A distribuição estratégica do grupo naval do porta-aviões USS Harry S. Truman, interveio ao mesmo tempo que o bombardeio tripartido da Síria. Esta armada, incluindo uma fragata alemã, acaba de entrar no Mediterrâneo com poder de fogo incomparável. Segundo a NATO, foi enviado para enfrentar a influência russa.

O porta-aviões americano, Harry S. Truman, que partiu da maior base naval do mundo em Norfolk, Virgina, entrou no Mediterrâneo, com o seu grupo de ataque. [1] Esse grupo é composto pelo lança mísseis Normandy e pelos contratorpedeiros lança mísseis Arleigh Burke, Bulkeley, Forrest Sherman e Farragut, em breve mais duas, o Jasone e The Sullivans. Está agregada ao grupo de ataque do Truman, a fragata alemã Hessen. A frota, com 8.000 homens a bordo, tem um enorme poder de fogo.

Estão assim consideravelmente reforçadas, as Forças Navais USA para a Europa e África, com quartel general em Nápoles-Capodichino e a base da Sexta Frota, em Gaetta, às ordens do mesmo almirante (presentemente James Foggo), que comanda a Força Conjunta Aliada, em Lago Patria.

Faz parte do robustecimento geral das forças americanas na Europa, às ordens do mesmo general (actualmente Curtis Scaparrotti) que desempenha o cargo de Comandante Supremo Aliado na Europa.Numa audiência no Congresso, Scaparrotti explica o motivo desse fortalecimento. [2] O que apresenta é um verdadeiro cenário de guerra: acusa a Rússia de dirigir “uma campanha de instabilidade para mudar a ordem internacional, fragmentar a NATO e minar a liderança USA em todo o mundo”.

Na Europa, depois da “anexação ilegal da Crimeia pela Rússia e da sua destabilização da Ucrânia Oriental”, os Estados Unidos, que introduzem mais de 60.000 militares nos países europeus da NATO, reforçaram essa introdução com uma brigada blindada e uma brigada aérea de combate e estabeleceram depósitos de armamentos posicionados previamente, para enviar mais brigadas blindadas. Ao mesmo tempo, duplicaram a colocação dos seus navios de guerra no mar Negro.

Para aumentar as suas Forças na Europa, os Estados Unidos gastaram mais de 16 biliões de dólares em cinco anos, ao mesmo tempo incitaram os aliados europeus a aumentar as suas despesas militares em 46 biliões de dólares em três anos, para fortalecer a NATO contra a Rússia.

Isto faz parte da estratégia lançada por Washington em 2014 com o golpe da Praça Maidan e o consequente ataque aos russos da Ucrânia: fazer da Europa a primeira linha de uma nova Guerra Fria para fortalecer a influência dos EUA sobre os aliados e impedir a cooperação euro-asiática. Os ministros dos Negócios Estrangeiros da NATO reafirmaram o seu consentimento em 27 de Abril, preparando uma nova expansão da NATO para leste contra a Rússia, através da admissão da Bósnia-Herzegovina, Macedónia, Geórgia e Ucrânia.

Esta estratégia requer uma preparação adequada da opinião pública. Para este fim, Scaparrotti acusa a Rússia de “usar a provocação política, espalhando desinformação e minando as instituições democráticas”, mesmo em Itália. Anuncia, em seguida, que “os USA e a NATO opõem-se à desinformação russa com uma informação verdadeira e transparente”. Seguindo o seu exemplo, a Comissão Europeia anuncia uma série de medidas contra as ‘fake news’, acusando a Russia de usar “desinformação na sua estratégia de guerra”.

É de esperar que a NATO e a União Europeia censurem o que é publicado aqui, decretando que a frota americana no Mediterrâneo é uma ‘fake news’ espalhada pela Rússia na sua “estratégia de guerra”.

Manlio Dinucci

Texto original em italiano :

Flotta Usa con 1000 missili nel Mediterraneo

Tradução : Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

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Like so many others that watched the unfolding U.S.-led cruise missile strike on Syria in the early morning hours of April 14th, I was amazed by the brazen and ill-conceived nature of such an undertaking. Not only was the attack not based on any verifiable intelligence proving a chemical attack by Syrian governmental forces, the given reason for the justification of the attack, but it was extremely ill-advised from any military or political stand point. Was it imperial hubris on the part of the “leadership” of the sole “exceptional” nation, or a simple matter of poor military decision making that resulted in the approval of the strike?  A number of failures in executing the strike have come to light after the fact, not minor faults that have been magnified by Russian or Syrian government propaganda interests, but real and fundamental failures that have showcased real weaknesses in frontline U.S., French and U.K. tactical cooperation, as well as new weapon systems and their employment.

A number of analyses have appeared online over the past week that have showcased the utter failure of the French Navy’s performance in the strike and the inability of the sole VLS fired LACM in the French Navy arsenal, the MdCN , to launch reliably. Only one of three FREMM class multi-purpose frigates deployed was able to successfully fire cruise missiles within the agreed upon launch interval. The five Rafale carrier-borne strike aircraft taking part in the strike each carried 2 SCALP air-launched land attack cruise missiles, yet it was announced that only 9 SCALPs were fired against targets in Syria. Apparently, one missile malfunctioned and had to be dropped into the sea as not to present a danger to the returning aircraft upon landing.

Of even greater import than the obvious failure of the French Navy, was the official announcement by the Syrian military that they had recovered two U.S. cruise missiles that were relatively intact after the strikes were conducted. These two missiles were promptly delivered to the Russian military in Syria. This entire story may just be a propaganda or military psy-op. on the part of Russia, but if true, what could be the possible implications? If true, it would not be an extremely disastrous development for the U.S. if both of these cruise missiles were a more modern variant of the Tomahawk. This missile is based on technology developed in the 1970s and 1980s. The Tomahawk is a legacy U.S. weapon system. Although increasingly modernized over intervening decades, the Tomahawk is far from cutting edge as guided missiles are concerned. Such a development would definitely aid the Russian military and defense industry in not only furthering the development of Russian missile technology, but more importantly, in developing countermeasures to defeat U.S. guided munitions.

Very early after the strikes were conducted, the U.S. Air Force made it known that B1-B strategic bombers also took part in the strike. These bombers supposedly fired 19 Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missiles (JASSM) at targets in Syria. That is the official record.  It is acknowledged that each B1-B can carry 24 such missiles, so it is unclear how many bombers were employed in the April 14th strike, but at least one or more were utilized. The JASSM has been in development since the mid-1990s, and was not declared operational until February of this year. The Syria strike of April 14th would be the first documented use of this weapon system ever in warfare. The JASSM had a quite troubled developmental history, and like so many other U.S. weapons systems, ran considerably over budget. The JASSM is seen as the benchmark of the next generation of U.S. cruise missiles. Did one of these missiles fail and crash land in Syria? Does Russia now have a relatively intact JASSM missile to study and reverse-engineer? If so, this is without a doubt, the greatest U.S. military technology loss (not due to Chinese espionage at least) in almost a century. And the entire episode either stems from U.S. hubris and arrogance, or simple dereliction of duty in approving a missile strike operation that was likely to be marginally successful, and definitely not worth the risk.

The Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-Off Missile (JASSM)/AGM-158A

The Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-Off Missile (JASSM) began development in 1995 with the aim of designing and fielding the next generation of precision, autonomous, guided cruise missile for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. The Tomahawk (TLAM) land attack cruise missile proved to be very successful in attacking targets in the first Gulf War of 1991. Between this conflict and the start of the JASSM program, at least 357 TLAMs were fired on Iraq, and an additional 13 were used to target Serbian forces in Bosnia. In total, the U.S. armed forces have fired no less than 2,413 TLAMs on targets in seven different countries over the past 27 years.

Image on the right: BGM-109C Block III Tomahawk land attack cruise missile. The missile is equipped with a solid propellant rocket booster and discarding two-piece canister to facilitate launch.

Combat Debut of Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile: Did U.S. Air Force Lose High Tech Missile in Syria?

With the passage of time, TLAMs have been increasingly employed to engage targets where a robust, modern air-defense network is not present. The TLAM is a sub-sonic cruise missile with minimal inherent stealth characteristics. In conjunction with more high tech and stealthy guided munitions that can bear the brunt of targeting and eliminating high value command and control and critical air defense network control elements, the TLAM still has a significant part to play in future U.S. military operations. The JASSM was developed to be just such a high tech and stealthy guided munition. If the weapons prove successful, JASSMs fired from aircraft outside of an adversary’s airspace, and well out on engagement range of air defenses, could overwhelm and destroy key air-defense network radar and command and control assets, as well as the most capable enemy surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries.

Image on the left: JASSM being loaded into the internal bomb bay of a B-1B Lancer strategic bomber.

Combat Debut of Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile: Did U.S. Air Force Lose High Tech Missile in Syria?

Development of the JASSM was begun in 1995 by Lockheed Martin. Twelve years after the program had begun, the cruise missile had not achieved the level of success required, and an additional $68 million had to be allocated to help salvage the $3 billion program. The JASSM finally was able to pass the USAF Initial Operational Test and Evaluation program, and a contract was signed with Lockheed Martin in 2013 to provide the first batch of 2,000 missiles. A year later, the Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile Extended Range AG-158B (JASMM-ER) successfully passed testing and an order for a further 2,900 of these missiles was signed. The JASSM-ER extends the range of the base missile from 370 km. to 1,000 km. Both missiles are fitted with a 450kg. WDU-42/B penetrator warhead. The warhead is fitted with a penetrator fuse that can measure the density of the environment around it so it can determine when it has penetrated a hardened target. The JASSM is guided by an internal guidance system which is programmed prior to launch with targeting information. The missile’s flight path can be adjusted in flight via a jam-resistant GPS receiver. Once the missile enters its terminal targeting phase, it switches over to an infrared (IR) imaging seeker which is able to identify the target via parameters in its targeting memory. This targeting memory can be uploaded with up to eight different target identifications. Lockheed Martin claims accuracy within a three yard radius of target.

Image on the right: JASSM being successfully test fired from an F-15E Strike Eagle. The JASSM development parameters demanded that the next generation air launched cruise missile be compatible with multiple strike, maritime patrol and strategic bomber aircraft in the U.S. and NATO inventory.

Combat Debut of Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile: Did U.S. Air Force Lose High Tech Missile in Syria?

The JASSM has been purchased by the militaries of Poland, Finland and Australia. The missile was initially designed to be utilized by the U.S. B1-B strategic bomber; however, from the very start, it was envisioned that the missile be compatible with a broad spectrum of U.S. aerial platforms, including the F-16C/D, F-18C/D, F-15E, F-35 strike aircraft, as well as the B-2 and B-52 strategic bombers. The P-3 Poseidon may also be a candidate for use of a modified anti-ship cruise missile currently being developed using the JASSM-ER as its foundation. The Long Range Anti-Ship Missile AG-158C (LRASM) is currently being developed by Lockheed Martin as a next generation sea and air launched anti-ship cruise missile meant to defeat near-peer or peer naval targets. There is little doubt that the LRASM is being developed to counter the exceedingly modernized and capable warships developed by China and Russia over the past 25 years. The People’s Liberation Army Navy in particular, has been developing and commissioning extremely capable warships at a rate far exceeding any other navy in the world. As its attention continues to focus on militarization of the South China Sea and Chinese A2/AD, or access and area denial capability in this region, the U.S. Navy will have to develop a more viable means by which to engage and defeat exceedingly capable PLAN surface warfare platforms.

Image on the left: Computer generated rendition of a LRASM targeting a Russian Sovremenny Class destroyer.

Combat Debut of Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile: Did U.S. Air Force Lose High Tech Missile in Syria?

The AG-158 family of missiles have been developed as the benchmark of the next generation of cruise missiles for both the U.S. Air Force and Navy. Significant investment went into the development of this weapon system, and it goes without saying that the specifics behind its design and how it functions must remain unknown to any prospective adversaries, with Russia and China paramount among them. In light of the importance of keeping the specifics of this new technology secret, was it truly a good idea to use JASSM missiles in a pointless assault against Syrian government targets on April 14th? A simple and logical cost benefit analysis would conclude that it was not a wise decision.

It is quite obvious to anyone that has ever followed proxy conflicts, that all sides invested in the conflict will use such proxy wars as an advanced training ground for their own weapon systems. There is no doubt that Russia has been doing this in Syria for years now; however, they have been quite reserved in their willingness to use their most secretive and game-changing assets. The S-300 and S-400 systems have not been used, nor have the most state of the art electronic warfare (EW) systems. They have been deployed in Syria for sure, but Russia has wisely decided not to use these systems unless absolutely necessary. As soon as these weapons are used, the U.S., NATO and Israel will be able to gain very real data on how they work, especially from the standpoint of EW. Russia will only risk using these systems, and thus “showing their hand” if they have no other options.

Combat Debut of Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile: Did U.S. Air Force Lose High Tech Missile in Syria?

Satellite images of the Him Shinshar “Chemical Weapons storage facility” before and after the strike. Were JASMMs used to target these structures?

The Trump administration decided to approve a strike plan that included the employment of the JASSM, which had only become operational months before. Whether the decision was made to ensure that the Syrian air-defense network’s ability to interdict and defeat the attack would be minimized by using JASSM missiles is questionable. It was disclosed that only 19 of the missiles were used, accounting for 18% of the cruise missiles used. These were fired from two B-1B bombers. Each of these aircraft can carry 24 JASSMs each. The majority of missiles employed in the attack were the TLAM, fired from U.S. Navy destroyers and a Virginia Class attack submarine. Also, one target alone, the Barzah Research and Development Center, were allegedly saturated by 76 missiles. Use of the JASSM in such an attack would be pointless, as the cruise missile was designed to target and destroy targets with such effectiveness that only one missile would be necessary. This concept is referred to as Missile Mission Effectiveness (MME), and the JASSM was expected to have an MME value of one. What would be the point of targeting a handful of unhardened targets with multiple JASSMs? Two of the three main facilities said to have been targeted and destroyed in the attack was a munitions storage facility and “CW bunker” located in Him Shinshar near the city of Homs. It is impossible to tell from the satellite imagery provided by the U.S. as proof of the effectiveness of the attack, or if these were hardened targets or not. Even if they were, why target them with 19 missiles that each possess an MME = 1?

As it becomes clear with each passing day that there was no chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the Syrian government on civilians in East Ghouta, the questionable judgement of using the JASSM in the April 14th strike becomes even more glaring. Why risk the possible recovery of a JASSM, whether largely intact or not, in perpetrating an attack that was not only unnecessary, but one based on a fabrication? Clearly the U.S. intelligence apparatus has greater information collecting means than just monitoring opposition linked Twitter accounts. Was the possible loss of a JASSM and its delivery to Russia worth “success” in a meaningless attack that would yield no real, material benefit? The answer is an unequivocal no.

The Russian M.O.D. was quick to verify claims made by the Syrian military that they had handed over two U.S. cruise missiles recovered largely intact, but they did not specify any details. Either this is simply a bluff, or Russia does in fact have these missiles now. Of added significance is the fact that the Russian M.O.D. has yet to specify what type of missiles were recovered, and I would bet that this information is not forthcoming. They will keep the U.S. leadership guessing and fearing that they are currently inspecting one of their newest and most advanced guided missiles, even if they are not. An intact TLAM would be of obvious benefit to the Russian defense industry, but an intact JASSM would be a windfall.  Decades of development and tens of billions of dollars could be thwarted in just a few short years, forcing the U.S. defense industry to work to improve upon and safeguard what they saw as the foundation of both air and sea launched cruise missiles guaranteeing U.S. power preeminence through the next fifty years.

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Brian Kalman is a management professional in the marine transportation industry. He was an officer in the US Navy for eleven years.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Trump Breaks Landmark Iran Nuclear Deal

May 9th, 2018 by Jamie Merrill

Donald Trump has announced that the US will withdraw from the landmark Iran nuclear deal, in the most significant foreign policy move of his presidency so far.

In a blow to US allies who support the deal, Trump said:

“I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, and in a few moments I will sign a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating US nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime.”

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, he called the Iran deal “defective” and said that the US will be “instituting the highest levels of economic sanctions” against Iran.

Pulling out of the deal was a key Trump campaign promise and he has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the accord, which was signed during Barack Obama’s presidency after five years of diplomatic efforts.

Trump used his White House speech to attack the Obama-era deal, saying it was failing to protect the US and its allies from the “lunacy of an Iranian nuclear bomb”.

He said that the “decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement” would allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon in a short period of time, and that failure to act would prompt a “nuclear arms race in the Middle East”.

He did not mention that Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, with more than 100 warheads according to US researchers, although it neither confirms nor denies possessing atomic weapons.

The president said he made the decision after consulting with US allies, despite frantic diplomatic efforts from European allies to stick to the deal.

He added that America would “not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail” and will not allow “a regime that chants ‘Death to America'” access to nuclear weapons.

He also said that

“the United States no longer makes empty threats. When I make promises, I keep them.”

Following Trump’s speech, the US Treasury said that it would reimpose a wide array of Iran-related sanctions after the expiry of 90- and 180-day wind-down periods, including sanctions aimed at the country’s oil sector and transactions with its central bank.

In a statement on its website, the Treasury said sanctions relating to aircraft exports to Iran, the country’s metals trade and any efforts by Tehran to acquire US dollars will also be reimposed.

Iran activity in Syria?

Trump’s speech, in which he attacked Iran for its intervention in Yemen and Syria, came minutes after the Israeli military told its civilians in the Golan Heights to prepare their bomb shelters after troops allegedly noticed “irregularly activity of Iranian forces in Syria”.

The US leader started his speech by accusing “Iran and its proxies” of bombing American embassies, murdering hundreds of American service members and torturing American civilians, in comments that struck a similar tone to remarks by President George W Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003.

He also accused the Iranian government of “plundering the wealth” of its people, and supporting terrorist groups including al-Qaeda.

The move to violate the deal and reinstate all sanctions on Tehran has come under fierce opposition from the international community.

Trump ignored warnings from Germany, France and the UK – all parties to the deal alongside Russia and China – that a US withdrawal will undo years of work that has kept nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands.

It has already been met with dismay in Tehran and Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron said:

“France, Germany, and the UK regret the US decision to leave the JCPOA. The nuclear non-proliferation regime is at stake.”

Trump’s move comes despite a burst of last-minute diplomacy, including a visit by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a call from Macron.

European diplomats fear Trump’s move has no long-term strategy, and that the US president is pandering to Iran hawks in his administration.

The announcement means that the US is now on a path to abandoning the deal, which was enshrined in international law in a 2015 UN Security Council resolution.

The US will now be in breach of the agreement by reintroducing sanctions on Iran, and stands isolated among its allies.

‘A great loss to arms control’

The deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA), requires Iran to give up its stock of 20 percent enriched uranium, halt production and limit research of new nuclear centrifuges, and allow extensive international inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA).

In announcing the withdrawal, Trump also ignored a warning from IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, who said that in Iran his agency had the world’s most robust nuclear verification regime. If the deal failed, it would be “a great loss,” he added.

Ben Rhodes, a former advisor to President Obama, said

Trump was “blowing up” the deal with “no plans for what comes next, no support from our closest European allies, Russia or China”.

Despite the US pull-out, diplomats in European capitals are hoping to stick with the deal in some form, but there are doubts over whether this is a practical option.

They could invoke a 100-day dispute mechanism inside the deal in an attempt to prevent its immediate collapse.

Trump, however, is now surrounded by fierce critics of the deal, including John Bolton, his new national security advisor, and any European move is likely to be met with displeasure in Washington.

Israel and Saudi Arabia, both key US allies in the region, have also lobbied hard against the deal, claiming security concerns and a sunset clause that allows Iran to restart nuclear enrichment once the deal ends in 2025. Both welcomed Trump’s announcement on Tuesday.

Other parties to the deal, including China, have pointed out that the IAEA has verified Iran’s compliance with the accord on no fewer than 10 occasions, and that the deal has put into place strict monitoring and verification measures on the Iran nuclear programme.

Some sanctions take effect after a 90-day “wind-down” period ending on 6 August, and the rest, most notably on the petroleum sector, after a 180-day “wind-down period” ending on 4 November.

Both deadlines are meant to give firms and other entities time in which to conclude trade and other business activities with or in Iran, the US Treasury Department said on Tuesday.

90-day and 180-day windows

The United States will reimpose sanctions on the purchase or acquisition of US dollars by the Iranian government, Iran’s trade in gold and precious metals, and on the direct and indirect sale, supply and transfer to or from Iran of graphite, raw or semi-finished metals, coal and industrial-related software.

When the 90-day period expires, sanctions also will be reapplied to the importation into the United States of carpets and foodstuffs made in Iran, and on certain related financial transactions.

On 4 November, sanctions will be reinstated on Iran’s energy sector and on the provision of insurance or underwriting services.

They also will be reapplied to petroleum-related transactions, including purchases of Iranian oil, petroleum products or petrochemical products, with the government-owned National Iranian Oil Company and other firms, and on Iran’s shipping and shipbuilding sectors.

Foreign financial institutions will face sanctions for transactions with the Central Bank of Iran or other Iranian financial institutions designated under legislation passed by Congress in 2012.

With the expiration of the 180-day period, the United States will reimpose sanctions “as appropriate” on individuals who were on US blacklists on 16 January 2016, the date when most sanctions on Iran were suspended under the nuclear deal.

Rouhani faces attack from hardliners

It will also bring political difficulties for Rouhani, a moderate cleric who pushed the deal as a way to boost the country’s economy.

He has staked much of his political credibility on the deal – which hasn’t brought Iran the economic benefits it had hoped for – and its collapse could give his hardline opponents more power, observers say.

Speaking before Trump’s speech, Iranian Revolutionary Guard deputy commander Hossein Salami issued a defiant statement, reported the Fars news agency.

“Our nation is not afraid of US sanctions or military attack.

“Our enemies including America, the Zionist regime and the allies in the region should know that Iran has prepared for the worst scenarios and threats.”

Trump’s decision is also likely to be closely monitored across the Middle East, where a number of regional powers are considering whether to push forward with their own civil nuclear programmes.

Also ahead of Trump’s speech, Jake Sullivan, a former chief foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton, said:

“The only reason POTUS has to walk away from the deal right now, is because it was negotiated by President Obama…that’s no reason for a commander-in-chief to play around with American national security.”

Summary

  • President Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran
  • Trump is reinstating sanctions on Iran, but didn’t explain how that will play out
  • The deal “should have never never been made,” the president says
  • Trump says the Iran deal negotiated by the Obama administration failed to protect America’s national security, but he didn’t give any examples
  • Iran’s ballistic missile program feature strongly in Trump’s remarks, even though this activity wasn’t covered under the original agreement
  • Trump cited Iran’s involvement in other regional conflicts, including Yemen and Syria
  • While his statement started out using the harshest possible language to describe the Iranian regime, he softened his tone to talk about the Iranian people
  • The president cited “evidence” from Israel to back his claims on Iran’s activity
  • Trump compared his actions today to the ongoing negotiations with North Korea to bring an end to that country’s nuclear program
  • Rouhani, commenting on Trump’s announcement, says Iran can achieve benefits of the JCPOA with five countries. He said that the country is prepared for enrichment IF NEEDED in three weeks
  • “The EU is determined to act in accordance with its security interests and to protect its economic investments” in Iran, EU foreign policy chief Mogherini said. The bloc signals it won’t shy away from a showdown with Trump
  • Former US President Barack Obama called Trump’s decision “so misguided.”
  • UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres calls on other nations to preserve Iran deal.

Update 6: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that he is “deeply concerned by today’s announcement that the US will be withdrawing” from the Iran deal.

Guterres said controversies relating to the agreement should be resolved within its mechanism for handling disagreements, and that “issues not directly related to the JCPOA should be addressed without prejudice to preserving the agreement.”

He also called on the deal’s remaining partners to work together to preserve the accord.

Read the full statement below:

I am deeply concerned by today’s announcement that the United States will be withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and will begin reinstating US sanctions.

I have consistently reiterated that the JCPOA represents a major achievement in nuclear non-proliferation and diplomacy and has contributed to regional and international peace and security.

It is essential that all concerns regarding the implementation of the Plan be addressed through the mechanisms established in the JCPOA. Issues not directly related to the JCPOA should be addressed without prejudice to preserving the agreement and its accomplishments.

I call on other JCPOA participants to abide fully by their respective commitments under the JCPOA and on all other Member States to support this agreement.

* * *

Update 5: Former President Barack Obama has issued a statement about President Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 JCPOA, one of his signature foreign policy accomplishments.

And as one might expect, he’s not happy.

Obama slammed the decision as “so misguided” and said that “walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on America’s closest allies, and an agreement that our country’s leading diplomats, scientists, and intelligence professionals negotiated.”

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Update 4: Iranian President Rouhani appeared State TV blasting Trump, saying that

“Iran complies with its commitments, US has never complied.”

Furthermore, Rouhani added that from now on, “JCPOA is between Iran and 5 counties only.”

Rouhani confirmed that currency controls and reforms are being undertaken to be ready for the decision, and added thatTehran is ready to resume its nuclear enrichment work within 3 weeks after holding talks with the European members of the deal.

Nancy Pelosi backs Rouhani:

Today is a sad day for America’s global leadership.  The Trump Administration’s dangerous & impulsive action is no substitute for real global leadership.

Saudi Arabia welcomed President Donald Trump’s decision on Tuesday to withdraw the United States from the international nuclear agreement with Iran and to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran.

“Iran used economic gains from the lifting of sanctions to continue its activities to destablise the region, particularly by developing ballistic missiles and supporting terrorist groups in the region,” according to a statement carried on Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television.

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally, has been at loggerheads with Shi’ite Iran for decades, and the countries have fought a long-running proxy war in the Middle East.

*  *  *

Update 3: US Treasury announces that it will begin the process of implementing 90- and 180-day wind-down periods for activities involving Iran that were consistent with sanctions relief. At the end of that period, all applicable sanctions will come back into effect.

Today President Donald J. Trump announced his decision to cease the United States’ participation in the JCPOA and begin reimposing U.S. nuclear-related sanctions on the Iranian regime. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is taking immediate action to implement the President’s decision. Sanctions will be reimposed subject to certain 90 day and 180 day wind-down periods. At the conclusion of the wind-down periods, the applicable sanctions will come back into full effect. This includes actions under both our primary and secondary sanctions authorities. OFAC posted today to its website frequently asked questions (FAQs) that provide guidance on the sanctions that are to be re-imposed and the relevant wind-down periods.

Below is a statement from Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin in response to the President’s decision:

“President Trump has been consistent and clear that this Administration is resolved to addressing the totality of Iran’s destabilizing activities. We will continue to work with our allies to build an agreement that is truly in the best interest of our long-term national security. The United States will cut off the IRGC’s access to capital to fund Iranian malign activity, including its status as the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, its use of ballistic missiles against our allies, its support for the brutal Assad regime in Syria, its human rights violations against its own people, and its abuses of the international financial system.”

OFAC updated its website today to provide guidance, including new FAQs

The Treasury Department’s FAQ on sanctions is very blunt:

Q: Will the United States resume efforts to reduce Iran’s crude oil sales?

A: Yes.

However, it appears it is very unclear just what sanction-specifics are…

*  *  *

Update 2: After initially spiking, oil is now rapidly fading the entire move.

Meanwhile, at least Israel is delighted by the development:

  • NETANYAHU SAYS DEAL GAVE IRAN BILLIONS TO FUND TERROR
  • NETANYAHU  CALLS ON INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO STOP THE BAD DEAL

Statement from House Speaker Paul Ryan:

“From the beginning, the Obama-era Iran Deal was deeply flawed. Iran’s hostile actions since its signing have only reaffirmed that it remains dedicated to sowing instability in the region. The president’s announcement today is a strong statement that we can and must do better. I have always believed the best course of action is to fix the deficiencies in the agreement. It is unfortunate that we could not reach an understanding with our European partners on a way to do that, but I am grateful to them for working with the United States toward that goal. The president is right to insist that we hold Iran accountable both today and for the long-term. There will now be an implementation period for applying sanctions on Iran. During that time, it is my hope that the United States will continue to work with our allies to achieve consensus on addressing a range of destabilizing Iranian behavior—both nuclear and non-nuclear.”

The full White House fact sheet on ending the “Unacceptable” Iran deal can be found here, some excerpts below:

The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.

