highlights on his C.V., indiscriminately demonizes blacks, the LGBT community, the Left as a whole, the environment “scam” and most of all, the poor. He’s avowedly pro-torture. He markets himself as a Messiah – a fatalistic avatar coming to “save” Brazil from all those “sins” above.

The Goddess of the Market, predictably, embraces him. “Investors” – those semi-divine entities – deem him good for “the market”, with his last-minute offensive in the polls mirroring a rally in the Brazilian real and the Sao Paulo stock exchange.

Bolsonaro may be your classic extreme-right “savior” in the Nazi mould. He may embody Right populism to the core. But he’s definitely not a “sovereignist” – the motto of choice in political debate across the West. His “sovereign” Brazil would be run more like a retro-military dictatorship totally subordinated to Washington’s whims.

Bolsonaro’s ticket is compounded by a barely literate, retired general as his running mate, a man who is ashamed of his mixed race background and is frankly pro-eugenics. General Antonio Hamilton Mourão has even revived the idea of a military coup.

Manipulating the ticket, we find massive economic interests, tied to mineral wealth, agro-business and most of all the Brazilian Bible Belt. It is complete with death squads against Native Brazilians, landless peasants and African-American communities. It is a haven for the weapons industry. Call it the apotheosis of tropical neo-pentecostal, Christian-Zionism.

Praise the Lord

Brazil has 42 million evangelicals – and over 200 representatives in both branches of Parliament. Don’t mess with their jihad. They know how to exercise massive appeal among the beggars at the neoliberal banquet. The Lula Left simply didn’t know how to seduce them.

So even with echoes of Mike Pence, Bolsonaro is the Brazilian Trump only to a certain extent: his communication skills – talking tough, simplistically, is language understandable to a seven-year old. Educated Italians compare him to Matteo Salvini, the Lega leader, now Minister of Interior. But that’s also not exactly the case.

Bolsonaro is a symptom of a much larger disease. He has only reached this level, a head-to-head in the second round against Lula’s candidate Haddad, because of a sophisticated, rolling, multi-stage, judicial/congressional/business/media Hybrid War unleashed on Brazil.

Way more complex than any color revolution, Hybrid War in Brazil featured a law-fare coup under cover of the Car Wash anti-corruption investigation. That led to the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and Lula being thrown in jail on corruption charges with no hard evidence or smoking gun.

In every poll Lula would win these elections hand down. The coup plotters managed to imprison him and prevent him from running. Lula’s right to run was highlighted by everyone from Pope Francis to the UN’s Human Rights Council, as well as Noam Chomsky. Yet in a delightful historical twist, the coup plotters’ scenario blew up in their faces as the front-runner to lead the country is not one of them, but a neofascist.

“One of them” would ideally be a faceless bureaucrat affiliated with the former social democrats, the PSDB, turned hardcore neoliberals addicted to posing as Center Left when they are the “acceptable” face of the neoliberal Right. Call them Brazilian Tony Blairs. Specific Brazilian contradictions, plus the advance of Right populism across the West, led to their downfall.

Even Wall Street and the City of London (which endorsed Hybrid War on Brazil after it was unleashed by NSA spying of oil giant Petrobras) have started entertaining second thoughts on supporting Bolsonaro for president of a BRICS nation, which is a leader of the Global South, and until a few years ago, was on its way to becoming the fifth largest economy in the world.

It all hangs on the “vote transfer” mechanism from Lula to Haddad and the creation of a serious, multi-party Progressive Democratic Front on the second round to defeat the rising neofascism. They have less than three weeks to pull it off.

The Bannon Effect

It’s no secret that Steve Bannon is advising the Bolsonaro campaign in Brazil. One of Bolsonaro’s sons, Eduardo, met with Bannon in New York two months ago after which the Bolsonaro camp decided to profit from Bannon’s supposed “peerless” social engineering insights.

Bolsonaro’s son tweeted at the time,

“We’re certainly in touch to join forces, especially against Cultural Marxism.”

That was followed by an army of bots disgorging an avalanche of fake news up to Election Day.

A specter haunts Europe. Its name is Steve Bannon. The specter has moved on to the tropics.

In Europe, Bannon is now poised to intervene like an angel of doom in a Tintoretto painting heralding the creation of a EU-wide Right Populist coalition.

Bannon is notoriously praised to high heavens by Italian Interior Minister Salvini; Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban; Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders; and scourge of the Paris establishment, Marine Le Pen.

Last month, Bannon set up The Movement; at first sight just a political start-up in Brussels with a very small staff. But talk about Boundless Ambition: their aim is no less than turning the European parliamentary elections in May 2019 upside down.

The European parliament in Strasbourg – a bastion of bureaucratic inefficiency – is not exactly a household name across the EU. The parliament is barred from proposing legislation. Laws and budgets can only be blocked via a majority vote.

Bannon aims at capturing at least one-third of the seats in Strasbourg. He’s bound to apply tested American-style methods such as intensive polling, data analysis, and intensive social media campaigns – much the same as in Bolsonaro’s case. But there’s no guarantee it will work, of course.

The foundation stone of The Movement was arguably laid in two key meetings in early September set up by Bannon and his right-hand man, Mischael Modrikamen, chairman of the quite small Belgian Parti Populaire (PP). The first meeting was in Rome with Salvini and the second in Belgrade with Orban.

Modrikamen defines the concept as a “club” which will “collect funds from donors, in America and Europe, to make sure ‘populist’ ideas can be heard by the citizens of Europe who perceive more and more that Europe is not a democracy anymore.”

Modrikamen insists, “We are all sovereignists.” The Movement will hammer four themes that seem to form a consensus among disparate, EU-wide political parties: against “uncontrolled immigration”; against “Islamism”; favoring “security” across the EU; and supporting “a Europe of sovereign nations, proud of their identity.”

The Movement should really pick up speed after next month’s midterms in the U.S. In theory, it could congregate different parties from the same nation under its umbrella. That could be a very tall order, even taller than the fact key political actors already have divergent agendas.

Wilders wants to blow up the EU. Salvini and Orban want a weak EU but they don’t want to get rid of its institutions. Le Pen wants a EU reform followed by a “Frexit” referendum.

The only themes that unite this mixed Right Populism bag are nationalism, a fuzzy anti-establishment drive and a – quite popular – disgust with the EU’s overwhelming bureaucratic machine.

Here we find some common ground with Bolsonaro, who poses as a nationalist and as against the Brazilian political system – even though he’s been in Parliament for ages.

There’s no rational explanation for Bolsonaro’s last-minute surge among two sections of the Brazilian electorate that deeply despise him: women and the Northeast region, which has always been discriminated against by the wealthier South and Southeast.

Much like Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 U.S. election, Bolsonaro’s campaign targeted undecided voters in Northeastern states, as well as women voters, with a barrage of fake news demonizing Haddad and the Workers’ Party. It worked like a charm.

The Italian Job

I’ve just been to northern Italy checking out how popular Salvini really is. Salvini defines the May 2019 European Parliament elections as “the last chance for Europe.” Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero sees them as the first “real election for the future of Europe.” Bannon also sees the future of Europe being played in Italy.

It’s quite something to seize the conflicting energy in the air in Milan, where Salvini’s Lega is quite popular while at the same time Milan is a globalized city crammed with ultra-progressive pockets.

At a political debate about a book published by the Bruno Leoni Institute regarding exiting the euro, Roberto Maroni, a former governor of the powerful Lombardia region, remarked: “Italexit is outside of the formal agenda of the government, of the Lega and of the center-right.” Maroni should know, after all he was one of the Lega’s founders.

He hinted however that major changes are on the horizon. “To form a group in the European parliament, the numbers are important. This is the moment to show up with a unique symbol among parties of many nations.”

It’s not only Bannon and The Movement’s Modrikamen. Salvini, Le Pen and Orban are convinced they can win the 2019 elections – with the EU transformed into a “Union of European Nations.” This would include not just a couple of big cities where all the action is, with the rest reduced to fly over status. Right Populism argues that France, Italy, Spain, and Greece are no longer nations – only mere provinces.

Right Populism derives immense satisfaction that its main enemy is the self-described “Jupiter” Macron – mocked across France by some as the “Little Sun King.” President Emmanuel Macron must be terrified that Salvini is emerging as the “leading light” of European nationalists.

This is what Europe seems to be coming to: a trashy, Salvini vs. Macron cage match.

Arguably the Salvini vs. Macron fight in Europe might be replicated as Bolsonaro vs. Haddad in Brazil. Some sharp Brazilian minds are convinced Haddad is the Brazilian Macron.

In my view he is not. His has a background in philosophy and he’s a former, competent mayor of Sao Paulo, one of the most complex megalopolises on the planet. Macron is a Rothschild mergers and acquisitions banker. Unlike Macron, who was engineered by the French establishment as the perfect “progressive” wolf to be released among the sheep, Haddad embodies what’s left of really progressive Left.

On top of that – unlike virtually the whole Brazilian political spectrum – Haddad is not corrupt. He’d have to offer the requisite pound of flesh to the usual suspects if he wins of course. But he’s not out to be their puppet.

Compare Bolsonaro’s Trumpism, apparent in his last-minute message before Election Day: “Make Brazil Great Again,” with Trump’s Trumpism.

Bolsonaro’s tools are unmitigated praise of the Motherland; the Armed Forces; and the flag.

But Bolsonaro is not interested in defending Brazilian industry, jobs and culture. On the contrary. A graphic example is what happened in a Brazilian restaurant in Deerfield Beach, Florida, a year ago: Bolsonaro saluted the American flag and chanted “USA! USA!”

That’s undiluted MAGA – without a “B”.

Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale and author of How Fascism Works, takes us further. Stanley stresses how “the idea in fascism is to destroy economic politics… The corporatists side with politicians who use fascist tactics because they are trying to divert people’s attention from the real forces that cause the genuine anxiety they feel.”

Bolsonaro has mastered these diversionist tactics. And he excels in demonizing so-called Cultural Marxism. Bolsonaro fits Stanley’s description as applied to the U.S.:

“Liberalism and Cultural Marxism destroyed our supremacy and destroyed this wonderful past where we ruled and our cultural traditions were the ones that dominated. And then it militarizes the feeling of nostalgia. All the anxiety and loss that people feel in their lives, say from the loss of their healthcare, the loss of their pensions, the loss of their stability, then gets rerouted into a sense that the real enemy is liberalism, which led to the loss of this mythic past.”

In the Brazilian case, the enemy is not liberalism but the Workers’ Party, derided by Bolsonaro as “a bunch of communists.” Celebrating his astonishing first round victory, he said Brazil was on the edge of a corrupt, communist “abyss” and could either choose a path of “prosperity, freedom, family” or “the path of Venezuela”.

The Car Wash investigation enshrined the myth that the Workers’ Party and the whole Left is corrupt (but not the Right). Bolsonaro overextended the myth:  every minority and social class is a target – in his mind they are “communists” and “terrorists.”

Goebbels comes to mind – via his crucial text The Radicalization of Socialism, where he emphasized the necessity of portraying the center-left as Marxists and socialists because, as Stanley notes, “the middle class sees in Marxism not so much the subverter of national will, but mainly the thief of its property.”

That’s at the center of Bolsonaro’s strategy of demonizing the Workers Party – and the Left in general. The strategy of course is drenched in fake news – once again mirroring what Stanley writes about U.S. history: “The whole concept of empire is based on fake news. All of colonization is based on fake news.”

Right Against Left Populism?

As I wrote in a previous column, the Left in the West is like a deer caught in the headlights when it comes to fighting Right populism.

Sharp minds from Slavoj Zizek to Chantal Mouffe are trying to conceptualize an alternative – without being able to coin the definitive neologism. Left populism? Popularism? Ideally, that should be “democratic socialism” – but no one, in a post-ideology, post-truth environment, would dare utter the dreaded word.

The ascent of Right populism is a direct consequence of the emergence of a profound crisis of political representation all over the West; the politics of identity erected as a new mantra; and the overwhelming power of social media, which allows – in Umberto Eco’s peerless definition – the ascent of “the idiot of the village to the condition of Oracle.”

As we saw earlier, the central motto of Right populism in Europe is anti-immigration – a barely disguised variation of hate towards The Other. In Brazil the main theme, emphasized by Bolsonaro, is urban insecurity. He could be the Brazilian Rodrigo Duterte – or Duterte Harry: “Make my day, punk.”

He portrays himself as the Righteous Defender against a corrupt elite (even though he’s part of the elite); and his hatred of all things politically correct, feminism, homosexuality, multiculturalism – are all unpardonable offenses to his “family values.”

A Brazilian historian says the only way to oppose him is to “translate” to each sector of Brazilian society how Bolsonaro’s positions affect them: on “widespread weaponizing, discrimination, jobs, (and) taxes.” And it has to be done in less than three weeks.

Arguably the best book explaining the failure of the Left everywhere to deal with this toxic situation is Jean-Claude Michea’s Le Loup dans la Bergerie – The Wolf Among the Sheep – published in France a few days ago.

Michea shows concisely how the deep contradictions of liberalism since the 18th century – political, economic and cultural – led it to TURN AGAINST ITSELF and be cut off from the initial spirit of tolerance (Adam Smith, David Hume, Montesquieu). That’s why we are deep inside post-democratic capitalism.

Euphemistically called “the international community” by Western mainstream media, the elites, who have been confronted since 2008 with “the growing difficulties faced by the process of globalized accumulation of capital,” now seem ready to do anything to keep its privileges.

Michea is right that the most dangerous enemy of civilization – and even Life on Earth – is the blind dynamics of endless accumulation of capital. We know where this neoliberal Brave New World is taking us.

The only counterpunch is an autonomous, popular movement “that would not be submitted to the ideological and cultural hegemony of ‘progressive’ movements that for over three decades defend only the cultural interests of the new middle classes around the world,” Michae says.

For now, such a movement rests in the realm of Utopia. What’s left is to try to remedy a coming dystopia – such as backing a real Progressive Democratic Front to block a Bolsonaro Brazil.

One of the highlights of my Italian sojourn was a meeting with Rolf Petri, Professor of Contemporary History at the Ca Foscari University in Venice, and author of the absolutely essential A Short History of Western Ideology: A Critical Account.

Ranging from religion, race and colonialism, to the Enlightenment project of “civilization”, Petri weaves a devastating tapestry of how “the imagined geography of a ‘continent’ that was not even a continent offered a platform for the affirmation of European superiority and the civilizing mission of Europe.”

During a long dinner in a small Venetian trattoria away from the galloping selfie hordes, Petri observed how Salvini – a middle-class small entrepreneur – craftily found out how to channel a deep unconscious longing for a mythical harmonious Europe that won’t be coming back, much as petty bourgeois Bolsonaro evokes a mythical return to the “Brazilian miracle” during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

Every sentient being knows that the U.S. has been plunged into extreme inequality “supervised” by a ruthless plutocracy. U.S. workers will continue to be royally screwed as are French workers under “liberal” Macron. So would Brazilian workers under Bolsonaro. To borrow then from Yeats, what rough beast, in this darkest hour, slouches towards freedom to be born?

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Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook.

 All images in this article are from Consortiumnews.

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A Multibillion Dollar Question: Is the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) Still in Effect?

By David Orchard and Marjaleena Repo, October 10, 2018

The USMCA — which president Trump half playfully, half menacingly called the US Marine Corps Agreement —states in its preamble that it will “replace the 1994 North American free trade agreement.” It is completely silent about the FTA.

‘With Kavanaugh on the Court, Checking and Balancing Is Not Going to Happen”

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn and Janine Jackson, October 10, 2018

Keep in mind that international law—insofar as the United States has ratified treaties—or customary international law are part of US law, under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, and yet Kavanaugh has nothing but scorn for international law, and he confuses international law with foreign law.

Video: The Pentagon’s Insect Army

By Manlio Dinucci, October 10, 2018

Swarms of insects, transporting genetically modified infectious viruses, attack the agricultural crops of a country and destroy its food production – this is not a science-fiction scenario, but a plan that is actually being prepared by DARPA, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The Sessional Curse: Universities and the Casual Work Force

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 10, 2018

Universities have become bastions of sessional torment, feeding grounds for despair.  The term “sessional” is merely a euphemised way of describing an academic employee who has no ongoing employment other than what is offered, a person ever at the mercy of the subject or course coordinator of a department.  They are the toiling poor, the barrel scrapers, the trudged upon and demanded.  

Weather Warfare: Beware the US Military’s Experiments with Climatic Warfare

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 10, 2018

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Aux Barricades Mes Enfants! The Insanity of US Foreign Policy. The Danger of War

By Philip Giraldi, October 09, 2018

All too often demonstrations morph into progressive exercises in flagellation of what are now referred to as “deplorable” values with little being accomplished either before, during or afterwards, apart from the piles of debris left behind to be cleaned up by the Park Service. And such events are rarely even covered by the media in Washington, where the Post generally adheres closely to a neocon foreign policy tactic, which means that if you ignore something distasteful it will eventually go away.

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The world should welcome President Assad’s latest decree granting amnesty to military deserters inside and outside of the country, but observers shouldn’t forget that it isn’t a new initiative and might therefore not be observed by the parties that matter most because they ignored his government’s identical outreaches over the past couple of years.

Europe’s Much-Needed “Pressure Valve”

President Assad issued a decree earlier this week granting amnesty to military deserters inside and outside of the country, which was lauded by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as a step towards “national reconciliation”. In theory, this could encourage civilians whose only crime has been to evade military service to return to the liberated portions of the country where the majority of the population lives and begin the process of reintegrating into society. Not only might his see some deserters leaving their homes in Idlib and the US-occupied but Kurdish-controlled northeastern part of the country, but it could also put at ease the fears of many migrants who were worried about being prosecuted for evading their duty if they ever came back to their homeland. Accordingly, the second-mentioned element might make it more “politically viable” for the EU to repatriate Syrian migrants, which could in turn provide a much-needed “pressure valve” from the grassroots opposition that many political leaders such as the bloc’s de-facto leader Merkel are presently experiencing.

Military And Political Implications

There are also two other implications that could be extrapolated from this announcement. The first is that there’s a lingering ambiguity over whether returning deserters would still be eligible for mandatory conscription. It hasn’t thus far been clarified in English-language media if the amnesty also means that they’re no longer obligated to serve their nation, so the possibility remains that they might, at least pending an official follow-up comment on the matter. Relatedly, the answer to this question would say a lot about the intentions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in terms of the next phase of the country’s conflict. Allowing for these returning deserters to hypothetically be drafted into the same armed forces that they originally fled from would indicate that the SAA isn’t preparing to end the kinetic phase of war like some have thought but could be seeking to increase its ranks prior to a possible campaign in Idlib and/or the northeast. These possibilities are realistically slim, but can’t yet be discounted.