President Donald J. Trump

PROTECTING AMERICA FROM A BAD DEAL: President Donald J. Trump is terminating the United States’ participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and re-imposing sanctions lifted under the deal.

  • President Trump is terminating United States participation in the JCPOA, as it failed to protect America’s national security interests.
  • The JCPOA enriched the Iranian regime and enabled its malign behavior, while at best delaying its ability to pursue nuclear weapons and allowing it to preserve nuclear research and development.
  • The President has directed his Administration to immediately begin the process of re-imposing sanctions related to the JCPOA.
  • The re-imposed sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy, such as its energy, petrochemical, and financial sectors.
    • Those doing business in Iran will be provided a period of time to allow them to wind down operations in or business involving Iran.
  • Those who fail to wind down such activities with Iran by the end of the period will risk severe consequences.
  • United States withdrawal from the JCPOA will pressure the Iranian regime to alter its course of malign activities and ensure that Iranian bad acts are no longer rewarded.  As a result, both Iran and its regional proxies will be put on notice.  As importantly, this step will help ensure global funds stop flowing towards illicit terrorist and nuclear activities.

IRAN’S BAD FAITH AND BAD ACTIONS: Iran negotiated the JCPOA in bad faith, and the deal gave the Iranian regime too much in exchange for too little.

  • Intelligence recently released by Israel provides compelling details about Iran’s past secret efforts to develop nuclear weapons, which it lied about for years.
    • The intelligence further demonstrates that the Iranian regime did not come clean about its nuclear weapons activity, and that it entered the JCPOA in bad faith.
  • The JCPOA failed to deal with the threat of Iran’s missile program and did not include a strong enough mechanism for inspections and verification.
  • The JCPOA foolishly gave the Iranian regime a windfall of cash and access to the international financial system for trade and investment.
    • Instead of using the money from the JCPOA to support the Iranian people at home, the regime has instead funded a military buildup and continues to fund its terrorist proxies, such as Hizballah and Hamas.
    • Iran violated the laws and regulations of European countries to counterfeit the currency of its neighbor, Yemen, to support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force’s destabilizing activities.

More here

Shortly after Trump’s announcement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued the following statement:

* * *

Update: President Trump has confirmed the US withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal and will be instituting the highest level of sanctions against Iran, adding that any nation that aids Iran will also be sanctioned.

  • TRUMP WARNS OF BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN EVER IF IRAN PURSUES NUKES
  • TRUMP SAYS IRAN’S LEADERS WILL `WANT TO MAKE’ NEW NUCLEAR DEAL

Trump stated that he has decided against continuing to waive sanctions as laid out in the 2015 JCPOA pact, i.e. Nuclear Deal, between the United States, Iran, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and China. The deal provided Tehran billions in sanctions relief in exchange for curbing its nuclear program.

International inspectors and the deal’s signatories, including U.S. officials, have said Iran continues to comply with the terms of the agreement, but Trump has long derided the Obama-era accord as the “worst deal ever negotiated.” Trump had kept the deal alive by waiving sanctions several times since taking office. However, when the president last renewed the waivers in January, he warned he would not do so again unless European allies agreed to “fix” the nuclear deal.

At the end of April, as the waiver deadline approached, Europeans engaged in a flurry of activity to convince Trump to remain in the pact. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson all visited the United States to make their case; however the deal’s international critics were also active, and none more so than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last week  delivered a speech in which he declared “Iran lied” about its nuclear intentions.

Meanwhile, supporters of the deal say the United States withdrawing gives Iran an excuse to restart its nuclear program, effectively killing the pact; at the same time it permits Israel to launch a preemptive attack claiming Iran will now resume building nukes.

Not surprisingly, both France and Germany have warned the end of the deal could mean a Middle East war.

Still, experts have said Iran is likely to stay in the deal even without the United States if it can continue getting benefits from the accord by being able to do business with European companies. Although with Trump escalating sanctions against Iran, this remains to be seen.

In a sign that Iran is not ready to walk away from the deal, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday ahead of Trump’s announcement that Iran wants to keep “working with the world and constructive engagement with the world” adding that “It is possible that we will face some problems for two or three months, but we will pass through this.”

And it seems CNN was once again ‘fake news’ as WTI prices spike on the Trump confirmation.

Gold also spiked, but is fading lower now.

*  *  *

While President Trump is expected to announce that he will not continue sanctions relief for Iran, a major step toward ending the 2015 nuclear pact he calls the “worst deal ever,” this morning’s barrage of fake news has left markets and onlookers confused and looking for clarification.

As The Hill reports, the announcement follows weeks of furious lobbying by European allies who sought to convince Trump to remain in the deal.

That should not be surprising since The EU has the most to lose if the deal is scuppered..

Infographic: Iran Deal: The EU Has The Most To Lose | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

But each one left the U.S. pessimistic about the deal’s future.

As we detailed earlier, while expectations are for Trump to withdraw from the deal, his speech will be all about the nuance: how will the president frame the US exit, and whether Iran will be allowed to continue its oil exports after the US is no longer a participant in the JCPOA.

One preview of what Trump’s speech may look like comes from Citi’s head of commodity research, Ed Morse, who in a Bloomberg interview this morning said that President Trump will likely give European governments “a chance to step up what they’ve already offered in terms of tightening sanctions”on Iran.

The tighter sanctions would relate to issues left out of the 2015 nuclear accord, such as Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, terrorist financing, Hezbollah, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp.

“The president’s going to say something that he’s going to move in a certain direction, that he’s ready to re-impose sanctions” predicted Morse, who added that Trump will “come out strong, and say the Europeans are stepping up to the table and we’ve got to do more.”

Morse also said that it’s possible OPEC will meet and decide to increase output to fill gap left by Iran, although with the price of Brent surging to the revised Saudi target of $80, it is unlikely that OPEC will interfere with the recent favorable equilibrium.

Finally, with everyone throwing their 2 cents on what the price impact of today’s deal collapse could be, Morse said that the Iranian political risk in oil price is about $5/bbl, however the recently bearish analysts said that any sell-off would be “a lot more” than that.

So, will he? Or won’t he? (Trump is due to speak at 1400ET)

The new B61-12 nuclear bomb – which the US is preparing to send to Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland and probably other European countries – is now in its final stages of development.

This was announced by General Jack Weinstein, deputy chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, responsible for nuclear operations, speaking on May 1 at a symposium of the Air Force Association in Washington, in front of a select audience of senior officers and military industry executives.

“The program is doing extremely well,” the general noted with satisfaction, specifying that “we have already conducted 26 engineering, development, and guided flight tests of the B61-12.”

The program provides for the production of about 500 B61-12’s, beginning in 2020, for a cost of approximately 10 billion dollars. (This means that each bomb will cost twice what it would cost if it were built entirely of gold).

Source: PandoraTV

The many components of the B61-12 are designed in the Sandia National Laboratories of Los Alamos, Albuquerque and Livermore (in New Mexico and California), and produced in a series of plants in Missouri, Texas, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The bomb is tested (without nuclear charge) in the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.

The B61-12 has entirely new “qualities” compared to the current B61 deployed in Italy and other European countries – a nuclear warhead with four selectable power options; a flight system that guides it with precision onto the target; the ability to penetrate into the subsoil, even through reinforced concrete, and explode at depth.

The greater precision and the penetrating ability make the new bomb suitable for attacking command-center bunkers , so as to “decapitate” the enemy country. A 50 kt B61-12 (equivalent to 50 thousand tons of TNT, three times the Hiroshima bomb) that explodes underground has the same destructive potential as a nuclear bomb of over one megaton (one million tons of TNT) that explodes on the surface.

The B61-12 can be dropped from the US F-16C/D fighters deployed in Aviano, and from the Italian PA-200 Tornados deployed in Ghedi. But the new F-35A fighters are needed to exploit all the capabilities of the B61-12 (especially its guidance system). This involves the solution of other technical problems, which are added to the numerous problems that occurred with the F-35 program, in which Italy participates as a second-level partner.

The complex software of the fighter, which has been modified over 30 times so far, requires still further updates. Modification of the 12 F-35’s will cost Italy approximately 400 million Euros, which must be added to the still unassessed sums (estimated at 13-16 billion Euros) for the purchase of 90 fighters and their continuous modernization. This money will be State-funded (i.e. using our money), while the money from the production of the F-35 will end up in the coffers of the military industries.

The B61-12 nuclear bomb and the F-35 fighter, which Italy receives from the US, are therefore part of a single “parcel bomb” that will blow up in our faces. Italy will be exposed to further dangers as a forward base for the US nuclear strategy against Russia and other countries.

There is only one way to avoid this:

  • by asking the US, on the basis of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to remove all nuclear weapons from our territory;
  • by refusing to provide pilots and nuclear attack fighter-bombers to the Pentagon in the framework of NATO;
  • by exiting the NATO Planning Group;
  • by adhering to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Is there anyone, in the political world, willing to stop practising ostrich politics?

*

This article was originally published on Il Manifesto.

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

The United States is so far doing virtually no trade with Iran anyway. In 2017 total US exports to Iran were just 138 million dollars, and total imports a mere 63 million dollars, figures entirely insignificant to the US economy. By contrast, for the EU as a whole imports and exports to Iran were each a very much more substantial 8 billion dollars in 2017 and projected to rise to over 10 billion dollars in 2018.

There is one very significant US deal in the pipeline, for sale of Boeing aircraft, worth $18 billion dollars. It will now be cancelled.

Which brings us to the crux of the argument. Can America make its will hold? Airbus also has orders from Iran of over US$20 billion, and it is assumed those orders will be stopped too, because Airbus planes contain parts and technology licensed from the US. It is possible, but unlikely, that the US could grant a waiver to Airbus – highly unlikely because Boeing would be furious.

Now even a $20 billion order is probably in itself not quite big enough for Airbus to redevelop aircraft to be built without the US parts or technology (which constitute about 8% of the cost of an airbus). But the loss of a $20 billion order on such capricious grounds is certainly big enough for Airbus to look to future long term R & D to develop aircraft not vulnerable to US content blocking. And if Iran were to dangle the Boeing order towards Airbus too, a $38 billion order is certainly big enough for Airbus to think about what adaptations may be possible on a timescale of years not decades.

Read across from aircraft to many other industries. In seeking to impose unilateral sanctions against the express wishes of its “old” European allies, the USA is betting that it has sufficient global economic power, in alliance with its “new” Israeli and Saudi allies, to force the Europeans to bend to its will. This is plainly a very rash act of global geopolitics. It is perhaps an even more rash economic gamble.

We are yet to see the detail, but by all precedent Trump’s Iran sanctions will also sanction third country companies which trade with Iran, at the least through attacking their transactions through US financial institutions and by sanctioning their US affiliates. But at a time when US share of the world economy and world trade is steadily shrinking, this encouragement to European and Asian companies to firewall and minimise contact with the US is most unlikely to be long term beneficial to the US. In particular, in a period where it is already obvious that the years of the US dollar’s undisputed dominance as the world currency of reference are drawing to a close, the incentive to employ non-US linked means of financial transaction will add to an already highly significant global trend.

In short, if the US fails to prevent Europe and Asia’s burgeoning trade with Iran – and I think they will fail – this moment will be seen by historians as a key marker in US decline as a world power.

I have chosen not to focus on the more startling short term dangers of war in the Middle East, and the folly of encouraging Saudi Arabia and Israel in their promotion of sustained violence against Iranian interests throughout the region, as I have very written extensively on that subject. But the feeling of empowerment Trump will have given to his fellow sociopaths Netanyahu and Mohammed Bin Salman bodes very ill indeed for the world at present.

I shall be most surprised if we do not see increased US/Israeli/Saudi sponsored jihadist attacks in Syria, and in Lebanon following Hezbollah’s new national electoral victory. Hezbollah’s democratic advance has stunned and infuriated the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia but been reported very sparsely in the MSM, as it very much goes against the neo-con narrative. It does not alter the positions of President or Prime Minister, constitutionally allocated by religion, but it does increase Hezbollah’s power in the Lebanese state, and thus Iranian influence.

Iran is a difficult country to predict. I hope they will stick to the agreement and wait to see how Europe is able to adapt, before taking any rash decisions. They face, however, not only the provocation of Trump but the probability of a renewed wave of anti-Shia violence from Pakistan to Lebanon, designed to provoke Iran into reaction. These will be a tense few weeks. I do not think even Netanyahu is crazy enough to launch an early air strike on Iran itself, but I would not willingly bet my life on it.

The problem is, with Russia committed to holding a military balance in the Middle East, all of us are betting our lives on it.

Press Freedom in Britain: Getting Darker

May 9th, 2018 by Katharine Quarmby

Britain leads the way in Europe – but not in a good way. It has a worse record on press freedom than all other European nation states except Italy, trailing others such as Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. 

In the 2018 World Press Freedom Index, an annual report, by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Britain was judged to have been in 40th place. This compared to Norway and Sweden at the top of the index, with the UK coming in below Trinidad and Tobago and only just ahead of Taiwan. The United States is also trailing, to the dismay of American media organisations, coming in at 45 on the list (with North Korea in bottom place, at 180).

Britain’s ranking, from the World Press Freedom Index 2018

RSF has drawn attention to several issues that may have contributed to Britain’s place in the ranking. It says: “A continued heavy-handed approach towards the press (often in the name of national security) has resulted in the UK keeping its status as one of the worst-ranked Western European countries in the World Press Freedom Index.”

It points, in particular, to online threats against journalists, many of them women, proposed changes to the Official Secrets Act, repeated attempts to impose state-backed press regulation – and a legal action by the law firm, Appleby, against the Guardian and the BBC, for work on the Paradise Papers. The UK is the only place where such proceedings have started in the wake of international revelations over tax avoidance.

The UK’s poor ranking has drawn reactions from freedom of expression organisations.

“It’s depressing that the UK has maintained its recent low ranking in the world press freedom index”, said Jodie Ginsberg, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, a body campaigning for freedom of expression. She added: “The environment for press freedom is declining globally and we need to see leaders speak out more in its defence. Instead we see the likes of Donald Trump smearing anyone who criticises him as a peddler of ‘fake news’. This does little to promote the central value of press freedom, as a cornerstone of democracy, around the world – and in fact emboldens those in positions of power everywhere to suppress further journalists and journalism.”

So what does this mean for us, as journalists working in the public interest? As Index on Censorship says, about its project to map media freedom, journalists and media workers are confronting relentless pressure simply for doing their job.

A straw poll of journalists in the Bureau itself demonstrates that restrictions on press freedom have impacted on work and reduced our capacity to tell stories that matter, both in the UK and abroad.

My own work has been affected, in the UK and in Iran, where family members live. One of my books, Hear My Cry, on “honour” violence affecting a British-Yemen citizen, has had to be published elsewhere in the EU, as potential publishers here were concerned about the weak safeguards for public interest journalism here under the Defamation Act.

Image on the right: Quarmby family photograph, of the journalist and birth father in Iran in 2007

When I visited family in Iran in 2007, under the Ahmadinejad regime, I travelled to the country on a tourist visa, rather than a journalist visa, as I knew that I could then meet family members and friends without a minder present. As my Iranian birth father, like many other naval officers, had been imprisoned after the Revolution (pictured, but blurred for safety, below) it would have been risky for him to meet me if I was under constant surveillance. When I returned to the UK, I did write and broadcast on my experiences in Iran. But I am aware that it would be problematic to go back now, as the current regime targets journalists – and their families, if they have Iranian connections. I would be putting myself and my Iranian birth family at risk. Iran was ranked at 164 on this year’s press freedom list.

The Bureau itself, with other organisations supporting freedom of expression, currently has a case at the European Court of Human Rights, about which our managing editor, Rachel Oldroyd,has written. The Bureau brought the case in 2014, with the aim of forcing the government to provide adequate protections and safeguards for journalists’ privileged communications. Without these protections, we argued, the government’s actions were a direct threat to a free press and indirectly would have a chilling effect on whistleblowers seeking to expose wrongdoing. In November 2017 the arguments were made in a rare aural hearing at the court, combined with two other cases brought by a group of human rights organisations including Amnesty International, Privacy International and Liberty. The case is currently being considered.

Bureau managing editor Rachel Oldroyd, with Rosa Curling from Leigh Day and counsel Conor McCarthy, of Monckton Chambers, at the ECHR

Jessica Purkiss, one of the Bureau’s foreign affairs reporters, has also faced difficulties. She says:

“While reporting on issues in Palestine I was deported by the Israeli authorities. Israel controls the borders to Palestine so entrance depends on their approval. The security personnel were clear to tell me that I was not being deported for being a journalist but for taking a photo of a Palestinian protest – something that was not illegal to my knowledge – which they had obtained by going through my computer. After a night in a detention cell, I was escorted onto a plane back to the UK and my passport withheld until I landed on British soil. I have been banned from Israel, and therefore from visiting Palestine, for ten years.”

She has also faced problems in Palestine:

“During my time in Palestine I wrote a story about the poor treatment of teenagers arrested by the Palestinian Authority. I received a call from their press office informing me that if I didn’t provide the names and addresses of the children, I could face charges of withholding evidence.”

Israel was ranked at 87 on this year’s list and Palestine at 134.

Meirion Jones, our investigations editor, has also encountered difficulties in his long career in journalism.

Just this week one of the British fraudsters who sold fake bomb detectors to Iraq was given two more years prison time under proceeds of crime legislation because he wouldn’t surrender some of the millions of pounds he made from his crime.

The fraud, which probably cost the lives of 2,000 Iraqis who were blown up after the detectors failed to detect explosives, was uncovered by a team led by the Bureau’s Investigations Editor Meirion Jones when he was at BBC Newsnight (pictured above with a fake detector). But Jones believes a major reason that the fraudsters set up business in the UK was because the libel laws made it so difficult to expose them: “One of the bogus bomb detector makers hired extremely expensive lawyers to threaten to sue us for libel if we said the detectors were fake”, he said.

He also did the original investigation into the paedophile Jimmy Savile (image on the left):

“Savile was protected for years by British libel law and lawyers, including the late George Carman QC. Many in the British press knew or suspected Savile was a paedophile for decades but were too afraid of being sued for millions to tell the truth – we need a US First Amendment style law which guarantees freedom of the press.”

Our Afghan expert, Payenda Sargand, faced an uncomfortable experience in Dubai.

“I was detained for taking the photo of a plain commercial building in Dubai in 2003. The police detained me and confiscated my camera after they spotted me getting ready to take a photo of Emirates Towers [a building complex in Dubai]. I explained to them that I was a journalist and I had not yet even taken a picture of the towers. Their argument was that it was illegal to take pictures of the complex. They took me to a police station and kept me for over eight hours, under a freezing air conditioner. Their behaviour was unprofessional and rude. I have tried to find out more about this ever since. I believe the only reason for my detention was to do with the fact that I am Afghan. It didn’t matter that I was a journalist.”

The United Arab Emirates is 128 on the World Ranking.

Another Bureau journalist, whose experience is anonymised to protect the source, had problems in Vietnam (ranked this year at 175).

“While trying to partner on a sensitive subject I was assigned a press minder. On the one day I tried to report on my own I received an anonymous text message, warning me that the police would be waiting for me if I travelled to meet my source. In fear for my source I cancelled the meeting and managed to get the story another way.”

Most chillingly, of course, is the fact that journalists die every year because of their work in war-zones, unmasking corruption and speaking truth to power, most recently the Cypriot journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia. Journalism is not a crime – but reading the World Press Freedom Index this year, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is all too often seen as one.

*

Katharine Quarmby has years of experience as a journalist and writer, specialising in investigative and campaigning journalism.

Chinese President Xi Jinping held a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Dalian, China on Monday and Tuesday.

The two leaders, along with several officials from each country, held a luncheon and discussed pressing issues on China-North Korea relations.

According to China’s Xinhua News Agency, the leaders’ discussion focused on regional peaceeconomic development and strategies for realizing long-lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Xi said he “speaks highly” of the two country’s growing relations.

The meeting was the second in less than two months; late last March the two leaders held a meeting in Beijing, preceding the upcoming landmark intra-Korea summit between Kim and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in.

Following the meeting, Xi said that “both China and the DPRK (North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) are socialist countries, and their bilateral relations are of major strategic significance,” as quoted by Xinhua.

Kim also praised his relationship with Xi as having a “comradely trust” and said that he looks forward to continuing to work together.

Kim also reportedly briefed Xi on the latest developments and decisions in the Workers Party of Korea (WPK), North Korea’s ruling party. Xi said after the meeting that the most recent congress of the WPK’s Central Committee had developed a strategy of focusing on “socialist economic construction,” and raising people’s livelihood.

The latest meeting precedes an expected meeting between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump in the coming weeks, the outcome of which could have major consequences for the region, and potentially end the Korean War that has continued since 1953.

President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal with Iran creates, unnecessarily, a new source of tension in a region besieged by conflicts. This move was heartily supported by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and opposed by all other governments that are part of the deal. Given the level of legal troubles that President Trump is facing now, his decision could be based to some extent in creating the conditions to fog his personal drama.

For several decades, relations between the U.S. and Iran and between Iran and the West have been shrouded in misconceptions and prejudices. They have done nothing to achieve a peaceful relationship with that country, and only led to a permanent state of distrust that can lead to war at any moment. In this situation, some basic facts need to be restated.

The present conflicting relations can be traced to a large extent to 19 August 1953, when both the United Kingdom and the US orchestrated a coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. The reason: Mossadegh was trying to audit the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation, to change the terms of that company’s access to Iranian oil.

Following the refusal of AIOC to cooperate with the Iranian government, the Iranian parliament voted almost unanimously to nationalize AIOC and expel its representatives from Iran. The anti-government coup that ensued led to the formation of a military government under General Fazlollah Zahedi. That government then allowed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to rule the country as an absolute and ruthless monarch.

60 years after the coup, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) finally admitted that it had been involved in both its planning and the execution of the coup that caused 300 to 800, mostly civilian, casualties. That fateful coup and the US behavior towards Arab governments throughout the region are behind the anti-American sentiment not only in Iran but throughout the Middle East.

I wonder how we, in the United States, would have reacted if China and Russia, for example, would have plotted to overthrow a democratic American government, leaving a chaotic situation in its wake. In addition, while Iran has not invaded another country in centuries, both the US and Israel, Iran’s enemies, have led brutal wars against other countries and peoples.

US interference in Iranian affairs didn’t end there. In September 1980, Saddam Hussein started a war against Iran that had devastating consequences for both countries. The war was characterized by Iraq’s indiscriminate ballistic-missile attacks and extensive use of chemical weapons.

The war resulted in at least half a million and probably twice as many troops killed on both sides, and in at least half a million men who became permanently disabled. The US actively supported Saddam Hussein in his war efforts with billions of dollars in credits, advanced technology, weaponry, military intelligence, and Special Operations training.

Pentagon officials in Baghdad planned day-by-day bombing strikes for the Iraqi Air Force. According to the US former ambassador Peter W. Galbraith, Iraq used this data to target Iranian positions with chemical weapons. Despite the brutality of these attacks, Iran didn’t respond in kind.

In 1984, Iran presented a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council condemning Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons, based on the Geneva Protocol of 1925. The US instructed its delegate at the UN to lobby friendly representatives to support a motion to abstain on the vote on the use of chemical weapons by Iraq. Given these facts, can we be surprised that Iranians have a deep resentment against the US?

However, rather than following a policy of appeasement, President Donald Trump nixed the agreement with Iran that goes contrary to the US’s own political and economic interests in the region. And they have a faithful ally in Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Where do these actions lead us to?

*

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award and a national journalism award from Argentina. He has written extensively on Iranian issues.

Featured image: Yuval Steinitz

Israel will assassinate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he continues to allow close ally Iran to operate in Syria, the Israeli energy minister has warned.

Yuval Steinitz made the warning to Israeli news website Ynet on Monday, amid a war of words between Tehran and Tel Aviv over suspected Israeli air raids in Syria targeting Iranian fighters.

“If Assad allows Iran to turn Syria into a military base against us and attack us on Syrian soil, he must know that will mean his end,” Steinitz said.

“He will not remain ruler of Syria. It’s unacceptable that Assad sits quietly in his palace, rebuilding his regime while allowing Syria to be turned into a base for attacks on Israel,”

“Assad should realise his actions will bear a price,” he added.

The minister’s comments come come days after a senior Iranian official warned that his country will retaliate against Israeli “aggression” in Syria.

“We are in Syria at the request of the Syrian government,” said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, president of Iran’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee.

“The aggression of the Zionist entity on our advisers in Syria guarantees us the right of response,” said Boroujerdi.

Last week, missile strikes on central Syria killed 26 pro-regime fighters, most of them Iranians, in a raid that bore the hallmarks of an Israeli operation.

They were the latest in a series of such attacks that come amid heightened tensions after Damascus and Tehran accused Israel on April 9 of conducting deadly strikes against a military base in central Syria.

Iran is a staunch supporter of Assad and provides both financial and military support for his regime.

Iran has sent military advisers, as well as fighters recruited from Afghanistan and Pakistan, to work with Assad’s forces.

They are known in Iran as “defenders of the shrines” in reference to Shia holy sites in Syria.


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The Family-Party-State Nexus in Nicaragua

May 9th, 2018 by Trevor Evans

In 1979 a popular uprising led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew the U.S.-backed Somoza-family dictatorship which had ruled Nicaragua since the 1930s, and in 1984 the Sandinistas and their presidential candidate, Daniel Ortega, decisively won the country’s first free elections in decades. The Sandinistas introduced a major programme of land redistribution and a significant expansion of public health care and education services. However, initial gains were undermined under the impact of an armed opposition (‘the contra’) organized and promoted by the U.S., a collapse of international raw material prices in the early 1980s, and Sandinista policy errors, including an over-ambitious programme of large-scale investments.

In 1990, a war weary population voted for a broad coalition led by Violetta Chamorro, the widow of a distinguished journalist murdered on Somoza’s orders. Chamorro’s government pursued a policy of national reconciliation but, in order to obtain much needed finance, was required to adopt exceptionally austere economic policies by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Following a resumption of economic growth in the mid-1990s, elections in 1996 were won by a right-wing populist, Arnoldo Aleman, who was subsequently convicted to 10 years’ jail for corruption, and Aleman was followed in 2001 by his former vice-President, Enrique Bolaños, a fiercely anti-Sandinista business leader.

Following the Sandinista’s electoral defeat in 1990, many activists left the party as a result of dissatisfaction with Ortega’s leadership and the lack of internal party democracy. Some formed the small breakaway Movement for Sandinista Renovation (MRS), while others became involved in local development projects and in building an independent women’s movement. In 2006, however, the fractious liberal and conservative parties were unable to agree on a joint candidate for the presidential elections and this made it possible for Ortega, who had stood at every election since the 1980s, to win with a minority of the vote.

Despite a constitutional prohibition on consecutive terms in office, the electoral commission allowed Ortega to stand for the presidency again in 2011, and he was elected for a further term. The Sandinista dominated National Assembly subsequently agreed a constitutional change to allow consecutive terms, and in 2016 Ortega stood for the presidency yet again, this time with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as vice-presidential candidate. Shortly before the election, the main opposition candidates were disenfranchised, leaving Ortega and Murillo with a sure victory.

The Family-Party-State Nexus

Since resuming the presidency in 2007, Ortega has governed through a close alliance with Nicaragua’s principal business groups. COSEP, the main private business organization, had a highly conflictual relation with the Sandinista government in the 1980s but has enjoyed very close relations with the current government. The American Chamber of Commerce, which includes the major U.S. companies in the country, has also worked closely with the government, although after a heavily contested election in early 2018 the head of Cargill’s Nicaraguan subsidiary became president after campaigning for a more independent path. The government has also been able to count on the support of the leaders of the main unions, which are affiliated to the FSLN.

Ortega has tried to ensure that no political force emerges on the left and the breakaway MRS was unable to register for the elections in 2016. There are numerous right-wing parties, but they are small and in many cases little more than the personal fiefdoms of their leaders. Among the larger groups, the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC), which won the elections in 1996, has since the early 2000s provided political support for Ortega, initially under a ‘pact’ which allowed its leader, Aleman, to serve his jail sentence for corruption on his rural estate.