About the second implication of this decision, the return of Syrian nationals back to the Damascus-administered areas of the country could put the Arab Republic on the path of finally making progress on UNSC 2254’s mandated constitutional reform and the holding of new elections. It’s a lot easier for everyone if as many Syrians as possible returned home prior to a possible referendum on the outcome of the ongoing constitutional reform negotiations and the national elections that would eventually follow instead of attempting to ensure that the voting rights of millions of Syrians outside of the country are respected in states which don’t even recognize the present government as legitimate. The larger the number of Syrians that don’t have a chance at participating in these votes for that aforementioned political reason, the more likely it is that the results might be considered “illegitimate” by the West on the supposed basis that too many people were “disenfranchised”, even though this wouldn’t be through any fault of Damascus’ own.

“Politically Incorrect” Realities

For as well-intentioned as President Assad’s amnesty decree might be and the strong possibility that it would lead to positive progress in advancing a so-called “political solution” to the country’s conflict if people take advantage of it, there’s actually nothing inherently new in what the Syrian leader promulgated because this exact same thing was tried before in February 2016 with little success. Although the military situation in the Arab Republic was much different back then when compared to now, some of the inhibiting issues from that time are still relevant in the present day. For example, whether justified or not, some deserters still fear that they’ll be discriminated against if they return home, be it by the state or even their own neighbors. These feelings could also be manipulated from abroad through social and other media by self-interested actors who don’t want to see the large-scale return of refugees and other categories of people to Syria.

Another factor is that some of the military deserters might not want to return to the liberated portions of Syria, no matter how “politically incorrect” this is to countenance among many of the government’s most ardent social media supporters. Whether living in Idlib, the northeast, or outside of the country, they might have become accustomed to their places of residence, possibly because they sympathize with the Islamist or “Neo-Marxist” ideologies of the first two mentioned de-facto self-administrated regions inside of Syria. Many points have been put forth arguing that Syrians as whole might have a more promising future inside of the liberated areas of the Arab Republic, but some might still think that they’ll live better lives elsewhere. Idlib and the Kurdish-controlled northeast are attractive for ideological reasons and also because comparatively smaller amounts of reconstruction aid could have a relatively larger effect on improving the locals’ livelihoods after the war. As for the migrants, they might have settled into other societies and simply prefer living there instead.

Concluding Thoughts

Syria, for all intents and purposes, seems to be on the cusp of finally (and some would say, belatedly) transitioning its conflict from the kinetic phase of military hostilities to the non-kinetic one of political negotiations aimed at ultimately achieving “national reconciliation”. President Assad’s decree to grant amnesty to SAA deserters should therefore be seen in this context, which means that it might have a greater chance of success than the identical one issued two and a half years ago did given the different context in which it was made. If everything goes according to plan, then a chain reaction of peacemaking moves could rapidly be set into motion, though no one should get their hopes unrealistically high that the best scenario will enter into being, let alone that easily. There are still plenty of obstacles impeding it from happening, not least of which is the “politically inconvenient” fact that some Syrians just don’t want to return back to the liberated areas of their country.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Natural landscapes are declining worldwide. Approximately 30 percent of the world’s natural forests are expected to be lost by the end of this century. Further, 25 percent of all land on earth is currently under threat of desertification, resulting in severe soil erosion and falls in productivity, food security, and biodiversity. Morocco is no exception. Over 90 percent of Morocco’s historical forest cover has already been decimated due to the combined effect of overexploitation, overgrazing, and worsening climate. The disastrous extent of Morocco’s environmental degradation poses a major threat to the country’s flora and fauna. According to the IUCN Red List, over 223 plant and animal species in Morocco are endangered. In addition, severe erosion, water run-off, floods, and soil depletion are critical concerns for human well-being, particularly in the Atlas communities who depend on natural resources and are marginalized with most experiencing systemic poverty.

Under these highly stressful conditions, conservation inherently remains a development issue and their combined mitigation has become an important political objective. As a result, a wide range of projects that provide communities with control over their natural resources and promote socioeconomic benefits were established. However, tackling environmental and societal issues at once can be challenging and many projects have failed to achieve both their conservation and development goals. Identifying a set of effective practices and sharing lessons learned is therefore crucial to successfully conserve natural landscapes and alleviate poverty.

To enable an understanding of effective practices, a Moroccan pro-poor agroforestry program was assessed using a new methodology that allowed the analysis of the linkage between conservation management, community interventions, and their influence on both development outcomes and biodiversity improvements. The evaluation of this program implemented by the High Atlas Foundation (HAF), a Moroccan-United States nonprofit organization, was carried out by this author, an independent primary investigator from April to September 2018. The study involved a desk-based review of relevant documents, 34 interviews, and six focus groups with seven staff members and 26 beneficiaries. The data were then analyzed and organized into an assessment booklet. This booklet was used by a group of independent professionals, who scored the performance of the program, determined successful practices as well as gaps, and gave recommendations for further improvement.

The assessment revealed that HAF in Morocco showcases exemplary, highly effective practices and, thus, can serve as a model project that should be lauded internationally. Since 2003, HAF has planted 3.6 million seeds and trees with a remarkable increase in 2018, enabled through establishing four new nurseries in partnership with Morocco’s High Commission of Water and Forests and Ecosia, a social business based in Berlin. Through the distribution of fruit trees, the foundation facilitates the transition from subsistence barley and corn cultivation to surplus organic fruit tree farming. This helps preserve the natural environment by reducing soil erosion and flooding and increasing soil quality and plant regeneration, which is highly relevant for villages that face serious and at times dangerous levels of mountain erosion and desertification, exacerbated by farming of staples and cattle herding. One farmer observed: “Before when we just grew barley and corn, the soil lost quality fast and erosion took our land. Now the trees prevent this from happening. We also have more bees because bees love the flowers.”

Fruit tree plantations in the Tifnoute Valley, High Atlas Mountains.

Furthermore, the foundation was able to impact approximately 10,000 households by increasing their agricultural skills and income. In the Tifnoute Valley of the Taroudant province, for example, the foundation distributed between 10 and 100 cherry trees per farmer. They now generate $21 to $105 from each cherry tree, depending on the water availability, harshness of winters, production rates of previous years, and other factors. On average, this is ten times as much as farmers were able to earn from barley and corn. One farmer stated:

“Before we grew trees, we had to work hard to grow corn and barley. If I counted everything together and sold all the barley and corn without keeping anything for myself, I only gained $53 a year. A few years after the foundation gave me trees I was able to sell the fruits for $528 to $1,055 depending on how much my trees produced. With the income generated, I improved my family’s life.”

In addition, the increased income enabled communities to reinvest their profits in further communal ventures like school infrastructure, health care, or youth enterprises.

Key to this success is the foundation’s holistic strategy to meaningful community engagement. Through utilizing the participatory approach, the foundation involves communities in every step of the program, entrusts them with the authority to make decisions, and increases their capacity to be agents of change. This secures early community buy-in, prevents programs from being driven by external interests, and guarantees the program is designed with a thorough understanding of local context. Furthermore, through women empowerment workshops, skills-building, literacy classes, and other community-determined initiatives such as improving school infrastructure and enriching education, HAF addresses poverty from all angles. Thereby HAF acknowledges that poverty can manifest not only through shortfalls of income and food but also through a lack of access to education, equality, empowerment, and opportunity. One woman said:

“This tree and plant nursery changed our lives. Before the nursery we were just at home. Now with the help of the foundation we are able to work in the nursery, learn new skills, earn our own money, and help to provide for our families. This makes our life so much easier and men are starting to respect us. We are very proud of what we do even when we encounter problems. We learned how to face the problems together, search for solutions, and keep going.”

The ongoing deterioration of landscapes and the significant dependency of rural poor on natural resources illustrate the need to considerably change conservation thinking. The High Atlas Foundation proves that meaningful community engagement through participatory methods is essential to sustainable, long-term success. A farmer concluded, “I have great expectations for the future. The trees we planted will be good for the environment, prevent soil erosion, and the project will benefit the communities and the associations in this area.” Therefore, community engagement should never be an afterthought or rhetorical, but should be fundamentally integrated into every conservation and development project. By sharing their lessons learned and effective practices, the High Atlas Foundation offers excellent potential for informing the global conservation and development community of how to develop impactful and beneficial programs.

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Kerstin Opfer holds a Master in Conservation and Rural Development at the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, and has traveled, worked, and lived in Morocco for over four years.

The US doesn’t want to do anything that could risk Narendra Modi’s reelection next year such as inadvertently contributing to the explosive growth of petrol prices in his country, so it’s possible that Trump might grant America’s new strategic partner a waiver from the forthcoming anti-Iranian sanctions so long as India pledges to gradually reduce its purchases of the country’s resources like it’s already doing when it comes to Russian weaponry.

One of the biggest questions on everyone’s mind in Eurasia is whether the US will sanction India for its promise to continue purchasing Iranian resources after the reimposition of American sanctions against the Islamic Republic next month. It’s unclear at this time whether India is just saying that as a negotiating tactic in advance of entering into free trade talks with the US or if it’s actually sincere in its stated intentions, but this high-stakes game of geo-energy “chicken” is pushing Washington into deciding whether it should waive any forthcoming sanctions against New Delhi or not. Plenty of arguments have been made in predicting why this might not happen, but in the interests of presenting a contrarian analysis, the present piece will explain why this might indeed occur.

Hitting The Brakes On “Balkanizing” Iran

The most important motivation that the US has is to cripple the Iranian economy and create the conditions where a self-sustaining cycle of Hybrid War unrest could easily take root with minimal foreign support, therefore facilitating the US’ objectives of Regime Tweaking (political “concessions”), Regime Change, and Regime Reboot (constitutional “reform” that leads to “Balkanization” via weaponized “decentralization”). These goals are made moot if Iran’s major customers continue purchasing its energy in defiance of America’s threats to impose “secondary sanctions” against them, which is why it’s so important for Washington to get New Delhi to fall in line with this policy. India, however, cannot simply go “cold turkey” and give up its second-largest supplier without suffering severe structural consequences to its economy.

Bearing this in mind, that’s why the US will probably seek to reach a backroom deal with India in getting its counterpart to gradually reduce its purchase of Iranian resources in exchange for a sanctions waiver, similar in principle to what it could potentially do vis-à-vis New Delhi’s recent S-400 deal with Moscow as long as the country continues its trend of reducing Russian weapons purchases. The US would therefore be able to advance its Hybrid War designs against Iran without inadvertently destabilizing its Indian strategic partner through the sudden explosive growth of petrol prices that a “clean break” would trigger. Moreover, the US and Saudi Arabia might not have enough extra oil on hand to meet the demand that India would have if it cut off Iranian imports completely.

Keeping Modi In Power

It’s a lot easier and less unpredictable for the US to smoothly transition India into fully complying with its anti-Iranian sanctions by making its waiver conditional on the phased decrease of energy purchases from the Islamic Republic and their replacement with American and Saudi resources instead. Importantly, by keeping petrol prices stable, incumbent Prime Minister Modi wouldn’t risk any realistic chance of losing reelection next year, and his continued leadership over India is essential for implementing the US’ grand strategic objective of “containing” China in the Afro-Asian Ocean and beyond. Speaking of which, that same imperative might even result in India being granted a waiver for continuing to trade with Iran through Chabahar and the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) in spite of the US officially being against this.

“Containing” China

From the perspective of the New Cold War, the US’ main mission is to obstruct, control, or influence China’s New Silk Roads in order to prevent them from reengineering global trade routes to America’s hegemonic detriment, which is why it has an interest in using India as its “Lead From Behind” proxy in Central Asia. As such, the case can convincingly be made that the US has more to gain by turning a blind eye to India’s Iranian-transiting trade with Central Asia and Afghanistan via the NSTC and having New Delhi contribute to “containing” China and Pakistan there, respectively, than to sabotage this “promising” scenario out of blind hatred for Iran and an obsession with dealing as much economic pain to the country as possible.

Finally, the last argument that can be made in favor of the US granting India a waiver to its forthcoming anti-Iranian sanctions is that American grand strategic objectives are best served by ensuring that India remains in a relationship of complex interdependency with Washington’s Russian, Chinese, and Iranian rivals and doesn’t too solidly pivot to the Western camp. This might sound counterintuitive at first but it follows a certain logic. India’s fast-moving embrace of the US at the obvious expense of its Russian, Chinese, and Iranian partners’ economic and security interests would lead to them adapting to this new reality and learning how to function without their one-time partner, so it follows that the US can more effectively exploit its strategic partnership with India if the latter is still integral to them.

Concluding Thoughts

There’s no telling what Trump will do in any given situation, but “The Kraken” has a knack for spreading chaos to whatever he touches, and the issue of India potentially earning a waiver from the US for continuing to do all manner of business with Iran in spite of America’s forthcoming reimposition of sanctions against the Islamic Republic will assuredly be another case in point. As has become the norm, however, the US might surprise observers by behaving unexpectedly and not levelling “secondary sanctions” against India for, as New Delhi has a self-interested reason in misleadingly framing it as, “defying” Washington. Instead, granting India a waiver might actually do more to advance America’s grand strategic interests than sanctioning the South Asian state, though Alt-Media might never notice the trick that’s been played on them.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

There is something strange about this. Other than Maude Barlow and of Sujata Dey of the Council of Canadians, it appears that no other journalists or columnists from the mainstream media have mentioned two significant features in NAFTA 2.0 that are of considerable benefit to Canada. These two factors may compensate for the flaws and drawbacks of the renegotiated deal. Yet nowhere is this mentioned in the mainstream media.

The text of NAFTA 2.0, now to be known as USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), leaves out in their entirety Chapters 6 and 11 of NAFTA 1.0. Both of these chapters do not appear in the new agreement. By not being in the new agreement the provisions of these chapters are simply no longer applicable. This is a fact of major consequence, yet this has received no media coverage whatsoever.

Chapter 6 in the original NAFTA deals with energy and has the infamous energy proportionality rule (NAFTA 605 a), which gives the USA the right to import the same proportion of any type of energy that it has imported over the previous three years, even if Canada itself needs this energy product. Article 605 (b) prevents Canada from imposing a higher price for exports than its domestic price.

NAFTA’s Chapter 11 contains a dispute settlement provision that allows American and Mexican corporations to sue Canada for any law or regulation which they think causes them “loss or damage” and which they feel breaches the spirit of NAFTA.

To fully appreciate the significance of the omission of these two chapters in the new agreement, it is important to review the nature of their provisions.

In a recent publication Gordon Laxer pointed out that in NAFTA’s Chapter 6 the proportionality rule is unique in the world’s treaties. No other trade agreements worldwide have NAFTA-like proportionality clauses. Obviously no other country would subject itself to this type of sovereignty limitation. Actually, the energy proportionality provision came into effect in the 1989 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement; in 1994, NAFTA built upon and superseded the FTA, but its energy proportionality rule remained. As Laxer points out,

“Putting this policy, or any policy, into an international trade agreement is like constitutionalizing it. It’s hard for the next government to undo it no matter how much it and the voters may wish to do so.”

Knowledgeable Canadians sometimes wonder why it is that Canada currently exports three-quarters of its oil production to the USA but then proceeds to import 40 percent of its oil largely for Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. Canada is compelled to do this because of the “proportionality clause” in the NAFTA document. The proportionality clause stipulates that Canada must continue to export the same proportion of total “supply” that it has over the previous three years. Supply includes domestic output as well as Canada’s imports, and this applies to all forms of energy – oil, natural gas and electricity. If Canada should reduce the amount of energy it exports to the USA, it must also reduce the supply of that energy domestically to the same extent. It should be noted that although Mexico is a member of NAFTA, it refused to agree to the proportionality clause.

With this NAFTA provision it was not possible for Canada to ever cut off exports to the USA for purposes of conservation or in order to supply eastern Canada with our own oil and to stop foreign imports. According to Laxer, at present Canada is committed to export 74 percent of its daily oil production, 52 percent of its natural gas, and 11 percent of its electricity. With NAFTA in force, Canada could never reduce these amounts of exports to the US, and furthermore, our exports would keep increasing. And as Laxer said, “That’s true even if it leaves eastern Canadians freezing in the dark.”

To compound the problem, Canada has allowed most of its oil and gas industries to be foreign owned. No other country in the world has signed away to another country first access to its energy resources.

So to suddenly have NAFTA’s energy chapter, including its horrendous proportionality rule, eliminated in the new trade agreement is of monumental importance.

As for NAFTA’s Chapter 11, which allows US and Mexican corporations to sue Canada for any law or regulation that they considered would cause them “loss or damage” or restrict their profits, this was almost as bad as the energy proportionality rule. These disputes were not heard by Canadian judges in Canadian courts, but by special tribunals operating behind closed doors, using not Canadian law, but NAFTA rules. There was no right of appeal. Since 1994, Canada had been sued 42 times by US corporations under NAFTA. These tribunals reversed several of Canada’s laws, forced Canada to pay $314 million, $219 million in NAFTA fines plus $95 million in unrecoverable legal fees, and Canada was faced with additional claims of $6 billion more. In the meantime, the USA had not lost a single case. Almost two-thirds of the claims against Canada have targeted our environmental regulations or resource management policies.

To have this perverse provision suddenly removed from the new trade agreement is cause for celebration by Canadians.

Although it’s in order to celebrate the successful renegotiation of this matter, the reality is that this deal must be approved by the legislatures of all three countries before it comes into force. Until then, NAFTA will stay in effect. Because of the nature of American politics, the ratification of the USMCA is not a certainty.

With respect to other beneficial parts of the deal, Maude Barlow and Sujata Dey point out that in addition to the elimination of these two harmful provisions, Canada has been able to retain the cultural exemption clause from NAFTA 1.0. This means that Canada can keep cultural protection policies that shield culture from the marketplace and the U.S. mega cultural industries. However, the flaws of the original agreement are still there and prevent Canada from enacting future policies that would protect culture in the digital world.

The removal of both the energy proportionality rule and chapter 11 in the renegotiation of NAFTA did not come about in some happenstance manner. It occurred because of concerted public pressure and this is proof that public input works. The Canadian government was made aware that these two NAFTA issues were of concern to millions of Canadians, and hence the government could not afford to alienate such a large portion of the public.

This awareness occurred largely as a result of a campaign by several groups and a number of individual researchers. The campaigns by the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives were crucial in this matter. They kept these two critical NAFTA issues at the forefront throughout the renegotiations. The Council of Canadians maintained a national public education and engagement campaign that reached more than 1 million people. This included their hard-hitting TV ad that ran on CBC’s The National, a series of informational videos breaking down key problem areas, and their NAFTA Toolkit that helped ordinary people take the NAFTA fight directly to their own MPs. In addition they mobilized more than 35,000 people to make individual submissions to the federal government’s public consultations on what they wanted to see in any new NAFTA deal, especially the elimination of both Chapter 11 and energy proportionality. They also organized numerous public forums and rallies in communities across Canada to help people better understand what’s at stake and how to get involved.

The Council of Canadians produced hard-hitting research and timely reports on why energy proportionality should be out of NAFTA, and what was needed to make NAFTA a good deal for people and the planet. As well there were a number of individual researchers, especially Gordon Laxer, who presented well-researched material to alert the public to the problems that had been created by NAFTA.

With regard to other features in the new agreement, almost everything else is downhill for Canada. What has correctly made the news is that some Canadian farmers will take a hit. NAFTA 2.0 opens Canada’s market to more U.S. dairy products, including products that contain bovine growth hormone (BGH), a genetically modified hormone that is injected in cows to make them produce more milk. BGH has been banned in Canada due to its link to serious health concerns. However, more than 90 percent of our dairy market is still protected for Canadian producers.

Patents on pharmaceuticals, such as biologic drugs, have been extended from 8 years to 10 years – the US had insisted on 12 years, so this was a compromise. This means that it will take longer for generic drugs to get to the market. And of course this will make drug prices even higher, and it could have an impact on Canada’s attempt to implement a national pharmacare plan.

Although the agreement makes some reference to environmental protection, marine pollution, endangered animals, and measures to protect the ozone layer, because of US insistence there is no reference to global warming or climate change. Also, as in the original, it could still leave our water vulnerable to corporate interests that want to buy and sell it. It also does not include provisions on gender equality or Indigenous rights, although these are mentioned in the agreement.

The chapters on labour and the environment both suffer from weak enforcement. However, with reference to Mexico, there are provisions to reinforce collective bargaining and increase auto wages. Hence this is an improvement over the original NAFTA. In the case of the auto industry at least 40 per cent of the car will have to be made by workers earning at least $16 (U.S.) per hour, much higher than the average Mexican autoworker makes. As such this is of particular importance to Mexican workers. There is no such wage provision in NAFTA.

It should also be noted with respect to Mexico that in the new agreement, Article 8.1, entitled, Recognition of the Mexican State’s Direct, Inalienable, and Imprescriptible Ownership of Hydrocarbons states as follows:

The Mexican State has the direct, inalienable and imprescriptible ownership of all hydrocarbons in the subsoil of the national territory, including the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone located outside the territorial sea and adjacent thereto, in strata or deposits, regardless of their physical conditions pursuant to Mexico’s Constitution.

So according to this provision, Mexico will continue to have control over its hydrocarbons. But what about Canada? Probably the reason why Canada is not included is because the horses are already out of the barn. The USA already owns or has part ownership of all kinds of oil and gas fields in Canada, especially in the tar sands area. So how could such a provision be made applicable to Canada?

Because of the technical/legalese language involved it is difficult to determine the full ramifications of a number of chapters in the text. However, in at least two chapters there are provisions that would appear to interfere with Canada’s economic independence. These are chapters 22 and 33.

Chapter 22 deals with “state-owned enterprises” which in Canada are called Crown corporations, owned by federal or provincial governments. It appears that by the terms of this deal such government owned entities would be restricted to non-competition with private sector companies. Crown corporations had been very important in the past in Canada but not many now remain. It seems that this new provision is intended to restrain Canada from creating new Crown corporations. At present a number of provinces have publicly owned hydro corporations, but this new provision does not seem to affect them. Nevertheless, how could Canadian negotiators have ever agreed with the provisions of this chapter?

Chapter 33, entitled “Macroeconomic Policies and Exchange Rate Matters,” would appear to interfere with Canada’s right to determine the value of its currency and its Bank of Canada policies. With this agreement in effect it appears that we may now have to consult with the USA to determine the value of our dollar. If true, this would be outrageous!

Inserted near the end of NAFTA 2.0 is a provision that is an outright affront to Canada’s independence. It has received considerable comment in the media. This provision restricts Canada’s ability to strike free trade agreements with China and other “non-market” countries. It states that a USMCA party would have to inform the others before it began negotiations and it would have to allow them to review the final text before signing. It then states “entry by any party into a free trade agreement with a non-market country shall allow the other parties to terminate this agreement on six-month notice.”

How Canada agreed to such an obvious American diktat is almost unbelievable. This was certainly meant to control Canada’s trade relationship with China. Actually however this can be used to Canada’s advantage. This would be a good way for Canada to get out of the new USMCA. If we could strike a truly good deal with China – let the Americans kick us out! The case can be made that in almost all respects, Canada would have been better off not being in NAFTA or now being in the USMCA.

It should be recalled that before Canada signed the FTA and NAFTA, it traded with the US and the rest of the world under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now the World Trade Organization (WTO). If the new USMCA were terminated, Canada would automatically return to trading with the US under the WTO, under whose terms we did far better than under the FTA and NAFTA.

To put this in further context, it’s worthy to quote from David Orchard on this matter:

In fact, Canada does not need NAFTA or the FTA, and never did. It could profitably withdraw from both with a simple six months notice. Canada, along with the USA and Mexico, is a member of the world’s largest free trade agreement and has been for many decades, something those begging for NAFTA blithely ignore or downplay. Formerly called the GATT, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a multilateral organization with 164 member states in which Canada has more allies and much more clout than trying to negotiate one-on-one bilateral trade agreements with the United States. This forum and its rules have served Canada well over the years. Canada’s access to the US market and record of solving disputes has been far better under the WTO than under the FTA or NAFTA, and Canada was able to protect its institutions and pass its own sovereign laws in a way it has not been able to under our two so-called free trade agreements.

To add to this, a number of years back, Lloyd Axworthy, former president of the University of Winnipeg and former Liberal minister of foreign affairs had put forward a powerful critique of NAFTA that deserves citation:

Let’s begin by seriously considering an end to NAFTA and reliance instead upon the World Trade Organization to regulate the terms and provisions of free trade. Not only would this offer us the protection of a trade body that has some teeth in its regulations ones not rooted in US domestic procedures and laws–it would also free us to engage in a much more innovative and active global strategy. The emergence of new economic powers like China, India, Brazil and South Africa provides markets hungry for the resources and know-how that Canada possesses. Our NAFTA connection impedes our ability to take advantage of this potential… . It’s time for new policies and tough action to shift our trade and security strategies away from a preoccupation with continental matters to a more global footing.

If Axworthy, a previous Liberal cabinet minister, can advocate Canada’s withdrawal from NAFTA, why can’t the media or our political parties see the logic of this? Because of NAFTA, Canada did not have the right or the independence to determine many of its policies, especially on matters of energy.

Such a conclusion however seems to be beyond the mental capacities of not only the “learned media” but also of all three of our major political parties. They view leaving NAFTA or the now USMCA with totally unjustified gloom and doom anxiety.

In renegotiating NAFTA there was a matter that had never been discussed. As has already been stated, in 1989 Canada and the US signed the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and in 1994 NAFTA was built upon the FTA and superseded it. As such, it appears that the FTA was never abrogated, so it must be still on record. It should be recalled that the energy proportionality rule was first formed in the FTA. Hence if the energy proportionality provision has been deleted in NAFTA 2.0, could it still be maintained through the provision in the FTA? If so, and if Canada wanted to get rid of this nightmare, all it would have to do is give a six month notice and the FTA would be abrogated. So this need not be a serious issue.

Strangely, the NDP has never taken an enlightened stand on NAFTA, has never examined its negative impact on our country, and has never advocated its abolition. Given this, what has been the NDP’s response to the new agreement? On October 1 Jagmeet Singh and the NDP’s trade and deputy trade critics, Tracy Ramsey and Karine Trudel, made a statement, entitled: “NDP: Trade with U.S. and Mexico – New Name, Worse Deal.” They correctly assess that the new deal will hurt dairy, poultry and egg farmers and will adversely affect pharmacare, but like all the other news media they make no mention of the elimination of both the energy proportionality rule and Chapter 11 with its provision allowing corporations to sue Canada. This indicates that they either haven’t read the text of the new agreement or that they simply don’t understand the significance of what has happened. What a hopeless political alternative.

One can’t help wondering what Tommy Douglas and the CCF-NDP of a previous era would do at a time such as this. In all likelihood, they might assess that because of the elimination of chapter 11 and the energy proportionality rule, this is a somewhat better deal for Canada, but nevertheless, they would advocate that we give a six-month notice and simply get out of our current partial economic straitjacket. Is there any prospect of the NDP ever being revived in the way the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbin suddenly became aware of its original socialist roots?

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This article was originally published on Canadian Dimension.

John Ryan, Ph.D., is Retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar at the University of Winnipeg.

Featured image is from Canadian Dimension.

Nikki Haley is a neocon hardliner, a geopolitical know-nothing, the most unqualified ever US UN envoy, an embarrassment to what diplomacy is supposed to be all about. 

Supporting US aggression in multiple theaters, she uses the world body as a platform for demonizing Washington’s enemies, threatening and otherwise maligning them.

Her rants consistently feature hate-mongering disinformation – notably against Syria, Iran, Russia, and North Korea before Trump’s mid-June summit with Kim Jong-un.

Her appointment in January 2017 surprised: A GOP South Carolina governor with no foreign policy experience, critical of Trump during the campaign.

She was one of 15 Republican governors, expressing opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. Trump said she’d “be a great leader representing us on the world stage.” She’s been polar opposite.

Her one-sided support for Israel was a likely key reason for her appointment. As South Carolina governor, the state was first in the nation to prohibit public agencies from working with companies supporting BDS activism.

Her ideological extremism is way over the top. Straightaway as UN envoy, she provocatively said

“(y)ou’re going to see a change in the way we do business,” adding:

“Our goal with the administration is to show value at the UN, and the way we’ll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our back as well.”

“For those who don’t have our back, we’re taking names. We will make points to respond to that accordingly.”

Trump said Haley told him months ago she planned to leave after serving two years in her post, her successor to be named in two or three weeks, he added.

She denied having 2020 presidential aspirations, ludicrously claiming since Trump took office,

“the United States is respected.”

“Countries may not like what we do, but they respect what we do. They know that if we say we’re going to do something, we follow it through” – at the expense of world peace, equity and justice for all everywhere, she failed to explain.

Haley served as Washington’s 29th UN ambassador. She and John Bolton were clearly the most embarrassing choices for the position, using “diplomacy” as a political weapon against US enemies.

Bolton resurfaced as Trump’s national security advisor. So will Haley one day in a new capacity most likely – perhaps as a presidential aspirant in 2020 or 2024.

The prospect should terrify everyone!

A Final Comment

Commenting on Haley’s resignation, the NYT  said she’ll “be missed,” adding:

“(S)he proved a practitioner of multilateral diplomacy…exit(ing) with her dignity largely intact.”

“(A) replacement in her mold may be the best to hope for from Mr. Trump.”

On geopolitical issues mattering most, including US and other Western officials in charge of them, the newspaper of record consistently supports what demands condemnation – notably anything related to Washington’s imperial agenda.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Turkish authorities have announced that they will search the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul as part of their investigation into the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was last seen going into the embassy.

The Saudi regime has one of the poorest human rights records of any government in the world. Reporters Without Borders ranks it among the worst countries for journalist freedoms. In 2012, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in detention and 10,000 lashes for criticising the regime’s human rights record.

Over recent months the Saudi authorities have cracked down on women’s rights campaigners and human rights defenders.

The regime is also the world’s largest buyers of UK arms, which it has used in the ongoing bombardment of Yemen. The war has killed thousands and created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

UK government statistics show that since the bombing of Yemen began in 2015, the UK has licensed £4.7 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, including:

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

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

 “The accusations from the Turkish authorities are very serious. The Saudi regime has a proven contempt for its critics and has used its position to crack down on free speech and dissent. Despite the atrocities and abuses, it has always been able to rely on the uncritical political and military support of the UK and other arms dealing governments.

Journalism is fundamental to democracy. It’s time for Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt to end the arms sales and call on the regime to end its persecution of journalists and human rights defenders.”

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As we described in the previous post the European Union’s track record has been disastrous. It has been the least successful trade area in the world over the last 10 years. Global Finance magazine calculated EU GDP growth over this period at 1.0% per annum (and the Eurozone even worse at 0.7%) compared to other advanced economies (excluding the G7) at 3.0% and the world at 3.8%. As John May of Business for Britain commented on BrexitCentral “As a continent only Antarctica (population 4,000) performed worse than Europe.”

The Euro has crippled European economies and the index of investor confidence has just fallen dramatically from nearly 35% in January to 12% today.

The Italian bank crisis continues and the latest spending plans of the Italian Government, in defiance of the EU, have led to a rapid rise in Italian debt yields as the risk not just to Italy but to the whole Eurozone system rises. The Euro zone’s “Fiscal Compact” requires countries in trouble – like Greece, Spain, Italy – to keep reducing their deficits to no more than 0.5% of GDP, (a difficult task even for a growing economy like the UK, never mind bankrupt countries like Greece and Italy) and hence in the long run their national debt.

But the Euro is such a horrendous straightjacket for the poorer peripheral countries that their debts to the richest countries – like Germany and Holland – keep rising. Such debts are represented (because it is all inside the Euro currency) in the so called “Target 2” balances which is a settlement of accounts between Eurozone nations. Germany is on the line for some Euros 900bn because the system is owed billions by Italy (over 400bn Euros) and Spain a similar amount.

This economic weakness is reflected in political weakness in the member states where the traditional parties who created and defended the European Union disaster have lost massive public support. The international weakness is evident when in Europe EU nations rely on US military strength and in the Middle East have no significant role to play as Russia increasingly gains influence.

The alienation felt by European peoples, as the would-be Superstate fails, is growing. As with so many political cultural disasters the experience of specific people and families is the most instructive.

The EU’s Alienation of Its Peoples

Anne-Sylvaine Chassany the FT Bureau chief in Paris has decided to move from Paris back to London because her son, wrenched from his school friends was so unhappy: “This realisation came when, more than a year after our return to Paris, I caught him under his bedsheets silently crying over his London class photograph.”

Alienation on a grand scale is evident from figures from Eurostat which chronicle the youth and brain drain from the poorer and peripheral nations of the EU. Nearly 20 per cent of working age Romanians work in other EU member states – up from under 8 per cent a decade ago. Lithuania (15.0 per cent), Croatia (14.0 per cent), and Portugal (13.9 per cent) also have high numbers of alienated workers competing for low paid jobs in other countries – because they have no currency to reflect the reality in their own.

Foreign workers are of course weak participants in the labour market, are paid badly and miss their own culture and find it hard to keep in touch with their families at home. But that does not bother the pseudo intellectual elitists in the Brussels nomenclatura who do so well out of the new economic empire (even as it fails). Indeed as it fails they are more active with “more Europe”, more “solutions”, more bureaucracy and higher salaries – as those they “serve” enter a third decade of grotesque levels of unemployment, poverty and desperation.

As we saw in the UK such bureaucratic parasites have utter contempt for the working class even in their own countries never mind the mass mobilised workers forced to leave their home countries for the greater good of the “country called Europe”.

And of course the mass movement of Middle East and African migrants into a Europe whose nation states long ago lost control of their borders to Brussels is a grave crisis, as the costs and crime rates for immigrants in Sweden and Germany testify. In Italy 40% of rapes are committed by immigrants but they make up only 8% of the population.

Millions of migrants are now working or just existing inside the EU without documents. Researchers Michael Peel and Jim Brunsden are reported on Brexit Central as examining the numbers of such people.

“Between 2008 and 2017, more than 5m non-EU citizens were instructed to leave the bloc. About 2m returned to countries outside it, according to official data.  While the two sets of numbers do not map exactly — people don’t necessarily leave in the same year they are ordered to do so — the figures do suggest several million people may have joined Europe’s shadow population in the past decade or so. The cohort is likely to swell further as a glut of final appeals from asylum cases lodged since 2015 comes through.”

No wonder a warning to Brussels has just been issued by two of Europe’s “populist” (ie democratic) leaders:

“The enemies of Europe are those who are entrenched in the Brussels bunker.” – Marine Le Pen

“Europe’s enemies are those cut off in the bunker of Brussels,the Junckers, the Moscovicis, who brought insecurity and fear to Europe and refuse to leave their armchairs.” – Matteo Salvini

Iran Trouble Exposes EU Weakness

Donald Trump has applied new sanctions on Iran for fomenting revolutionary movements in the Middle East and failing to meet its obligations under the agreement to halt the development of nuclear weapons. This affects European countries – especially those big corporations doing business in the USA – “Those who do business with Iran will not do business with the USA” said Trump.

So the EU is trying to set up a payments tool to help companies trade with Iran and frustrate the US sanctions. The UK has joined them.

Trump’s second lot of Iran sanctions – targeting oil exports and central bank payments – are due in November and this special payments system is designed to help those companies who wish to risk their US business by continuing to trade with Iran. Most companies have stopped rather than risk that business.

It looks as if it will end up being some form of barter deal and is unlikely to weaken US sanctions – so internationally weak is the EU.

German and French Establishments Collapse

The weakness of the establishments in France Germany and Italy is even more serious than the powerlessness of the EU itself.

The darling of that globalist corporatist cliques now so hated in the Western democracies, Emmanuel Macron, is seen as elitist and alien to French voters who see him as part of a corrupt establishment. His disapproval rating is now 59%. The Russians (whom Macron tried to suck up to with obsequious flattery while insisting on the continuation of sanctions!) call him “the little untrustworthy pervert”.

No wonder the Franco German plans for tighter EU controls over member states and increased “financial integration” has been strongly opposed by a united group of 12 other member states. The more the EU has integrated the more inequalities and instability have emerged. Growth in Germany is two and half times that in France or Italy.

Germany’s anti EU Alternative fuer Deutschland party has reached an all time high in the polls at 18.5% while the Social Democrat Party, the most eurofanatic of all, has collapsed to 17%. The AFD is now second behind the Merkel Conservative block which is itself in great trouble as the CDU’s sister party the Bavarian CSU opposes the Government’s immigration policies.

After Brexit Germany itself will have to find E10bn to plug the gap in the EU budget.

In Italy the major parties collapsed and the Liga and the Five Star Movement harvested together 50% of Italian votes. The main left wing party got a mere 18% for their eurofanatic betrayal of the working class. Italians have spent 20 years with crippling debts and high unemployment. The Italian banking crisis (and thereby the national debt crisis) is a threat to the whole of the EU, as Juncker and his friends are just realising.