The other main right-wing grouping, the Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI), was the leading force in an electoral front which could have provided the most serious opposition to Ortega at the elections in 2016. However, this was effectively undermined a few months before the election when the country’s supreme court, which is dominated by Sandinista appointees, handed control of the party to a minority group. The party’s original candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency were prevented from running and its 28 representatives in the national assembly had to relinquish their seats. The PLI’s long-time leader – a banker – has since retired and former members of the party have established two new political organizations: Cuidadanos por la Libertad (CxL), which obtained legal recognition in May 2017, took part in the municipal elections later in the year; the Frente Amplio por la Democracia (FAD), by contrast, argues that current elections are a farce and it is concentrating on building a new movement from the base up.

At the general election in 2016, when the FSLN principal candidates, Daniel Ortega and Rosaria Murillo obtained 72% of the vote, the turnout was reportedly low as many people, including FSLN supporters, apparently considered the result to be a foregone conclusion. In the vote for the National Assembly, the FSLN obtained 70 out of 91 seats, with 14 seats going to Ortega’s tamed opposition, the PLC.

Ortega himself makes relatively few public appearances and there are unofficial reports that he is in poor health. Murillo, who was already playing an important role in coordinating the work of different government ministries, has come to play an increasing role in managing the day to day government of the country. Virtually all ministerial announcements are now made by Murillo, usually during a regular mid-day radio broadcast, and the mayors of the FSLN controlled municipalities are required to attend regular meetings with her in Managua. She has also build a strong base of support in the Sandinista youth movement, which has an important presence in the universities.

At the local elections in 2017, the FSLN won in 135 municipalities, while the PLC won in 11 and the new CxL in 6. However, as at the previous municipal elections in 2012, there were widespread allegations of irregularities and, in 2017, the extent of support for different parties was obscured because only figures for the share of the vote were published. In the most populated part of the country along the Pacific, the FSLN won strongly, but turnout was reportedly low; in central rural areas, where the contra had had a social base in the 1980s, the PLC and the CxL secured their best results; in the sparsely populated Caribbean area, there was also support for the local indigenous based party, but here the election was marred by violence between rival groups’ supporters.1 Reportedly, there was also discontent among long-time members of the FSLN at Rosario Murilla’s introduction of a centralized procedure for selecting candidates which, it was alleged, favoured her younger supporters.2

The OAS and the USA

In response to the allegations of electoral irregularity, the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, met with Ortega in February 2017. To the disappointment of Ortega’s critics, Almagro agreed to allow Ortega four years to rectify shortcomings in the country’s electoral system. Ortega is under strong international pressure to respond to the OAS but, having unexpectedly lost the elections in 1990, he appears intent on making the very minimum of concessions necessary to appease external critics so as to ensure that, at the elections due in 2021, either he or his designated successor will win.

Perhaps predictably the United States government and its ambassador in Nicaragua have been at the forefront of criticisms of Nicaragua’s onetime leftist president and his regime. The U.S. authorities have drawn attention to what they describe as ‘significant irregularities’ at the national and local elections in Nicaragua since 2011 and, in the aftermath of the national elections in 2016, members of the U.S. Congress from both main parties initiated the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act, which would require U.S. representatives at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to vote against approving any loans for Nicaragua. This was passed by the House of Representatives in October 2017 and requires Senate approval to become law. Meanwhile, the U.S. Agency for International Aid, which had been providing some $10-million a year in development assistance, included a mere $200,000 for Nicaragua in its budget for 2017/18, and nothing at all for subsequent years.3

In a more pointed move, in December 2017 the U.S. deployed the Global Magnitsky Act to impose a ban on Robert Rivas, the president of Nicaragua’s electoral commission, from using banking services in the USA. Until then, the Act had only been used against Russian and Venezuelan government officials. Rivas had, inexplicably, accumulated numerous luxury properties in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Paris. He has been a close ally of Ortega and, although his functions have since been officially transferred to his deputy, he has been allowed to retain his title as head of the electoral commission.

Nicaragua’s police and army were re-founded after the Revolution in 1979 and for long enjoyed an unusually high reputation for their probity. However, over the last ten years the number of complaints, particularly about the police, has been rising.4 Perhaps more seriously, there are also fears that the independence of the two institutions is being eroded. The police and the army both had established procedures whereby the top official would serve one term in office and then pass to retirement. In both institutions, however, the rules regarding retirement have been overridden, and subsequently changed by the National Assembly, and the current office-holders are serving their third consecutive terms. This, it is feared, has reduced their independence and gives at least an impression that they are beholden to Ortega.

The most important media in Nicaragua are television and radio, and these are largely in the hands of two groups which, between them, control 10 television channels. One group is owned by a Mexican businessman, Angel Gonzalez, whose channels are dominated by popular entertainment and avoid political controversy; the other group is controlled by the Ortega family, and transmits what has been described as a mixture of official propaganda, yellow journalism and mass entertainment. The one exception is channel 12, which is host to Nicaragua’s one critically informative current affairs programme.

Strong Economic Growth but Rising Inequality

Nicaragua, with a population of 6.2 million in 2017, has the second lowest per capita income in the Americas. Its economy has grown strongly in recent years, although output fell in 2009 as a result of the deep recession in the U.S. and other major markets. Between 2010 and 2017 economic growth averaged just under 5 per cent a year, the third highest in Latin America after Panama and the Dominican Republic.5

The economy remains dependent on primary commodity exports, the most important of which are coffee, beef, gold and sugar. In addition, there has been a significant growth of production in export processing zones since the 1990s, primarily involving textile products and, more recently, the assembly of electrical harnesses for cars produced in Mexico. There is, however, still a large sector of subsistence farmers particularly in the more mountainous areas in the north of the country, and in the towns there is a very large commercial sector, much of it based on informal labour.

Nicaragua’s export revenues increased strongly up to 2014, although since then growth has slowed due to weaker world prices. In 2017 exports of goods amounted to $4.1-billion but imports at $6.6-billion were considerably larger. The deficit has been covered in part by family remittances which have increased considerably in recent years. Because of the employment situation in Nicaragua many families have at least one member who has gone abroad to work, principally to the United States or neighbouring Costa Rica, and in 2017 remittances amounted to $1.4-billion.

Nicaragua has also received substantial foreign direct investment in recent years, attracted by low wage levels and the relative security compared with neighbouring Honduras and El Salvador. Net direct investment amounted to $816-million in 2017, with the inflows directed principally to manufacturing industry, telecommunications, commerce and energy. The largest source in 2016 was Panama (22%), followed by the United States (13%) and Mexico (12%).

Until recently, Nicaragua benefitted from oil provided on very favourable terms by Venezuela. This was organized through a company called Alba de Nicaragua SA, or Albanisa, which is 51% owned by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, and 49% by Nicaragua’s state-owned petrol company, Petronic. Under the terms of the deal agreed with Venezuela, Nicaragua was supposed to pay half the cost of the imported oil; the other half was effectively a long-term low-interest credit which provided Albanisa and a web of subsidiaries with funds to invest in a wide range of projects in Nicaragua.6 Between 2008 and 2014 Nicaragua is estimated to have benefited from some $3.5-billion in this way but, controversially, although a public debt, this major source of external finance was not registered in the government’s official figures.

As the economic situation in Venezuela deteriorated, the supply of oil declined and none was received in 2017. There were plans for Venezuela to build a major new refinery in the country but these have been abandoned. Nicaragua has since had to purchase oil on the international market and social expenditures financed with revenues from the Venezuelan oil have had to be reduced. At the same time, Nicaragua – strongly pressed by the International Monetary Fund – has begun to include the amounts owed to Venezuelan in the country’s official debt figures.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Wang Jing of HKND Group.

In 2013, Nicaragua’s parliament granted a Chinese investor, Wang Jing, a 100-year concession to build and run an inter-oceanic canal through Nicaragua, a mega project that would be able to accommodate even larger ships than the Panama Canal, and which was viewed as a means of fast-tracking the country’s economic development. The $50-billion project was strongly opposed by environmentalists and also gave rise to a significant opposition movement among peasants whose land would have been compulsorily purchased and whose demonstrations were harshly restricted by the police. Work on the canal has been delayed amidst reports that Wang made large losses when the Chinese stock market crashed in 2015-16. From being a centre-piece of the government’s development plans, the canal was not even mentioned by Ortega in his address at the start of the new presidential term in 2017, and it seems unlikely that it will ever be built.

In recent years there has been considerable investment in communications and infrastructure. This is particularly notable in the condition of many roads. The main routes are being widened and resurfaced while the network of all-weather roads in rural areas is being steadily expanded. There has also been a notable expansion in access to electricity, especially in rural areas. According to official figures, coverage increased from around 70% of households in 2010 to 94% in 2017. The state-owned distribution company was privatized in 2000, but sold again in 2014 to a company which is registered in Spain, but which is widely believed to be linked to the government.

The supply of water has remained in the public sector and here too there has been investment in expanding its reach. But while some 90 per cent of households now have access to drinking water in urban areas, the figure is little more than 30 per cent in rural areas. There is a programme for building low income housing, but housing construction has been declining since 2015. According to the Association of Housebuilders, around half of the new homes built in 2017 were for low income households, but this amounted to a mere 2,500 units. There has, however, been investment in public spaces in many towns, providing play grounds together with seating and widely-used free access to the internet.

Sustained economic growth has led to a rise in the number of people in work. The official figure for the rate of unemployment fell to a low of 3.5% for men and 3.8% for women in 2017, but this presents a rather misleading picture, since workers without a formal job have little option but to seek an income from some type of informal employment. Even according to official figures, informal employment accounted for 42 per cent of the workforce in 2017.

The number of people who are formally employed and enrolled in the social security system has increased, from 534,881 in 2010 to 914,196 in 2017. This provides workers with a pension on retirement, but membership growth has slowed, and coverage is very uneven. While some 75 per cent of workers employed in the supply of electricity and water are insured, the figure is only around 45 per cent for workers in manufacturing industry and under 10 per cent in agriculture. The social security system is, in any case, seriously under-funded and, as the IMF has repeatedly warned, it will face a crunch which will place a further financial demand on the central government in 2019.

The employment situation has contributed to poor peasants in central regions of the country pressing toward the Caribbean in search of land to farm, a process exacerbated by the growth of large scale investments in capitalist agriculture, which have displaced many small farmers. This migration of ladino farmers has led to serious confrontations, some resulting in fatalities, with members of indigenous groups who, under the Nicaraguan constitution, are guaranteed exclusive rights to farm the land in Nicaragua’s autonomous Caribbean regions.

The limited employment opportunities in Nicaragua explain why so many workers seek work in other countries. Many of these migrant workers are unskilled, but skilled workers, including university graduates, have also been obliged to look for work abroad, and it is estimated that some 20 per cent of the population lives abroad. The remittances which they have sent back to their families have played a decisive role in maintaining living standards in the country.

On returning to office in 2007, the Ortega government launched an anti-poverty programme entitled Zero Hunger. This provided the poorest households with some basic agricultural support and, crucially, corrugated zinc sheets which enabled them to waterproof the roofs of their shacks. However, as the financial resources from Venezuela have declined, the Zero Hunger programme has been wound down, and subsidized electricity prices for low income households and for pensioners, which were also financed with Venezuelan resources, are to be phased out between 2018 and 2022. According to independent annual surveys carried out between 2009 and 2015, the proportion of the population living in poverty registered a limited decline, from 44.7 to 39.0 per cent, and those in extreme poverty from 9.7 to 7.6 per cent, with the most significant declines registered in rural areas.7

After resuming the presidency in 2007, the Ortega government raised the official minimum wage significantly. However, for the great majority of workers, wage rises lagged behind inflation and it is only since 2010 that real wages have begun to register a rise. According to official figures, between 2010 and 2017 real wages for workers in formal employment increased by about 10 per cent when converted into dollars, or just over 1 per cent a year. By 2017, the average wage was equal to around $340 a month. In the financial sector and the mines, the figure was somewhat higher, at just over $500 a month, but in the manufacturing sector the average was equal to just $230, while the average for agricultural workers was a mere $130. For the government, low wage costs have clearly been an important part of their strategy for attracting foreign investment.

Nicaragua also has a prosperous commercial middle class and a very wealthy upper class. According to CEPAL figures, the top 10 per cent receives some 33 per cent of national income and, together with the next 10 per cent, almost 50 per cent of national income.8 This group includes traditional land-owning families, many of which have also branched out into commerce or industry; it also includes newly rich traders who have profited from the boom in commerce. According to the CEPAL report, while inequality declined slightly in the period from 2002 to 2008, as in virtually the whole of Latin America, Nicaragua was the only country where inequality increased between 2008 and 2014 (more recent figures are not available for Nicaragua). According to an Oxfam study published in 2015, there were 210 multi-millionaires in Nicaragua, each with net assets of over $30-million.9 Nicaragua’s wealthiest businessman, Carlos Pellas, is estimated to have accumulated a fortune of $2.4-billion, one of the largest in Central America, but some Sandinista leaders have also acquired wealth more recently, albeit on a lesser scale.

The Beginning of the End?

The Nicaraguan government faced a difficult economic outlook for 2018, with the threat a U.S. initiated limit on its access to international financial institutions, together with the need to adjust to the end of financial support from Venezuela. In the face of these challenges, growth projections for 2018 and 2019 have been reduced by both the IMF and the Nicaraguan central bank. In April 2018, Ortega was then confronted with the most serious political challenge to his rule since returning to office in 2007.

The government announced that, in order to address the Social Security System’s large deficit, pensions would be cut by 5 per cent and pension contributions would be increased for both workers and employers. A demonstration in Managua by pensioners against the reduction in their pensions was supported by students from the city’s public universities, but the student demonstrators were confronted by riot police and members of the Sandinista youth organization. Over the next three days the scale of the street confrontations increased, spreading to several other cities, and resulting in the death of over 40 people and many more injured.

After four days, Daniel Ortega appeared on television, flanked by his wife and the chiefs of the police and army, and he decried what he described as the manipulation of innocent students by political opponents with ulterior motives. But his failure to condemn the deaths led to yet further criticism, and in a second broadcast on the same day he announced the pension reforms would be cancelled and that the government would enter a dialogue with the country’s business organization on how to reform the pension system. The business organizations, which until then had enjoyed close relations with the government, said they would not enter negotiations until police violence against demonstrators was ended, and supported calls for a major peaceful demonstration the following day. It also insisted that any negotiations should include all sectors of Nicaraguan society.

On Monday, 23 April, tens of thousands joined a peaceful march in Managua and there were large demonstrations in many other cities. The authorities did not attempt to intervene and the demonstrations remained peaceful. The demands of the demonstrators had by now, however, gone beyond the issue of mere pension reform and broadened to include expressions of deep dissatisfaction with the Ortega family regime. In the absence of any serious political opposition, however, it was not clear what the alternative might be.

*

Trevor Evans teaches at the Institute for International Political Economy, Berlin School of Economics and Law.

Notes

1. Elecciones municipales 2017. Nicaraguas, tres escenarios diferentes, Envio, December 2017.

2. Observadores del eclipse institucional, Envio, September 2017.

3. Preocupa deterioro de relación con EE.UU., La Prensa, 23 March 2018.

4. See Centro Nicaraguense de Derechos Humanos (CENIDH), Informe Annual 2016, 2017.

5. The source for figures, if not otherwise given, is Banco Central de Nicaragua, Anuario Estadístico 2017, April 2018, available from www.bcn.gov.ni.

6. For details, see the series of articles on confidencial.com.ni by Iván Olivares, ‘La ‘alcancía’ de Albanisa’ (9 April 2016), ‘Una ‘pulpería’ de negocios’ (11 April 2016), and ‘La deuda: de Caruna a Albanisa’ (13 April 2016), and Enrique Saenz, ALBANISA, Confidential, 27 September 2017.

7. Fideg, Encuesta de hogares para medir la pobreza en Nicaragua. Informe de resultados 2015.

8. CEPAL, Panorama Social de América Latina, 2017.

9. Oxfam, Desigualdad Extrema y Secuestro de la Democracia en América Latina y el Caribe, 2015.

All images in this article are from the author.

Trump and Israeli Collusion

May 9th, 2018 by Margaret Kimberley

Donald Trump’s decision to exit from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement on Iranian nuclear capability is in keeping with his doctrine of joining Israel at the hip of the United States. Fealty to the state of Israel is a constant in United States foreign policy. Every president who has served since that country was founded has given it carte blanche to do anything it wants but Trump goes further than anyone else.

Most of the acquiescing is done out of cynicism and the need to placate influential supporters who can and do choose who may hold elective office, including the presidency. But Donald Trump is different. He is the one true believer in Israeli’s right to reign supreme in its region and in command of American foreign policy. Other presidents may have said they were willing to move the embassy to Jerusalem but Trump is the one who will actually do it. Trump had resisted leaving the JCPOA agreement but finally stopped listening to aids, Congress, and European allies and completely succumbed — as he wanted to do all along.

“Perhaps “Russiagate’ should be changed to ‘Israelgate.’”

Trump’s love for Israel makes him committed to opposing both Iran and his predecessor’s legacy at every turn. It is therefore not surprising that an Israeli security firm, Black Cube , spied on two Obama administration officials and the head of an Iranian advocacy group in hopes of discrediting them and the agreement.

Black Cube was most recently in the news as the spy agency hired by former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein to investigate women who accused him of sexual assault. The firm is surely an arm of the Israeli government’s Mossad security agency. In fact, its founders are all former Mossad agents and that is its claim to fame.

Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl were both negotiators to the JCPOA agreement that Donald Trump hates so much. Trita Parsi is president of the National Iranian American Council. It will be interesting to see if any Democrats will speak up about the Black Cube/Israeli government spying on Kahl, Rhodes, Parsi and their families. A case can certainly be made that an official investigation should be undertaken. Robert Mueller claims that his mandate allows him to go far beyond the question of collusion between Trump and the Russian government. If he can indict former campaign manager Paul Manafort and charge him with acts that have nothing to do with Russia he can surely do the same regarding Black Cube.

“It will be interesting to see if any Democrats will speak up about the Black Cube/Israeli government spying.”

One of the alleged smoking guns in the Russiagate saga is actually connected to the Israeli government. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn lied about contacting the Russian ambassador to the United Nations. But the communication happened at the behest of Israel who wanted to secure Russian support for Israel in a Security Council vote. Perhaps the well known moniker should be changed to Israelgate.

Israel is not alone in making desperate attempts to hold the empire together. France, the United States and the United Kingdom outdo one another making false claims about chemical weapons in Syria and they all worked together to destroy Libya. The neocon plan for a new American century has been in the works for years as secular Arab nations fall to NATO invasions and interventions and always with Israel’s help.

Ultimately Israel wants to instigate an American attack on Iran and a Trump presidency is their best chance to make that happen. Benjamin Netanyahu’s periodic public relations campaigns against Iran are meant to ratchet up the political pressure. Israel and the other nations who worked for Syrian regime change have failed. President Assad is firmly in place. He is resolved to free his country from Israeli and U.S. backed terrorists and Vladimir Putin is committed to helping him.

“Israel and the other nations who worked for Syrian regime change have failed.”

Israel wants to scuttle as much as it can and get Trump to do their dirty work. Democrats may not be true lovers of Israel but they are craven and unlikely to rock the boat. The story of collusion is the same. Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman slaughters Yemenis but his friendship with the United States gives him and his public relations juggernaut cover. Congress and the corporate media always roll out the red carpet for the killer prince.

One needn’t know history to figure out who is a friend of the United States government and who is a foe. But the ruling elite can’t be allowed to make that decision for everyone else. In fact we should know that the friends of the empire are the enemies of the people. There are plenty of other enemies who work with American presidents to undermine national sovereignty and human rights all over the world. Israel is just the most blatant and most successful of them all.

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Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well here. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at [email protected].

Featured image is a White House photo.

War Codes in Trump’s Iran Proclamation

May 9th, 2018 by Daniel McAdams

Today President Trump announced that he was canceling US participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JPCOA) otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. The president’s assertions were ludicrous and factually incorrect, but the neocons who were no doubt behind the speech have never been all that wedded to the truth. It became obvious fairly on that Trump’s rationale was not to be taken seriously, when he cited last week’s comical stage performance by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “Iran Lied” about its nuclear program. 

Netanyahu’s fairy tale required us to believe that the Iranians were storing their most sensitive national security (paper) documents and compact discs in an unguarded desert hut, which the crack Israeli team of intelligence operatives were able to discover and remove by the truckload right under the noses of what they claim is among the most totalitarian “regimes” on earth.

And even if one believes that fairy tale, one is required to suspend logic and reason and conclude that evidence that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons technology but had halted the program by 2003 is actually proof that Iran is currently pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities — despite repeated inspections that have concluded otherwise. Really, it’s something a child could see through. Which is perhaps why the neocons were so successful at packaging it for Trump’s consumption.

Likewise Trump’s claim that Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism…for among other things fighting actual terrorists (al-Qaeda and ISIS) in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government!

Only in the twisted world of the neocons can one country arming al-Qaeda and ISIS (the US) be “anti-terrorist” and another country killing al-Qaeda and ISIS (Iran) be “pro-terrorist.”

But all that aside, there is something potentially earth-shattering in what at first appears to be just bluster and blunder by President Trump. With neocons in charge of the words coming out of his mouth we should not believe it was an accident.

When President Trump uttered this line:

“Iran remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and provides assistance to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, al-Qaida, and other terrorist networks,”

he was signaling his official determination that Iran is one of the “associated forces” that is fair game for US bombs as outlined in the post-9/11 authorization for the use of military force.

In short, Trump’s sentence indicates, in our convoluted and post-Constitutional current reality, that President Trump believes he has all the authority he needs to initiate an attack on Iran.

Forget all the other speculation on Trump’s speech. This is the only thing to really focus on.

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Featured image is from the author.


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

The so-called “Iran Nuclear Deal,” officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed on 2015 now under threat by a backtracking US – was billed at the time of its signing as a historic agreement that provided a path forward towards peace between the US and Iran.

The BBC in an October 2017 article titled, “Iran nuclear deal: Key details,” would even go as far as claiming:

The 2015 nuclear deal struck between Iran and six world powers – the US, UK, Russia, France, China, and Germany – was the signature foreign policy achievement of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The initial framework lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for limitations to the country’s controversial nuclear energy programme, which international powers feared Iran would use to create a nuclear weapon.

But while the agreement has been hailed as a “signature foreign policy achievement,” it was, before even its inception – not a vehicle towards peace – but a cynical ploy to justify future war.

The United States had never intended to allow Iran to rise as a counterbalancing regional power in the Middle East or Central Asia nor escape from under the constant threat of US military intervention or the crippling sanctions it has targeted the nation with for decades.

The enduring presence of US military forces in Afghanistan transcending now three presidencies and nearly two decades was one of two bookends placed around the rise of Iran.

The other has been a war waged in the Middle East by the US and its allies against Iraq beginning in 2003 and spreading to Syria and Yemen by 2011.

Despite the numerous proxy wars Washington is waging against Tehran, US policymakers had determined years ago the necessity to justify a wider and more direct confrontation with Tehran itself.

A Conspiracy to Offer Then Sabotage an Iran Peace Deal is Stated US Policy 

Far from conjecture, plans by US policymakers have been documented and are available freely to the public from among the various corporate-financier funded policy think tanks that produce US foreign and domestic policy.

Prominent among these is the Brookings Institution whose corporate-financier sponsors include arms manufacturers Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, energy giants Exxon Mobil, BP, Aramco, and Chevron, and financiers including Bank of America, Citi, and numerous advisers and trustees provided by Goldman Sachs.

In their 2009 paper, “Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF), Brookings policymakers would first admit the complications of US-led military aggression against Iran (emphasis added):

...any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. 

The paper then lays out how the US could appear to the world as a peacemaker and depict Iran’s betrayal of a “very good deal” as the pretext for an otherwise reluctant US military response (emphasis added):

The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offerone so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.

And from 2009 onward, this is precisely what the United States set out to achieve. First with US President Barack Obama’s signing of the 2015 JCPOA, up to and including current US President Donald Trump’s attempts to backtrack from it based on fabricated claims Iran failed to honor the agreement.

America’s Clumsy Warmongering 

Perhaps unbeknownst to Brookings policymakers in 2009 was the eventuality of Western propaganda unraveling in the face of growing opposition in the form of both national and alternative media organizations.

Today, attempts to cite “chemical weapons attacks” and recycle 2003 “weapons of mass destruction” narratives to fan the flames of America’s multiple and perpetual global conflicts are failing to persuade increasingly skeptical audiences.

The “game” – as Brookings policymakers called their attempts to covertly provoke war with Iran in their 2009 paper – they had hoped to hide from public view, is now exposed – dissected and displayed by independent analysts and national media organizations with unprecedented reach into global audiences once solely dominated by Western propaganda.

This has forced the West to proceed out in the open, with increasingly desperate public ploys to sell this exposed agenda.

During Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s April 30th press conference regarding “evidence” that Iran was still pursuing a nuclear weapons program, his presentation had barely concluded before it was picked apart and exposed as little more than a poorly conceived charade designed to undermine the “Iran nuclear deal.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s presentation was so anemic that even Israel’s Haaretz newspaper featured editorials with headlines like, “Netanyahu and His Lonely War on the Iran Nuclear Deal.”

Yet despite the lack of public support, the momentum toward war with Iran is of titanic dimensions. It is a war that has been engineered for years, spanning multiple US presidencies. It involves peripheral conflicts including the wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria used to stage US troops and equipment ahead of a future war with Iran itself.

The entire “Iran Nuclear Deal” was conceived, promoted, and then intentionally sabotaged at the cost of years of propaganda and public displays as well as both public and behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvering.

The supporting, arming, and training of Persian Gulf state armies in preparation for conflict with Iran has also been ongoing for years.

That the US currently lacks a legitimate pretext to not only betray the JCPOA, but to pursue further sanctions, provocations, and eventually war with Iran will not stop the US from trying – or having a sufficiently self-demonized Israel try on Washington’s behalf.

Managing America’s Dangerously Derailed Agenda

Israel’s growing role in provoking both Iran and Syria is a signal of US desperation. Brookings and other analysts both for and against US aggression toward Iran note that Israel itself is incapable of toppling the governments residing in either Damascus or Tehran. Israel’s role instead is to provoke a conflict and retaliation – or even stage what appears to be Syrian or Iranian retaliation – to then draw in the United States who may be capable of toppling either or both governments.

Russia’s presence in Syria from 2015 onward has greatly complicated even this plan – which was written out in great detail in Brookings’ 2009 policy paper. Brookings policymakers seemed to have laid out a plan that was clearly put in motion – but a plan that never considered the possibility of Russia intervening directly in the Middle East and placing itself between both Syria and Iran and nearly two decades of US regime change across the region.

America’s clumsy warmongering represents an agenda with massive momentum that has jumped the proverbial tracks and through its mass and speed alone continues traveling forward.

For Syria, Iran, and all other nations sure to be targeted next should either or both nations fall to US military aggression and global hegemony – managing America’s derailed agenda and minimizing the damage it causes while gradually grinding it to a halt will require patience, persistence, and unfortunately many years more of conflict, chaos, and loss of life.

That the US is pursuing a similar agenda through similar means in Eastern Europe vis-a-vis Russia and in Asia Pacific vis-a-vis China will jeopardize global peace and stability for years to come.

Preventing the US from sparking a wider conflict in the Middle East or through more patient and persistent means achieve its goals by partitioning territory and perpetuating bloodshed – will be key to undermining its efforts in Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific, as well as transitioning away from a Washington-dominated unipolar world order, toward a greater balance of global multipolar power.

*

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

Featured image is from the author.


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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.

Trump Withdraws from Iran Nuclear Deal

May 9th, 2018 by Stephen Lendman

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

There’s nothing “horrible” about the JCPOA deal, plenty awful about Trump pulling out.

His deplorable action came as expected – added proof that Washington can never be trusted.

Dealing with whatever regime is in power is hazardous, a lesson learned repeatedly over time, Tuesday the latest example – a day that will live in infamy like many others in US history.

World geopolitical conditions are now more precarious and hazardous than before – more unstable, risking US-led naked aggression against Iran, depending on how events unfold.

Trump’s withdrawal had nothing to do with “prevent(ing) an Iranian nuclear bomb,” as he falsely claimed – everything to do with escalating political and economic war on the Islamic Republic by reimposing nuclear-related sanctions, new ones to come, notably targeting its energy, petrochemical and financial sectors.