Hysterical EU Threatens Its Members

As the Brexit date nears and the EU establishment realises at last that there could be big losses for the EU, Brussels is using the threat of the EU’s next 7 year “financial framework” to rein in member states – especially East Europeans – who might be tempted to be influenced by UK arguments. Those states are particularly worried about the lack of security cooperation with the UK – the exclusion of the UK from the Galileo satellite system being of particular concern with the EU Commission’s Martin Selmayr (who has a track record of seeking to embarrass and marginalise Britain) being seen as a particular problem.

The Stench of Remainer Hypocrisy

All this is of course a matter of complete indifference to British Remainers who are slavishly bound to the corporatist fascist EU and its poverty – while claiming leftist compassion for the people of Britain! They would rather hurl British youth into the 30% to 40% youth unemployment and mass migration which characterise life in the EU than allow an independent democratic Britain.

One of those calling for a second referendum is the Muslim Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn who immediately after the 2016 referendum told LBC radio that another vote on Brexit would lead to “even more cynicism… the reality is the British public had a say, they voted and they voted to leave ……..we’re out for good, there’s no going back”. Now he demands a second referendum.

The former Tory Prime Minister John Major (who drove his party to its worst electoral defeat since 1906!) said during the referendum: “If we vote out thats it we are out it is not credible to say lets have another vote.” Now he wants a second referendum.

Another eurofanatic ,the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, says she would back a second referendum and that the public “might not even get their Brexit”. But last year she told the party conference:

“Back in June 2016, everyone had their say. The country made a clear decision. I have said it before and I say it again: I fully respect the result. We chose to Leave and we must make a success of Brexit.”

As the MEP Daniel Hannan has rightly said about calls for a second referendum:

“Why should we accept calls for a second referendum from people who by definition don’t accept the result of referendums.”

Referenda for the European Union are not a legitimate expression of the people (the true sovereigns) about their constitution and democracy. Oh no – for the ruling euro-class referenda are an instrument of control. If the “plebs” are too stupid to see their own interest then they must keep voting until they do. Plebiscites have often been the easily manipulated weapons of dictatorships. In Europe they still are. But not in Britain. There may be another referendum – probably in about another 41 years which is how long the British had to wait for the Remainers to ask them for a second time in 2016.

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This article was originally published on Freenations.

There are more than 700 obstacles to Palestinian movement across the West Bank imposed by Israeli occupation authorities, according to the findings of new research by the United Nations.

According to the comprehensive survey, conducted by UN OCHA in July, there are 705 permanent obstacles across the West Bank “restricting or controlling Palestinian vehicular, and in some cases pedestrian, movement”.

UN OCHA noted that “this figure is three per cent higher than in December 2016, the date of the previous survey”. The largest net increase was recorded in the Ramallah governorate, with a total of 15 additional obstacles.

The obstacles include “140 fully or occasionally-staffed checkpoints, 165 unstaffed road gates (of which nearly half are normally closed), 149 earth mounds and 251 other unstaffed obstacles (roadblocks, trenches, earth walls, etc).”

While all the 140 checkpoints include permanent infrastructure, only 64 of them are permanently staffed by Israeli occupation forces: 32 located along the Separation Wall or on roads leading to Israel, 20 in the Israeli-controlled area of Hebron city (H2), and the other 12 elsewhere in the West Bank.

UN OCHA noted that “the other 76 (partial) checkpoints are either occasionally staffed or have security personnel located in a tower rather than on the ground.”

In addition to the obstacles recorded by UN OCHA, the agency noted that between January 2017 and the end of July 2018, Israeli occupation forces employed an additional 4,924 ad-hoc “flying” checkpoints, or nearly 60 a week.

“These involve the deployment of Israeli forces for several hours on a given road for the purpose of stopping and checking Palestinian drivers and vehicles, but without any permanent physical infrastructure on the ground,” the report explained.

UN OCHA also detailed how the Israeli military “has blocked vehicle access to the main entrances of Palestinian localities from which stones have been thrown at Israeli vehicles or where the homes are located of the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of attacks against Israelis.”

Since January 2017, UN OCHA has documented 93 such incidents of collective punishment, affecting a total of 30 Palestinian communities. The closures may last “for a few days to a number of weeks”, with a “disproportionate impact on children, the elderly and disabled people”.

The UN agency added that “road obstacles are an integral component of a broader system of access restrictions, citing security reasons, that impedes the movement of Palestinians within the West Bank and contributes to geographical fragmentation.”

This sytem includes: the Wall (85 per cent of which lies inside the West Bank); permit requirements for West Bank ID holders seeking to enter occupied East Jerusalem; “prohibitions or restrictions on the use of 400 kilometres of roads serving Israeli settlers almost exclusively”; access closed to some 20 per cent of West Bank land designated “firing zones” or “border buffer ones”; access closed to “over 10 per cent of West Bank land located within the municipal boundaries of Israeli settlements”.

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Featured image: Palestinians try to pass through the Qalandiya checkpoint from Ramallah into Jerusalem to spend the Laylat Al-Qadr at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Ramallah, West Bank on 21 June, 2017 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]

On September 30 the UK’s foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt, delivered an astonishing tirade, saying “The EU was set up to protect freedom. It was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving. The lesson from history is clear: if you turn the EU club into a prison, the desire to get out won’t diminish, it will grow — and we won’t be the only prisoner that will want to escape.” His comparison of the EU to gulags of former years played well with many people in Britain, but was understandably regarded as totally inappropriate by the EU, whose spokesman’s polite observation was “I would say respectfully that we would all benefit – and in particular foreign affairs ministers – from opening a history book from time to time.”

The lunacy didn’t stop there. Not content with insulting the EU’s 27 countries, the government in London decided to whip up even more patriotic fervour by again trying to portray Russia as a threat to the United Kingdom.

In June 2018 the UK’s Sun newspaper carried the headline “Britain will send RAF Typhoon fighter jets to Iceland in bid to tackle Russian aggression” and since then Mr Williamson hasn’t altered his contention that “the Kremlin continues to challenge us in every domain.” (Williamson is the man who declared in March 2018 that “Frankly Russia should go away — it should shut up,” which was one of the most juvenile public utterances of recent years.)

It was reported on September 29 that Williamson was concerned about “growing Russian aggression ‘in our back yard’,” and that the Government was drawing up a “defence Arctic strategy” with 800 commandos being deployed to a new base in Norway. In an interview “Mr Williamson highlighted Russia’s re-opening of Soviet-era bases and ‘increased tempo’ of submarine activity as evidence that Britain needed to ‘demonstrate we’re there’ and ‘protect our interests’.”

Mr Williamson has not indicated what “interests” the United Kingdom could have in the Arctic region, where it has no territory.

The eight countries with territory north of the Arctic Circle are Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. They have legitimate interests in the region which is twice the area of the US and Canada combined. But Britain has not one single claim to the Arctic. Not even a tenuous one like Iceland’s, which is based on the fact that although its mainland is not within the Arctic Circle, the Circle does pass through Grimsey Island, about 25 kilometres north of Iceland’s north coast. Britain’s Shetland Islands, its northernmost land, are 713 kilometres (443 miles) south of the Arctic Circle.

So why does the UK declare that it has “interests” in the Arctic and that the region is “in our back yard”? How can it possibly feel threatened?

The Arctic Institute observed in February 2018 that Russia’s “newer Arctic strategy papers focus on preventing smuggling, terrorism, and illegal immigration instead of balancing military power with NATO. These priorities suggest that Russia’s security aims in the Arctic have to do with safeguarding the Arctic as a strategic resource base… In general, the government-approved documents seem to have moved from an assertive tone that highlights Russia’s rivalry with NATO to a less abrasive tone based on securing economic development.”

And economic development is what it’s all about. On September 28 “it was reported that “a Danish-flagged cargo ship successfully passed through the Russian Arctic in a trial voyage showing that melting sea ice could potentially open a new trade route from Europe to east Asia.” It is obviously in the best economic interests of the European Union and Russia that the route be developed for commercial transit. To do this requires avoidance of conflict in the region.

So what’s your problem, Defence Minister Williamson?

In August Britain’s Parliamentary Defence Committee published On Thin Ice: UK Defence in the Arctic which concluded that “There is little doubt that the Arctic and the High North are seeing an increasing level of military activity. There is much greater divergence in the evidence we have taken on what the reasons behind this are, particularly in relation to Russia. One view is that there is no offensive intent behind Russia’s military build-up and that it is simply trying to regenerate military capacity in order to reassert sovereignty. The opposite view is that this is just one more part of Russia’s aggressive reassertion of great power competition.”

The Danish Government told the Committee that

“Presently, Denmark sees no need for an increased military engagement or enhanced operative role for NATO in the Arctic”,

and the Swedish Ambassador said

“The Swedish Arctic is a limited part of Swedish territory. We are more a Baltic Sea nation than an Arctic nation… Obviously, the whole area around the Arctic, in particular the Kola Peninsula, is of strategic importance to Russia and they have a serious military presence there. We see all of that. Is that reason to call it militarisation of the Arctic?”

In January Reuters reported that China had notified its Arctic strategy, “pledging to work more closely with Moscow in particular to create an Arctic maritime counterpart — a ‘Polar Silk Road’ — to its ‘one belt, one road’ overland trade route to Europe. Both the Kremlin and Beijing have repeatedly stated that their ambitions are primarily commercial and environmental, not military.” It couldn’t be plainer that Russia and China want the Arctic to be a profitable mercantile trade route, while Russia wants to continue exploration for oil, gas and mineral deposits, which are important for its economy.

To develop the Arctic requires peace and stability. It would be impossible to reap the benefits of the new sea-route and potentially enormous energy and mineral riches if there were to be conflict in the North. It is obviously in the best interests of Russia and China that there be tranquillity rather than military confrontation.

But Britain’s Defence Minister insists there must be a military build-up by the UK in the Arctic “If we want to be protecting our interests in what is effectively our own back yard.” He is backed by the Parliament’s Defence Committee which states that

“NATO’s renewed focus on the North Atlantic is welcome and the Government should be congratulated on the leadership the UK has shown on this issue.”

NATO is always on the lookout for excuses to indulge in military action (such as its nine–month blitz that destroyed Libya), and has announced it will conduct Arctic-focussed Exercise Trident Juncture in November, which Naval Today noted will be “one of the largest ever with 40,000 personnel, around 120 aircraft and as many as 70 ships converging in Norway.”

The NATO military alliance is preparing for war in the Arctic, and deliberately confronting Russia by conducting manoeuvres ever-closer to its borders. It had better be very careful.

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Brian Cloughley is British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan

Featured image is from Flickr.

Fear of defeat drives military men to folly.  Early in 1968, General William Westmoreland, America’s commanding general in Vietnam, feared that communist forces might overrun U.S. military positions at Khe Sanh.  His response, according to recently declassified cables as reported in the New York Timestoday, was to seek authorization to move nuclear weapons into Vietnam.  He planned to use tactical nuclear weapons against concentrations of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops.  President Lyndon Johnson cancelled Westmoreland’s plans and ordered that discussions about using nuclear weapons be kept secret (i.e. hidden from the American people), which for the last fifty years they have been.

Westmoreland and the U.S. military/government had already been lying to the American people about progress in the war.  Khe Sanh as well as the Tet Offensive of 1968 were illustrations that there was no light in sight at the end of the tunnel — no victory loomed by force of arms.  Thus the call for nuclear weapons to be deployed to Vietnam, a call that President Johnson wisely refused to countenance.

Westmoreland’s recourse to nuclear weapons would have made a limited war (“limited” for U.S. forces, not for the Vietnamese on the receiving end of U.S. firepower) unlimited.  A nuclear attack in Vietnam likely would have been catastrophic to world order, perhaps leading to a much wider war in Asia that could have led to world-ending nuclear exchanges.  But Westmoreland seems to have had only Khe Sanh in his sights: only the staving off of defeat in a position that American forces quickly abandoned after they had “won” the battle.

War, as French leader Georges Clemenceau famously said, is too important to be left to generals.  Generals often see the battlefield in narrow terms, seeking victory at any price, if only to avoid the stain of defeat.

But what price victory if the world ends as a result?

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Featured image: General William Westmoreland in 1968 (Stars and Stripes)

When will NDP members push back against the party leadership’s all-too friendly relations with Canada’s leading Israel lobby group?

Recently, former NDP Premier of Nova Scotia Darrell Dexter joined the board of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) while four years ago NDP foreign critic Paul Dewar and MP Robert Chisholm attended a CIJA sponsored Young Leadership Israel Advocacy Program retreat.

A 2014 calculation found that 20 NDP MPs had been to Israel on a CIJA (or its predecessor) financed tour. Since 2016 now party leader Jagmeet Singh has participated in one of these trips as have Randall Garrison and Murray Rankin, the NDP’s two executives on the Canada Israel Inter-Parliamentary Group, which has hosted lobbying events on Parliament Hill with CIJA.

NDP MPs have also taken CIJA representatives into their offices. In 2014-15 BC MP Nathan Cullen’s office took in Daniel Gans through CIJA’s Parliamentary Internship Program, which pays pro-Israel university students $18,000 to work for parliamentarians (Gans then worked as parliamentary assistant to NDP MP Finn Donnelly). In 2014 Cullen met representatives of CIJA Pacific Region to talk about Israel, Iran and other subjects. According to CIJA’s summary of the meeting,

“Mr. Cullen understood the importance of a close Canada-Israel relationship.”

CIJA takes aggressive extreme, anti-Palestinian, positions. CIJA backed moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, ripping up the Iran nuclear accord and Israeli forces killing over 120 peaceful protesters in Gaza in Spring 2018.

Before its February convention CIJA called on the NDP to “push back against marginal elements within the party” promoting Palestinian rights. The organization was likely the driving force behind a Globe and Mail article on the eve of the convention titled “Supporter of homophobic, anti-Semitic U.S. religious leader to speak at NDP convention.”

At the start of the year CIJA called on its supporters to write the government to request Canada take more Eritrean, Sudanese and other African refugees that Israel is seeking to expel. Apparently, CIJA wants an as ‘Jewish and white as possible’ state in the Middle East, but supports multiculturalism in Canada.

CIJA works with and co-sponsors events with the Jewish National Fund, which engages in discriminatory land-use policies outlawed in this country nearly seven decades ago. JNF Canada CEO Lance Davis previously worked as CIJA’s National Jewish Campus Life director and CIJA campaigned aggressively against a 2016 Green Party resolution calling on the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the charitable status of the JNF, which owns 13% of Israel’s land and systematically discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Beyond defending racist land-use policies abroad, CIJA has stigmatized marginalized Canadians by hyping “Islamic terror” and targeting Arab and Muslim community representatives, papers, organizations, etc. In response to a 2016 truck attack in Nice, France, CIJA declared “Canada is not immune to…Islamist terror” and in 2017 they highlighted, “those strains of Islam that pose a real and imminent threat to Jews around the world.”

In a bid to deter organizations from associating with the Palestinian cause or opposing Israeli belligerence in the region, CIJA demonizes Canadian Arabs and Muslims by constantly accusing them of supporting “terror.” Last September the group said it was “shocked” Ottawa failed to rescind the charitable status of the Islamic Society of British Columbia, which CIJA accused of supporting Hamas, a group Palestinians and most of the world consider a political/resistance organization.

CIJA pushed to proscribe as a terrorist entity Mississauga-based IRFAN (International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy) because it supported orphans and a hospital in Gaza through official (Hamas controlled) channels. Its 2014 press release about the first Canadian-based group designated a terrorist organization boasted that “current CIJA board member, the Honourable Stockwell Day…called attention to IRFAN-Canada’s disturbing activities nearly a decade ago.”

CIJA aligned itself with the xenophobic backlash against the term “Islamophobia” in bill M-103, which called for collecting data on hate crimes and studying the issue of “eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.” CEO Shimon Fogel said the “wording of M-103 is flawed. Specifically, we are concerned with the word ‘Islamophobia’ because it is misleading, ambiguous, and politically charged.” It takes chutzpah for a Jewish community leader to make this argument since, as Rick Salutin pointed out, anti-Semitism is a more ambiguous term. But, Fogel would no doubt label as anti-Jewish someone who objected to the term anti-Semitism as “misleading, ambiguous, and politically charged.”

If NDP officials are uncomfortable severing ties to the lobbying arm of Canada’s Jewish Federations at minimum they should refuse to participate in CIJA’s parliamentary internship program and lobbying trips to Israel.

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Featured image is from The Canadian Jewish News.

An intelligence service given free rein to commit ‘serious crimes’ in its own country is an intelligence service that is the enemy of its people.

Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate that global temperature rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures would constitute a threshold the planet cannot cross without suffering the worst effects of climate change. Yet according to the U.N. report, mean global land-sea temperatures have already risen above 1°C and the planet could pass the 1.5°C threshold as early as 2030 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current level and no effective CO₂ down-draw measures takes place.

These projections underestimate what is happening in the atmosphere-ocean-land system since, due to amplifying feedbacks from desiccating land, warming oceans, melting ice, methane release and fires, no temperature limit can be specified for global warming. The Paris agreement, which focuses on limits to emissions, hardly acknowledges the essential need to down-draw atmospheric carbon which has already reached >450 ppm CO₂ + Methane equivalent.

Climate science is a complex discipline, yet politicians, economists and journalists appear to believe they understand it, rushing to conclusions based on partial knowledge or ignorance. Lately government members have been referring to climate science as an “ideology”.  Looking at the plethora of misconceptions regarding the accelerating climate crisis in the atmosphere-ocean-land system, it is not clear where to start:

1. Linear temperature rise projections issued by the IPCC summaries for policy makers take little account of the non-linear to abrupt behaviour of atmospheric conditions, as indicated by sharp climate instabilities during the last glacial-interglacial ages, consequent of amplifying feedbacks from land and ocean. IPCC reports, based on credible scientific peer review papers, have been prefaced by summaries for policymakers, in part edited by government representatives. Consequently the urgency of the climate crisis has been underestimated. Temperature goals such as 1.5^oC or 2.0^oC constitute political goals, not science-based values. The concentration of atmospheric CO₂+Methane of >450 ppm is driving amplifying feedbacks to global warming, namely from warming oceans, melting ice, methane release, fires, desiccated vegetation, push temperatures upwards – unless and until a method is found to draw-down atmospheric CO₂.