Trump lied saying the JCPOA “allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium and over time reach the brink of a nuclear breakout.”

He lied again claiming

“we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie.”

In its annual assessments of Iran, Washington’s intelligence community cites no evidence of a military component in Tehran’s nuclear program – or anything suggest it seeks one.

Ten IAEA inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities affirmed full JCPOA compliance, the Islamic Republic fully cooperative with agency monitors.

US and Israeli accusations about the deal giving Iran billions of dollars for terrorist related activities is a bald-faced lie.

So was Trump saying withdrawal protects America from a bad deal. Just the opposite is true.

So-called “malign” Iranian behavior refers to helping Assad combat US-supported terrorists in Syria, along with its diplomatic relations with predominantly Shia Iraq, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and other regional governments – legitimate behavior, nothing “malign” about it.

Trump saying he’ll impose the highest level of sanctions on Iran is bad news for world peace and stability if EU nations and their enterprises observe them.

P5+1 nations vowing to stick with the JCPOA despite Trump’s withdrawal is meaningless unless they publicly reject new US sanctions on Iran, refusing to observe them, along with enterprises in their countries continuing normal business activities with the Islamic Republic.

The same goes for at least most other key nations in Europe and the world community – what’s highly unlikely to happen.

Rejecting Trump’s action and others to come against Iran is the only way to neutralize illegal US sanctions, rendering them ineffective, maintaining the JCPOA as an international treaty.

Following Trump’s Tuesday announcement, Britain, France, Germany, and EU political chief Mogherini expressed strong support for the JCPOA, saying nothing about refusing to observe new US sanctions surely coming.

What’s most important they’ve been silent on so far, appearing to want things both ways – sticking with the JCPOA while letting Washington kill it by signaling likely compliance with reimposed US nuclear related sanctions and more surely to come by the Trump administration and Congress.

The lesson for Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, other sovereign independent nations, and rest of the world community is clear.

Dealing with Washington diplomatically is fruitless, counterproductive, and hazardous to nations pursuing this course with a nation bent on world conquest and dominance – wars of aggression, color revolutions, political assassinations, and double-dealing its favored strategies.

Trump is the latest in a long line of US leaders pursuing its destructive imperial agenda – begun during the earliest days of the republic, continuing today with super-weapons in the hands of warlords willing to use them against any nation challenging its hegemonic aims.

Today is the 73rd anniversary of Soviet Russia’s Great Patriotic War triumph over Nazi Germany – over 25 million of its soldiers and civilians lost in the epic struggle.

Another global war could doom us all, things ominously heading in this direction if forceful enough action isn’t taken to prevent it.

Trump’s disgraceful JCPOA withdrawal represents a shot across the bow for what’s likely to come – a threat to world peace too great to ignore.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Featured image is from The Intercept.

After the tragedy of 9/11, the question of the U.S. military response to win the “War on Terror” in the Middle East and beyond was publicly discussed and justified by the elite in Washington. After the occupation of Afghanistan in 2001; the warmongers in the Bush administration -based on the fake documents- argued that if we don’t take out Saddam now, we will face the “Mushroom Cloud” later. They were confident that fearful Americans will support their military aggression. On March 19, 2003, the U.S. launched its “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign and killed innocent Iraqi civilians, occupied that country but was not able to show any trace of WMD or an active nuclear program in Iraq.

Prior to the Iraq war, millions in the U.S. and around the world courageously took to the street and opposed the invasion of Iraq; but at the same time, the majority of American people silently stayed home and hoped the “terrorists” would be defeated soon by the U.S. military might. The invasion of Iraq simply failed. The war on terror created chaos and Iraq became the cradle of new terrorist groups. The U.S. invasion of Iraq did not “FREE” Iraqis, but it opened the eyes of millions in the U.S. and around the world to the barbaric nature of the U.S. military and its ruthless generals on the field and the hypocrite politicians/warmongers in the White House and Congress. The glory of “Operation Enduring Freedom” was tarred with the horrifying and torturous pictures of the abusive American soldiers and their Iraqi victims in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Meanwhile in the U.S., in the absence of a massive antiwar movement, an antiwar sentiment started to grow. Public opinion turned against all wars as it did during the Vietnam War.

The antiwar sentiment among the working people who were concerned about their own problems; job security, healthcare and decent schools for their children forced the U.S. to adopt new ways of military intervention. A “don’t tell” strategy which is hidden from the public was adopted and practiced by Pentagon. The ongoing drone strikes against “enemies” in Northern Pakistan or Somalia by the order of President Drone Obama became normal and daily operations.

In March 2011, Mrs. Clinton as the Secretary of State told NATO allies that the U.S. mission in Libya is “to enforce the no-fly zone and protect civilians”. She convinced the Obama administration to bomb Libya back to the dark ages from the air without the need of having American boots on the ground except for a few CIA operatives and military advisors. In Syria, the administration unable to conduct a direct military intervention for regime change supported all kinds of shady anti-Assad “rebel” groups with close ties to the remnants of Al-Qaeda terrorist groups.

From the start the Trump administration left the military decisions to the military men in Pentagon. Mr. Trump, the new commander in chief, surrounded himself with the generals and proudly ceded the decision-making of America’s wars to them. Indeed the generals and the Pentagon took this opportunity and secretly expanded their military involvement in Yemen. The generals plainly told the lawmakers that you have no authority to question the Commander in Chief’s determination and U.S. involvement in the conflict! The excellent article “Pentagon to Congress: You Can’t Stop Us from Fueling Saudi Arabia’s War in Yemen” by Project on Government Oversight (POGO) points out “The Pentagon’s claim that Congress lacks the power to limit U.S. involvement in the Yemeni civil war is an even more serious encroachment on Congress’s constitutional authority over the military.” Timothy Guzman on the Global Research site (April 19, 2017) wrote:

“Trump’s Defense Secretary James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis signaled to Saudi Arabia that the U.S. is seriously considering a deeper role into the Saudi-Yemen conflict that has devastated the poorest country in the Middle East since the war began in 2015. Mattis made his first trip to Saudi Arabia as the Defense Secretary and of course, mentioned Iran’s ‘alleged role’ by supplying missiles to the Houthis and how innocent people were being killed.”

Now in 2018, the U.S. Special Forces are operating secretively on the ground in Yemen and turning the Saudis’ war into an American war. The NYT Editorial board on May 3, 2018, informed its readers that

“In the latest expansion of America’s secret wars, about a dozen Army commandos have been on Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen since late last year, according to an exclusive report by The Times. The commandos are helping to locate and destroy missiles and launch sites used by indigenous Houthi rebels in Yemen to attack Saudi cities.”

Today in Yemen, General Mad Dog Mattis’ dream in conducting a perfect War Crime has come true. This new condition gives the warmongers in the military and General Mattis the opportunity to set the stage confronting Iran militarily without authorization from Congress.

“At Mattis’s request,” writes Dexter Filkins in New Yorker “theatre commanders in Yemen and Somalia are now empowered to launch some strikes without permission from the White House.”

In the same lengthy article describing General Mattis, back in 2003 in Iraq, he also wrote:

“In a Marine base in Falluja, I saw a poster on the wall quoting Mattis’s advice on how to succeed in Iraq: ‘Be polite, be professional, but always have a plan to kill everyone you meet.’”

Apparently, the U.N. report of the death of 10,000 people in Yemen since 2015 is not enough for the generals and Pentagon. They are not concerned about Mark Lowcock -the head of the UN office for the coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)- warning that people in war-torn Yemen are facing a situation that “looks like the Apocalypse”.

On the contrary, for the warmongers who are obsessed with turning Iran back to the situation pre-1979 revolution, a strong foothold in Yemen is an ideal military plan. On Saturday (5/5/2018) Al Jazeera reported that

“The UAE has occupied the airport and seaport of Socotra island, despite the Yemeni government’s presence there. What the UAE is doing in Socotra is an act of aggression, the official told Al Jazeera.”

The escalation of war secretly in Yemen makes the prospect of a catastrophic regional war more real and imminent. With the recent victory toward a peaceful Korean peninsula; gaining political ground by Hezbollah in national elections in Lebanon and the defeat of anti-Assad groups backed by the U.S. in Syria leaves Yemen the last battleground for war against Iran. Therefore Yemen should be the main focus of peace activists around the world not only to respond to the dire humanitarian crisis but also to end the overt and covert military operations and relentless bombing of none military targets, residential areas, schools and hospitals by the powerful military forces in that country.

As President Trump in justification to withdraw from JCPOA agreement (Iran Deal) gave an even more distorted history of Iran Nuclear program than Mr. Netanyahu disastrous presentation a few days ago, the world once again witnessed the isolated and weak U.S. administration. In short Mr. Trump’s announcement was a diplomatic fluff! It was an isolated act that would not deter E.U. of continuing economic relation with Iran. Talk of more sanctions would not make the U.S. stronger in the Middle East. The U.S. can only rely on its military might to confront Iran and an occupied Yemen is a preferable scenario.

It is imperative for the democratic minded people and peace activists to expose the secret and unauthorized U.S. military operations in Yemen which could become the springboard for a global war.

U.S. OUT OF YEMEN NOW!

*

Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

Actors Allegedly Paid to Support New Orleans Power Plant

May 9th, 2018 by Tsvetana Paraskova

Actors have been hired and paid to sit through public hearings for a proposed power plant in New Orleans, The Lens reports, citing interviews with some of the actors and screenshots of Facebook messages about the acting gig.

According to the website, some 50 people with bright orange T-shirts turned up at the City Hall last October at a public hearing on Entergy’s proposed power plant in New Orleans. At least four people were hired actors, and one actor said that he recognized up to 15 others who work in the local film industry.

Each of the actors was paid $60 per meeting for meetings between October and February, according to Facebook messages provided to The Lens. There were also ‘speaking roles’ for the actors that paid $200.

Three of the actors agreed to talk to The Lens and provide evidence that there were being paid in cash to show support for the power plant. Actors were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, told not to speak to media, and were told not to tell anyone that they were being paid to go to the public hearings.

The practice to hire paid support for something to make it look authentic, known as astroturfing, is not technically illegal.

“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” Keith Keough, who heard about the acting job through a friend, told The Lens, adding that he thought he would be shooting a commercial.

“I’m not political,” Keough said. “I needed the money for a hotel room at that point.”

In March this year, the New Orleans City Council voted to approve construction of the New Orleans Power Station, a 128-megawatt unit composed of seven natural gas-fired reciprocating engines. The plant is scheduled to come online in January 2020 and is estimated to cost around US$210 million to build, including transmission and other project-related costs and contingency.

Referring to the report that actors were paid to support the power plant, Entergy said in a statement to Newsweek:

“The recent allegations that some supporters of the New Orleans Power Station may have been paid to attend or speak at certain public meetings are troubling and run counter to the values of our company.”

“While we reiterate that Entergy did not pay, nor did we authorize any other person or entity to pay supporters to attend or speak at Council meetings, we recognize that our interactions with our stakeholders must always be based on honesty and integrity.”

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

It was foolhardy to expect positive change under his leadership. Whoever heard of a billionaire good guy, amassing wealth the old-fashioned way.

So far in office, he exceeded the recklessness and indifference to lawful governance of his predecessors domestically and geopolitically.

He matched Star Trek, going beyond where earlier administrations went before, exceeding the ruthlessness and indifference to the general welfare of his predecessors.

Instead of draining the swamp, he filled it with neocon warmakers, crooked billionaires and Wall Street predators.

His making America great again scam is only for the privileged few, no others. He broke every lofty promise made, showing contempt for world peace, rule of law principles, democratic values and ordinary people everywhere.

The myth of an anti-establishment candidate vanished straightaway after he took office.

As commander-in-chief of the nation’s military, he continued US wars of aggression he inherited, escalated them with likely new countries in mind to attack.

Instead of improving relations with Russia, China, Iran and other sovereign independent countries, they’re more dismal than ever.

At 2:00 PM Tuesday in Washington, he’s expected to announce US withdrawal from Iran nuclear, according to the NYT, citing unnamed European diplomats.

One said there’s a “very small” chance for America remaining in the JCPOA. It’s “pretty obvious” he’ll reimpose nuclear-related sanctions, an attempt to kill it.

Replacing Tillerson at State with Pompeo and McMaster as national security advisor with Bolton (two militant Iranophobes) signaled his imminent move – the latest black mark on his deplorable record.

Washington targets Venezuela for regime change because of its sovereign independent social democracy, anathema to US policymakers.

On Monday, Mike Pence announced new (illegal) US sanctions on three more Venezuelans – turning truth on its head calling them “narcotics kingpins.”

Twenty companies associated with the targeted individuals in Venezuela and Panama were also sanctioned. Washington uses illegally imposed sanctions as weapons of economic war – against nations and individuals refusing to bow to its will.

Right-wing extremist Pence also called for postponing Venezuela’s May 20 presidential election, outrageously saying

“(t)here will be no real election in Venezuela on May 20, and the world knows it,” adding:

“It will be a fake election with a fake outcome. Suspend this sham election. Hold real elections. Give the people of Venezuela real choices – because the Venezuelan people deserve to live in democracy once again.”

Democracy in America is pure fantasy. Venezuelans have the real thing, the world’s most open, free and fair process, shaming US money-controlled elections – one party rule with two right wings, at war on humanity, including against its own citizens.

Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement, saying

Washington “launched erratic maneuvers, typical of the arrogance and despair of imperialist politics, after having failed once and again in the face of the will of a free and independent people.”

Last week during a pre-election rally, Maduro said

“(s)o they’re not going to recognize” him as Venezuela’s legitimate president if reelected as expected, adding “(w)hat the hell do I care what Europe and Washington say?”

He’s running against Chavista turncoat Henri Falcon and businessman/evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci – linked to the Panama Papers tax haven scandal by an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists probe into his affairs.

The Trump administration vowed not to recognize election results if Maduro wins as expected – maybe planning another coup d’etat attempt to depose him with neocon extremists Bolton and Pompeo in charge of geopolitical policymaking.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Donald Trump’s White House default on the politically vital Iran deal, that was so painstakingly negotiated in conjunction with Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China in order to preserve world peace, has been done on the instructions of, and for the sole benefit, of the state of Israel. And to the specific detriment of Europe and the Middle East.

Israel, of course, will not be content merely in the abrogation of the Iran deal.  The second stage of their strategy is to persuade the US to attack Iran with the consequent loss of American military lives, and others, that such an attack will inevitably entail.

Israel itself is already a powerful, albeit undeclared, nuclear power with up to 400 undisclosed nuclear warheads concealed in subterranean arsenals in the Negev desert and in sites between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  There may also possibly be chemical or biological WMD because Israel is not a party to either the Chemical or Biological Weapons Conventions that have been subscribed to by the rest of the world.

The detrimental and far-reaching impact of this US-Israeli decision to renege on the internationally agreed nuclear deal with Iran are incalculable. The immediate effect will be to drive a wedge between Europe and the US and this will affect, inter alia, NATO defence systems including American cruise missiles based in Germany and elsewhere.

It is clear that this momentous decision is the worst, by any yardstick, that this US President has made to date. It is clearly the inevitable result of the position of POTUS being held by a profit-seeking, commercial property developer and his family, instead of an experienced leader, politician and diplomat with a proven track record in government.

All we know now, for sure, is that the future for world peace is highly uncertain.

*

Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

The new US National Security Advisor John Bolton controversially advocated the so-called “Libyan model” for North Korea’s denuclearization.

While he was indeed speaking about the technical aspect of this example in having the North African country completely surrender all of its nuclear-related capabilities, others are interpreting it differently and almost as a Freudian slip given that it was precisely because of Tripoli’s sincere adherence to this model that it was defenseless in deterring the NATO-led war that ultimately led to its destruction in 2011. On the surface, it makes one question why any country, let alone North Korea (whose media specifically said right after the beginning of the NATO campaign that Libya should have kept its nuclear program), would ever follow that model, but then again there’s a lot speculatively going on behind the scenes that the public isn’t privy to.

The entire denuclearization process is such a sensitive one and full of face-saving moves by all sides that it’s unlikely that Bolton would recklessly jeopardize the process by speaking as boldly as he did without he and his “deep state” handlers being certain that it wouldn’t offend Kim to the point of pulling out of the talks for reasons of national dignity. The opposite is actually happening, and he’s instead welcoming American and other experts to observe the decommissioning of his country’s mountainous nuclear test site later this month and even invite the media to report on the entire process. Furthermore, all of this is going ahead despite a South Korean presidential advisor saying last week that North Korea wants “American investment…sponsors, and multinational consortiums” coming to the country, which the man predicted could eventually lead to McDonalds and even a Trump Tower opening up in the former so-called “Hermit Kingdom”.

Again, despite the obvious sensitivity of this issue and North Korea’s history of strongly responding to those types of remarks, the denuclearization process is continuing unabated. It’s all the more remarkable then that a South Korean official quoted Kim as saying that

“if we meet often and build trust with the United States, and if an end to the war and nonaggression are promised, why would we live in difficulty with nuclear weapons?”

For all intents and purposes, North Korea has reversed its previous position and is now willingly – and one could even say, eagerly – doing exactly what Libya once did, especially in regard to surrendering its tangible deterrence capacities in exchange for simple promises that don’t remove the regional threat posed by American forces.

It can only be conjectured at this point why Pyongyang is doing this and whether it’s related to the reported collapse of its mountainous nuclear test site that some rumors allege might have been destroyed by a new type of American weapon, but conventional analyses point to China’s active participation in the latest UNSC sanctions regime against North Korea as being one of the prime catalysts for Kim’s nuclear backtracking. The communist country might fear that it’ll eventually collapse without the sanctions relief that only denuclearization can provide at this point, and that its future will be much brighter if it embraces its pivotal transit role in facilitating the construction of a multimodal Russian-Chinese “Korean Corridor” and courts international expertise to develop its prospective $6-10 trillion rare earth mineral deposits.

Therefore, it’s because of these strategic reasons – both due to international pressure & its own prerogative as well as a mix of fact & speculation – why North Korea is surprisingly following in Libya’s footsteps, though it remains to be seen whether this risky gamble will ultimately lead to a different outcome.

*

This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

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

Russia’s 21st-century grand strategy is all about becoming the supreme “balancing” force in Afro-Eurasia through the skillful diplomatic management of the hemisphere’s multiple conflicts, though the greatest danger to this vision comes not from the US’ Hybrid Wars, but from Russia itself if its diplomatic and expert community representatives don’t rise to the occasion in properly explaining this strategy to the masses.

Russia seems to have become one of the favorite topics nowadays of anyone who’s even remotely interested in international politics, and apparently everyone has an opinion about the country’s grand strategy. Those inclined to believe the Western Mainstream Media usually hold one of two contradictory positions in mistakenly believing that Russia is either hell-bent on militarily conquering the world or is just a few years from an all-out collapse as a result of systemic mismanagement at home. On the other hand, many followers of Alt-Media wrongly think that Russia has a self-appointed mission to save the world from American-led unipolarity in all of its manifestations and that the 5-D chess grandmaster President Putin is flawlessly winning victory after victory. All three trains of thought unfortunately fail to account for the reality of Russia’s grand strategy, which can best be summarized as endeavoring to become the 21st-century’s supreme “balancing” force in Afro-Eurasia through the skillful diplomatic management of the hemisphere’s conflicts.

From The “Ummah Pivot” To The “Golden Ring”

This ambitious vision owes its origins to the “progressive” faction of the Russian “deep state” (its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies) that courageously decided to throw off the Soviet shackles of the past and initiate game-changing rapprochements with non-traditional partners such as Turkey, Saudi ArabiaAzerbaijan, and Pakistan in what can colloquially be called the “Ummah Pivot”.  These foreign policy pioneers “filled in the (geographic) gap” that their predecessors left unattended to after they “bookended” Eurasia with their own post-Cold War rapprochements with Germany in the West and China in the East, so it makes sense that the time would eventually come for Russia to look South towards the Muslim-majority countries lining that part of the Eurasian Rimland. As all of this has been happening, China unveiled its One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity that provides the infrastructural basis for connecting these disparate geopolitical nodes together and building the structural foundation for the emerging Multipolar World Order.

Russia Iran Azerbaijan summit

Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan summit in Tehran in 2017

Having been rebuffed in Western Eurasia by the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions that Brussels was pressured by the US into implementing, Moscow “rebalanced” its hitherto European focus and diversified its diplomatic efforts through the “Ummah Pivot”, which has seen the creation of two new trilateral partnerships. The first one centers on Syria and concerns Russia, Turkey, and Iran, while the second one is all about Afghanistan and involves Russia, Pakistan, and China. The combined geostrategic potential of these five multipolar Great Powers “circling the wagons” to protect the Eurasian supercontinental core is the “Golden Ring”, which represents the ultimate integrational objective of the 21st-century and would symbolize the institutional union of many of the Eastern Hemisphere’s most important continental powers. Of the highest strategic significance, the fulfillment of the Golden Circle would allow its members to trade with one another via forthcoming overland Silk Road routes that crucially avoid the US Navy’s dominance along the Eurasian Rimland.

Peripheral Problems

Nevertheless, the supercontinental maritime periphery is still very important because of China’s dependence on sea routes for trading with Africa, whose future is intertwined with the People’s Republic because the latter absolutely needs the continent to become robust enough of a developed market to purchase the country’s overproduced goods. Beijing’s greatest competitors in the Afro-Pacific space are Washington and its “Lead From Behind” coalition of the “Quad”, which have unveiled the so-called “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” (AAGC) to counter the New Silk Road. Making everything all the more tense, China and the other four Golden Circle Great Powers need to prepare themselves for responding to externally provoked identity conflicts in the Silk Road’s geostrategic transit states (Hybrid Wars), and while the Eurasia Core can more or less count on multilateral solutions to these challenges via the SCO or any other related structure, Africa has no such security options.

China is therefore compelled to build up the military capacities of its Silk Road partners there and potentially even deploy its aircraft carriers along the coast in the worst-case scenario to “Lead From Behind” in assisting the locals in their counter-Hybrid War campaigns, but it’s interestingly at this point where Russia could play a pivotal role in restoring stability to Africa. Moscow is already experimenting with a new policy of using “mercenaries” to support the internationally recognized but fledgling government of the Central African Republic in its quest to reclaim the civil war-torn country from the myriad bands of militants that are occupying the vast majority of it, and the success of Russia’s version of its own “Lead From Behind” strategy would be the “proof of concept” needed to convince the rest of Africa and China that Moscow could provide much-needed security services in protecting their Silk Road projects.

The African Angle

As was explained in the hyperlinked analysis above, Russia’s involvement in African conflict resolution processes could expand from the initial military phase to a secondary diplomatic one in making Moscow a key player in any forthcoming political settlements there, provided of course that its national companies can be guaranteed privileged access to the said nation’s marketplace and resources. This win-win tradeoff could appeal to African elites and their Chinese partners alike, both of which don’t have the combat or diplomatic experience that Russia has earned through its anti-terrorist campaign in Syria and attendant Astana peace process to handle the coming Hybrid War challenges ahead. So long as Russia exercises prudence and avoids getting caught in any potential quagmires, then it can continue to “do more with less” in “cleaning up” the many messes that are predicted to be made all across Africa in the coming future.

Together with the military dimension of this “balancing” strategy comes its traditional diplomatic one, which Russia is already practicing to a degree with China’s Indo-Japanese rivals. The reinforcement and betterment of bilateral relations with each of these American-aligned Great Powers is to both Russia and even China’s advantage because it could allow Moscow to exercise “moderating” influence on each of them in the event that the US succeeds in getting them to provoke a crisis with Beijing. Taking it even further, though, Russia should explore opportunities to become a full-fledged member of the AAGC in order to “piggyback” off of these two much more entrepreneurial countries’ progress in Africa, especially when considering that China isn’t helping Russia gain access to this marketplace (though that could change if it becomes Beijing’s strategic security partner in the continent). “Balancing” between the two economic “blocs” would be to Russia’s premier advantage, and it could even yield benefits for its underdeveloped Far East and Arctic regions.

Strategic Review

Reviewing the grand strategy that’s been expounded upon thus far, Europe’s rejection of Russia as a result of American pressure motivated Moscow to commence the “Ummah Pivot” in solidifying the Eurasian Core through two interlinked trilateral partnerships that collectively form the basis of the Golden Ring Great Power nexus. By leveraging its centralized position in Eurasia, Russia aims to become the irreplaceable transit state for most continental connectivity ventures as well as the neutral “balancer” for constructively resolving the Hybrid War chaos that the US has wrought all across the landmass, thereby flexing both economic and diplomatic muscle through this strategy. Moving beyond the Eurasian Core and into the Rimland, Russia’s multi-vectored relationships with India and Japan can skillfully be put to use to acquire a market presence in Africa that would complement its unofficial military one via “mercenaries” and thereby allow it have a chance at “balancing” that continent’s affairs too.

No Narrative, No Chance

For as nifty as this approach may sound, there’s a lot of risk inherent in it, particularly when it comes to American-encouraged Hybrid Wars in the Eurasian Heartland and divide-and-rule infowar operations designed to break the Golden Ring, but these can still be managed on the state-to-state level with enough multilateral coordination and trust. More difficult to handle, however, are the consequences of Russia’s soft power “shortcomings” in traditionally “failing” to properly explain its “balancing” strategy to the masses, thereby leading to discontent and confusion that in turn provides a fertile environment for devious US-backed NGO operations aimed at sowing discord between the society and their elites. Russia assuredly communicates its “balancing” intentions to each of its “deep state” counterparts, just as it has a history of doing, but the Russian Federation hasn’t been able to match the USSR when it comes to getting its message across to average folks in each of those countries.

Armenia protests

Armenian protests, Velvet Revolution, April 2018

Armenia is a perfect example of what went wrong with Russia’s soft power strategy and deserves to be concisely analyzed as a case study. Russia’s “military diplomacy” of preserving the regional balance of power by selling arms to both Armenia and its neighboring foe Azerbaijan is a sound strategy in the geopolitical sense but a risky one when it comes to Russia’s image in the minds of each of its partners’ populations. Azerbaijanis don’t mind much since Russia was regarded as previously being closer to their enemy until recently, but the Armenians were understandably upset when they learned that their CSTO mutual defense ally was arming their adversary. Even if the majority of its citizens wouldn’t ever “come around” to seeing Russia’s side of this situation, Moscow could have at least invested enough soft power resources and effort in trying to explain its grand strategic intentions in this situation, but it didn’t and this in turn fueled Pashinyan’s “protest” movement against the ruling Armenian authorities.

It’s not just Armenia either, but many of Russia’s traditional partners are uneasy over its newfound “balancing” relations with their historic rivals. The Serbian, Syrian, Iranian, and Indian publics would rather that Russia didn’t cooperate so closely with Croatia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, but seeing as how it already is, the “least” that Moscow could do, many of them feel, is try to explain to them why this is occurring even if they don’t ultimately end up agreeing with it. Unfortunately, that’s not happening, at all, and the consequences of this soft power “ineptitude” is that people are losing trust in Russia. Instead of having a chance to consider it as being a skillful player on the “19th-Century Great Power Chessboard” in “balancing” everything and therefore counteracting the destabilizing effects of American foreign policy, the country is coming off as overly “self-interested”, “untrustworthy”, and superficially “no different from the US”.

Global Risks

Russian strategists and policymakers are indeed adhering to a Neo-Realist paradigm of International Relations, but their country’s grand interest in maintaining stability in Afro-Eurasia and consequently securing the New Silk Roads that are expected to form the foundation of the emerging Multipolar World Order fully overlap with each of its partners’, though all of them should accept that each party must “compromise” on something or another in order to reach the Moscow-mediated “deals” for bringing this win-win future about. This “inconvenient” reality might not be popular among their publics but it’s nevertheless what has to happen in order for Russia’s model to succeed, though the actual problem arises when people aren’t made aware of any of this by their leaders and then all of a sudden hear on the news or come across rumors (whether true or not) that their country might be on the verge of “sacrificing” something dear to them.

Had the proper “preconditioning” and “perception management” been implemented prior to this happening, then the potential for the US or other hostile third parties to exploit this sentiment in stirring unrest like they did in Armenia after Russia’s repeated weapons deals with Azerbaijan would be a lot less because there’d at least be a “constructive” narrative already available to counter the newly created destructive one that’s been weaponized by Moscow’s foes. Regrettably, because Russia prefers to deal mostly with its partners’ “deep states” when it comes to these issues and tends to “neglect” public opinion in those countries, this soft power vulnerability is now present all across Afro-Eurasia and waiting to be exploited by the US, which wields considerably stronger sway in “winning hearts and minds” on the local level, even if it has to rely on indirect (NGO) means to do so. Russia’s partners, especially those with nominally “democratic” systems, are therefore at risk of being “blackmailed” by demagogic mobs.

Concluding Thoughts

It can’t be stressed how important it is for Russia’s grand strategic vision of “balancing” Afro-Eurasian affairs to be clearly expressed by its diplomatic and expert community representatives in order to prevent the US from weaponizing “public pressure” against it inside of each of its partners’ societies. Sensitive issues such as arms shipments to both Armenia and Azerbaijan or cooperating with Turkey in northern Syria need to be discussed at the local level and not just with each traditional partner’s “deep state” so as to retain public trust in Moscow’s international measures by making at least some degree of effort in trying to explain these policies to the masses. The lack of any narrative whatsoever from the Russian side in these regards leads to an informational void that is quickly filled by the US and its unipolar allies, which endangers the long-term sustainability of Moscow’s “balancing” efforts because of the risk that its partners might cave to externally manipulated “public pressure” (Color Revolutions).

For as ambitious as it sounds, it’s certainly possible for Russia to pull off its strategy in repairing the damage that the US made all across the hemisphere (especially in its non-European quarters), but only so long as there are equal measures of “deep state” and public trust in its initiatives. Nobody, let alone average folks, should ever be under any false impressions about Russia’s motives in doing this, which are first and foremost to secure its own interests but also overlap with the primary ones of each of its many partners when it comes to the general goal of advancing multipolarity, but false expectations about Moscow’s “commitment” to them will only lead to a sense of disappointment with time which will inevitably be capitalized upon by its American adversary. Along the same lines, having no understanding whatsoever of what Russia is up to is equally dangerous because it could also result in the same disruptive outcome.

Therefore, Russia needs to prioritize its soft power outreaches and must urgently make attempts through its diplomatic and expert community representatives to communicate its “balancing” intentions beyond its partners’ “deep states” and directly to their people. Regular citizens must be made aware of Russia’s global vision so as not to be as easily manipulated by America through the exploitation of the existing narrative void and/or their false hopes that wishfully arise from it, though it must nevertheless be accepted that not everyone will agree with Moscow’s “balancing” means regardless of its intentions. That’s perfectly alright because the importance is in making the narrative known so that subsequent soft power efforts can be invested in promoting it among the public, which is why the first step must immediately be undertaken in making people aware of this message to begin with so that follow-up plans can be implemented for advancing it in the future and strengthening this grand strategic vision at all levels of Afro-Eurasian society.

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This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

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

All images, except the featured, in this article are from the author.

America’s Word Is Worthless

May 9th, 2018 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

We can now dismiss all hope that Trump’s campaign promises to pull out of Syria, normalize relations with Russia and stop the offshoring of American jobs will ever become US policies. By dishonoring the US government’s word and pulling out of the Iran nuclear non-proliferation agreement, an agreement signed by the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran, President Trump has revealed that his regime is totally in the hands of the Zionist warmongers.

It was already evident, but America’s renewal alone in the world of the fabricated conflict with Iran is proof that US foreign policy is in the hands of Israel. All you have to do is to watch Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN, groveling at the feet of AIPAC, to watch US Secretary of State Pompeo groveling at the feet of Netanyahu, to see the glee all over the face of neoconservative Israeli agent John Bolton, the National Security Adviser to the President of the United States, from his realization that his conflict agenda with Iran has prevailed. Indeed the entire Trump regime are such dedicated grovelers at Israel’s feet that the Trump regime comes across as a barbaric tribe groveling before the King of Kings.

Washington’s major European vassals said that they will stick to the agreement. We will see if they can withstand the pressures and the sums of money that will be thrown at them to change their minds.

This means a new test for Russia. Can the Russian government stand the destabilization of Iran any more than it can the destabilization of Syria? Can Russia again muster the determination to protect her southern flank?

One wonders if Trump’s ill-considered decision has finally taught Putin, Lavrov and the Atlanticist Integrationists who have for so long resisted reality that the agreements that they so desperately want to make with Washington are completely worthless before they even make them.

Will Russia finally wake up and stop inviting more dangerous situations by her extraordinary indecisiveness? If Putin doesn’t put his foot down, he is going to get us all killed.

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This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

Featured image is from Weber Shandwick.


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

In what can only be considered a staggering loss for western influence in Lebanon, Hizbullah doubled its seats in the new Lebanese parliament as a result of the first election in nine years…and its own, far too obvious, attempt to influence the result.

The desperation of Saad Hariri’s western backers had been shown by his image shadowing the many candidate’s campaign poster images whom he hoped would be part of his own new coalition, one that would have resulted in additional influence for him and the western backers he met with two weeks ago in Paris. This was exemplified by the vote-buying scandal- ignored by western media- designed to negate Hizbullah’s continued rise in influence.

In a political blunder of geopolitical importance, during the days leading up to this past Sunday’s Parliamentary election this supposedly secret vote buying (for as much as $2000 per vote) was anything but a secret in the minds of Lebanese voters as they went to the polls. The disgust of voters for this attempt to thwart their first move towards democracy after almost a decade served up a defeat that could see Hariri relegated to the dustbin of politics since many of the candidates he counted on were thrashed, losing more than a third of their existing seats, while Hizbullah doubled their seats to twenty-four and many their coalition partners also made strong gains. This means that, as predicted, the Hizbullah coalition will not only be a block to remaining western influence in the Parliament, this coalition will also now set the agenda and with their new majority have the ability to strongly influence the election of the three most important leaders: the President, Speaker of Parliament and Prime Minister- who will not likely be Hariri.

Trouble for Hariri began early on election morning when, by 2 PM, voter turn out was well below expectations at a paltry 24.7%. This led to impassioned television pleas from current president Michel Aoun asking Lebanon to get out and vote. In a subsequent tweet he wrote,

“I reiterate the call, if change and a new approach are what you want, you must exercise your right. You should not miss the opportunity given by the new law which grants everyone permission to access parliament.”

Processions of cars adorned with political party banners and flags began roaming the streets with bullhorns begging voters to come out, and their candidates began soliciting votes in front of the polling stations despite both being a violation of campaign rule 78. Kataeb Party leader and MP Sami Gemayel after casting his vote in Metn, told reporters afterwards that he was shocked at “candidates breaking the media blackout rule.” President of the Election Observation Committee, Judge Nadim Abdel Malek, next released a statement warning any media outlet that had breached the electoral silence in today’s vote that they will be referred to the Publications Court.

Hizbullah Election Support Workers in Beirut District 1

As has been the case in the lead up to the election, Hizbullah was playing it cool and by the rules. Their supporters are impassioned, well organized, pro- Lebanon down to their core and vote. Thus, the ongoing reports of low turn-out favoured their likely success. Hizbullah did not participate in election trickery, which is consistent with its eighteen-year rise in power that, among other factors has been bolstered by a consistent adherence to ethics as demanded by their Shia doctrine and its abhorrence of corruption. This doctrine has been the proper reflection of the demonstrative corruption and divisiveness of Hariri and the other non-Shia parties. After the widespread vote-buying scandal, voters were left with only two choices, don’t vote or vote against continued corruption. Neither choice favoured Hariri, hence the low turn-out and that his party, the Future Movement Party, went down in defeat.

Election Day Begins- Democracy Wins!

There were no serious incidents reported and problems were limited to long lines, accidentally switched ballot boxes, a lack of privacy in voting booths, lack of handicap access and help for the elderly, complaints that ballot cards were too large and that several politicians were violating Rule 78.  Popular Bloc leader Myriam Skaff held a news conference saying that Lebanese Forces Party supporters struck her car with bats and criticized the Internal Security Forces for not intervening when her car was attacked while she was in it, before the Lebanese army finally intervened. Al-Jadeed TV reported that the Lebanese Army pulled a man from his car after he tried to drive through a roadblock in Choueifat.

Chief Observer of the European Union’s Election Observation Mission Elena Valenciano said that the mission and its 131 observers across Lebanon had a “very positive” impression of the voting process in 98 percent of cases observed.

“The management of the voting process is happening normally and professionally,” Valenciano said.

Her comment, of course, failed to mention the voter fraud so much in everyone else’s minds. Free Patriotic Movement leader, parliamentary candidate and current foreign minister Gebran Bassil more accurately addressed this problem, stating, that there was a “financial brutality”  that was “focused on buying votes and the consciences of citizens, which is dangerous.” Bassil said his party was “clean.”

The Electoral Supervisory Committee released a statement denouncing violations of a government-ordered media blackout on electoral campaigns.

“Despite releasing continued statements and warnings during its direct observation of the media, it appears that some outlets are still violating the electoral media blackout and are not adhering to Article 78 of the electoral law,” the statement reads.

Article 78 prevents news outlets from reporting on campaigns during Election Day.

Despite low turn out, some district voting district locations were packed until closing time. Baalbeck-Hermel was given an additional 73 ballot boxes for multiple municipalities after the original allotted boxes filled up by 3:30 p.m. This led to Hezbollah Deputy head Sheikh Naim Qassem contacting the Interior Ministry overextending voting hours beyond original 7 p.m. closing time. This was denied for correct constitutional reasons, however, the compromise was to allow anyone still in line to enter the polling area before 7 PM and then vote after the doors were closed. This lead to the official close of the vote being at 8:08 PM.

At 10.32pm the Lebanese Interior Ministry revised its final turnout count in the election to 46.88. This was a disappointing turnout after nine years of anticipation and down from the previous election’s total of 55%.

What the Election Means for Lebanon

On Monday, the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah spoke of a big political and electoral victory for the “Resistance,” saying that Hezbollah proved wrong any doubts about the support that it enjoys within its base.

The group’s Shia bloc of total Shia candidates emerged stronger than before. Shia dissent against Hezbollah and its allies in the Amal Movement in the south was so minimal that opposing candidates lists failed to reach the election threshold.

Besides increasing Shia representation in full, Hezbollah was able to expand its base in parliament, picking up seats for Sunni and Christian allies in Beirut and the Western Beqaa Valley.

“Hezbollah is the biggest winner in this election,” Kassem Kassir, author of the book Hezbollah between 1982 and 2016, told Middle East Eye.

He added that the party and its direct allies will end up with a 50 MP bloc of the 128, not including the past coalition loyalty President Michel Aoun’s lawmakers.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement lost seats in several districts where it was previously unchallenged. His party shed a third of its previous share of parliament – down to 29 MPs.

In Tripoli, the Future Movement lost five of the district’s 11 seats to Sunni rivals and ex-prime minister Najib Mikati picked up four while Faisal Karameh, a former minister and the heir of a political dynasty in the north, was able to make it into parliament. Meanwhile, former justice minister Ashraf Rifi was soundly defeated in his hometown of Tripoli,  ending his quest to challenge Hariri for Sunni leadership.

The Nine Color Coded Parties and the Candidates for Beirut District 1

The right-wing Christian group, the Lebanese Forces (LF), is expected to expand its presence in the parliament from eight to 15 MPs, making it a major force in Christian politics. LF staunchly opposes Hezbollah and calls its weapons illegitimate, which is the height of political hypocrisy since this group operated as a brutal militia in the 1975-1990 civil war and was banned during the Syrian control of Lebanon until 2005.

With Aoun in the presidential palace, his Free Patriotic Party (FPM) looked to at least maintain its large bloc in parliament in support of the presidency. However, the FPM is set to lose a few of its 27 seats. Gebran Bassil, the foreign minister, Aoun’s son-in-law and FPM president, made it into parliament after two unsuccessful attempts in 2005 and 2009. Still, the FPM dropped seats in Mount Lebanon and the North, mostly because of proportional representation, and now it has to deal with stronger opposition from Geagea, who was vying for the presidency himself.

Independent candidates across Lebanon tried to challenge established political parties on Sunday, but they were almost completely unsuccessful which was a huge disappointment for the growing youth movement across Lebanon that detests sectarianism, patronage and corruption and largely due to the vote-buying scandal stayed home instead of vote. Nadia Shaarawi, the manager of the polling station, said that young people had largely stayed away.

“The young people don’t want to vote,” she said. “I know from my nieces and nephews, they are not happy with any politicians.”

Their message was only heard in the mostly Christian Beirut 1 district, where journalist Paula Yacoubian, one of the seventy independent candidates with the Kolomna Watani Party, made it to parliament as the only successful woman candidate of the eighty-six offerings.

Thumbs Up! For the First Election in Nine Years.

After the election had closed and the final tally was in, on Monday the interior minister Machnouk has hailed the election a “democratic festival”. At a press conference, Machnouk said all problems were swiftly addressed when brought to the attention of the ministry, which was substantially accurate.

Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah also dubbed the election an “accomplishment,” praising the government and President Aoun for its success.

The future of Lebanon is now firmly in the hands of those new parliamentarians who are sincere in their desire to see Lebanon prosper and bring their a new kind of future. One based on inclusion and peace. As they head off to change Lebanon, this election will keep in their minds, and in the minds of the western troika one lesson, a lesson that is sure to rise again in the next election and hopefully in new elections across the world…cheaters never prosper!

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 150 in-depth articles over the past seven years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, KXL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

Withdrawal Symptoms: Trump and the Iran Nuclear Deal

May 9th, 2018 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Hot on the heels of the Benjamin Netanyahu “nuclear archive” show supposedly revealing Iranian perfidy, US President Donald Trump added succour to the Israeli cause by promising to withdraw from the Iran Nuclear deal, more lengthily known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The JCPOA originally comprised various undertakings and actions on the part of the Obama administration: the rescinding of various executive orders imposing nuclear sanctions on Tehran (Executive Orders 13574, 13590, 13622 and 13645) and specific sections of Executive Order 13628.  To this laundry list were added persons and entities deemed Specially Designated Nationals and Foreign Sanction Evaders who were specifically de-listed.

Such measures caused discomfort to Congress, not least because of the JCPOA’s designation as a non-legally binding political agreement.  Doing so side-stepped the need for Congressional approval, though a rebuff came in the form of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, requiring the president to submit any nuclear agreement with Tehran to review by the legislators.  An oversight mechanism was thereby introduced.

Trump remained true to his vulgar form, calling the agreement “a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made”.  Iran deserved special mention as being “the leading sponsor of state terror.  It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflicts across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and al Qaeda.” 

He also spoke in tones suggesting an alternate, disassociated reality.  Iran had been permitted “to continue enriching uranium and, over time, reach the brink of a nuclear breakout.”  Nor did the deal prove expansive enough, avoiding “other malign behaviour, including its sinister activities in Syria, Yemen, and other places around the world.”

The good offices of the US Treasury, along with other agencies, have been mobilised by Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum, with a promise that sanctions will be re-imposed on those industries exempted in the 2015 deal, specifically aircraft exports, precious metals, the purchase of US banknotes and the oil sector. 

As the US Department of Treasury explained,

“As soon as administratively feasible, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) expects to revoke, or amend, as appropriate, general and specific licenses issued in connection with the JCPOA.”  

Applicable sanctions will come into effect at the end of 90-day and 180-day wind down periods.

At times, the language from the department is colourfully off in its child-like morality.  

“The US government will continue to make aggressive use of its authorities to target Iran’s malign behaviour.”  

The president’s distinct vernacular is proving catching, and the bureaucrats are succumbing.

The Iran obsession has taken hold in the White House, and the hard talkers have evidently taken up residence beside Trump’s ear.  National Security Adviser John Bolton has been stumping the view that European companies doing business with Iran ought to cease within six months or face US sanctions. 

The president, explained Bolton in a press briefing, had made “a firm statement of American resolve to prevent not only Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but a ballistic missile delivery capability.  It limits its continuing support of terrorism and its causing instability and turmoil in the Middle East.”

Through his briefing, Bolton’s answers betrayed the carceral mentality that characterises his approach to international diplomacy, or whatever passes for it. Never give the other side an inch.  Dictate stances and refuse to abide by your own obligations. The “fundamentally flawed” agreement, he asserted, “does not prevent Iran from developing deliverable nuclear weapons. It allows Iran to continue technologies like uranium enrichment, reprocessing of plutonium.” The underlying sentiment here is that Iran should have nothing to do with anything remotely resembling the atom.

Washington’s allies had been attempting to reel Trump back with respective, and evidently ineffectual visits by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron’s warning to members of the US congress was fitted as part of a broader program of restraint: be aware of withdrawing from collectively hammered out agreements on security.

As with the climate change regime, those states left with the shambles of a clumsy US exit will stay the course. Federica Mogherini of the EU expressed the need to “preserve” the arrangements.  A joint statement from the UK, Germany and France emphasised “our continuing commitment to the JCPOA.”  The leaders noted the assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Tehran “continues to abide by the restrictions set out by the JCPOA, in line with its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.  The world is a safer place as a result.”

This point of compliance has sailed over the heads of Trump’s circle of ravenous hawks, suggesting that such abidance is the problem.  The European angle on this has always been accommodating to the verification results of the IAEA.  As an official in the German Federal Foreign Office noted last year,

“We have no indication of Iran violating its JCPOA commitments.”

In Tehran, a proposal involving restoring enrichment capabilities clipped by the JCPOA is doing the rounds.

“I have ordered the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran,” explained Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, “to be ready for action if needed so that if necessary we can resume our enrichment on an industrial level without any limitations.”  

In a note of mild reassurance, Rouhani claimed that the agreement would still remain in place provided its “goals in cooperation with other members of the deal” could be achieved.

Hard line reactionary types the world over will be excited by Trump’s latest take on Iran.  The cards for war are being readied.  The obscurantist regime in Riyadh cheered with welcome that an arch rival had been railroaded.  Likewise that other fear monger, Israel.  Their desire has an obscene angle to it: to discourage Iran from non-proliferation, thereby setting up the premise for an attack that would confirm their fears.  Doing so will, in these demonic calculations, finally settle long, dog-eared scores.

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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]


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

Revisiting “Love Serenade” in Australia

May 9th, 2018 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Lebanese parliamentary elections didn’t turn out the way Washington and Israel wanted.

The May 6 general election was the first in nine years. Results were as follows:

Hezbollah and its allies won a 67-seat majority of parliament’s 128 seats – equally divided between Muslims and Christians.

The right-wing Christian Lebanese Forces was the biggest winner in Sunday elections, nearly doubling its number of parliamentary seats from 8 to 15.

Hezbollah has 13. Its allies made significant gains, including the Shiite Amal Movement and President Michel Aoun’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement.

The Hezbollah-linked broadsheet Al-Akbhar headlined “The Slap,” featuring a dour-looking Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Iran’s Tasnim news agency headlined “Lebanese election result puts an end to Hariri’s monopoly among Sunnis.”

His Future Movement alliance lost a third of its seats, yet remains the largest parliamentary Sunni bloc. He’ll likely remain prime minister, considerably weakened post-election.

For the first time, a proportionally representative system was in place, replacing the winner-take-all one, permitting more independent candidates to participate. Turnout was low at 49%.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi issued a statement, saying

“Lebanon is an independent country…Iran respects (the) vote of the Lebanese people…We are ready to work with…the government elected by the majority.”

Islamophobe Israeli minister Naftali Bennett tweeted:

“Hezbollah = Lebanon…Israel will not differentiate between the sovereign State of Lebanon and Hezbollah, and will view Lebanon as responsible for any action from within its territory.”

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called parliamentary results a “political and moral victory” for the resistance.

In a televised address, he said the electoral “mission is accomplished,” giving Hezbollah and its allies power to veto legislation they consider unacceptable.

A unity cabinet is likely to be formed, including Hezbollah. It’s falsely designated a terrorist organization by the State Department, at the behest of Israel, its tail too often wagging the US dog on regional issues.

 

Under Lebanon’s confessional system, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the parliament speaker a Shia Muslim.

Western favorite Hariri will likely remain prime minister, but the balance of power now favors Hezbollah and its allies.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Toward A Red-Green Vision for Toronto

Transit is a critical issue for many people in Toronto, as in all major urban areas. More is at stake than reducing traffic congestion and gridlock. Transit and general mobility are intimately related to larger issues in capitalist society: how goods and services are produced and delivered; the location of and nature of jobs; where and how we live and travel; issues of class, inequality and oppression related to race, age, gender, and sexuality; climate justice; and the very shape and nature of our democratic institutions.

Free transit opens the door to a broader transformation of urban life and the current social system. Our ‘Red-Green’ vision is socialist, based on the working class, environmentally just, internationalist, and transformative.

Promises and Challenges of Free Transit

Our free transit model makes public transit a right of all people, which would dramatically increase its use. While serving the vast majority of Torontonians and strengthening the public sector’s role in meeting their needs, it would also address the special mobility requirements of the least mobile and most public transit-dependent: people with disabilities, people living in poverty, older and younger members of our community, and people with precarious, off-hour jobs and heavy domestic workloads, especially often women and people of colour.

Demanding Free Transit Poses Key Questions:

  • How can Free Transit help transform our car-dominated transit system?
  • How would it be financed?
  • How would it challenge government austerity and fight for good green jobs?
  • How much would Free Transit support global climate justice?
  • How can transit users and transit workers together push for Free Transit?
  • Could Free Transit networks be generous public spaces realizing the full diversity of our city?

Mobility in the city

Mobility is more than the ability of people to travel where they want or need to go. People who have to take transit to precarious jobs, juggle two or more jobs, and/or balance household and work tasks have different transit needs than the wealthy. For many people, a reduced need to travel could be as important as the right to move around the city.

A socially just system of mobility means planning and reordering the location of work, home, and recreation. It means changing the structure of work, including fighting against precarious work, and involves reorganizing gendered patterns of living and working. In other words, mobility systems should qualitatively improve workers’ everyday lives while reducing environmental degradation.

Building a Compact City

‘Transit-oriented development’ means combatting sprawl by intensifying residential development, along with providing walkable, street-oriented, mixed-use built environments. This can produce the population densities that make mass public transit feasible.

As neutral or positive as this seems, it has problems. Intensification in Toronto is mostly in the form of private real estate development, usually of high-rise condominiums. This leads to increasing land costs that threaten low-rent apartments, cheaper shops and industrial spaces. All these displace working-class people move to the suburbs, reinforcing sprawl. Our approach calls for compact, land-saving and energy-efficient building. This would require public land ownership and social housing that is collectively or co-operatively owned and managed.

Public Space in the City

Even publicly owned transit networks can be socially-divided and far less than really public in practice. New lines sometimes cater to privileged elites (such as the original UP Express train link from Union Station to the airport), are built and maintained via “public-private partnerships” (Toronto’s new LRT network), or bypass areas where working-class people, especially people of colour and/or on social assistance, live.

Transit must not reinforce current patterns of segregated living. It must also fully accommodate people with disabilities and special needs while allowing everyone to travel without the fear of being scrutinized by transit authorities or harassed by other transit users. In sum, free transit should provide a completely public space, where people have the right to engage with one another and feel comfortable doing so, in the spirit of the world’s most congenial public places.

The Scale of Our City

Free transit – and complementary industrial strategies – would require greater integration of neighbourhood and commuter transit, and of those with national rail networks. This would strengthen transit at all levels. Current regional commuting flows (such as GO Transit) are often out of joint with travel at smaller, neighbourhood or municipal scales; they actually encourage individual, short-term car trips and undercut necessary city densities.

We need to integrate what remains of Canada’s passenger rail grid with inter- and intra-regional and local transit networks while also co-ordinating transit with much improved cycling and walking infrastructure. Transit integration is particularly important in inner and outer suburbs with high levels of car dependency. Current forms of regional integration are business-dominated, undemocratic and underfunded. Ontario’s Metrolinx agency is particular invested in privatizing public transit in the greater Toronto area (GTA).

The RER (Regional Express Rail) network, of which GO is a component, will bring surface transit stations into the city. This is what remains of the rather short-sighted and opportunistic promises of what the then Toronto mayoralty candidate John Tory called “SmartTrack”. It will add a small number of new surface transit stops to the east and western parts of Toronto.

Free Transit flash-mob in downtown Toronto.

Addressing the Twin Crises: Environment and the Economy

Free transit would necessitate shifting away from private transport, which creates about a quarter of global carbon emissions. That shift would make a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gas pollution, which in turn would have benefits around the world. Public mass transit produces 5–10% of the greenhouse gas levels of autos and consumes much less land than cars do.

The recent economic crisis, although seen by business and governments as helpful for entrenching unpopular austerity measures, provides an opportunity for ecological and economic reconstruction. A Red-Green economic development strategy, with mass public transit as a key component, can build on workers’ and environmentalists’ fights against plant closures, such as Toronto’s Green Work Alliance in the 1990s, the Greater London (England) Council experiments in the 1980s, and new initiatives in the United States, such as the facilitation by the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) of transit users’ movements in cities across the country as well as Canada, the Blue-Green Campaign in Richmond, California and European movements, such as Barcelona en comu, in Spain/Catalonia.

The investment necessary for free transit is a major opportunity to promote social and ecological development. The public sector could become a strategic lynchpin for developing urban infrastructure, in the process creating green jobs and implementing an industrial strategy centred on retrofitting ailing manufacturing plants, generating new forms of sustainable energy, building non-profit housing on government-assembled land, land trusts or co-operatives, and providing new forms of public service.

Changing Car Use

Toronto needs to radically decrease the dependence on private vehicles that has been structured into our living and working lives since the mid-20th century. On its own, Free Transit would not end car dependence. Doing that would require not only dramatic increases in transit capacities but also measures to transform the way we use cars today.

Such changes will need to be carefully thought through. They need to recognize that many working-class people cannot easily shed their dependence on cars. They should not be penalized if switching modes of transportation is not an immediate option.

Solutions will include intensifying and expanding transit in currently transit-poor areas of the city and in newer suburbs while at the same time making residential, commercial or industrial development contingent on transit access. There should be limits on car usage and parking as priority is given to pedestrians, cyclists and transit on many routes.

Public Ownership and Democratic Planning

Free transit can only happen if transit is fully public in both ownership and operation – it is not compatible with private-sector logic. But public-sector bureaucracies and even unionized workers may think that this demand threatens the financial viability of public transit. Achieving it will require a strong alliance among public transit workers and their unions, transit users and all supporters of robust and expanded public transit. The goal is not to make public managers more powerful, but to democratize planning and administration by empowering transit workers and users.

Free Transit is in the medium- and long-term interest of transit workers. It would end fare policing, a major source of tensions between transit workers and users; lead to increased transit employment; and raise transit workers’ importance and prestige in users’ lives.

Democratic planning should be introduced at all scales, from local neighbourhoods to higher levels of co-ordination and planning. Regional and inter-regional transit needs can also be articulated from below, by creating regional democratic planning bodies that are mandated to improve transit – not to take resources from transit-dependent but underserved areas (such as inner suburbs) or transit-dense districts (such as downtown).

Paying for Free Transit

Current budgetary practice makes it difficult to pay for Free Transit. In Toronto, massive public funding would be needed to replace the current 70% of operating costs paid by fares and to take on the capital costs of building new transit capacity.

The Ontario government would have to reverse its Harris-era downloading of operating support to municipalities with limited taxing ability. Both Ontario and federal governments need to provide the funding that is recognized around the world as essential for any successful transit system, free or not. Even free public transit can be cheaper than the costs of building road and other car-related infrastructure. Ending state subsidies (such as building highways at public expense) to privatized transport and land development would, of course, challenge vested interests in the construction, development, finance, media and auto-related industries.

Increasing federal and provincial funding of mass public transit with stable and generous formulas, while ending the hidden subsidies to these vested interests, would make it possible to fund free transit without increasing municipal taxes. This would not preclude a new tax structure to support the transformation of our city, such as new taxes on gas, carbon and parking, and certain kinds of tolls, congestion fees and luxury taxes. A national urban transit plan, co-ordinated across all levels of government is needed, much like the current highway system. New financing could come through restoring the 1% reduction of the HST made by Harper and higher gas taxes. A national capital levy of 2% for public transit and climate change initiatives could also be raised.

Eliminating fares would get rid of the cost of collecting them. It would eliminate Presto, and all of the other enormous apparatus used to collect and police fare collection.