2. By analogy a measurements of a patient’s body temperature after they have taken a dose of aspirin, measurements of terrestrial temperatures under the masking effect of a high concentration of sulphur aerosols does not give a true measure of atmospheric temperature. For example, following the post 9/11 cessation of air traffic and of contrails over the US, measured temperatures rose significantly. When taking account of this discrepancy, mean global temperatures are tracking closer 2 degrees Celsius (Hansen et al. 2008. Target atmospheric CO₂: Where should humanity aim? https://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126) 

3. For the above reasons, talk of restricting mean global temperatures to any particular figure, such as 1.5^oC or 2^oC above preindustrial levels, ignores the scientific evidence as to how the atmosphere behaves. The “Paris target” of 1.5^oC is meaningless since: (1) no mechanism is known to arrest amplifying feedbacks rom rising above this limit, and (2) no plans for draw-down of atmospheric CO₂ appear to be at hand, the $trillions required for such endeavor being spent on the military and wars.

Rarely has the full extent of the climate catastrophe been conveyed by the mainstream media, including the ABC, as contrasted with the proliferation of pseudo-science infotainment programs, where attractive celebrities promote space travel. Rarely do the major panels include scientists.

Given a 2 to 3-fold rise in extreme weather events, signs of the impending global climate tipping points are everywhere, from hurricane-hit Caribbean islands and southeast US, to cyclone-ravaged and sea level rise-affected southwest Pacific islands, to flooded south Asian regions such as Kerala and Pakistan, to fire-devastated regions in southern Europe and California, to the Australian and east African droughts. The list goes on. To date it is estimated some 400,000 deaths are linked to climate change each year (see this)

Yet the warnings are shunned, in particular in rich western countries. Whenever the term “future” is expressed in the mainstream media and in Parliaments, it is rare that a caveat is made regarding the effects of global warming, Should there be a future investigation of those who have been, continue to, promote and preside over the rise in carbon emissions, with the consequent climate calamity, this would be recorded by survivors as the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Homo “sapiens”.

“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice” (Martin Luther King)

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Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and Paleo-climate science, Australia National University (ANU) School of Anthropology and Archaeology, ANU Planetary Science Institute, ANU Climate Change Institute, Honorary Associate Professor, Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, University of Queensland. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley “was probably the most pro-war, pro-imperialist high-ranking Trump official, and therefore the most beloved Trump official by the war-loving U.S. media. She held every conventional foreign policy view that has generated so much destruction.”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley unexpectedly announced her resignation on Tuesday, but informed critics are raising their voices in the aftermath of the news to make sure nobody gets away with describing the outgoing diplomat—who said she will serve in the position until the end of the year—as anything other than what she is: a sycophant for President Donald Trump and a horrible war-monger who used her powerful position to push a neoconservative foreign policy while undermining global goodwill, overtly attacking human rights, and making the world a more dangerous place.

While some news outlets and commenters ignored historical evidence as they attempted to frame Haley as a “moderate” voice in the Trump administration and Republicans applauded her “moral clarity,” progressive critics hit back hard against such blatantly false characterizations.

“Moderate?” exclaimed political commentator Amir Amini in a tweet responding the New York Times‘ story about the surprise resignation.

“Haley spent every minute of her time at the UN threatening innocent nations w/ war, terror and literally bullying and trying to blackmail (and miserably failing) the entire [world] into supporting her agenda dictated by the military industrial complex.”

Blasting CNN for whitewashing the record, Medea Benjamin of CodePink didn’t have a hard time cataloging some of Haley’s most deplorable accomplishments while at the UN:

Numerous data points during Trump’s presidency and Haley’s time at the UN have shown a woeful decline of the United States’ standing in the eyes of the world. Just last week, as Common Dreams reported, a global Pew survey showed that only 50 percent of the world currently has a favorable opinion of the U.S., down from 64 percent when President Obama left office.

According to journalist Glenn Greenwald, the reason outlets like the Times describe Haley as a “moderate” is “because she affirms all of the standard pro-war, pro-imperial orthodoxies that are bipartisan consensus in Washington. That’s why [Bill Kristol, founder and editor of the right-wing The Weekly Standard] reveres her. She was a Tea Party candidate, but ‘moderate’ means: loves U.S. wars & hegemony.”

Before Trump’s hiring of John Bolton as National Security Adviser, Greenwald added,

“Haley was probably the most pro-war, pro-imperialist high-ranking Trump official, and therefore the most beloved Trump official by the war-loving U.S. media. She held every conventional foreign policy view that has generated so much destruction.”

Nikki Haley, who is quitting as UN ambassador, will be described as an “adult in the room” in Trump’s administration. Don’t believe it. She served as a rigid ideologue who undermined prospects for Middle East peace & refused to stand up for women’s rights.https://t.co/b8aH2eSQ9c

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) October 9, 2018

Meanwhile, religious scholar and author Reza Aslan issued this plea to reporters and commentators, “Please make sure all your Nikki Haley hot takes mention just how awful she is, what an embarrassment she was as UN Ambassador, and how quickly this ‘moderate’ Republican violated her ‘values’ to serve at the feet of a racist, pussy-grabbing sociopath.”

And as journalist Matthew Chapman noted:

In her short time as U.N. Ambassador, Haley:

-Set Arab-Israeli relations back 20 years.
-Defunded U.N. peacekeeping forces and gloated about it.
-Withdrew the U.S. from the Human Rights Council.

Why do people keep insisting she's one of the reasonable ones? https://t.co/mVhvH2emy9

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) October 9, 2018

There's no measure by which Haley is a "moderate."

As gov, she blocked Medicaid and resisted taking down the Confederate flag. As UN ambassador she blew up Arab-Israeli policy, defunded peacekeeping, and pulled us out of the Human Rights Committee. She's as extreme as they come.

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) October 9, 2018

Beyond her disgraceful record, the news of Haley’s resignation was greeted with widespread speculation about her future plans. While some have concocted a theory—not wholly without merit—that Haley could be used to replace Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) if he is tapped by Trump to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions (assuming Sessions gets canned or quits following the midterms), others said the much more interesting and importation speculation is about why she is departing now.

How about this:

1. Haley exits UN.

2. AG Sessions is elbowed out after mid-terms.

3. Lindsey Graham replaces Sessions.

4. Haley takes Graham’s SC Senate seat.

5. Positioning begins for 2024 presidential bid by Haley — the most politically ambitious of Trump’s associates.

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) October 9, 2018

While Trump and Haley stated Tuesday that her departure has been planned for months, on Monday the ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) called on the State Department Inspector General to initiate an official probe in order to determine if Haley violated ethics regulations by accepting more than half a dozen free flights for herself and her husband on luxury private aircraft from three South Carolina businessmen last year.

“By accepting gifts of luxury private flights, Ambassador Haley seems to be falling in line with other Trump administration officials who are reaping personal benefits from their public positions,” said CREW executive director Noah Bookbinder, in a statement.

It might be too early to speculate about precisely who might replace Haley next year, but  journalist Rania Khalek had a good idea of what qualifications the top candidates can expect to have:

Nikki Haley resigned, good riddance. But I’m sure trump will appoint someone just as enthusiastic for war against Iran and Syria and just as sincere in their hatred for Palestinians and love for the Saudis and Israel and right wing Latin American governments.

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) October 9, 2018

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On October 1, 2018, after some 14 months of negotiations, the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs unveiled the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In their press conference Minister Freeland said,

“The original NAFTA contained a clause that eroded Canada’s sovereign control over our energy resources, known as the ‘proportionality clause.’ That’s now gone.”

By members of the House of Commons and various commentators, this claim has been repeated across the country. But is it really true that it is gone?

On January 1, 1989, the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) entered into force. It contained the original and unprecedented proportionality clause, committing Canada to deliver to the US the same proportion of all forms of energy that the US had been receiving over the previous three years, even if Canada faced a shortage itself (Article 904), and furthermore to never charge the Americans more for “any good” than Canadians were charged (Articles 408, 409). These clauses were repeated verbatim later in NAFTA (Articles 605, 314, 315). At the above press conference the minister continued,

“The investor state dispute resolution system that has allowed [American and Mexican] companies to sue the Canadian government is also gone… Known as ISDS, it has cost Canadian taxpayers more than 300 million dollars in penalties and legal fees. ISDS elevates rights of corporations over the rights of sovereign governments. In removing it, we have strengthened our government’s right to regulate in the public interest.”

One truly wishes that our country was free to act as it chooses. 

However, the FTA articles 2010 (Monopolies) and 2011 (Nullification and Impairment) give the US the right to challenge “any measure” taken by Canada “whether or not such a measure conflicts with the provisions of this agreement.” This amounts to a veto over Canadian policy and the chill on federal, provincial and municipal legislation has been far reaching. A dramatic example of this was Ontario’s NDP government in 1991 scrapping its longstanding commitment to introduce provincial public auto insurance, similar to that existing in Saskatchewan and BC, after State Farm, the largest US auto insurance company, claimed that under the FTA $1.3 billion would be owed by Ontario as “compensation” to US auto insurance companies if the province proceeded with these plans. Ontario drivers can credit the FTA as the cause for the high cost of their car insurance.

The USMCA — which president Trump half playfully, half menacingly called the US Marine Corps Agreement —states in its preamble that it will “replace the 1994 North American free trade agreement.” It is completely silent about the FTA.

The multibillion dollar question hanging in the air is this: under the USMCA is the FTA still in force, or are the minister of foreign affairs and the prime minister telling us that it, too, is gone, and that we have regained our sovereignty over our economy and our energy resources? If that is the case,  would a thank you note to President Trump for helping “make Canada great again”  perhaps be in order?

David Orchard was twice a contender for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He is the author of The Fight For Canada: Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism. He resides in Borden, SK.

Marjaleena Repo was national organizer for Citizens Concerned About Free Trade from 1985 till 1998, campaign manager and senior advisor for David Orchard’s leadership campaigns, and the Saskatchewan vice-president for the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada until its take-over in 2003 by the Reform Alliance Party. She resides in Saskatoon, SK.

They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].

The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh is currently exhibiting a substantial selection of Rembrandt’s paintings, drawings, and prints – focusing on those works that reveal the story of “Britain’s Discovery of the Master.” Exploring the significance of Rembrandt to British collectors, artists, and writers provides us with the occasion to revisit some fifteen major oil paintings, beginning with an early Self-Portrait (1629), and including his only two portraits of British sitters, from 1634.

Belshazzar’s Feast (1636-38) was among a handful of the first major paintings by Rembrandt to appear in Britain. It is also one of the most fascinating works to be included in this show, and is itself a kind of feast for the eye and mind. The painting draws its subject from the famous story in the Book of Daniel, in which the Jewish Temple is looted by the Babylonians; its holy artifacts, including “gold and silver vessels” are stolen by the king Nebuchadnezzar while his son Belshazzar makes a great feast where these sacred cups are profaned, until suddenly a disembodied hand appears and writes on the wall of the king’s palace the words “mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.” This is the moment that Rembrandt chose to capture, the moment of existential dread, as Belshazzar witnesses the writing which appears to be composed of light itself.

Belshazzar’s Feast (1636-38)

The sacred vessels are a recurring motif in this painting: in his palpable terror, Belshazzar has tipped over a golden chalice, which is speedily disgorging its contents onto the lavish table. Meanwhile, in the lower right corner, a woman crouches with her back to us – and although we cannot see her face, we know it is transfixed on the divine letters above. In her right hand she holds a vessel, which is also pouring itself out on to her red sleeve, drenching the garment along her forearm.

Another remarkable detail of this painting consists of Rembrandt’s unusual arrangement of the Hebrew letters – namely, in right-to-left columns rather than right-to-left rows which is how Hebrew is typically written. This could have been his way of accounting for the inability of the Babylonian wise men to make sense of the inscription, which ultimately leads to their sending for Daniel to help them understand it. As she plays the recorder, one faint mysterious figure in the extreme rear is looking directly at us – and she alone, an almost otherworldly apparition, appears to be without any fear. The painting is a breathtaking tour de force, and reveals an artist who thought deeply and penetratingly about the text that he rendered on canvas.

Four small drawings (which have been attributed to Rembrandt with some controversy) are exhibited here together for the first time. They date from around 1640, and are done in pen and brown ink, brown wash, and black chalk. The drawings depict various English views: St Albans Cathedral and Windsor Castle, while the remaining two offer views of London with Old St Paul’s in the background. The Dutch master certainly had in an interest in English subjects and ‘exotic’ architecture, which often made its way into his biblically-inspired paintings.

When Rembrandt was thirty-nine years old he painted Girl at a Window (1645), which is a wonderful example of the artist’s sense of mystery – taking a very simple subject and making it profoundly engaging. We are presented with a young woman in a loose-fitting white blouse and red cap, leaning forward on a stone ledge. She has a rounded face with a rosy complexion. While all that seems straightforward enough, there is great deal we might wonder about her: For one, who is she? For another, where is she? The space she inhabits is dark and tells us little. And when is she, for that matter? Her clothing could possible be that of a servant girl; though she could also be the artist’s lover, as some historians have speculated. She may even be a biblical figure, drawn from the Old Testament – strongly suggested by the timeless quality of her garb. What is perhaps most interesting about her is the direct gaze she levels at us, the viewer – the way she draws us into the picture, even gesturing toward herself with her left hand. The seductive quality of her is born out of that penetrating look, those large, searching eyes with which she seems to see us across the centuries – or rather, outside of time altogether.

Girl at a Window (1645)

The Mill (1645) was among the most cherished of Rembrandt’s painting during the nineteenth century, and understandably so. British romantics, such as Constable and Turner, were enamored with the somber, soulful atmosphere; the striking silhouette of the lone windmill against a stormy and foreboding sky is rendered with a dramatic chiaroscuro that would profoundly influence their work. With the restoration of the painting in 1977-79, the old discolored varnish was removed, and a very different, and brighter painting emerged – one that would have been rather unfamiliar to the nineteenth century romantics and connoisseurs who, like Wilhelm Bode, would proclaim it, “the greatest picture in the world.”

Like so much that Rembrandt does, this painting is deeply mysterious – when we consider, for example, the passing boatman in the lower right corner. Perhaps he is Charon, ferrying the departed across the river Styx – a reading which would have been more consistent perhaps with the earlier Romantic reception of the work. Rembrandt takes the ordinary, elemental things of life – water, air, and earth – and finds the truth within them, the truth of our human condition, the ephemeral beauty of the seemingly mundane, and the transiency of all things under the sun.

Head of an Old Man (1659) is truly a hauntingly unforgettable work: with bold and apparently rapid brushwork, Rembrandt captures with perfect sincerity, with unassailable honestly, the fragility but also the dignity, the complete humanity of old age. The white, tousled mane and discolored beard; the wrinkled brow with its deep-set lines; the large, darkening but questioning eyes that seem to peer into the beyond with all the wonder of being alive and facing the reality of our mortality – it is all there on the canvas. Rembrandt has caught it all and then some. The painting is staggeringly heartbreaking, and reveals the absolute timelessness of the artist – a work of art such as this is forever contemporary, because it is true – every stroke of the brush is true.

The exhibition concludes with a number of works by contemporary artists – including Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, John Bellany, and Glenn Brown – who have taken inspiration, in one form or another, from the Dutch master. Some of these works fare better than others, when hanging next to Rembrandt. Among the most notable of these is Auerbach’s Study after Deposition by Rembrandt II (1961), a heavily impastoed work, which draws deeply on Rembrandt’s love of the chaotic. This is a rare and wonderful exhibition, which serves to remind us of the power of oil painting to reveal the wondrous enigma of being.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Janine Jackson interviewed Marjorie Cohn about the Brett Kavanaugh nomination for the October 5, 2018, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Janine Jackson: Donald Trump’s public mockery of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who testified she was assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, was an acutely despicable spectacle in an administration that is no shirker when it comes to despicable spectacle. But the Kavanaugh hearings, the FBI “investigation” into allegations against him, the whole process, seemed to indicate more serious failures than Trump’s vindictive creepiness. What is going on here, and what might it mean for the Supreme Court going forward?

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She joins us now by phone from San Diego. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Marjorie Cohn.

Marjorie Cohn: Thanks for having me, Janine.

JJ: We’re in media res here, of course. We just heard this morning, October 4, that the FBI had completed its investigation, which Susan Collins called“very thorough,” despite it not including statements from Ford, or dozens of others who wanted to contribute. I have so many questions, but they really all kind of amount to, how is this happening? How are we at a place where a man who shout-sobbed his way through his hearings, snarling and accusing, and making clear that he hates “Democrats,” “the Clintons” and “the left,” could even be considered to have the temperment appropriate to a Supreme Court justice?

MC: That’s an excellent question, but it’s very clear, and it’s been clear from the start, that the Republican leadership, in concert with Donald Trump, is going to ram this nomination through so that they can achieve a solid, right-wing majority on the Supreme Court which will last for decades, and will reverse many of the rights that we hold dear.

The Republicans know that Kavanaugh would provide a reliable vote against immigrants, workers, voters, and gay and transgender people. He would deliver a dependable vote for employers, private property and church-state bonding, and they can rest assured that he would do his best to immunize Trump from criminal liability, and enable him to continue their mean-spirited, right-wing agenda. And this is more important to them than any judicial temperament, than any credible allegations of sexual assault, because the bottom-line issue—one of the most significant issues—is abortion rights, reproductive rights, and overturning Roe v. Wade, in addition to gay rights, and they have rationalized all of these other horrors to that end.

JJ: Kavanaugh seems so tainted, though, at this point. Why not just some other conservative? What is it about the timeline that you think makes them feel like they have to keep going with this candidate, over the objection of now, you know, millions of people?

MC: In part, they want Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court before the November 6 midterm elections, because if the Democrats achieve a majority in the Senate, then there might not be sufficient votes to confirm him after the election. That’s the most immediate consideration, but they were in a hurry to get him confirmed by October 1, which was the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, and they want to help ensure the outcome of several hot-button cases that are on the Court’s docket, including cases involving double jeopardy, immigration, age discrimination and the Endangered Species Act. And there is a possibility that the Court might decide to take up cases involving gerrymandering, gay and transgender rights, and the separation of church and state.

JJ: You’ve been writing about Brett Kavanaugh for a while now, and you have pointed out that there’s plenty to undermine his candidacy even before we get to sexual assault allegations, and those other things are, in a way, at risk almost of being overlooked. And one of the concerns is around his record on international law and the power of the president. What are the flags there? And, again, they’re nothing to do with his “personality,” but they’re derived from his public record as a judge.

MC: Keep in mind that international law—insofar as the United States has ratified treaties—or customary international law are part of US law, under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, and yet Kavanaugh has nothing but scornfor international law, and he confuses international law with foreign law. International law, as I said, is treaty law and customary international law, which is customs that countries have built up over the years. But foreign law is totally different. It’s the law of France or Brazil or Germany; and he conflates the two.