As part of a progressive taxation system, we should all be prepared to be taxed for a basic public service like free transit, recognizing that this will leave us far better off than having to pay increasingly expensive transit fares or go into debt to finance car travel, which is in effect a socially regressive tax on mobility. Occasional transit users – motorists and cyclists for instance – will benefit from transit-friendly taxation in other ways, too.

A genuinely accessible and usable public transportation network is essential to creating a sustainable, breathable and livable city for us all.

How To Get There

Free Transit Toronto proposes the following steps toward Free Transit:

  • Freeze all fares and embark on a plan to reduce them in a series of steps over 5 years.
  • Prioritize eliminating fares for seniors, people on social assistance, low incomes and the unemployed. Start with implementing the Fair Pass plan immediately, extending their coverage, and reducing them over a 3-year period. Eliminate fares immediately during non-peak hours.
  • Suspend fare collection during extreme weather alerts (cold and hot).
  • Maintain full public ownership of all transit services, stock and maintenance. No private contracts (such as P3s) that distort the goals of public transit.
  • Create neighbourhood-based, short-distance public transit to link people lacking access to the main urban network.
  • Electrify all RER trains and charge fares at the same level as the TTC.
  • Replace Metrolinx with a democratic planning body mandated to facilitate generous, just, integrated and transit-oriented mobilities.

In Toronto, the movement to defend and expand public mass transit includes the Fair Fare CoalitionScarborough Transit Action, and TTCRiders in the city of Toronto, as well as movements in Mississauga and Hamilton and around the world. Along with the city’s working-class movement and climate justice advocates, Free Transit Toronto can create a sorely needed critical pole of reference for Toronto and Canadian politics – and achieve Free Transit.

Download PDF flyer.

*

Free Transit Toronto is built around the idea that public transit should be considered a public service and, like the libraries and Medicare, should be funded by progressive tax revenues, not by fares. For more information see freetransittoronto.org, and @freetransitTO.

All images in this article are from FTT.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Two days of talks between Chinese and US delegations last week ended with diplomatic language alone, indicating failure to accomplish anything significant, both sides holding firm in their demands.

First quarter 2018 US trade deficit with China was the highest on record at $91.1 billion, up over $10 billion year-over-year.

The comment period on Trump’s announced $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods expires at end of May. They’re likely coming if some agreement between both countries isn’t achieved in the next few weeks.

“This ever-expanding trade deficit is like the ghost of Trump trade promises past that is haunting the US negotiators (in talks with Beijing officials), trying to remedy the debacle of our China trade policy and those trying to conclude a NAFTA replacement deal that ends the outsourcing incentives and thus could win broad support,” Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach explained, adding:

“Expect ever-expanding trade deficits that eviscerate Trump’s grand trade reform promises unless the administration transforms our failed China trade policy and removes NAFTA’s job outsourcing incentives, adds strong labor and environmental standards, and thus achieves a NAFTA replacement that can get through Congress.”

Chinese and US negotiators are deeply divided. Washington demands Beijing cut the trade deficit at least $200 billion by end of 2020, along with halting state subsidies for companies under the “Made in China 2025” plan – and not retaliate against US exports to the country.

Beijing called on the Trump administration to halt its investigation of Chinese trade and industrial policies, along with lifting its restrictions on high-tech exports to the country.

A Chinese trade policy adviser called Washington “too demanding,” adding (bilateral disagreements) cannot be solved merely by China without coordination from the US.”

Talks will continue, including on the sidelines of later in the year international forums between Trump and Xi Jinping directly.

China is willing to allow increased imports of US goods, not reduce exports of its own to America. Nor will it halt subsidies to certain industries, longstanding practice by Washington to corporate favorites.

Both countries want trade war avoided. Beijing remains firm in its position, saying it won’t bow to US pressure.

“We will not offer concessions on anything we consider to be a core interest,” said one unnamed Chinese official, adding:

“There are too many issues that we may not be able to solve in one round. Both sides can continue the discussions in Beijing or in Washington. If the talks break down and the US side escalates (its) actions, we are also well prepared for it.”

“In the event of a trade war, China’s economy is going to be more resilient than America’s.”

Washington doesn’t negotiate. It demands, able to enforce its will on most countries, including EU ones, not easily on China, intending to go along with nothing harming its longterm growth strategy.

Compromise by both sides is likely, whether enough to satisfy both countries another matter entirely.

Long-term US policy calls for regime change in China, replacing its sovereign independence with pro-Western puppet governance, wanting a strategic opponent of its aim for global dominance eliminated.

The bilateral trade dispute is a side show to Washington’s greater imperial objectives – yet important enough to spark conflict between both countries if not resolved.

Mattis explained saying

“great power competition (is) the primary focus of US national security.”

Washington called Russia and China “revisionist power(s)” hostile to US interests. An eventual imperial showdown with both countries is likely, risking unthinkable global war.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Featured image is from Stansberry Churchouse.

Featured image: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (l) and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro meet today to sign accords, among them an agreement to start a bi-national initiated with Petros (Source: @NicolasMaduro)

Venezuela y Palestinian leaders agreed to start a binational bank between the two countries to be kickstarted with 20 million Venezuelan Petros.

Newly re-elected Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas landed in Caracas last night for a two-day diplomatic stay in Venezuela and already he and President Nicolas Maduro have signed an accord to create the binational bank to fund technological and industrial initiatives between the two countries.

During the same meeting Venezuelan minister of tourism Marlenys Contreras and Palestinian director general of international cooperation, Imad Zuhairi agreed to bilateral tourism and hotel projects.

Today’s session at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas also established an agreement to begin a Venezuela-Palestine business council to expand economic, banking, trade and financial cooperation among the countries.

Both countries already maintain several accords in the areas of education, trade, energy, agriculture, culture, communication, sports, defense, security and health since 2009.

Maduro told Abbas during their meeting

“the sovereign and free Venezuela is dedicated to the cause of a free, independent, sovereign and peaceful Palestine.”

The Palestinian president thanked Maduro for defending his country,

“I’d like to reiterate my thanks to the Venezuelan government and its people for their support of the Palestinian cause.”

Palestine’s president went on to thank Maduro for the education scholarships that have enabled many Palestinian students to study in the South American country.

“Dozens of engineers and doctors have graduated and others continue to study,” said Abbas.

Abbas thanked Venezuela for its help in establishing the ophthalmology hospital in Palestine named “Hugo Chavez”, after the deceased Venezuelan president.

The Palestinian head of state will continue his Latin American diplomatic tour to Cuba and Chile.


*

Featured image: Ancient Xidi Village in China

There is no time for long introductions. The world is, possibly heading for yet another catastrophe. This one, if we, human beings will not manage to prevent it, could become our final.

The West is flexing its muscle, antagonizing every single country that stands on its way to total domination of the Planet. Some countries, including Syria, are attacked directly and mercilessly. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people are dying.

Political and potentially military disaster is simultaneously ‘complemented’ by the ecological ruin. Mainly Western multi-national companies have been plundering the world, putting profit over people, even over the very survival of the human species.

‘Political correctness’ is diluting the sense of urgency, and there is plenty of hypocrisy at work:  while, at least in the West and Japan, people are encouraged to recycle, to turn off the lights in empty rooms and not to waste water, in other parts of our Planet, entire islands, nations and continents are being logged out by the Western corporations, or destroyed by unbridled mining. The governments of the West’s ‘client states’ are getting hopelessly corrupt in the process.

Western politicians see absolutely no urgency in all that is taking place around the world, or more precisely – they are paid not to see it.

So, are we now dealing with the thoroughly hopeless scenario? Did the world go mad? Is it ready to get sacrificed for the profit of the very few? Are people simply going to stand passively, watching what is happening around them, and die, as their world goes literally up in flames?

It appeared so, until few months ago.

Then, one of the oldest cultures on Earth, China, stood up and said

“No! There are different ways to go forward. We could all benefit from the progress, without cannibalizing, and fully destroying our Planet.”

China, led by President Xi, accelerated implementation of the concept of so-called Ecological Civilization, eventually engraving it into the constitution of the country.

A man who did tremendous work in China, working tirelessly on the Ecological Civilization concept in both China and in the United States, John Cobb Jr., has been, for years, a friend and close comrade of mine.

A 93-year-old Whiteheadian philosopher (and many believe, one of the most important living philosophers), one of the most acknowledged Christian progressive topologists, and self-proclaimed ‘supporter of Revolution’, John Cobb’s is a brave ‘alternative’ and optimistic voice coming from the United States.

Andre Vltchek and John Cobb Jr.

We first met on a bus from Pyongyang to DMZ, in DPRK, several years ago, and became close friends, presently working on a book and a film together.

In this difficult, extremely dangerous, but also somehow hopeful time for our planet, it is clear that John Cobb’s voice should be heard by many.

*

China’s Growing Commitment to Eco-Civ

I recalled our meeting in Claremont, when John expressed worries that China and its leadership could go ‘either way’, in regard to the “Ecological civilization”, possibly even against it. Inside China and her leadership, there were apparently voices defending ‘pure economic growth’ approach. Now the Chinese Parliament has written the goal of ecological civilization into the national constitution.

I wanted to know what does it mean, practically? Is there a reason to celebrate?

John replied via email:

“Something like fifteen years ago, the Chinese Communist Party wrote the goal of an ecological civilization into its constitution.  Although the formulation is remarkable, the motivation is not hard to understand.  The Party was responding to the distress of hundreds of millions of Chinese who longed for clean air and blue skies.  To maintain the popularity of the party, it had to assure the people that it shared their concerns.  Everyone agreed that lessening pollution was a good thing.

Nevertheless, the phrase meant more than just trying to minimize the ecological damage done by rapid economic growth.  It expressed an understanding that the natural world was constituted of ecologies rather than just a collection of individual things.  And it clearly indicated the desirability of human activity fitting into this natural world rather than replacing it.

Many who supported this goal, however, did not suppose that announcing it committed China to major changes in the present.  Many have argued that China’s first task was to modernize, meaning especially industrialize, and become a wealthy nation.  Then it would have the luxury of attending to the natural environment.  Few, if any, thought it meant that China would turn away from the goal of economic growth to pursue something different.

Communist Victory in Beijing, China

However, Chinese leaders did recognize that simply postponing the work for clear skies and a healthy environment would not work.  The nation needed to work on economic growth and a healthy natural environment simultaneously.  It began evaluating the success of provincial governments by their achievements in these two distinct realms.  Growth goals were set below what would be possible, so that it could be channeled in less environmentally harmful directions.  Experiments with ecovillages received encouragement.

The talk of moving toward an ecological civilization also encouraged reflection about “civilization” alongside “market.”  That supported those Chinese who were concerned that the narrow concern for wealth at all costs was not healthy for human society.  Marxism had always emphasized economic matters, but it was concerned to move society away from competition toward cooperation.  It was always concerned with the distribution of goods, so that the poor would be benefited, and workers would be empowered.  The idea of recovering traditional Chinese civilizational values gained in acceptance.

The extent to which the health of the natural environment and cultural goals gained status as policy goals bothered some party members.  For them China’s wealth and power were crucial.  An observer could not be sure that the extent to which the goal of ecological civilization was broadening the aims of government would continue.  Leadership is subject to change every five years.

However, the changes at the recent Party congress tended to strengthen commitment to ecological civilization.  President Xi, who has been central to the moves toward ecological civilization was given another five years.  He and others reiterated the goal and affirmed steps in its direction.  Now it seems likely that in the next five years he will not be a “lame-duck” president since the limitation to two terms has been removed.

To reinforce the Chinese commitment, the Parliament has written the goal of ecological civilization into the national constitution.  Since the national government is regularly guided by the Party, this may not seem to make much practical difference.  But the way it occurred does make clear that the nation, on the whole, is not resentful.  The Chinese people do not feel that the Party’s commitment is oppressive or foolish.  We can have considerable confidence that China as a nation in genuinely committed and that the people share a hope for becoming an ecological civilization.  Predicting the future is never safe, but as these matters go, we can have confidence that China is committed.  Given the likelihood that it will supersede the United States as the global leader, this can give us grounds for hope.”

John Cobb’s Role in China

John Cobb is a well-known figure in the PRC. His thoughts are having great impact on an influential group of Chinese leaders. But how would he, personally, summarize his involvement in the “Ecological Civilization” project? What impact did he have, personally, on what is happening in China, in this particular field?

“Through most of my life, the last thing I anticipated was to have a role in China.  As a Protestant theologian, any hope for influence went in quite different directions.  Although my theology is deeply shaped by the prophetic tradition of ancient Judaism, and I understand Marx also to have been deeply informed by that tradition, I did not expect Chinese Communists to recognize that kinship. Yet in the end, I consider that, through a remarkable sequence of chances, my role in China has been the most important part of my life.  I will first describe my trajectory, then the trajectory of China, and then the wholly “improbable” intersection.

In my studies at the University of Chicago in the late nineteen forties, made possible by the GI bill, I was introduced to Alfred North Whitehead.  Over the years, I was more and more impressed by the way his “philosophy of organism” answered my questions and provided me the holistic vision that I craved, one quite contrary to the mechanist and materialist thinking that dominated American education and culture.

In the late sixties, I was awakened to the fact that the dominant modern culture was leading the world to self-destruction, and my attachment to Whitehead, as one who offered a far more promising alternative, was confirmed and deepened.  Meanwhile interest in any alternative to mechanism was fading in American universities.  Together with David Griffin, I seized an opportunity in 1973 to create a center to keep Whitehead’s thought alive and display its relevance to the crises of our time.  This Center for Process Studies has sponsored conferences and lectures and publications displaying how Whitehead’s organic and processive thought provides a more promising pattern of thinking in many fields.  Ecological concerns played a large role throughout.  Although many individual scientists and professionals worked with us, the universities tightened their commitment to the modern vision we were trying to get beyond.  We sometimes called ourselves postmodernists, but when that term was given wide currency by French intellectual deconstruction of modernity, David Griffin began calling us “constructive postmodernists.”

Lotus lake and Chinese girl – ecological paradise

By the opening of the twentieth century, thoughtful Chinese saw that the Western colonial powers together with Japan were nibbling away at China and that classical Chinese culture was unable to compete with the West in science, technology, and military power. To maintain Chinese independence, China must modernize. It adopted the dominant Western form of modernity, bourgeois capitalism.  The suffering of the poor led many to seek a better form of modernity in Marxism, and during and after World War II the Marxists replaced bourgeois democracy with rule by the Communist Party.

Mao Tse Tung made a serious effort to end China’s class society in what was called then “Cultural Revolution.” This evoked so intense an opposition from the urban middle class, that it was a painful failure, never repeated.  When the Communist Party repudiated this Marxist goal, what was left was rule by the party and commitment to rapid modernization as the road to national wealth.

Chinese intellectuals were not comfortable with this total commitment to the modern in view of the deconstruction of the modern by French intellectuals.  Some of them followed the French in calling themselves postmodernists, but the French postmodernists gave little guidance in relation to China’s biggest problem with modernization — the pollution and degradation of the environment.  When they discovered that there was another form of “postmodernism” that made positive proposals for change and gave a great deal of attention to the natural world, many of them were interested.  One Chinese postmodernist, Zhihe Wang, came to Claremont to complete his studies, and it was his leadership that led to the intersection of developments in China with my life. He decided that he could be most effective living in the United States and frequently visiting China. His wife, Meijun Fan left a prestigious professorship in Beijing to work with him.  As a result of their effective introduction of “process thought” to China, thirty-five universities established centers focusing on the relevance of Whitehead’s thought to a wide range of topics, such as education, psychology, science and values, the legal system, and so forth.

Meanwhile, partly, I assume, to assuage the distress of many urbanites with the pollution of the air, the Communist Party wrote into its constitution the goal of becoming an “ecological civilization.”  Because of the reputation of the Chinese leadership in Claremont, they were encouraged to hold conferences on this topic here, primarily for Chinese scholars.  These gave me and other American constructive postmodernists an opportunity to participate in shaping the meaning of the initially rich and suggestive, but rather vague, term. This has probably been our major contribution.

There has been one very important shift in Chinese policy due to the commitment to “ecological civilization.”  As part of its goal of modernization, China planned to industrialize agriculture.  At many of the conferences here and at others in China, we argued that China could not build an ecological civilization on an industrial agriculture.  The Communist Party was persuaded to shift its policies from the continuing depopulation of rural China to the development of the thousands of villages that were slated for destruction.  Policies have changed, and in 2016 for the first time, more people moved from cities to countryside than from countryside to cities.  Development of villages has been emphasized along with the goal of ecological civilization in last fall’s crucial meetings of the Communist Party.  And the Chinese parliament has written the goal of ecological civilization into the national constitution.  It seems highly probable that this important shift in Chinese society will endure.

Obviously, the shift was primarily due to the work of many Chinese.  However, harsh criticism by Americans of the consequences of industrializing agriculture in the United States played a role.  Again, my voice was only one of many.  Partly, no doubt, because of my age, I am given far more credit than I deserve.  But I am very proud of whatever contribution I made to this shift that affects hundreds of millions of Chinese and gives some concrete meaning to “ecological civilization”.

Centralized Power

In many ways, China became the leader, when it comes to ecology, as well as combining traditional culture with modernity. It is determined to build the entire civilization around its ecological and cultural concerns. It appears that in the future, the ‘markets’ and financial considerations may play important but secondary role. Is it mainly possible because of the centralized/Communist nature of the Chinese political and economic system (including the central planning)?

“I have neither study nor experience qualifying me to address this question.  But I still have opinions; so, I’ll share them.

Clearly in China it has been the leadership of the central government that has set the course, done the planning, and implemented what it planned.  For those of us who believe the world needs urgently to move toward ecological civilization, this has worked well.  Prior to the meetings last fall, I remained unsure about whether everything depended on a particular leader who might be replaced.  That he emerged from the fall events with increased power was reassuring, especially because he strongly expressed determination to implement steps toward achieving the civilization China and the world needs.

There was still the possibility that representatives of other factions in the Communist Party, who sought to replace Xi, might treat him as a “lame duck.”  Now that the impossibility of a third term has been removed, that danger also is gone.  An extended period of leadership can probably make some policies so identified with the nation that they will continue even if a successor is not personally committed to the goal of ecological civilization.

All of this is to say that centralized power is currently working in a remarkably promising way not paralleled by other countries with less centralized political power.

Some European countries achieved a considerable move toward ecological civilization earlier than China.  That they are not currently leading may be because they are already farther along on the needed trajectory.  They have made significant desirable policy changes without centralized power.  In these countries, the public as whole is well informed and capable of making wise decisions.  Governments are sufficiently democratic that they express the public desires.  In some cases, commitment to sustainable practices and meeting the basic needs of all citizens has become the “common sense” of the people sufficiently that it is likely not to be radically abandoned by changing officials. It was impressive that, when Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Accords, there was very little interest in withdrawal in Europe, even though the reasons for withdrawal applied equally there.  Apparently, the corporate world in Europe has adjusted to new needs and expectations as it has not in the United States.

Even so, I have more confidence in endurance in China with its centralized control than in European countries more directly subject to popular opinion.  Thus far European countries have been fairly prosperous.  Pollution control has not led to unemployment or economic immiseration.  Thus, the level of commitment to ecological needs has not been seriously tested.

In contrast, the need to accept large numbers of refugees has been sufficient to weaken consensus on a range of issues.  It is not hard to imagine that corporations that have thus far been cooperative with good policies might take advantage of dissident public opinion to seek the kinds of changes that the United States is currently experiencing.  These corporations often control the media and thus can shape public opinion to support their ends.

Wuxi – medieval ecological village

As I compare China’s success in giving serious attention to the well-being of its natural environment and needy citizens with that of European countries, my reason for betting on China is that I have some confidence that it will maintain governmental control of finance and of corporations generally.  If it does this, it can also control the media.  Thus, it has a chance of making financial and industrial corporations serve the national good as perceived by people not in their service.  Less centralized governments are less able to control the financial and other corporations whose short-term interests may conflict with the common good.

Of course, the concentration of power in countries like China does not guarantee the continuation of governmental service of the common good.  There is an old adage in the West: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  I think the Communist Party in China works hard to socialize its members to resist corruption.  I think it has been largely successful.

My hero, Jesus, asserted that no one can serve God and money.  If we understand that God’s desire is for the common good, we can translate, no one can serve both money and the common good.  I think that at the present time, the Chinese Communist Party is more successful in cultivating a commitment to the common good than are the churches in the West.  That may be more important than the question of how centralized the power may be.

Commitment to the Common Good

I wrote to John that during our recent encounter, he stated that one of the reasons why China succeeded in so many fields, is because it can count on many people in its leadership, who are truly concerned about the well-being of their country. This fully coincided with my own experience that I gained in the PRC. But how does John see the West? How different is it in the West? Is the Western leadership constructed on thoroughly different principles? He replied immediately:

“Near the end of my answer to the previous topic I made the statement that I believed the Chinese Communist Party was more successful in eliciting concern for the wellbeing of China and all its people than the Western churches were in eliciting commitment to the common good.  For many Christians, this is surprising.  Christians have tended to think that we need belief in God to ground our ethical commitments.

No one supposes that a theistic ethic is the only way that people can be socialized with respect to action.  Earthly rulers have often considered their will as the grounds of law and ethics.  The deepest commitment should be to the ruler and hence to advance the ruler’s wishes.  But from the Christian point of view, true ethics must transcend obedience to political power.  Might does not make right.

How to live can also be determined by tribal or national culture.  This often overlaps with obeying the ruler, but it can even conflict with that.  The interpreters of the culture may be identified as priests or as sages.

Philosophers have sometimes attempted to ground ethics in a purely rational way.  Kant developed a “categorical imperative.”  Whether that is truly free from particular cultural shaping is questionable, but many still think so.  Certainly, it may be supported in more than one culture.

For theists, none of these forms of ethics really work.  For some of them the alternative is belief that the Creator is also the giver of law, and rewards those who obey in a life after death if not here and now, and punishes those who disobey.

Other theists reject this legalism and emphasize that we owe our being and all that is good in our lives to the Creative and Redeeming God.  This God loves all people and seeks the good of all.  Our grateful response is to serve those whom God loves, namely, at least, all human beings, and especially those whose needs are greatest.

For many theists, right and wrong are so bound up with God that when they hear that Marx was an atheist, they assume he had no ethics.  So, for me to say that Marx’s followers do a better job of evoking commitment to the common good than do Western theists strikes some as implausible.  They think that if there is no God to serve, one will serve something less than God, and therefore less than the “common” good.  Many theists assume that if one does not serve God one is likely to look out only for one’s own good.  This assumption is foundational to the academic discipline of economics.

In fact, however, Marx derived from Hegel a sense of a movement in history that should be served.  It is a movement that works for a classless society in which the needs of all are met.  To work for that society is certainly a way of serving the common good.  I believe this sense of participating in a process that works for good is more convincing to many people than serving what has been more conventionally called “God”.  The percentage of Western people who take seriously belief in a God who calls us to serve the common good is probably less than the percentage of Chinese who understand themselves to work with the dialectic of history to overcome the class society that leaves so many abused and oppressed.

Neither Christianity nor Marxism has a history of great moral achievement.  Both need to be honest about their failures. I will comment on Western Christianity in the modern world.  Two Western developments have greatly weakened it.  One is the development of science on the basis of a metaphysics that systematically excludes any possible role for God.  The other is the development of capitalism which assumes and celebrates individual self-interest as the one all-controlling motivation.  Even faithful churchgoers are likely to be influenced by both of these developments.  Among the actual determinants of behavior, theism now plays a small role.

Among Americans, the “American exceptionalism” into which the school system socializes youth plays a larger role.  It can lead to heroic acts thought to be in the service of the nation, and even to great passion for the preservation or restoration of the natural beauty with which the nation is endowed.  But its primary function is to persuade Americans to accept much profoundly evil activity on the part of their country by assuring them that in the long run this will enable others to share in the great benefits of Americanism.

I am attributing to the American educational system the inculcation of American exceptionalism.  However, it officially eschews even this value.  Its goal is to be “value-free,” which means in practice, in the service of money.  The whole culture celebrates the value of being rich.  Economic theory is the national ideology.  That Americans are becoming increasingly nihilistic is the natural result of a nihilistic system of schooling.

Sadly, China is going all too far in copying this nihilistic schooling.  My view is that the commitment of the government to Marxism has not been allowed to shape the academic curriculum, but that it does provide some important values to supplement the curriculum.  And, alongside the general culture, in the Communist Party, a substantial number of people are socialized in Marxist thought and values. It is because Marx has more influence in China than Jesus has in the West, that the chances of China to lead the world toward salvation are better than the chances of the West to do so.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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

All images in this article are from the authors.

Selected Articles: Will Trump End the Iran Nuclear Deal?

May 8th, 2018 by Global Research News

US President Donald Trump is set to declare his decision on the Iran Nuclear Deal before the deadline on May 12. Should Trump decertify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), he is not only compromising the possibility of dialogue with Iran but more so risking the world towards annihilation. 

Is the world ready for the turnaround? Will PM Benjamin Netanyahu achieve his goal behind his presentation of baseless claims on Iran’s nuclear arsenal?

Read our selection of articles below and share it far and wide. Let us fight against media disinformation and push towards a world of peace.

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Iran Isn’t Violating the JCPOA Nuclear Agreement — America Is

By Darius Shahtahmasebi, May 04, 2018

The aim of this performance is to cast doubt on the efficacy of the Iranian nuclear accord signed in 2015, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which U.S. President Donald Trump has long intended to completely derail. Netanyahu, of course, is totally on board with this goal.

Trump “All but Decided to Withdraw” from Iran Deal as IAEA Refutes Netanyahu Speech

By Zero Hedge, May 03, 2018

Soon after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a televised address in which he unveiled a cache of 55,000 pages of documents and 183 CDs that he claimed comprised Iran’s alleged “atomic archive” of documents on its nuclear program, supposedly proving the existence of an illegal and ongoing secret program to “test and build nuclear weapons” called Project Amad, the UN’s atomic agency weighed in to directly negate the claims. 

Netanyahu’s Anti-Iranian Reality-TV Show

By Dr. Ludwig Watzal, May 01, 2018

With his newest anti-Iranian rant, Netanyahu wanted to impress another braggart of reality-TV, President Donald Trump. This time, Netanyahu got professional, speaking in English, using slides and pictures, not cartoons like in the United Nations where he had ridiculed himself. He even exposed two “monuments,” one showing shelves full of folders apparently containing documents about Iran’s secret nuclear program. Perhaps these files were just for decoration. He avoided revealing its contents.

Warning: Nuclear Deal With Iran Prelude to War, Not “Breakthrough”

By Tony Cartalucci, March 07, 2018

Hysteria now sweeps the headlines across the Western media regarding a “historical nuclear deal” that “Obama made” that vindicates the Nobel Peace Prize he was “prematurely awarded” so many years ago. For those aware of the ruse at play, such sentiments are to be inevitably and completely betrayed by what is sure to follow.

Israel Buys the US Congress: Sabotaging the US-Iran Peace Negotiations

By Prof. James Petras, March 02, 2018

Precisely because of the initial favorable response among the participants, the Israeli government escalated its propaganda war against Iran.  Its agents in the US Congress, the mass media and in the Executive branch moved to undermine the peace process.  What is at stake is Israel’s capacity to wage proxy wars using the US military and its NATO allies against any government challenging Israeli military supremacy in the Middle East, its violent annexation of Palestinian territory and its ability to attack any adversary with impunity.

Iran at a Dangerous Crossroads

By Peter Koenig, January 05, 2018

He addressed many issues from internal affairs, competing factions within the Islamic Revolution, to external relations – and the economy. He also referred to The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly called the Iran Nuclear Deal, the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, reached in Vienna, Austria, on 14 July 2015. The accord is barely two and half years old and already breached by one of the five main-sponsors, the United States of America.

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Pacco bomba nucleare dagli Usa

May 8th, 2018 by Manlio Dinucci

La nuova bomba nucleare B61-12 che gli Usa si preparano a inviare in Italia, Germania, Belgio, Olanda e probabilmente in altri paesi europei – è ormai in fase finale di realizzazione. Lo ha annunciato il generale Jack Weinstein, vice-capo di stato maggiore della U.S. Air Force, responsabile delle operazioni nucleari, intervenendo il 1° maggio a un simposio della Air Force Association a Washington di fronte a uno scelto uditorio di alti ufficiali e rappresentanti dellindustria bellica.