Now that he’s been on the Court of Appeals, and during the Bush administration’s so-called “War on Terror,”  Kavanaugh almost always deferred to the president on executive power. Now, the Supreme Court, during the Bush administration, did check and balance the executive, the president, and said that federal courts have jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions by Guantánamo detainees; they said that a US citizen who’s being held as an enemy combatant has due process rights to contest his detention, and they said that Bush’s military commissions violated the Geneva Conventions and the Federal Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Now, in 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo detainees held as enemy combatants have the right to file habeas corpus petitions in US federal courts, to say, “I’m being unlawfully held.”

But after Boumediene, Kavanaugh—on the Court of Appeals—did his best to try to neuter these habeas corpus rights that the Supreme Court had upheld in Boumediene, in case after case. And also, Kavanaugh has a record of dangerous deference to the president. Notwithstanding the case of Jones v. Clinton, the Paula Jones case, which said that a president has to answer to at least a civil case—that didn’t involve a criminal case—Kavanaugh doesn’t think that a president should be bothered to answer to a civil case or a criminal case while he’s in office.

And under US v. Nixon, a unanimous Supreme Court said that Nixon had to turn over the tapes during the Watergate scandal, and that led to Nixon’s resignation. And yet, although that case, US v. Nixon, is a settled precedent, Kavanaugh has said he thinks it should be reconsidered. And one of the most disturbing things, Janine, is that in a law review article, Kavanaugh wrote in 2014, he wrote that, yes, the Take Care Clause of the Constitution requires the president to enforce the law, it says that the president shall “take care” that the laws are faithfully executed. But then Kavanaugh went on to say, yes, the president has to enforce the law

at least unless the president deems the law unconstitutional, in which event the president can decline to follow the statute until a final court order says otherwise.

So Kavanaugh would create a dangerous presumption in favor of a president who refuses to follow the law. That is very worrisome.

JJ: And it should be worrisome, I should think, to people of any political stripe, allowing the president to make the law. And there are references, also, “Well, we’re in wartime.” But of course, given that the war is the “War on Terror,” it’s like we’re always going to be in wartime, so we can’t really think of that as a temporary status.

MC: Yes, that’s the excuse for whatever the president wants to do: “Oh, we’re fighting terrorism,  the ‘War on Terror.’” The “War on Terror” is a misnomer. Terrorism is a tactic; it’s not an enemy. And yet, under the guise of the so-called “War on Terror,” Bush and Obama, and now Trump, are decimating our civil liberties. And Congress, unfortunately—not in every case, in some cases there’s pushback, but—largely defers to him, and the courts are the last resort to check and balance an out-of-control executive. And yet with Kavanaugh on the Court, that checking and balancing is not going to happen.

JJ: It seems important for the conversation to separate our concerns about Kavanaugh in particular, and then also this process that’s happening, that’s allowing him to advance in this way. There’s the lack, as Anita Hill pointed out in an op-ed, the lack of a protocol for vetting charges of harassment or assault in confirmation hearings, which should have been put in place before Clarence Thomas, but certainly after.

There’s Jeff Flake saying, we’re going to have an investigation by the FBI to last “no longer than a week.” What kind of an investigation decides how long it’s going to last before it starts?

The process, I think, just seems so broken to folks.

And I know that we knew that the Supreme Court was subject to partisan push and pull. I mean, Merrick Garland, George W. Bush, it’s not a new thing. But, I don’t know, it’s hard to see how anyone can, going forward, see the Supreme Court as a check or balance at this point.

MC: I think you’re absolutely right, and I think when Kavanaugh, and I say when because I think his confirmation is a forgone conclusion, especially because this so-called FBI investigation, which didn’t even last a week, this perfunctory investigation, which ignored many people coming forward who had evidence, including a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary who would confirm and corroborate the allegations of Deborah Ramirez, who said that Kavanaugh waved his penis in her face, forcing her to touch it.

It really is a farce, but Collins and Flake, at least the two of them, are getting political cover from this so-called week-long investigation—saying there’s “no new credible corroboration,” it was a “thorough” report. Whereas many, many people—it was detailed in Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article—came forward and tried to contact the FBI, saying that they had relevant information, and yet the FBI did not contact them. They gave it a lick and a promise.

And evidently, during his testimony, Kavanaugh said, oh, I’ve been through six FBI investigations and there’s never been a problem. Well, actually, during the FBI investigation for his appointment to the Court of Appeals, the American Bar Association reduced their “Very Qualified” rating to “Qualified,” because there were problems with his judicial temperament.

And we saw that on display in the hearings—terrible judicial temperament. I mean, he was having tantrums, he was aggressive, he was acting, you know, “I know you are but what am I?“ with the senators, which is just unheard of.

And I am proud to say that I’m one of more than 1,000 law professors who signed a letter saying that he should not be confirmed, solely on the basis of his judicial temperament, which is really, really beyond the pale.

JJ: I understand that Chuck Schumer is asking for the FBI report to be made public, along with the White House directive. I imagine that many folks who see it will or would think, “Well, yeah this was a sham.” But what does that outrage translate to? What can we do, and is this a tipping point, potentially, for making actual, structural changes to the Court itself?

MC: Well, I don’t know about structural changes. I mean, that’s a tall order. But you see people in the streets today, yesterday, probably tomorrow and Saturday. The #MeToo movement has really galvanized the whole issue of women—and men, in some instances—being afraid to come forward to report sexual assault, because of feelings of humiliation or the ramifications.

And because of this time in history, where Kavanaugh has been accused of these things in the wake of the #MeToo movement, this has galvanized people all over this country, and these people are not going to go away. We are not going to go away. We are going to continue to pressure the branches of government.

And the fact that there were two courageous women, survivors of sexual assault, in an elevator with Jeff Flake, in his face, challenginghim, is the only reason, I think, or certainly a primary reason, that he agreed to this investigation, this so-called investigation.

So political pressure, and I’m talking about people pressure, really does have an effect, and we have to keep it up, and people should be sitting in Collins’ office, and Murkowski and Flake and Manchin, who are the swing voters, and they should be around the block, and they should be demanding that they vote “No” on this confirmation.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Marjorie Cohn. You can find her most recent piece, “Five Reasons Why the GOP Is Rushing to Confirm Kavanaugh,” online at TruthOut.org, that and other work at MarjorieCohn.com. Marjorie Cohn, thank you so much joining us this week on CounterSpin.

MC: Thank you so much, Janine.

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

Janine Jackson is FAIR’s program director and producer/host of FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin. She contributes frequently to FAIR’s newsletter Extra!, and co-edited The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s (Westview Press).  Jackson is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and has an M.A. in sociology from the New School for Social Research.

Swarms of insects, transporting genetically modified infectious viruses, attack the agricultural crops of a country and destroy its food production – this is not a science-fiction scenario, but a plan that is actually being prepared by DARPA, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Five scientists from one French and two German universities have revealed this information in Science, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific revues. In their editorial, published on 5 October, they cast serious doubt on the idea that DARPA’s research, entitled “insect allies” was intended only for the use declared by the Agency – the protection of US agriculture against pathogens by using insects as the vectors of genetically modified infectious viruses. These viruses are transmitted to plants and modify their chromosomes. This capacity – as declared by the five scientists – appears to be “very limited”.

However, within the scientific milieu, the programme is “widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery”, in other words “a new form of biological weapon”. This violates the Biological Weapons Convention, which came into effect in 1975, but which has remained inactive mainly due to the refusal of the USA to accept inspections of their own laboratories.

The five scientists specify that “easy simplifications could be used to generate a new class of biological weapons, weapons that would be extremely transmissible to susceptible crop species due to insect dispersion as the means of delivery”.

This scenario of an attack on agricultural cultures in Russia, China and other countries, led by the Pentagon with swarms of insects transporting the virus, is not a science-fiction fable. DARPA’s programme is not the only one to use insects as a weapon of war. The US Office of Naval Research has asked for research from Washington University in St Louis in order to transform locusts into biological drones.

Source: PandoraTV

Using an electrode implanted in its brain and a tiny transmitter on the insect’s back, the on-the-ground operator can decipher what the locust’s antennae are picking up. These insects have an olfactive capacity capable of instantaneously perceiving various types of chemical substances in the air – which enables the identification of stores of explosives and other sites which can be hit by air or missile attacks.

Even more frightening scenarios were mentioned in the editorial by the five scientists in Science magazine. DARPA’s programme – they emphasise – is the first programme concerning the development of genetically modified viruses which can be spread throughout the environment, and which could infect other organisms “not only in agriculture”. In other words, human beings could be listed among the organisms potentially affected by the insect-borne infectious viruses.

We know that during the Cold War, in the laboratories of the US and other nations, research on bacteria and viruses was carried out – when these agents are spread by insects (lice, flies, ticks), they can trigger epidemics in the enemy nation. Among them are the Yersinia Pestis bacteria, the cause of the bubonic plague (the terrifying « Black Death » of the Middle Ages) and the Ebola virus, which is both contagious and lethal.

With the techniques available today, it is possible to produce new types of pathogens, spread by insects, for which the targeted population would have no defence.

The “plagues” which in the Biblical narrative were sent by God to strike Egypt with enormous swarms of mosquitoes, flies and locusts, can today really be sent by human beings to strike the whole world. This time, we are not being warned by prophets, but by scientists who have retained their humanity.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

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

Universities have become bastions of sessional torment, feeding grounds for despair.  The term “sessional” is merely a euphemised way of describing an academic employee who has no ongoing employment other than what is offered, a person ever at the mercy of the subject or course coordinator of a department.  They are the toiling poor, the barrel scrapers, the trudged upon and demanded.  

The problem here is loathsomely international.  In 2014, CBC News noted the increasing use of contracted sessionals in the university curriculum in Canada.  The case of Kimberley Ellis Hale was cited, an instructor in sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, who had essentially slaved for sixteen years on a precarious contract.  Despite those years of service, “she has no job security.  She still needs to apply to teach her courses every semester.  She gets none of the perks a full time professor gets”.

As with Canada, the United Kingdom’s tertiary education system sees approximately half of all academic staff employed on low-paid temporary contracts.  In the United States, half-time work characterises half of faculty staff while the majority do not fall within a “tenure track” category.  The doors to employment security are, for the most part, barred.

In Australia, as a consequence largely of shifts that took place in university education in the early 1990s, teaching and research institutions became servers of market goals and ideologies, overseen by a none-too-benevolent master in the form of the Commonwealth.  Casual academic staff are the “proletariat of the academic profession”, something akin to a tribe abandoned and lost. 

“It seems,” reflect Jane Kenway and Diana Langmead rather ruefully, “that the triumph of economics over university education is now complete.”  

Central to this is fragmentation and increased expectation: the former, focused on splitting management from workers and ongoing workers from casual employees; the latter, on converting the academic into a consultant, entrepreneur and wearer of all hats of incongruous size and meaning, all the while inflating workloads on diminishing returns.   

Casual academic staff are, according to research done by Robyn Day, David Peetz and Glenda Strachan, “not integrated with the permanent academic labour market and that discipline is a key determinant of the level of ‘frustration’ of casual academic staff.”

With this environment comes a subservience peppered by anxiety.  Free thinking is feared and despised; grovelling and silence is rewarded, if only sporadically.  Colleagues compete for diminishing resources; the casual labour force fears the loss of favour and, to that end, remain consciously indifferent to university policy that might well undermine pedagogy and research.  Resistance and protest is, in some cases brutally, quelled.

Little wonder then, that university politburos and their over-remunerated consultancies insist on collective binges of wellness days, the psychobabble that substitutes decent policies for crank panaceas.  (We care for you by showing how we detest you.) 

“Searching for wellness and well-being on most university websites,” write Brad Wright and Matthew Winslade in The Conversation, “will lead to a dedicated page detailing a wealth of independent strategies and programs focusing on specific areas of health, such as mental health or workplace safety.”   

These grotesque exercises serve one purpose: to demonstrate the ongoing failings of a university system to either care for teaching and research staff and, in a grim spinoff, the students themselves.  Staff employed on a casual basis will emit levels of psychological distress so acute as to be contagious; the students, in turn, will react. 

The university politburos are, however, on to this, appropriating such fairly meaningless concepts as the “healthy university”.  Issuing from the 2015 International Conference on Health Promoting Universities and Colleges in Canada, such holistic approaches find ample room in conference proceedings but serve to remain stuck in a management, public relations void.  While the Okanagan Charter arising from the gathering was fed by the thoughts of health professionals, researchers, students and policy makers from 45 countries, local implementation remains within the purview of the management classes long lost to academic thought.  

The dictates of finance and delivery are all powerful.  Quality can be left to hang.  While a tenured or ongoing employee at academic rank might well be given a set number of courses to teach, those same courses, and number, can be taught by a sessional staff member for a fraction of the price.   

The academic sweatshop, in other words, burgeons with desperate members hoping for admission.  Managers and higher academics, noting this, see chances to mine the pool of labour, and boast accordingly of having lesser teaching loads to enable them to pursue fictional and, in most cases, the stodge that counts as research. (Evaluators, take note.) 

The sessional curse also extends to undermining the broader university environment.  While fat cat managers gorge themselves upon increasing salaries to cut ribbons, imbibe, identify appropriate paperclips and fill rooms with their insipid and, in the end, irrelevant presences, the pay for the sessional academic remains fairly constant in its impecuniousness.   

Hours are capped; students are not permitted, depending on the policy of the department, any attention beyond an hour in terms of marking and consultations. The learning process, in other words, is cut at its most vital point, discouraging the sessional from marking the paper in any way beyond the bare limit whilst depriving the student of the rigour necessary to benefit from that said education.  

This age of education is marked by the struggling part-timer and the looting manager barricaded behind protocols of control and discipline (do not, academics are told, challenge the management line).  Any reconciling of these is impossible on current trajectories and requires an enthusiastic, collectively orchestrated coup d’état.   

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

The Torture Memos, … was a term originally applying:

“…to a set of three legal memoranda drafted by John Yoo as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States and signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice [under the George W. Bush administration]  They advised the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Department of Defense, and the president on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques: mental and physical torment and coercion such as prolonged sleep deprivation, binding in stress positions, and water boarding, and stated that such acts widely regarded as torture might be legally permissible under an expansive interpretation of presidential authority during the “War on Terror”” (Wikipedia, open source)

The above quotation reaffirms and describes what was being conducted with regard to “Torture” deep inside the White House and Justice Department in the aftermath of 9/11.

Interesting, because guess who worked in that White House as Associate White House Counsel from 2001 to 2003? Oh goodness, none other than Brett Kavanaugh!

At his hearing for judgeship at the DC Court of Appeals in 2006 Brett answered more than once that he had NO knowledge of any such memos and protocols created by John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Alberto Gonzales, to name but just a few inside that administration. I guess that when it came to legal matters, like attempting to circumvent the Geneva Accords and semi legally legitimatize torture of detainees, an Associate White House Legal Counsel (duh, a lawyer) would NOT be privy to the plans. Anybody wish to buy my bridge in Brooklyn?

Not only did Brett Kavanaugh NOT acknowledge his being part of that scenario when questioned in 2006, but he used what the mob guys have done forever with his being D & D (Deaf and Dumb) when questioned recently by Senator Leahy at his confirmation hearing.

I have been told that lying about these matters is a criminal offense.  Putting aside the possible criminal charges, how in the hell can any US Senator vote to confirm a man who would behave this way?

These are your and my elected officials who are supposed to defend the Constitution and what it stands for. I have reservations regarding Republican Senator Rand Paul, who rails against our phony wars and use of torture and then goes along with the rest of the gang. On the flipside, why did the Senators opposing the Kavanaugh confirmation not have used the one week waiting period while the FBI investigated the sexual assault charges to trumpet the torture memo discrepancies by Kavanaugh?

Folks, the guy might have been lying not once but twice! During the hearings why did the Democrats not use the ‘bully pulpit’ afforded them by the mainstream media to lambast, and more importantly, to educate the American public? No, they decided to play the one wild card of sexual perversion and over drinking to get Kavanaugh… and it failed. Or did it….

You see, what this ‘food fight’ has always been about is getting elected and staying in power. These two parties care about that more than anything else. They sell the sucker public into thinking that they want to get elected and in power to help the the public.  This whole scenario, when the layers of that onion are pulled apart, is about elections…period!

You see, the Democrats are banking on enough Americans to believe Prof. Ford over Brett and thus do that right thing to support their party in November. Why confuse the public on torture memos? They, the Democrats and of course the Republicans, know that sexual scandals get the attention of the suckers [public opinion]… not scandals involving a few hundred rag heads getting water boarded and other assorted tortures.

Sadly, many polls have shown that to be true during our (eternal?) ‘War on Terror’. On abortion, see if I am correct in time to come. The Republicans will play to their base and push for overturning Roe vs. Wade, but they will back off when they see the overwhelming mass of women taking to the streets and political offices in protest. Once again, the Republicans want to get re-elected and that comes first.

The wizards who run this empire don’t give a damn about Pro Life or Pro Choice, or gay and women’s rights that much. No, they care about keeping the Military Industrial Empire powerful here and overseas. It’s the military spending and bases worldwide that matters to them.

On domestic issues the empire wants to keep we working stiffs inside of their virtual prison of lowest possible wages and fewest possible benefits with lots of personal debt. To them, private property rights must choke off public property rights. The more there are residential housing renters the better, since their Subprime scam already has been played out. They know that it is both of these political parties that always walk in lockstep to support this empire. This is why both parties joined repeatedly to pass more and more military spending, Wall Street bailouts, and maintaining a private insurance run health care system ( which Obama Care continued).  Trump serves them for now, until they check the weather reports and find a new front man… from either party!

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

The decision in Yaiguaje v. Chevron Corporation by the Ontario Court of Appeal denied justice owed to some 30,000 Ecuadorian people grievously harmed by profiteering oil companies. The story is an example of how the routine application of formality in law, accompanied by the pulverization of the dispute’s setting, is designed to benefit the truly rich and astonishingly evil.

When a court pronounces on a dispute, we expect the parties to accept the decision because we believe it will have been made by independent judges who apply pre-existing principles and criteria in an even-handed manner. The pre-existing principles are deemed to reflect social norms, values and needs. But, all too often, this ideal picture of the justice system fails to hold true. It does so when the principles on which a court hinges its decision do not make sense. In the Chevron litigation, the principles of corporate law were treated as if they were holy script. They should not have been. The fraught nature of the justice system also stems, in part, from the peculiar methodology used by the judiciary. It takes disputes out of their political, social, economic and cultural settings. Law and justice fail as the process pulverizes reality and the social relations in which the controversy arises are ignored.