«Il programma sta andando estremamente bene», ha sottolineato con soddisfazione il generale, specificando che «abbiamo già effettuato 26 test di ingegneristica, sviluppo e volo guidato della B61-12». Il programma prevede la produzione, a iniziare dal 2020, di circa 500 B61-12, con una spesa di circa 10 miliardi di dollari (per cui ogni bomba viene a costare il doppio di quanto costerebbe se fosse costruita interamente in oro). I molti componenti della B61-12 vengono progettati nei laboratori nazionali Sandia di Los Alamos, Albuquerque e Livermore (in New Mexico e California), e prodotti in una serie di impianti in Missouri, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee. La bomba viene testata (senza carica nucleare) nel Tonopah Test Range in Nevada.

La B61-12 ha «qualità» interamente nuove rispetto alla attuale B61 schierata in Italia e altri paesi europei: una testata nucleare a quattro opzioni di potenza selezionabili; un sistema di guida che la dirige con precisione sullobiettivo; la capacità di penetrare nel sottosuolo, anche attraverso cemento armato, esplodendo in profondità.

La maggiore precisione e la capacità penetrante rendono la nuova bomba adatta ad attaccare i bunker dei centri di comando, così da«decapitare»il paese nemico. Una B61-12 da 50 kt (equivalenti a 50 mila tonnellate di tritolo) che esplode sottoterra ha lo stesso potenziale distruttivo di una bomba nucleare da oltre un megaton (un milione di tonnellate di tritolo) che esplode in superficie.

La B61-12 può essere sganciata dai caccia statunitensi F-16C/D schierati ad Aviano, e dai Tornado italiani PA-200 schierati a Ghedi. Ma, per usare tutte le capacità della B61-12 (in particolare la guida di precisione), occorrono i nuovi caccia F-35A. Ciò comporta la soluzione di altri problemi tecnici, che si aggiungono ai numerosi verificatisi nel programma F-35, cui lItalia partecipa quale partner di secondo livello. Il complesso software del caccia, che è stato finora modificato oltre 30 volte, richiede ulteriori aggiornamenti. Per modificare 12 F-35 lItalia dovràspendere circa 400 milioni di euro, che si aggiungono alla spesa ancora inquantificata (stimata in 13-16 miliardi di euro)  per lacquisto di 90 caccia e il loro continuo ammodernamento. Soldi che escono dalle casse dello Stato (ossia dalle nostre), mentre quelli ricavati dai contratti per la produzione dellF-35 entrano nelle casse delle industrie militari.

La bomba nucleare B61-12 e il caccia F-35, che lItalia riceve dagli Usa, fanno quindi parte di un unico «pacco bomba» che ci scoppierà  tra le mani. LItalia sarà esposta a ulterori pericoli quale base avanzata della strategia nucleare degli Stati uniti contro la Russia e altri paesi. Non c’è che un modo per evitarlo: chiedere agli Usa, in base al Trattato di non-proliferazione, di rimuovere qualsiasi arma nucleare dal nostro territorio; rifiutare di fornire al Pentagono, nel quadro della Nato, piloti e aerei per lattacco nucleare; uscire dal Gruppo di pianificazione nucleare della Nato; aderire al Trattato Onu sulla proibizione delle armi nucleari.

C’è qualcuno, nel mondo politico, disposto a non fare la politica dello struzzo? 

Manlio Dinucci

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Antidepressants were once considered a short-term therapy to help people get over a troubled time. All that changed with the debut of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants, drug ads on TV and the promotion of the “chemical imbalance” theory of depression. Though there is almost no evidence of the theory––that SSRI antidepressants correct deficits in brain levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter––antidepressants became blockbusters for Pharma.

“By the mid-1990s, drug makers had convinced government regulators that when taken long-term, the medications sharply reduced the risk of relapse in people with chronic, recurrent depression,” says the New York Times.

Thanks to drug advertising and the unproven serotonin theory, the use of antidepressants has almost tripled. Only 13.4 million Americans took antidepressants in 1999–2000 ballooning to 34.4 million in 2013–4. In 2015 one in four U.S. women were on psychiatric drugs, usually antidepressants. More concerning, long-term use of antidepressants has doubled since 2010 and tripled since 2000 so that 15.5 million Americans have been taking the medications for at least five years. Yet few studies show the safety or efficacy antidepressants used long-term.

I have frequently reported on the side effects of SSRIs from birth defects associated with Paxil, including heart malformations, to sexual dysfunction and weight gain. The pills are also linked to serotonin syndrome when taken with migraine drugs and gastrointestinal bleeding when taken with aspirin.

One especially concerning side effect of SSRIs is bone-thinning and osteoporosis. Fracture events linked to SSRIs, especially from long-term use, have barely been researched or explored and are often dismissed by older patients as mere “aging.”

The wide use of SSRIs in the U.S. population does not just have health implications—it has political implications, too. By selling “depression” and its “cure,” Pharma siphons off legitimate, activist anger at a government system that keeps people poor, powerless, locked out of opportunity and saddled with debt. If they are unhappy, they have a personal problem says Pharma, treated with a pill––not a political problem.

Labeling bad and sad moods “depression” also transmits an unrealistic idea that people should be “more than happy” all the time and if they are not, they are “mentally ill.” Gone are the days when bad moods were attributed to problems with finance, romance, debt, jobs, housing, careers, family, marriages and health.

Pharma backlash

In April, the New York Times reported something the drug safety community has warned about for years: antidepressants can be very difficult to quit. In fact, the withdrawal from them––which Pharma calls a “discontinuation syndrome”––is similar to that of addictive drugs. Many patients are miffed that they were not warned by their doctors they may be “parked” on the drugs indefinitely, said the Times, thanks to side effects of dizziness, nausea, headache and brain zaps which do not go away quickly when they try to stop the drugs. Brian, a 29-year-old Chicagoan I interviewed who did not want his name used, told me he has remained on a SSRI antidepressant for years despite his wish to quit.

“Every time I try to stop, I get something that feels like an electrical current in my head and I can’t do it,” he says.

The article drew a huge backlash from psychiatrists from Pharma-funded medical schools.

“By amplifying the social media echo chamber, the article creates the unfortunate impression that most patients are forced to continue antidepressants out of fear of withdrawal rather than out of prevention of recurrence,” wrote 39 psychiatrists, terming depression “chronic” and “undertreated.”

At least 35 of the letter signers who want to see more not less SSRIs are affiliated with Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons which received $250 million from former Merck CEO Roy Vagelos and his wife Diana last year.

There was a similar Pharma-funded backlash in 2004 when the FDA added a black box warning label to SSRIs that said they are linked to suicide, especially in young people, threatening drug sales.

“The concerns about antidepressant use in children and adolescents have paradoxically resulted in a reduction in their use, and this has contributed to increased suicide rates,” said Charles Nemeroff who happened to have links to Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Wyeth-Ayerst, Pharmacia-Upjohn and five other drug makers.

Black box warnings create a barrier to treatment “by scaring young people and parents away from care,” said Mental Health America, reported to have accepted $3.8 million from pharmaceutical companies in 2005 the year after the black box warnings.

Doctors promoting SSRIs in medical articles have also been outed as taking money from Pharma. Doctor authors who had defended the use of antidepressants during pregnancy in a 2006 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) article had ties to antidepressant manufacturers. Lee Cohen, lead author of the antidepressants study, declared in a follow-up letter to JAMA that,

“We did not view those associations as relevant to this study,” and listed 76 other relationships the nine physician authors had with Pharma.

Yes, 76. Three years later another JAMA author was found to have undisclosed financial links to SSRI makers. Robert Robinson, who wrote about the drug Lexapro, had failed to report lecture fees he received from its manufacturer.

Martin Keller, former professor emeritus of psychiatry at Brown and lead author of a now discredited Paxil study, admitted that GSK had given him tens of thousands of dollars during and after the study.

Environmental concerns

Finally, with as much as a quarter of the population on SSRIs in some areas, there is an underreported concern about drugs in waterways and even drinking systems. A few years ago, the Southern Daily Echo News reported that fish were under the influence of Prozac and five times more likely to swim toward light than away from it, making them also more susceptible to predators.

Shrimp are also believed to be at risk.

Crustaceans are crucial to the food chain and if shrimps’ natural behaviour is being changed because of antidepressant levels in the sea this could seriously upset the natural balance of the ecosystem,” says Dr. Alex Ford, from the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Marine Sciences.

Could those of us who do not want to take psychiatric drugs be unwittingly receiving SSRIs anyway, perhaps in drinking water?

“There’s no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they’re at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms,” said Mary Buzby, director of environmental technology for Merck.

Clearly, Pharma’s SSRI marketing spree which has millions of people on SSRIs for decades does not just threaten patients.

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Martha Rosenberg is a freelance journalist and the author of the highly acclaimed “Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health,” published by Prometheus Books. Check her Facebook page.

Iran Under Renewed and Enormous Threats

May 8th, 2018 by Shane Quinn

A neutral bystander might question why Iran is not permitted to explore nuclear capabilities, especially as the country has long been under the shadow of possible attack. One need only examine the fate of past American victims like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, none of whom possessed nuclear weapons as a deterrent against aggression.

Such is the lesson invoked by US foreign policy. This has been heeded by North Korean leaders who, looking on at one American intervention after another, fearfully armed themselves to the teeth. On the other side, the United States and Israel possess a vast array of nuclear weapons – while the superpower and its right-hand man, unlike Iran, have decades of bloodshed and destruction under their belt.

Yet it is Iran that remains according to New York Times the key “destabilizing force” in the world with the Islamic republic, in reality, representing a threat to US and Israeli power in the Middle East. US president Donald Trump insisted that Iran is stoking the “fires of sectarian conflict and terror” while being “responsible for so much instability”. No such accusations are directed at America’s major ally and oil dictator country Saudi Arabia who, among other crimes, fund a range of terrorist groups.

Yet the Saudis have long constituted a “stabilizing regional presence” (according to MSM) , despite being among the world’s worst human rights abusers, far more severe than Iran. The US itself has been the greatest driver of “sectarian conflict and terror” in the Middle East, with repeated interventions dating to the early 1990s Gulf War. A rational observer would again be tempted to query why Israel and its sponsor America are not being pressurized into reviewing their own nuclear arsenals.

Unlike Iran, Israel refuses to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nor does it allow any inspections of its nuclear capabilities. Also with American assurance, Israel has thwarted calls for a nuclear weapons free zone in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has remained under significant outside pressure, in violation of the United Nations Charter. In recent days, this was publicly reiterated with Trump saying “If Iran threatens us in any way, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid”.

The West have a long history of intervention in Iranian affairs – dating in living memory to the early 1950s, when the US and Britain overthrew the country’s conservative parliamentary government, led by prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. He had been taking steps to nationalize Iran’s enormous oil reserves, placing it out of foreign reach, an unacceptable prospect. He was unceremoniously toppled in August 1953 and the pro-Western Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, replaced him.

During his quarter century of dictatorship, the Shah would compile one of the worst human rights records on earth (as noted by Amnesty International). None of that mattered so long as America and the new junior partner, Britain, had control over Iran’s oil supplies.

In August 1962, president John F. Kennedy bluntly outlined in a letter to the Shah that,

“The United States greatly appreciates the highly important strategic location of Iran”, while warning that the dictator should remain “vigilant against the pressures of international communism”.

Two years later Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, insisted that the Shah was “carrying out great programs aimed at the welfare of his people… His leadership has been a vital factor in keeping Iran free and in modernizing this ancient land”, while describing the tyrant as “a reformist twentieth century monarch”.

Despite the Shah’s grisly record, he received numerous requests to visit the West. The Shah toured the White House while meeting, at different times, presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Returning the favor with trips to the Iranian capital Tehran were Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon and Carter – while the Shah was also summoned to America to attend the funerals of both Kennedy and Eisenhower (in 1963 and 1969 respectively).

The Iranian despot further enjoyed invites to London, gracing the halls of Buckingham Palace where he met Queen Elizabeth II (still reigning today), also seeing Winston Churchill – Churchill was himself one of the instigators behind the 1953 coup. In March 1961, the Queen accepted the Shah’s invitation with a “royal tour to Iran”, joined by husband Prince Philip.

In April 1978, the Shah also saw Britain’s incoming prime minister Margaret Thatcher in Tehran. Later, following his ousting, Thatcher said she was “deeply unhappy” in being unable to offer the Shah refuge, whom she described as a “firm and helpful friend to the UK”.

Perhaps such meetings are not terribly surprising. For example the Indonesian dictator General Haji Suharto, who oversaw one of the biggest mass murders of the twentieth century (as the CIA reported), was also invited to Buckingham Palace in November 1979, where he greeted the Queen and Prince Philip. Previously, in March 1974, the British monarch had become acquainted with Suharto in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.

In April 1985, prime minister Thatcher saw Suharto during a state visit to Indonesia, saying that she and the dictator “have a close identity of view on so many things”, and elsewhere describing him as “one of our very best and most valuable friends” (Thatcher’s government was supporting the Suharto regime with weapons sales). Suharto also made repeated trips to the White House, being warmly hosted by a number of US presidents, from Nixon to Bill Clinton.

Mohammad Reza speaks with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office (Source: White House Photo Office)

Elsewhere, in mainstream dialogue, the Shah was known as “a protector of Middle East stability” by allowing American companies and banks to access Iran’s vast riches. In the background, the Shah’s notorious secret police SAVAK killed many thousands of people, maiming and torturing countless others. SAVAK’s formation in 1957 was made possible because of CIA assistance, along with backing from Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. In operation for 22 years, SAVAK is today known as “the most feared and hated institution” in Iranian history.

In early 1979, the Shah was at last overthrown by popular resistance – despite president Carter saying just months before that his was “a progressive administration”. Following the Shah’s expulsion, invitations from Washington and London to Iran’s new leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, were mysteriously not forthcoming. This despite the fact that Khomeini, in comparison to his predecessor, was something of a saintly figure. In fact, no Iranian leader since 1979 can match the blood spilled during the Shah’s rule.

One can assume that American and British elites are concerned solely with gaining control over major resources, while immune to the enormous human suffering that supporting dictatorships entails. Indeed, Iran has never been forgiven for liberating itself from Western-backed tyranny, since enduring a US-sponsored invasion, sanctions and endless threats.

In recent years, Tony Blair has gone so far as to blame Iran for the many problems in Iraq (and the entire region), following the murderous 2003 US/UK invasion. Blair, a key figure behind the illegal attack on Iraq, singled out “the continuing intervention of Iran”, while openly calling for “regime change in Tehran”.

Blair’s tone towards post-revolutionary Iran is standard fare across the West. Once Iran slipped from American influence it became “evil”, like North Korea and Iraq, as president George W. Bush outlined. Previously, in 1982, president Reagan took Saddam Hussein off the list of states sponsoring terrorism, so he could supply the Iraqi dictator with extensive military aid in his war against Iran (1980-88). The conflict’s longevity, which killed hundreds of thousands on either side, would not have been possible without US backing for Saddam.

From an imperial viewpoint, Iran is an even greater prize than its neighbor Iraq. In land area Iran is almost four times larger, with a population of 80 million compared to Iraq’s 37 million. Iran possesses far greater strength and international clout, containing more oil reserves along with other resources such as iron ore and magnesium.

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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 Danger of Leadership Cults

May 8th, 2018 by Chris Hedges

No leader, no matter how talented and visionary, effectively defies power without a disciplined organizational foundation. The civil rights movement was no more embodied in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. than the socialist movement was embodied in Eugene V. Debs. As the civil rights leader Ella Baker understood, the civil rights movement made King; King did not make the civil rights movement. We must focus on building new, radical movements that do not depend on foundation grants, a media platform or the Democratic Party or revolve around the cult of leadership. Otherwise, we will remain powerless. No leader, no matter how charismatic or courageous, will save us. We must save ourselves.

“You didn’t see me on television, you didn’t see news stories about me,” said Baker, who died in 1986. “The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders.”

All of our radical and populist organizations, including unions and the press, are decimated or destroyed. If we are to successfully pit power against power we must reject the cult of the self, the deadly I-consciousness that seduces many, including those on the left, to construct little monuments to themselves. We must understand that it is not about us. It is about our neighbor. We must not be crippled by despair. Our job is to name and confront evil. All great crusades for justice outlast us. We are measured not by what we achieve but by how passionately and honestly we fight. Only then do we have a chance to thwart corporate power and protect a rapidly degrading ecosystem.

What does this mean?

It means receding into the landscape to build community organizations and relationships that for months, maybe years, will be unseen by mass culture. It means beginning where people are. It means listening. It means establishing credentials as a member of a community willing to make personal sacrifices for the well-being of others. It means being unassuming, humble and often unnamed and unrecognized. It means, as Cornel West said, not becoming “ontologically addicted to the camera.” It means, West went on, rejecting the “obsession with self as some kind of grand messianic gift to the world.”

One of the most important aspects of organizing is grass-roots educational programs that teach people, by engaging them in dialogue, about the structures of corporate power and the nature of oppression. One cannot fight what one does not understand. Effective political change, as Baker knew, is not primarily politically motivated. It is grounded in human solidarity, mutual trust and consciousness. As Harriet Tubman said:

“I rescued many slaves, but I could have saved a thousand more if the slaves knew they were slaves.”

The corporate state’s assault on education, and on journalism, is part of a concerted effort to keep us from examining corporate power and the ideologies, such as globalization and neoliberalism, that promote it. We are entranced by the tawdry, the salacious and the trivial.

The building of consciousness and mass organizations will not be quick. But these mass movements cannot become public until they are strong enough to carry out sustained actions, including civil disobedience and campaigns of noncooperation. The response by the state will be vicious. Without a dedicated and organized base we will not succeed.

Image result for bob moses activist

Bob Moses (image on the right) was the director of the Mississippi Project of the SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) in the early 1960s when that group organized to register black voters. Most blacks had been effectively barred from voting in Mississippi through poll taxes, literacy tests, residency requirements and other barriers. Moses, like many organizers, was beaten and arrested. Blacks who attempted to register to vote were threatened, harassed, fired from their jobs, physically attacked and even murdered.

“In essence, it was low-grade guerrilla warfare,” Moses said recently at an event at Princeton University, in New Jersey. “In guerrilla warfare, you have a community you can disappear into and emerge from. That’s what we had. We had a group of local activists who had been a part of the NAACP local organizations and who had a different sense after World War II. They were our base. I can go any place, any time of the night, knock on a door. Somebody was going to open it up, give me a bed to sleep in, feed me. They were going to watch my back.”

“We had a guerrilla community that we could disappear into and then emerge to take some people down to the battleground, the courthouse in some local town with people trying to register to vote,” he said. “At that point, you were exposed and possibly open to some danger. The danger came in different ways. There were the highway patrols, which the state organized. Then there were the local sheriffs. Then there’s the Klan citizens. Different levels of danger. The challenge is to understand that you are not always in danger. Those who couldn’t figure that out didn’t last. They didn’t join.”

“In guerrilla warfare, you have to have an end,” he said. “You learn that from people in the guerrilla base who had been fighting and figuring out how to survive and thrive in a guerrilla struggle. The only way to learn that is to immerse yourself. There’s no training. In Mississippi, most of the people who did that were young, 17, 18, 19. And they lived there.”

Organizing, Moses said, begins around a particular issue that is important to the community—raising the minimum wage, protecting undocumented workers, restoring voting rights to former prisoners, blocking a fracking site, halting evictions, ending police violence or stopping the dumping of toxic waste in neighborhoods. Movements rise organically. Dissidents are empowered and educated one person at a time. Any insurgency, he said, has to be earned.

“If you get knocked down enough times and stand up enough times then people think you’re serious,” he said. “It’s not you talking. They’ve heard everyone talk about this forever. We earned their trust. We earned the respect of young people across the country to get them to come down and risk their lives. This is your country. Look what’s going on in your country. What do you want to do about it? We established our authenticity.”

Moses warned movements, such as Black Lives Matter, about establishing a huge media profile without a strong organizational base. Too often protests are little more than spectacles, credentialing protesters as radicals or dissidents while doing little to confront the power of the state. The state, in fact, often collaborates with protesters, carrying out symbolic arrests choreographed in advance. This boutique activism is largely useless. Protests must take the state by surprise and, as with the water protectors at Standing Rock, cause serious disruption. When that happens, the state will drop all pretense of civility, as it did at Standing Rock, and react with excessive force.

“You can’t be a media person [the subject of media reports] and an organizer,” Moses said. “If you’re leading an organization, it’s what you do and who you are that impacts the people who you are trying to get to do the organizing work. If what they see is your media presence, then that’s what they also want to have. It’s overwhelming to be a media person in this country. To attend to the duties of being a media person, the obligations that follow a media person, really means that you can’t attend to the obligations of actually doing organizing work. Once SNCC decided it needed a media person, it lost its organizing base. It disintegrated and disappeared. You can’t do both.”

The mass mobilizations, such as the Women’s March, have little impact unless they are part of a campaign centered around a specific goal. The goal—in the case of SNCC, voter registration—becomes the organizing tool for greater political consciousness and eventually a broader challenge to established power. People need to be organized around issues they care about, Moses said. They need to formulate their own strategy. If strategy is dictated to them, then the movement will fail.

“People need to figure out for themselves what they want to do about a problem,” Moses said. They need “agency.” They do not get agency, he said, “by listening to somebody tell them things.”

“They can develop agency by going out and trying things,” he said. “It works, or it doesn’t work. They come back. They think about it. They reformulate it. Staff people are keeping track of what it is, who it is, what they’re working on. They are documenting it. This is the difference between a mobilizing effort, where you’re getting people to turn out for an event, and trying to get people self-engaged and thinking through a problem.”

“When you do civil disobedience, the question is not about the power structure but the people you’re trying to reach,” he said. “How do they view what you’re doing? Do you alienate them? It’s a balance between, in some sense, leading and organizing. When you do your civil disobedience, it may or may not help with expanding your organizing base.”

Moses, who believes that only nonviolent resistance will be effective, said the Vietnam anti-war movement hurt itself by not accepting, as the civil rights movement did, prison and jail time as part of its resistance. Many in the anti-war movement, he said, lacked the vital capacity for self-sacrifice. This willingness to engage in self-sacrifice, he said, is fundamental to success.

“The anti-war movement would have had a huge impact if it had been able to agree that what we’re going to do is go to prison,” he said. “We are going to pay a certain price. We’re going to earn our insurgency against the foreign policy establishment of the country. We’re going to say no and go to prison. That way, they could have emerged when the war was over as the insurgents who had paid, in their own way, the price of the war.”

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best selling author, former professor at Princeton University, activist and ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 11 books, including the New York Times best-seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. 

Featured image is from Mr. Fish/Truthdig.

Syrian Civilization Confronts Western Barbarism

May 8th, 2018 by Mark Taliano

The White Helmets are al Qaeda auxiliaries.  They are misogynist, sectarian, anti-Christian terrorists.

Canada supports them and all of the sectarian, anti-Christian, misogynist terrorists invading, destroying, and occupying parts of secular, pro-Christian, pluralist, pro-equal rights, civilized Syria.

Pictured below we see Canada’s NDP foreign affairs critic, Helene Laverdiere, posing with White Helmets personnel inside the Canadian parliament.  (Ken Stone, of the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War, offers his comments below the picture.)

Canada, NATO, and their allies, including the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Apartheid Israel, have been supporting (all of) the terrorists with a view to destroying Syria and implementing “Regime Change” (God forbid), for the last seven years now.

Syrians, for the most part, are staunch supporters of their democratically-elected, secular, pro-Christian, pro-equal rights, government.

The video below was taken shortly after France, the UK, and the US criminally bombed Syria with their cruise missiles on April 14, 2018. Syrians in the video are rallying in support of their government.

(Video by Maickel Wijnhoven, Damascus, Syria)

Sarah Abdallah, for her part, notes that Christians in liberated Aleppo now have the freedom to attend church and celebrate First Communion, freedoms that the church-destroying, anti-Christian terrorists denied them.

In stark contrast to Syrian government-secured areas, are (Western-supported) terrorist-occupied areas.  In the video below, investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley interviews a former captive of Eastern Ghouta, now liberated by Syria and its allies.

The woman tells a harrowing tale of child abductions, organ harvesting, starvation, and myriad privations and humiliations.

(Video by Vanessa Beeley)

Canadians who cherish Truth for Freedom and Justice, who cherish religious freedoms and freedom from terrorism, must surely denounce Canada’s barbaric foreign policy, concealed as it is, beneath lies and fake progressive fronts.

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


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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

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Beyond Pesticides and The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) today responded to a federal judge’s ruling against Monsanto Co.’s motion to dismiss the groups’ lawsuit, filed in April, 2017. The lawsuit challenged Monsanto’s safety claim on its Roundup (glyphosate) products as misleading and fraudulent. Monsanto displays a claim on its Roundup product label that states that the chemicals in the product “targets an enzyme bound in plants but not in people or pets,” when, in fact, the chemical adversely affects beneficial bacteria essential to the gut biome and normal body functions.

Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, the lead plaintiff in the case, said:

“In the face of EPA’s poor regulation of pesticides, misleading pesticide product labeling cannot be left unchecked. The court’s decision to allow our case to move forward, in denying Monsanto’s motion to dismiss, is critical to showing that the company is deceiving the public with a safety claim on its Roundup (glyphosate) label. Its advertising and labeling claim that Roundup ‘targets an enzyme found in plants but not in people or pets’ is false, given the devastating harm that glyphosate has on beneficial bacteria in the gut biome. The disruption of the gut biome is associated with a host of 21st century diseases, including asthma, autism, bacterial vaginosis, cardiovascular disease, cancer, Crohn’s disease, depression, inflammatory bowel disease, leaky gut syndrome, multiple sclerosis, obesity, Type 1 and 2 diabetes, and Parkinson’s.

The science on the hazards of Roundup (glyphosate) are clear and Monsanto officials know it. With this case, we seek to ensure that the public is not misled by false advertising and product labeling in the marketplace. It is a critical step toward ensuring that people are fully informed before purchasing toxic products that can poison them, their families, and the communities where they live.”

OCA International Director, Ronnie Cummins said:

“Monsanto aggressively markets Roundup as ‘safe’ for humans and animals, despite newer studies indicating that glyphosate may be carcinogenic and its use may affect human and animal cardiovascular, endocrine, nervous and reproductive systems. No reasonable consumer seeing the claim on this product that glyphosate targets an enzyme not found ‘in people or pets’ would expect that Roundup actually targets an important bacterial enzyme found in humans and animals, affecting the health of their immune system.

Survey after survey shows that consumers rely on labels to guide their purchases and keep them and their families safe. When corporations mislead on the issue of a product’s effect on consumers and their families, they put everyone, but especially young children—in this case, playing in yards and parks—at risk, leaving the public no other recourse than to use the legal system to seek the removal of this misleading information.”

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, ruled that Beyond Pesticides and OCA presented enough evidence to support that Monsanto’s labeling of its flagship weedkiller, Roundup, misleads consumers.

Through their attorneys, Richman Law Group, Beyond Pesticides and OCA sued Monsanto on behalf of the general public, in Washington D.C., under the District of Columbia’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act, for misleading the public by labeling its popular weedkiller Roundup as “target[ing] an enzyme found in plants but not in people or pets.” The nonprofits allege that this statement is false, deceptive and misleading, because the enzyme targeted by glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is, in fact, found in people and pets.

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Featured image is from Beyond Pesticides.


seeds_2.jpg

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Slickly Packaged Anti-Russian US Media Propaganda

May 8th, 2018 by Michael Averko

Rachel Maddow‘s May 2 MSNBC show, highlighted Andrew Kramer‘s same day New York Times (NYT) article, saying the Kiev regime has decided to limit its cooperation with the Robert Mueller led FBI investigation on an alleged collusion between Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential campaign and the Russian government. The Kiev regime is presented as feeling pressured to not cooperate with Mueller, for the purpose of maintaining the military aid it has received from the Trump administration.

Maddow’s May 2 show included an appearance by The NYT’s Kenneth Vogel. To conform with her overly subjective and inaccurate spin, Maddow was quite selective in what she wanted out of Vogel. Specifically, Vogel’s August 18, 2016 Politico article about Konstantin Kilimnik, who has had ties to Trump’s former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort. As claimed, Kilimnik might’ve been working with Russian Intel during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. Manafort served for a time as a consultant to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych before the latter’s ouster in 2014.