In a capitalist society, adherence to formalistic corporate law and the ignoring of its social context combine to privilege the status quo, that is, to favour capitalists.

The Hurts and Salient Facts

1. In 1964, a subsidiary of Texaco began petroleum extraction operations in Ecuador with government approval. The explorations continued until circa 1990.

2. The health and cultural effects of the Texaco operations on 30,000 people have been disastrous. Billions of gallons of waste have left 880 Olympic pool-sized pits filled with solid petro waste; 1500 kilometres of roads are covered with crude oil; 60 billion gallons of toxic waste were dumped into waterways and 650 thousand barrels of crude oil spilled into the jungle and onto farmland. The consequences are: unusable water resources and a sky high incidence of childhood leukemia, spontaneous miscarriages, and skin diseases; tribal people have lost their way of life. These are the claimed factual bases for the legal action commenced in 1993. The litigation began more than a quarter of a century after the contaminating operations began. The Ontario Court of Appeal decision, the latest in this prolonged litigation came in May 2018, 25 years after the litigation was initiated and 54 years after the contaminating operations commenced. And still no finality, still no justice.

3. Philip Agee, the well-known former CIA operator, recorded how the CIA helped establish a military dictatorship in Ecuador and that, within months of that having been done, Texaco confidently set-up its oil extraction operations. When it ceased operations and a class action against it was launched, Texaco fought to have the case heard in what it deemed the friendly legal environs of Ecuador. It did not want to be sued in the U.S. where it felt a jury trial presented it with a greater risk of being held accountable than it would be by a tribunal of Ecuadorian judges appointed by, and drawn from, the ranks of a long-time business favouring elite. In 2001, years later, this jurisdictional fight was still going on. In that year, Texaco was absorbed by another U.S. giant, Chevron Corporation. It now was the entity on the hook for any left-over Texaco liabilities and it pursued the Texaco strategy. In 2002, Chevron succeeded in having the law suit against it moved to Ecuador.

The current Ukrainian crisis and, in fact, the civil war which started at the very end of 2013 are grounded in for decades lasting internal interregional antagonisms between the western and the eastern regions of Ukraine. The crisis is fully fueled by the Western governments which armed far-right “European” Kiev regime giving to it a comprehensive political, financial and diplomatic support for the policy of brutal Ukrainization and even Nazification of the whole country but primarily at the expense of the Russian-speaking population at Ukraine’s East. A similar example we experienced in “European” Croatia in the 1990s when the same Western establishment overwhelmingly supported and protected the Croatian policy of the Serbophobic Croatization and Nazification of Croatia.

The Ukrainian crisis is, however, spilled out into the Ukrainian-Russian relations on the international level including above all the “Crimean Question” as an apple of discord between these present-day two countries (ex-Soviet republics) from 1954 when Soviet establishment under the leadership of Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, the crisis came from Lithuania’s capital Vilnius where in November 2013 an Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine had to be signed. Lithuania at that time (July 1^st−December 31^st, 2013) presided the European (Union) Council and formally had full political responsibility for the breaking out of the crisis as being the host of the event on which the EU blamed only Ukraine’s President V. Yanukovych for the failure of the agreement as he simply rejected to sign it for the very benefits of all Ukrainian citizens.

However, his decision was primarily based on the logic of realpolitik as he preferred a much more favorable economic-financial offer by Moscow (including, de facto, legalization of stealing of Russia’s gas to Europe that was transported via Ukraine) for the purpose to try to resolve inner economic, social and political crisis which was threatening a stability of the Ukrainian society and state from 1991. The official Kiev recognizes that for Ukraine (up to 2014) Russia was:

“…the largest trade partner and a huge market. In addition, many Ukrainians have family and friendly relations with the Russian people. In this connection, it should be noted that Europeans are actually interested in stable partnership between the two countries. Ukraine remains the major transit country for Russian natural gas transported to Europe, and it is very important for Kyiv to make sure that Europeans regard it as a reliable and predictable partner” [Ukraine. A Country of Opportunities, Kyiv: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, 2010, 6].

It was obvious that such Yanukovych’s turn toward the Russian Federation would mean the closest political ties between Kiev and Moscow in future – a cardinal reason for the EU and USA to directly fuel a new color revolution in Ukraine for the purpose to overthrow Yanukovych and to install in power instead of him their own puppet regime which will drive the country to the direction of both the EU and the NATO (and probably to the war with Russia).

An aerial view shows Independence Square during clashes between anti-government protesters and Interior Ministry members and riot police in central Kiev February 19, 2014. (Source: Oriental Review)

The Ukrainian 2013/2014 colored revolution was committed according to the model of the first CIA’s sponsored East European colored revolution that was organized in Serbia (Belgrade) at the beginning of October 2000 (the “2000 October 5^th Revolution”). In the official literature and memoirs on this revolution, however, the essence of it that it was directly financed and sponsored by the CIA and the Western-financed NGOs is not mentioned at all. The protest of the “people” in Kiev in 2014 finally was ended by a classic street-style coup d’état like in Belgrade 14 years ago and the installation of as well as a classic (pro-USA/EU/NATO’s) marionette regime. As it is well known from an introductory course on democracy, any kind of coup d’état (putsch) is illegal and unconstitutional. As in the 2000 Belgrade Coup case, the 2014 Kiev Putsch case was formally justified as a “popular revolt” against the “dictator” who became ousted in February 2014.

In fact, however, unlawfully removed legally and legitimately elected head of state by the USA/EU’s sponsored and supported ultranationalistic and even a neo-Nazi colored political upheaval of the “Euromaidan” protesters in Kiev and some other bigger Western Ukrainian cities (like in Lvov) directly provoked a new popular colored revolution in the Russian-speaking provinces of East Ukraine and Crimea with a final consequence of a territorial secession of self-proclaimed Luhansk, Kharkov, and Donetsk People’s Republics and Crimea (according to Kosovo pattern from 2008).

The last Western sponsored attempt of color revolution happened on October 5^th, 2018 in Banja Luka (the Republic of Srbska in Bosnia-Herzegovina) two days before the general elections in the whole country when around 40,000 people protested against the “dictator“ Milorad Dodik – a President of the Republic of Srpska. However, a great part of those protesters arrived at Banja Luka on the organized way in buses from Sarajevo and other towns populated by Croats and Bosnian Muslims including and the veterans from the Bosnian civil war in the 1990s who served in the Muslim-Jihad Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina and committing war crimes against Serbian civilians. The pattern of “2018 Banja Luka Colored Revolution“ is quite visible in the prototypes of both “2000 Belgrade Colored Revolution“ and “2014 Kiev Euromaidan Revolution“.

In regard to the 2014 Kiev Coup, according to Paul Craig Roberts, Washington used its funded NGOs ($5 billion according to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at the National Press Club in December 2013) to begin street protests when the elected Ukrainian Government turned down the offer to join the European Union. Similarly to the Ukrainian coup in 2014, the Guatemala coup in 1954, when democratically elected Government of Jacobo Arbenz became overthrown, was also carried out by the CIA.

Nonetheless, following R. Reagan’s logic used in the US-led military invasion of Grenada in 1983, the Russian President could send a regular army of the Russian Federation to occupy Ukraine for the security reasons of Russia’s citizens who were studying at the universities in Kiev, Odessa or Lvov. Similarly R. Reagan’s argument (to protect the US’ students in Grenada) was (mis)used, among others, and by Adolf Hitler in April 1941 to invade and occupy the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as, according to the German intelligence service, the German minority in Yugoslavia (the Volksdeutschers) were oppressed and terrorized by the new (pro-British) Government of General Dušan Simović after the coup in Belgrade committed on March 27^th, 1941.

Nonetheless, a new anti-Russian government in Kiev launched a brutal linguistic and cultural policy of Ukrainization directly endangering the rights of ethnolinguistic Russians, who represent a clear majority of the population of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of East Ukraine, Crimean Peninsula respectively but as well as and of other non-Ukrainian population who supported a pro-Russia’s course of the country.

Finally, in the near future, if Kiev continues its anti-Russian and pro-NATO/USA/EU’s political-military course, the joint republic of Luhansk and Donetsk regions (or more) will be declared as an independent state with a real possibility to join the Russian Federation as Crimea already did it in 2014. It can be probably the best solution to the current Ukrainian crisis at least from the perspective of the Russian-speakers in East Ukraine.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is Founder & Editor of POLICRATICUS-Electronic Magazine On Global Politics Since 2014 (www.global-politics.eu). Contact: [email protected].

Featured image is from Fort Russ.

On October 21^st there will be a Women’s March on the Pentagon hosted by the Global Women’s Peace Action. My wife and many of our friends will be going and even I will tag along in support in spite of my gender. We participate with some reservations as we have only demonstrated publicly twice since 9/11, once opposing the then about to start Iraq War and once against the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

All too often demonstrations morph into progressive exercises in flagellation of what are now referred to as “deplorable” values with little being accomplished either before, during or afterwards, apart from the piles of debris left behind to be cleaned up by the Park Service. And such events are rarely even covered by the media in Washington, where the Post generally adheres closely to a neocon foreign policy tactic, which means that if you ignore something distasteful it will eventually go away.

Hopefully on this occasion it will be different because the time for talking politics is rapidly being rendered irrelevant by the speed of and Americans of all political persuasions must begin to take to the streets to object to what their government is doing in their name. I am mildly optimistic that change is coming as I find it difficult to imagine that in spite of the relentless flood of mainstream media propaganda there is even a plurality of Americans that supports with any actual conviction what the United States is doing in Syria and what it intends to do in Iran. And apart from a desire to make voting in America safer and insofar as possible interference free, I also believe that most think that Russiagate is a load of hooey and would prefer to be friends with Moscow.

Why now? “Now” is a whole new ballgame, as the expression goes, because the utter insanity coming out of Washington could easily wind up killing most of us here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Specifically, in a press conference on Tuesday, Kay Bailey Hutchison, a former Senator from Texas who is currently the United States’ ambassador to NATO, declared that Washington was prepared to launch a preemptive attack on Russian military installations as a response to alleged treaty violations on the part of Moscow. Note particularly what Hutchison actually said:

“At that point, we would be looking at the capability to take out a missile that could hit any of our countries. Counter measures would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty. They are on notice.”

And note further what she was implying, namely that Washington, acting on its own authority, has the right to attack a nuclear armed and powerful foreign country based on what are presumably negotiable definitions of what are acceptable weapons to base on one’s own soil. It would be an attack on a neighbor or competitor with whom one is not at war and which does not necessarily pose any active threat. By that standard, any country with a military capability can be described as threatening and one can attack anyone else based purely on one’s own assessment of what is acceptable or not.

It is quite remarkable how many countries in the world are now “on notice” for punishment when they do things that the United States objects to. United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has warned that she will be “taking names” of those United Nations members that criticize U.S. policies in the Middle East. As increasing discomfort with U.S. initiatives there and elsewhere is a worldwide phenomenon, with only Israel, the Philippines, Nigeria and Kenya having a favorable view of Washington, Haley’s list is inevitably a long one. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, when they are not fabricating intelligence and inflating threats, have likewise warned specific countries that they are being judged by Washington and will be punished at a level proportionate to their transgressions.

Hutchison is not known as a deep thinker, so one has to suspect that her expressed views were fed to her by someone in Washington. Her specific grievance against Russia relates to Moscow’s reported deployment of new land-based missiles that have a claimed range of more than 5,000 kilometers, which is enough to hit most targets in Europe. If true, the development would be in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 and would definitely pose a potential threat to the Europeans, but the more serious question has to be the rationale behind threatening a nuclear war through preemptive action over an issue that might be subject to renewed multilateral negotiation.

Hutchison and the State Department inevitably went into double-speak mode when concerns were expressed about possible preemption against Russia. She clarified her earlier comments with an almost incomprehensible “My point: Russia needs to return to INF Treaty compliance or we will need to match its capabilities to protect U.S. & NATO interests. The current situation, with Russia in blatant violation, is untenable.”

Spokesman Heather Nauert at State then chimed in

“What Ambassador Hutchison was talking about was improving overall defense and deterrence posture. The United States is committed to upholding its arms control obligations and expects Russia to do the very same thing.”

Both disclaimers were needed, even if lacking in clarity, but they did not dispel the ugly taste of the initial comment regarding starting a war of preemption. Russia took note of the back and forth, with a Foreign Ministry spokesman drily observing

“It seems that people who make such statements do not realize the level of their responsibility and the danger of aggressive rhetoric.”

Hutchison and Nauert also do not seem aware of the fact that Russia’s frequently stated defense doctrine is to use nuclear weapons if and when it is attacked by a superior force, which might well be Moscow’s assessment of the threat posed by U.S. led NATO.

The disconnect between the White House’s often expressed desire to improve relations with Russia and the bureaucracy’s tendency to send the opposite message is typical of what has been referred to as Trump’s “dual-track presidency”. Gareth Porter has recently observed how President Trump, for all his faults in so many ways, is indeed desirous of military disengagement in some areas but he is repeatedly being overruled or outmaneuvered by the permanent bureaucracies in government, most notably the Pentagon and intelligence services. Hutchison, Haley, Pompeo and Bolton speak and act for that constituency even when they appear to be agreeing with the president.

So given the danger of war based on what Washington itself says about the state of the world and America’s presumed role in it, it is time to take the gloves off and march. That a high-level official can even stand up and speak about preventive war with a major nuclear power is disgraceful. She should be fired immediately. That she has not been fired means that someone somewhere high up in the bureaucracy agrees with what she said. Nuclear war is not an option. It is an end of all options.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Featured image is from The Unz Review.

Deepening US hostility toward China is all about wanting to curb its growing economic, financial, and military might.

It’s about Washington’s imperial aims, wanting dominance over all other nations, its opposition to mutual cooperation and multi-world polarity, its rage to colonize planet earth for unchallenged control over all countries, their resources and populations – endless wars its favored strategy in pursuing its hegemonic objectives.

Beijing was  accused of trying to undermine the Trump regime politically, economically, and over trade, along with interfering in America’s November midterm elections – no evidence cited by US officials because none exists.

On Monday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert discussed Pompeo’s visit to Beijing, saying he

“directly addressed ‎areas where the United States and China do not agree, including on the South China Sea and human rights,” adding:

“He also emphasized the importance of maintaining cross-Strait peace and stability” – saying nothing about Trump’s trade war and provocative US naval operations close to Chinese waters and territory.

A reported upcoming US Pacific Fleet show of force in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait will further strain bilateral relations.

Pompeo wrongfully blamed China for deteriorated ties with the US. Following their meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said:

“The US has…taken a series of actions regarding Taiwan and other matters and leveled groundless accusations against China’s domestic and foreign policy,” adding:

Its “actions have damaged our mutual trust, cast a shadow over the future of China-US relations, and go against the interests of the people of the two countries.”

“We demand that the US to immediately stop its misguided comments and actions. China and the US should stick to the right path of win-win cooperation and avoid straying into conflict and confrontation.”

Pompeo expressed what he called “great concerns about actions China has taken…”

Tensions during his Beijing visit further indicated deteriorating bilateral relations. Wang Yi’s public displeasure showed his government’s anger over unacceptable Trump regime policies.

Further proof was over President Xi Jinping’s refusal to meet with Pompeo unlike earlier in June.

China’s Global Times asked should Beijing endure US “insult(s) and back down? Surely not,” it stressed, adding:

“China must steadfastly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests ranging from trade to defense and take countermeasures against US provocations.”

“We cannot allow the conflict with the US to dominate China’s foreign relations or to direct where China’s governance will be heading.”

“China is not the Soviet Union. The US cannot deal with China as it did with the Soviet Union.”

It rejects the Trump regime’s “big stick” approach to bilateral relations, along with falsely claiming China threatens US national security.

According to former State Department official/Asia Society Policy Institute president Daniel Russel, Trump’s “confrontational approach… is far more likely to cause China to dig in than to give in.”

“It will reduce the likelihood that the Chinese will make common cause over North Korea policy.”

Washington and Beijing agree on Korean peninsula denuclearization. Their approach to achieving it differs markedly.

China favors a phased/drawn out reciprocal approach v. speedy, one-sided denuclearization the Trump regime demands – unwilling to make concessions until all its demands are met, a procedure Pyongyang rejects.

Beijing also expressed concerns about Washington wanting its influence in the DPRK increased at its expense, fearing as well that too rapid denuclearization could destabilize the country, including Kim’s leadership.

Wang and Pompeo’s failure to hold a joint news conference following talks was a clear sign of deepening bilateral friction.

An upcoming Kim Jong-un/Putin summit is planned. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “possible dates, place, and format of such a visit are being worked out.”

Xi Jinping intends visiting Pyongyang ahead. According to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a Kim/Japanese PM Shinzo Abe summit is “open. A new order is being created on the Korean peninsula.”

North Korean state media said meetings with China and Russia will be held. Kim’s visit to Beijing in March was his first foreign diplomatic trip as leader.

In upcoming meetings with Putin and Xi Jinping, he’s likely to get their support in dealings with Washington.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On October 2, prominent Saudi journalist/critic Khashoggi disappeared after entering the Saudi kingdom’s Istanbul, Turkey consulate, needing documents for his upcoming wedding, scheduled for this week.

He hasn’t been seen or heard from since, likely victimized by foul play. Turkish officials believe he was murdered by a Saudi hit squad sent from the kingdom to eliminate him.

According to Turkish police, 15 Saudis, including several officials, arrived in Istanbul on October 6. They entered the consulate when Khashoggi was believed alive inside.

On October 7, Turkish/Arab Media Association head Turan Kislakci cited unconfirmed reports that he was killed in the consulate, his body dismembered, then removed undetected.

Istanbul’s chief prosecutor initiated an investigation into what happened, including an examination of all video surveillance footage of consulate entrances, along with checking all inbound and outbound flights since Khashoggi’s disappearance.

On Monday, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry asked permission to conduct a forensic search of the consulate, after Saudi envoy to the country Waleed AM El-Hereiji was summoned to the ministry for the second time.

Last year, Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia over harsh crackdowns on regime critics. Friction between him and its despotic ruling family surfaced after saying the kingdom should be “nervous about a Trump presidency.”

He opposed Saudi aggression in Yemen, its unacceptable policies toward Qatar, and harshness against critics.

Banned from writing and speaking out publicly, he self-exiled himself to America, saying

“I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice,” adding:

“To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot.”

Earlier this year, he said Saudi intellectuals and journalists risk imprisonment for criticizing ruling family policies.

“(N)obody…dare(s) speak and criticize reforms” initiated by MBS. “I haven’t heard him make even the slightest inference that he would open the country for power-sharing, for democracy.”

The State Department was largely silent on Khashoggi’s disappearance, a statement saying it’s aware of reports and seeks more information.

Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is ruthlessly intolerant of regime criticism. If proved responsible for Khashoggi’s death, relations with Turkey will likely worsen.

They deteriorated markedly in recent years. Saudi consul-general Mohammad al-Otaiba claimed Khashoggi “is not at the consulate nor in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the consulate and the embassy are working to search for him.”

His fiancee Hatice Cengiz waited for him outside the consulate. She disbelieves the regime’s explanation about his disappearance.

Kingdom assassins likely murdered him. Its ruling are authorities contemptuous of civil and human rights, along with disdaining the rule of law.

GOP Senators Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and Ben Cardin called for honest answers on what happened to Khashoggi, Graham tweeting:

“We agree that if there was any truth to the allegations of wrongdoing by the Saudi government it would be devastating to the US-Saudi relationship, and there will be a heavy price to be paid — economically and otherwise.”

Senator Chris Murphy said if reports about US resident Khashoggi’s murder by the kingdom is true,

“it should represent a fundamental break in our relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

Khashoggi is a Washington Post columnist. Commenting on his disappearance, its editorial page editor Fred Hiatt said

“(i)f the reports of (his) murder are true, it is a monstrous and unfathomable act.”

Separately the broadsheet accused kingdom authorities of unlawfully “carry(ing) out hundreds of arrests under the banner of national security, rounding up clerics, business executives and even women’s rights advocates.”

Khashoggi was likely abducted and murdered to silence his criticism. If proved, it’s unlikely to disrupt longterm bilateral relations America – notably strong since Franklin Roosevelt met with king Abdul Aziz in 1945.

Around the same time, the State Department called Middle East oil riches, mainly Saudi ones, “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

The kingdom’s likely responsibility for whatever happened to Khashoggi isn’t likely to change longterm US/Saudi relations.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

O crescimento do fascismo bolsonarista na reta final, turbinado por uma avalanche de fake news disseminadas pela internet, não chega a surpreender.

Trata-se de tática já antiga desenvolvida pelas agências americanas e britânicas de inteligência, com o intuito de manipular opinião pública e influir em processos políticos e eleições. Foi usada na Ucrânia, na “primavera árabe” e no Brasil de 2013.

Há ciência por trás dessa manipulação.

Alguns acham que as eleições são vencidas ou perdidas apenas em debates rigorosamente racionais, em torno de programas e propostas.

Não é bem assim.

Na realidade, como bem argumenta Drew Westen, professor de psicologia e psiquiatria da Universidade de Emory, no seu livro “O Cérebro Político: O Papel da Emoção na Decisão do Destino de uma Nação”, os sentimentos frequentemente são mais decisivos na definição do voto.

Westen argumenta, com base nos recentes estudos da neurociência sobre o tema, que, ao contrário do que dá a entender essa concepção, o cérebro humano toma decisões fundamentado principalmente em emoções. O cérebro político em particular, afirma Westen, é um cérebro emocional. Os eleitores fazem escolhas fortemente baseados em suas percepções emocionais sobre partidos e candidatos. Análises racionais e dados empíricos jogam, em geral, papel secundário nesse processo.

Aí é que entra o grande poder de manipulação pela produção de informações de forte conteúdo emocional e as fake news.

Os documentos revelados por Edward Snowden comprovaram que os serviços de inteligência dos EUA e do Reino Unido possuem unidades especializadas e sofisticadas que se dedicam a manipular as informações que circulam na internet e mudar os rumos da opinião pública.

Por exemplo, a unidade do Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group do Quartel-General de Comunicações do Governo (GCHQ), a agência de inteligência britânica, tem como missão e escopo incluir o uso de “truques sujos” para “destruir, negar, degradar e atrapalhar” os inimigos.

As táticas básicas incluem injetar material falso na Internet para destruir a reputação de alvos e manipular o discurso e o ativismo online. Assim, os métodos incluem postar material na Internet e atribuí-lo falsamente a outra pessoa, fingindo-se ser vítima do indivíduo cuja reputação está destinada a ser destruída, e postar “informações negativas” em vários fóruns que podem ser usados.

Em suma:

(1) injetar todo tipo de material falso na internet para destruir a reputação de seus alvos; e (2) usar as ciências sociais e outras técnicas psicossociais para manipular o discurso on-line e o ativismo, com o intuito de gerar resultados que considerados desejáveis.

Mas não se trata de qualquer informação. Não. As informações são escolhidas para causar grande impacto emocional; não para promover debates ou rebater informações concretas.

Uma das técnicas mais usadas tange à “manipulação de fotos e vídeos”, que tem efeito emocional forte e imediato e tendem a ser rapidamente “viralizadas”. A vice Manuela, por exemplo, tem sido alvo constante dessas manipulações. Também Haddad tem sido vítima usual de declarações absolutamente falsas e de manipulações de imagens e discursos.

A abjeta manipulação de imagens de “mamadeiras eróticas”, que estariam sendo distribuídas pelo PT, é uma amostra de quão baixa pode ser a campanha de “truques sujos” recomendada pelas agências de inteligência norte-americanas e britânicas.

Muito embora tais manipulações sejam muito baixas e, aos olhos de uma pessoal racional, inverossímeis, elas têm grande e forte penetração no cérebro político emocional de vastas camadas da população.

Nada é feito ao acaso. Antes de serem produzidas e disseminadas, tais manipulações grosseiras são estudadas de forma provocar o maior estrago possível. Elas são especificamente dirigidas a grupos da internet que, por terem baixo grau de discernimento e forte conservadorismo, tendem a se chocar e a acreditar nessas manipulações grotescas.

Na realidade, o que vem acontecendo hoje no Brasil revela um alto grau de sofisticação manipulativa, o que exige treinamento e vultosas somas de dinheiro. De onde vem tudo isso? Do capital nacional? Ou será que há recursos financeiros, técnicos e logísticos vindos também do exterior?

É óbvio que isso demandaria uma investigação séria, a qual, aparentemente, não acontecerá. Só haverá investigação se alguém da esquerda postar alguma informação duvidosa.

O capital financeiro internacional e nacional, bem como setores do empresariado produtivo, já fecharam com Bolsonaro, no segundo turno. Boa parte da mídia oligárquica também. O mal denominado “centro”, na verdade uma direita raivosa e golpista, ante a ameaça de desaparecimento político, começa, da mesma maneira, a aderir, em parte, ao fascismo tupiniquim, tentando sobreviver das migalhas políticas que poderiam obter, caso o Coiso e Mourão, o Ariano, ganhem.

Trata-se, evidentemente, do suicídio definitivo da democracia brasileira e de uma aposta no conflito, no confronto, no autoritarismo e no fascismo, o que levaria a economia e a política brasileiras ao profundo agravamento de suas crises.

Contudo, esse agravamento da crise político-institucional e econômica, que inevitavelmente seria acarretado pela vitória do protofascista Bolsonaro, poderá ser útil aos interesses daqueles que querem se apossar de recursos estratégicos do país e de empresas brasileiras.

O caos e a insegurança podem ser úteis, principalmente para quem está de fora. Vimos isso muitas vezes no Oriente Médio. No limite, o golpe poderá ser aprofundado por uma “solução de força”, bancada pelo Judiciário e pelos militares. Desse modo, seria aberta a porteira para retrocessos bem mais amplos que os conseguidos por Temer. Retrocessos principalmente do ponto de vista da soberania nacional.

Do ponto de vista geoestratégico, o prometido alinhamento automático de Bolsonaro a Trump, seria de grande interesse para os EUA na região. Como se sabe, a prioridade estratégica atual dos EUA é o “grande jogo de poder contra China e Rússia”, entre outros. Bolsonaro, que já prometeu doar Alcântara ao americanos e privatizar tudo, poderia ser a ponta de lança dos interesses dos EUA na região, intervindo na Venezuela e se contrapondo aos objetivos russos e chineses na América do Sul.

Por isso, parece-nos óbvio que há um dedo, ou mãos inteiras, de agências de inteligência estrangeiras, principalmente norte-americanas, na disputa eleitoral do Brasil. O modus operandi exibido nessa reta final é idêntico ao utilizado em outros países e demanda recursos técnicos e financeiros e um grau de sofisticação manipulativa que a campanha de Bolsonaro não parece dispor.

A CIA e outras agência estão aqui, atuando de forma extensa.

Cabe às forças progressistas se contrapor, de forma coordenada, a esse processo manipulativo. E a resposta não pode ser apenas contrapor racionalidade ao ódio manipulativo. A resposta, para a disputa do cérebro político, tem de ser também emocional.

O ódio anti-PT, antiesquerda, antidemocracia, antidireitos, anti-igualdade etc., que anima Bolsonaro e que foi criado pelo golpismo e sua mídia fake, tem desse ser combatido pela projeção de sentimentos antagônicos, como esperança, amor, solidariedade, alegria e felicidade.

Eles projetam um passado de exclusão, violência e sofrimentos. Nós temos de projetar um futuro de segurança e realizações.

Quanto à campanha sórdida de difamação e manipulação, orientada de fora, o nosso lema deve ser o mesmo de Adlai Stevenson, o grande político democrata dos EUA, que propôs ao republicanos: “Vocês parem de falar mentiras sobre os Democratas e eu pararei de falar a verdade sobre vocês”.

O Coiso, Mourão, o Ariano, e a “famiglia” Bolsonaro só falam aberrações chocantes, devidamente comprovadas. Não são fake news. Assim, basta expô-los a sua própria verdade. Derreterão como vampiros na luz do sol.

Marcelo Zero

 

Marcelo Zero : É sociólogo, especialista em Relações Internacionais e membro do Grupo de Reflexão sobre Relações Internacionais (GR-RI). É colunista do Brasil Debate

Enxames de insectos, que transportam vírus infecciosos geneticamente modificados, atacam as culturas de um país destruindo a sua produção alimentar: não é um cenário de ficção científica, mas é o que está a ser preparado pela Agência do Pentágono para projectos de pesquisa científica avançada (DARPA).

Revelam-no na Science, uma das revistas científicas de maior prestígio, cinco cientistas de duas universidades alemãs e de uma francesa. No seu editorial publicado em 5 de Outubro, eles questionam se o programa de pesquisa da DARPA, denominado “Insectos aliados”, tenha,  unicamente, o propósito declarado pela Agência: proteger a agricultura dos EUA de agentes patogénicos, usando insectos como transportadores de virus infecciosos geneticamente modificados que, transmitidos às plantas, modificam os cromossomas.”

Essa capacidade – dizem os cinco cientistas – parece “muito limitada”. Porém, há no mundo científico “a percepção generalizada de que o programa se destina a desenvolver agentes patogénicos e os seus transportadores para fins hostis” ou seja, “um novo sistema de armas biológicas”.

Isto viola a Convenção sobre Armas Biológicas, entrada em vigor em 1975, mas que permaneceu no papel, especialmente pela recusa dos EUA em aceitar inspecções aos seus laboratórios.

Os cinco cientistas especificam que “bastaria procedimentos fáceis para gerar uma nova classe de armas biológicas, armas que seriam extremamente transmissíveis a espécies agrícolas sensíveis, usando insectos como meio de transporte.

O cenário de um ataque às culturas alimentares da Rússia, da China e de outros países, efectuado pelo Pentágono com enxames de insectos que transportam vírus infeciosos geneticamente modificados, não é ficção científica.

O programa da DARPA não é o único sobre o uso de insectos com fins bélicos. O Laboratório de Pesquisa da US Navy, encomendou à Universidade Washington, em St. Louis, Missouri, uma pesquisa para transformar gafanhotos em drones biológicos. Através de um eléctrodo implantado no cérebro e de um pequeno transmissor no dorso do insecto, o operador no terreno pode compreender o que as antenas do gafanhato estão a captar.

Esses insectos têm uma capacidade olfactiva tal que percebem instantaneamente, os diversos tipos de produtos químicos no ar: o que permite a detectar depósitos de explosivos e outras instalações, para atingí-los com um ataque aéreo ou com mísseis.

Cenários ainda mais inquietantes surgem no editorial dos cinco cientistas na Science. O da DARPA – salientam – é o primeiro programa para o desenvolvimento de vírus geneticamente modificados para serem espalhados no ambiente, os quais poderiam infectar outros organismos “não só na agricultura”. Por outras palavras, entre os organismos a atingir com vírus infeciosos transportados por insectos poderiam estar também os humanos.

Sabe-se que, nos laboratórios dos EUA e noutros, durante a Guerra Fria, foram realizadas pesquisas sobre bactérias e vírus que, disseminados através de insectos (pulgas, moscas, carraças), podem desencadear epidemias no país inimigo. Entre estas, a bactéria Yersinia Pestis, causadora da peste bubónica (a temida “morte negra” da Idade Média) e o vírus Ebola, contagioso e letal.

Com as técnicas disponíveis hoje é possível produzir novos tipos de agentes patogénicos, disseminados por insectos, contra os quais a população a atingir não teria defesa.

As “pragas” que, na narrativa bíblica, se abateram no Egipto com imensos enxames de mosquitos, moscas e gafanhotos por vontade divina, hoje podem abater-se hoje, realmente,  no mundo inteiro pela vontade humana. Não o dizem os profetas, mas aqueles cientistas que permaneceram humanos.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 9 de Outubro de 2018

VIDEO (PandoraTV) em italiano com subtítulo em português

Artigo original em italiano :

L’esercito di insetti del pentagonoL’arte della guerra.

 

Tradução : Luisa Vasconcelos

Sciami di insetti, che trasportano virus infettivi geneticamente modificati, attaccano le colture di un paese distruggendo la sua produzione alimentare: non è uno scenario da fantascienza, ma quanto sta preparando l’Agenzia del Pentagono per i progetti di ricerca scientifica avanzata (Darpa). Lo rivelano su Science, una delle più prestigiose riviste scientiche, cinque scienziati di due università tedesche e di una francese. Nel loro editoriale pubblicato il 5 ottobre, mettono fortemente in dubbio che il programma di ricerca della Darpa, denominato «Alleati insetti», abbia unicamente lo scopo dichiarato dall’Agenzia: quello di proteggere l’agricoltura statunitense daglitrasmissibili a specie agricole sensibili, spargendo insetti quali mezzi di trasporto».

Lo scenario di un attacco alle colture alimentari di Russia, Cina e altri paesi, condotto dal Pentagono con sciami di insetti che trasportano virus infettivi geneticamente modificati, non è agenti patogeni, usando insetti quali vettori di virus infettivi geneticamente modificati che, trasmettendosi alle piante, ne modificano i cromosomi. Tale capacità – sostengono i cinque scienziati – appare «molto limitata».

Vi è invece nel mondo scientifico «la vasta percezione che il programma abbia lo scopo di sviluppare agenti patogeni e loro vettori per scopi ostili», ossia «un nuovo sistema di bioarmi». Ciò viola la Convenzione sulle armi biologiche, entrata in vigore nel 1975 ma restata sulla carta soprattutto per il rifiuto statunitense di accettare ispezioni nei propri laboratori.  I cinque scienziati specificano che «basterebbero facili semplificazioni per generare una nuova classe di armi biologiche, armi che sarebbero estremamente fantascientifico. Quello della Darpa non è l’unico programma sull’uso di insetti a scopo bellico. Il Laboratorio di ricerca della US Navy ha commissionato alla Washington University di St. Louis una ricerca per trasformare le locuste in droni biologici. Attraverso un elettrodo impiantato nel cervello e un minuscolo trasmettitore sul dorso dell’insetto, l’operatore a terra può capire ciò che le antenne della locusta stanno captando. Questi insetti hanno una capacità olfattiva tale da percepire istantaneamente diversi tipi di sostanze chimiche nell’aria: ciò permette  di individuare i depositi di esplosivi e altri impianti da colpire  con un attacco aereo o missilistico.

Scenari ancora più inquietanti emergono dall’editoriale dei cinque scienziati su Science. Quello della Darpa – sottolineano – è il primo programma per lo sviluppo di virus geneticamente modificati per essere diffusi nell’ambiente, i quali potrebbero infettare altri organismi «non solo nell’agricoltura». In altre parole, tra gli organismi bersaglio dei virus infettivi trasportati da insetti  potrebbe esservi anche quello umano. È noto che, nei laboratori statunitensi e in altri, sono state effettuate durante la guerra fredda ricerche su batteri e virus che, disseminati attraverso insetti (pulci, mosche, zecche), possono scatenare epidemie nel paese nemico. Tra questi il batterio Yersinia Pestis, causa della peste bubbonica (la temutissima «morte nera» del Medioevo) e il Virus Ebola, contagioso e letale. Con le tecniche oggi disponibili è possibile produrre nuovi tipi di agenti patogeni, disseminati da insetti, verso i quali la popolazione bersaglio non avrebbe difese.

Le «piaghe» che, nel racconto biblico, si abbatterono sull’Egitto con immensi sciami di zanzare, mosche e locuste per volontà divina, possono oggi abbattersi realmente sul mondo intero per volontà umana. Non ce lo dicono i profeti, ma quegli scienziati restati umani.

Manlio Dinucci 

il manifesto, 09 ottobre 2018

Brazil’s presidential election will go to a run-off between far-right Jair Bolsonaro and Workers Party candidate Fernando Haddad on October 28.

Mr Bolsonaro came first in the first round yesterday, with 46 per cent of the vote — just four points short of the majority he needed to impose his draconian vision on Brazil.

An open supporter of the cold war-era dictatorship that arrested and tortured then guerrilla Dilma Rousseff — the Workers Party former president ousted in a constitutional coup in 2016 — Mr Bolsonaro has vowed to accelerate the unelected Michel Temer regime’s programme of spending cuts and privatisation.

He says he would “check” the growth of social movements campaigning for stronger rights for women, gay people and indigenous peoples, privatise state-run companies and give the police greater powers to kill suspected criminals — though they already kill thousands every year.

Source: Bloomberg

In 2016, the last year for which complete figures are available, 4,224 Brazilians were killed by police officers.

And he has pledged a closer alignment of Brazilian foreign policy with that of the United States and suggested creating camps on Brazilian soil to harbour Venezuelans keen on overthrowing the socialist government there.

Mr Haddad, who became the Workers Party candidate after frontrunner former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was barred from standing because of a trumped-up sleaze conviction, came second on 29 per cent and will face a tough fight to beat Mr Bolsonaro in the next round. Polls suggest the candidates will be neck and neck now that the others have been eliminated from the contest.

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