Screenshot from Politico

On Maddow’s show, Vogel acknowledged some reason to question the extent (if any) of Kilimnik having a Russian Intel relationship for the period at issue. That’s the most objective part of her May 2 anti-Russian propaganda. With the coming months and years in mind, it’ll be interesting to see if anything conclusive comes up to support the notion of an anti-Hillary Clinton operation, involving Kilimnik, the Kremlin, Manafort and Trump, during the 2016 US presidential election.

Maddow started her May 2 show on this subject, with the image of civic minded, freedom loving Ukrainian people, toppling a corrupt pro-Russian leader Yanukovych, followed by his lavish living conditions being exposed to the public. Missing from Maddow’s presentation are these realities:

  • Manafort saying that he favored Yanukovych taking a European Union route, over the Russian involved Eurasian Customs Union
  • contrary to the pro-Russian stereotype, Yanukovych didn’t always do what the Kremlin preferred – his not advocating for Ukraine to be in the Eurasian Customs Union serving as an example
  • the violent nationalists, who committed murderous action during the Kiev street protests against Yanukovych
  • the overthrow of the democratically elected Yanukovych, who had just signed an internationally brokered power sharing agreement with his main political opposition
  • post-Yanukovych Kiev regime controlled Ukraine, includes a highly corrupt kleptocracy (whose lavishness hasn’t been featured in the manner of Yanukovych’s), meshed with an enhanced ultra-nationalist element, that has led to numerous deaths
  • the considerable unpopularity of that regime.

These are obviously inconvenient points for Maddow, who takes the easy way out by not mentioning them. In line with this tact, she omits mention of another article which Vogel had written.

Screenshot from Politico

He coauthored with David SternJanuary 11, 2017 Politico article, about the Kiev regime’s 2016 clandestine effort to find damaging information on Trump and Manafort. At the time, the Kiev regime was particularly uneasy with Trump’s position on Russia. CNN later followed up on this issue with Stern. He acknowledged not having as detailed a conversation as Vogel with the Ukrainian-American activist Alexandra Chalupa, who was involved with the Kiev regime’s effort against Trump and Manafort. In the aforementioned CNN segment, Stern was hesitant to equate that activity with what the Russian government has been accused of doing with Trump.

Months have gone by with no conclusive proof of a Trump-Russian government collusion. The ongoing investigation against Trump essentially serves the purpose of trying to nail him on something else. As a classic example, note how the Feds found Al Capone guilty of something much different from what he was being investigated for.

The neocons are pleased with Trump’s decision to increase military support to the Kiev regime. Neolibs have been generally more apprehensive on that move. For its part, Russia is understandably concerned about the Kiev regime, perhaps at some point launching a Croatian scenario into the rebel held Donbass territory. That move could very well lead to an increased exodus to Russia and pressure from within Russia to militarily strike back.

Contrary to what some say, the Russian government isn’t seeking unnecessary armed conflicts – something well worth debating if there’s any doubt. At the same time, the Kremlin can only (within reason) take so much. (Srdja Trifkovic’s May 2 Chronicles Magazine article, argues that the Kremlin has been passive on the domestic and foreign policy fronts.)

In the meantime, the likes of Maddow recklessly use Russia as a political football on a major US cable TV news network, offering little if any diversity in its coverage of that country.

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Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic.

Featured image: Mike Pompeo meets with Israeli Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, April 2018. (Source: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv/ flickr)

Former Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo has recently completed his first trip to the Middle East as U.S. Secretary of State. Perhaps not surprisingly as President Donald Trump appears prepared to decertify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) limiting Iran’s nuclear program creating a possible casus belli, much of what Pompeo said was focused on what was alleged to be the growing regional threat posed by Iran both in conventional terms and due to its claimed desire to develop a nuclear weapon.

The Secretary of State met with heads of state or government as well as foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Jordan during his trip. He did not meet with the Palestinians, who have cut off contact with the Trump Administration because they have “nothing to discuss” with it in the wake of the decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

During his first stop in Riyadh, Pompeo told a beaming Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir that Iran has been supporting the “murderous” Bashar al-Assad government in Damascus while also arming Houthi rebels in Yemen. He noted that

“Iran destabilizes the entire region. It is indeed the greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world…”

In Israel, Pompeo stood side by side with an smiling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said

“We remain deeply concerned about Iran’s dangerous escalation of threats to Israel and the region, and Iran’s ambition to dominate the Middle East remains. The United States is with Israel in this fight. And we strongly support Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself.”

At the last stop in Jordan, Pompeo returned to the “defend itself” theme, saying regarding Gaza that

“We do believe the Israelis have a right to defend themselves and we are fully supportive of that.”

One hopes that discussions between Pompeo and his foreign interlocutors were more substantive than his somewhat laconic published comments. But given the comments themselves, it is depressing to consider that he was until recently Director of the CIA and was considered an intellectually brilliant congressman who graduated first in his class at West Point. One would hope to find him better informed.

Very little that surfaced in the admittedly whirlwind tour of the Middle East is fact-based. Starting with depicting Iran as a regional and even global threat, one can challenge the view that its moves in Yemen and Syria constitute any fundamental change in the balance of power in the region. Iranian support of Syria actually restores the balance by returning to the status quo ante where Syria had a united and stable government before the United States and others decided to intervene.

Israeli claims repeated by Washington that Iran is somehow building a “land bridge” to link it to the Mediterranean Sea are wildly overstated as they imply that somehow Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are willing to cede their sovereignty to an ally, an unlikely prospect to put it mildly. Likewise, the claim that Iran is seeking to “dominate the region” rings hollow as it does not have the wherewithal to do so either financially or militarily and many of its government’s actions are largely defensive in nature. The reality is that Israel and Saudi Arabia are the ones seeking regional dominance and are threatened because a locally powerful Iran is in their way.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are the ones seeking regional dominance and are threatened because a locally powerful Iran is in their way.

Support by Tehran for Yemen’s Houthis is more fantasized than real with little actual evidence that Iran has been able to provide anything substantial in the way of arms. The Saudi massacre of 10,000 mostly Yemeni civilians and displacement of 3 million more being carried out from the air has been universally condemned with the sole exceptions of the U.S. and Israel, which seem to share with Riyadh a unique interpretation of developments in that long-suffering land. The U.S. has supplied the Saudis with weapons and intelligence to make their bombing attacks more effective, i.e. lethal.

Pompeo did not exactly endorse the ludicrous Israeli claim made by Benjamin Netanyahu last week that Iran has a secret weapons of mass destruction program currently in place, but he did come down against the JCPOA, echoing Trump in calling it a terrible agreement that will guarantee an Iranian nuclear weapon. The reality is quite different, with the pact basically eliminating a possible Iranian nuke for the foreseeable future through degradation of the country’s nuclear research, reduction of its existing nuclear stocks and repeated intrusive inspections. Israel meanwhile has a secret nuclear arsenal and is a non-signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without any demur from the White House.

The Israeli-Pompeo construct assumes that Iran is singularly untrustworthy, an odd assertion coming from either Washington, Riyadh or Tel Aviv. It also basically rejects any kind of agreement with the Mullahs and is a path to war. It is interesting to note that the Pentagon together with all of America’s closest allies believe that the JCPOA should stay in place.

And then there is the claim that Iran is the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism. In reality that honor belongs to the United States and Israel with Iran often being the victim, most notably with the assassination of its scientists and technicians by Mossad agents. Israel has also been targeting and bombing Iranians in Syria, as has the United States, even though neither is at war with Iran and the Iranian militias in the country are cooperating with the Syrians and Russians to fight terrorist groups including ISIS as well as those affiliated with al-Qaeda. The U.S. is actually empowering terrorists in Syria and along the Iraqi border while killing hundreds of thousands in its never-ending war on terror. Israel meanwhile has agreements with several extremist groups so they will not attack its occupied Golan Heights and also seeks to continue to destabilize the Syrians.

There is the claim that Iran is the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism. In reality that honor belongs to the United States and Israel with Iran often being the victim, most notably with the assassination of its scientists and technicians by Mossad agents.

Pompeo also endorsed Israel’s “fight” against the Gazan demonstrators and pledged that America would stand beside its best friend. As of this point, Israel has used trained army snipers to kill forty-three unarmed protesting Palestinians. Another 5,000 have been injured, mostly by gunfire. No “threatened” Israelis have suffered so much as a broken fingernail and the border fence is both intact and has never been breached. Israel is committing what is very clearly a war crime and the United States Secretary of State is endorsing the slaughter of a defenseless people who are imprisoned in the world’s largest open-air concentration camp.

Donald Trump entered into office with great expectations, but if Mike Pompeo is truly outlining American foreign policy, then I and many other citizens don’t get it and we most definitely don’t want it.

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Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests.

Killing the Truth: In this article, first published by the Duran and GR in October 2016, the journalist who exposed the truth regarding the State sponsors of ISIS-Daesh is killed. Who are the state sponsors of ISIS-Daesh.

Although all signs point to foul play, indeed murder, by Turkish intelligence, until now the US government has neither conducted nor demanded an inquiry into the events of the alleged car accident which Turkish officials say was the cause of Shim’s death, let alone offer condolences to the family.

Serena Shim was at the time reporting on Ayn al-Arab (Kobani), from the Turkish side. She was, in her own words, one of the first, if not the first, on the ground to report on ,“Takfiri militants going in through the Turkish border”. These include not only ISIS but also terrorists from the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA).

As Shim’s sister Fatmeh Shim stated in 2015, “She caught them bringing in ISIS high-ranked members into Syria from Turkey into camps, which are supposed to be Syrian refugee camps.”

Serena Shim’s January 2013 expose, “Turkey’s Pivotal Role in Syria’s Insurgency: PressTV Report from Inside Turkey,” showed footage of what she estimated to be 300 semi-trucks “awaiting militants to empty them out”; included testimony explaining how Turkey enables the crossing of foreign terrorists “freely” into Syria; spoke of the funneling of arms via the Incirlik US Air Base in Turkey to terrorists in refugee camps or on through to Syria; and highlighted the issue of terrorist training camps portrayed as refugee camps, guarded by the Turkish military.

Shim named the World Food Organization as one of the NGOs whose trucks were being used to funnel terrorists’ arms into Syria, and stated this in her last interview, just one day before being killed. Notably, in that interview she also explicitly stated that she feared for her life because Turkish intelligence had accused her of being a spy. She told Press TV:

“Turkey has been labeled by Reporters Without Borders as the largest prison for journalists, so I am a bit frightened about what they might use against me… I’m hoping that nothing is going to happen, that it’s going to blow over. I would assume that they are going to take me in for questioning, and the next hope is that my lawyer is good enough to get me out as soon as possible.”

Two days later, Press TV announced her death, stating:

“Serena was killed in a reported car accident when she was returning from a report scene in the city of Suruch in Turkey’s Urfa province. She was going back to her hotel in Urfa when their car collided with a heavy vehicle.”


This was the official version of her death, although in subsequent versions the story changed. In a report one month later, Russia Today (RT) spoke with Shim’s sister, who said:

“There’s so many different stories. The first was that Serena’s car was hit by a heavy vehicle, who proceeded to keep on driving. They could not find the vehicle nor could they find the driver. Two days later, surprisingly, they had found the vehicle and the driver, and had pictures of the heavy vehicle hitting my sister’s car. Every day coming out with new pictures of different degrees of damages that have happened to the car.”

“Serena and my cousin who was the driver of the car were taken to two different hospitals. She was reported first dead at the scene. Then coming out with later reports that she passed away at the hospital 30 minutes later from heart failure?! ”

POLITICAL BLACKOUT, MEDIA BLACKOUT

When on November 20, 2014, at a Daily Press Briefing, RT journalist Gayane Chichakyan twice pressed Director of Press Office, Jeff Rathke, for updates on Shim’s death, he unsurprisingly gave none:

Chichakyan: “It’s about the journalist Serena Shim, who died in Turkey under very suspicious circumstances. Did her death raise suspicions here at the State Department?”

Rathke: “Well, I think we’ve spoken to this in the briefing room several weeks ago, after it happened. I don’t have anything to add to what the spokesperson said at the time, though.”

Chichakyan: “But then she died several days after she claimed she had been threatened by the Turkish intelligence. Have you inquired about this? Have you asked questions? Is there really nothing new about this?”

Rathke: “Well, I just don’t have any update to share with you. Again, this was raised shortly after her death. The spokesperson addressed it. I don’t have an update to share with you at this time.”

Chichakyan: “I just want to go back to Serena Shim. You rightly said the State Department commented on her death several weeks ago, and you say there is no update. Why is there no update? A U.S. citizen dies days after she said she’d been threatened by the Turkish intelligence.”

Rathke: “Well, I simply don’t have any information to share at this time. I’m happy to check and see if there’s anything additional. We spoke out about it, as I said, at the very start several weeks ago after her death, so I – but I don’t have anything with me right now to offer. I’m happy to check and see if there’s more that we can share.”

Of course, neither he nor any US government official has followed up. Last year, Shim’s mother, Judy Poe, replied to me in a message:

“There is no doubt in my mind that my daughter did not die in a car accident. There was not one single scratch on her there was no blood absolutely anywhere. I have tried to contact the American Embassy in Turkey with the cell phone numbers they gave me originally when I was going to get my daughter. Absolutely no response from the American Embassy in Turkey, including via personal cell phones.”

Shim’s sister in her RT interview stated, “We’ve got no support whatsoever, nor have we got condolences.”

None of the major journalist organizations have pursued a just investigation into Shim’s murder, much less lamented it. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) turns up zero results when Shim’s name is searched on their website. Yet, the CPJ does have a list of journalists killed in Turkey since 1992, and as recent as Feb 2016, obviously minus Shim’s name.

Likewise, a search on the Reporters Without Borders website turns up zero results. A December 19, 2014 article at the Greanville Post does have a CPJ spokesperson stating:

“The Committee to Protect Journalists has investigated the events surrounding Serena Shim’s death in Turkey and at this time has found no evidence to indicate that her death was anything other than a tragic accident. Unless her death is confirmed to be in direct relation to her work as a journalist, it will not appear on our database. In the event that new evidence comes to light, CPJ would review her case.”

The article Greanville Post notes, “As of February 2016, the CPJ has not changed its position.”

The International Federation of Journalists does have a short entry on Shim:

“Serena Shim, the female correspondent for Press TV in Turkey was killed in a car accident on the Turkish-Syrian border. She was returning from an assignment in Suruç, a rural district of Şanlıurfa Province of Turkey when her car collided with a truck.”

But no call for inquiry and no questioning of official narrative. In a November 21, 2014 article at Shim’s death, RT noted that, “the office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media at the OSCE told RT that Turkey is carrying out an investigation.” It cited OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Gunnar Vrang, as saying:

“The representative has been following the case since the first reports appeared about the car accident that claimed the life of journalist Serena Shim. According to information available to her office, the Turkish authorities have started investigation into the details of the car accident.”

Searching the OSCE for Serena Shim’s name also results in zero hits. On February 5, 2016, Judy Poe tweeted:

Clearly the representative went with the Turkish rendition of events. Few in corporate media have looked into Shim’s suspicious death. In one surprising exception, Fox News reported on Shim’s death, citing a US State Department spokesperson as saying the State Department “does not conduct investigations into deaths overseas.”

Given that Turkish intelligence threatened Shim, according to her testimony, and that Turkey is notorious world-wide for its imprisonment and murder of journalists, the US State Department’s lack of concern is incriminating in itself.

In stark contrast to the silence around Shim’s death, John Kerry at least twice publicly mourned the death of James Foley, lauding as a hero the journalist who snuck into Syria via Turkey to report embedded with al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and giving sincere condolences to his family.

Without a trace of irony, in August 2014, Kerry said of Foley, and never of Shim, “We honor the courage and pray for the safety of all those who risk their lives to discover the truth where it is needed most.”

In September, 2014, Kerry directly contradicted the above-mentioned words of the State Department spokesperson, saying: “When terrorists anywhere around the world have murdered our citizens, the United States held them accountable, no matter how long it took.

And those who have murdered James Foley and Steven Sotloff in Syria should know that the United States will hold them accountable too, no matter how long it takes.” On the media and political blackout around Serena Shim’s suspicious death, Shim’s former colleague, Afshin Rattansi, host of RT’s “Going Underground” posited:

“There were a few press reports, but nothing like the kind of reporting about a brave young journalist that one would expect. Was this because the story she was covering was so dangerous that a NATO ally like Turkey should be cooperating with ISIS… was that the reason that this story has not been more widely broadcast? We don’t know.”

Indeed, this would not be the first time the US administration has not pursued justice for the murder of one of its citizens by an ally. Rachie Corrie’s March 16, 2013 murder by an Israeli soldier driving a bulldozer was not only witnessed by numerous rights activists with Corrie in Rafah, occupied Palestine, but was filmed. There is no denial that the Israeli soldier saw Corrie, drove his dozer over her and then reversed back, crushing her twice.

Yet, in spite of the efforts of her family and supporters, the US has never pursued justice for this American citizen either. Judy Poe said that Serena’s favourite motto was: “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” Shim lived the motto. She was 29, with two children, when killed.

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The Trump administration announced a policy of unprecedented cruelty in its persecution of immigrant families Monday. Family groups caught crossing the U.S. border without authorization will be immediately broken up, with the parents detained and prosecuted for illegal entry while their children are taken away from them.

Enforcement of the new policy was triggered by a memorandum sent out last Friday by the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, directing both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol to refer all suspected border crossers to the Justice Department for prosecution under a federal statute that prohibits illegal entry.

“Those apprehended will be sent directly to federal court under the custody of the US Marshals Service, and their children will be transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement,” a DHS official said in elaborating the policy.

Publicly announcing the policy in a speech to a police conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared,

“If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

By “smuggling,” Sessions was referring to parents bringing their children with them as they flee the violence-torn, poverty-stricken countries of Central America, seeking refuge in the United States. The vast majority of family groups detained at the US border come from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, where right-wing, military-backed regimes and gangs involved in the US-fueled drug trade hold sway, with the approval and assistance of Washington.

By the standard of Sessions, Trump, and the other bigots and maniacs who direct U.S. immigration policy, the Jewish parents fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s were also engaged in “smuggling” because they brought their children with them. So too, the millions who have fled US-devastated war zones in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East.

The Trump administration has been actively preparing a policy of family separation since Trump entered the White House, although officials denied they were doing so when initial reports appeared in the press last year. But according to press reports today, officials in the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice have long believed that jailing everyone caught crossing the border illegally was the best means to intimidate and discourage prospective immigrants.

Trump and Sessions would be quite willing to jail the children too, but this was barred by prior court decisions that overturned a similar (though undeclared) practice of the Obama administration. As a result, adopting a policy of universal jailing of adults requires the separation of children from their parents.

However, from the standpoint of the Trump administration, the sheer cruelty of such measures, with infants only a few months old torn away from their mothers, was a positive feature, since it would serve as an additional “deterrent” to crossing the border illegally.

According to the Wall Street Journal, once the Border Patrol separates the parents, the children will be classified as “unaccompanied minors” and sent to shelters, unless family members can be found living legally in the United States who are able to take care of them.

Sessions said that additional resources, including dozens of prosecutors and immigration judges, were being mobilized to the four borders states in the Southwest: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. He cited a doubling of detentions for illegal entry along that border in April 2018, compared to the same month last year.

Criminal prosecutions at the border have skyrocketed over the past 25 years, from 10,000 a year in the mid-1990s to a peak of more than 90,000 in 2013 under the Obama administration, which also deported more immigrants than any other administration in history. The number of such prosecutions declined to 60,000 in the last fiscal year, which ended September 30, 2017, but it is expected to increase dramatically and perhaps break the Obama record this year.

First-time “offenders,” convicted of “improper entry by an alien,” have usually been prosecuted for a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison. A second conviction for illegal border crossing would likely be a felony “illegal reentry,” with a prison term of up to two years. A third conviction can mean a prison term as long as 20 years. There are similarly savage penalties for aiding immigrants, making false statements to an immigration official, or acts classified as fraud, such as working under a false Social Security number.

Sessions pointed to the broad range of potential charges in his speech in Arizona.

“If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you,” he declared. “If you make false statements to an immigration officer or commit fraud in our system to obtain an immigration benefit, that’s a felony. We will put you in jail. If you help others to do so, that’s a felony, too.”

The entire speech of the attorney general was devoted to “law-and-order” demagogy, portraying the United States as a country under assault.

“We are not going to let this country be invaded,” he said. “We will not be stampeded. We will not capitulate to lawlessness.”

The truth is that the United States has invaded more countries than anyone since Hitler. The vast majority of the world’s refugees and displaced persons have lost their homes and been forced to flee for their lives because of American bombs, missiles and other armaments, whether employed directly by American troops, by US-backed puppet regimes (Afghanistan and Iraq) or by their US allies like Saudi Arabia (in Yemen), or France (across North Africa).

Leave it to Donald Trump, besieged by denunciations of his torturous behavior toward women, to have nominated a female torturer to head the Central Intelligence Agency. It was a move clearly designed to prove that a woman can be as crudely barbaric as this deeply misogynistic president. When it comes to bullying, Gina Haspel, whose confirmation hearing begins Wednesday, is the real deal, and The Donald is a pussycat by comparison. Whom has he ever waterboarded? Haspel has done that and a lot worse. Haspel is Trump’s ideal feminist, a point tweeted by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

They call her “Bloody Gina,” and for some of her buddies in the torture wing of the CIA and their supporters in Congress, that is meant as a compliment. For a decade after the 9/11 attacks, Haspel served as chief of staff, running the vast network of secret rendition torture prisons around the globe. As a definitive Senate Intelligence Committee report established, torture is not legal, according to U.S. law and international covenants signed by President Ronald Reagan, nor does it produce any actionable information in preventing acts of terror.

After the public revelation of the vast extent of the torture program horrified the world, Haspel deliberately destroyed 92 videotapes depicting the barbaric practice, violating a Justice Department order that the tapes be preserved, and thus clearly obstructing a criminal investigation. Yet in March, Trump chose to nominate Bloody Gina to be the new head of our super-spy agency.

Give Trump credit for consistency: He did campaign on the theme that torture—or “enhanced interrogation,” as his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, justified it—is only wrong when nations other than our own do it. And by nominating Haspel to head the CIA, Trump is clearly seeking to take torture out of the covert dark side, as former Vice President Dick Cheney termed his revival of the medieval dungeon art; Trump has branded it as a legitimate, made-in-America weapon, wielded by a woman, no less. Trump seemed to be saying,

“Label me a bully; I’ll show you what a woman can do!”

When it comes to authorizing the near-drowning of shackled prisoners and smashing their heads against prison walls, this lady is the equal of any macho man.

The best witness to the crimes of Bloody Gina is offered by a true hero of the real war against terrorism, former FBI agent Ali Soufan, who is credited with having done the most significant interrogation of captured terrorist suspects. Soufan shunned torture and skillfully gained the confidence of prisoners who went on to provide reliable information.

“It is a matter of public record,” Soufan wrote in The Atlantic magazine, “that Gina Haspel … played a key role in the agency’s now-defunct program of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ an Orwellian euphemism for a system of violence most Americans would recognize as torture. … I know firsthand how brutal those techniques were—and how counterproductive. … Unsurprisingly, the CIA’s own inspector general concluded that the torture program failed to produce any significant actionable intelligence; and I testified to the same effect under oath in the Senate.”

While there is no evidence that this indelible stain on America’s legacy produced any reliable information, the nomination of Bloody Gina sent a message to the world from this president that torture is to be rewarded. There are many, including Republican Sen. John McCain, who has his own story of being tortured as a prisoner in Vietnam and who raised questions about Haspel’s support of the torture program.

“The use of torture compromised our values, stained our national honor, and threatened our historical reputation,” McCain said.

But even some Democrats may support Haspel’s nomination given that members of their party have been complicit in excusing the heinous practice of torture. After all, it was Democratic President Barack Obama who decided not to prosecute anyone for ordering or committing the torture that is one of the great stains on American history. In fact, Obama prosecuted former CIA agent John Kiriakou after he revealed the torture program’s existence to a journalist. He did so after President Bush’s memorable statement that the United States “does not torture people!” Ironically, the Bush Justice Department cleared Kiriakou of any charges, while Obama revived them two years later and sent the former agent to prison for 30 months.

Whether or not the Senate confirms Haspel, the very fact of her nomination defines Trump as a fatally callous leader totally contemptuous of basic human rights and the rule of law. Trump did not indelibly link America to torture; that disgrace is owned by George W. Bush, a “moderate” Republican, but it remained for this American president to brand torture as a favored American sport.

*

Robert Scheer, editor in chief of Truthdig, has built a reputation for strong social and political writing over his 30 years as a journalist. His columns appear in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines. He conducted the famous Playboy magazine interview in which Jimmy Carter confessed to the lust in his heart and he went on to do many interviews for the Los Angeles Times with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and many other prominent political and cultural figures.

Five NATO members continue to possess colonies. These NATO states have no intention of granting their territories independence any time soon. Not only does France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United States insist on maintaining vestiges of their colonial pasts, but their colonies have been interwoven into NATO’s military infrastructure.

The continued presence of French, British, Dutch, Danish, and American colonies around the world extends what is officially called the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” to the South Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. If there was ever an organization guilty of blatantly deceptive advertising practices, it is NATO.

Recent attempts to secure more political autonomy in the French Caribbean territories of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana, the latter the home of a French space launch facility having strategic importance, have been met with everything from indifference in Paris or extreme hostility. A January 26, 1968 SECRET Central Intelligence Agency report warned against Soviet attempts to establish space tracking facilities in French Guiana. That same year, the Guiana Space Center was established at Korou in the French colony. NATO ordered the suppression of independence moves by the people of Guiana to keep the center solely in the hands of France and the European Space Agency. In March and April 2017, populist tempers flared when Guianese protesters took over the Korou space facility over charges that France was ignoring the people of the colony. Youth unemployment, for example, is at a staggering 55 percent.

Moves by Britain to curb the financial independence of its Caribbean-Atlantic territories of the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Bermuda, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have faced charges in those territories of Britain’s re-imposition of colonialism on the self-governing territories. The Dutch have been the most blatantly neo-colonialist in rolling back self-government in St. Maarten, Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba. The Dutch totally ignored the results of a 2015 referendum in Bonaire that rejected the island’s incorporation into the Netherlands by 65 percent. A 2014 referendum in St. Eustatius also rejected incorporation into the Netherlands. The Dutch colonizers have moved to impose direct rule on both islands with a wink and a nod from NATO.

Aerial Picture Of Thule Air Base.jpg

Aerial picture of Thule Air Base released by the White House (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

NATO treats its member states’ Caribbean and Atlantic territories as military “terra firma,” where air and naval bases either currently exist or could be ramped up for military actions. Attempts at independence or a strong degree of autonomy are not in NATO’s interests. NATO, through its surrogates in Copenhagen, has deterred any move toward independence by the Faroes and Greenland, both Danish territories that, on paper, enjoy self-government. NATO wants to ensure its continued presence at the U.S. airbase in Thule and deter China from mining operations in rapidly-warming Greenland that target known major deposits of rare earth minerals. Recent elections in Greenland resulted in a victory for Prime Minister Kim Kielsen and his four-party coalition that favors independence from Denmark. One of the parties, Nunatta Qitornai, favors immediate independence from Denmark. A scheduled referendum on a new constitution in the Faroes was postponed for six months. The referendum, which could lead to independence from Denmark, may have been delayed as a result of NATO interference directed through surrogates in Copenhagen and the Faroese capital of Torshavn.

The Dutch have ignored requests for more autonomy in the Caribbean territories of Aruba and Curacao, both sites of U.S. and NATO military and intelligence aerial and naval assets targeting the government of Venezuela and leftist groups in Colombia. The U.S. 12th Air Force, based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, operates two “Cooperative Security Locations” at Hato International Airport in Curacao and Reina Beatrix International Airport in Aruba.

A 2012 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the United States and the Netherlands grants access until 2021 to U.S. military forces for “training” and other purposes to Bonaire, Saba, St. Eustatius, and Saint Maarten. It was after this agreement was signed that the special autonomy enjoyed by these territories began to be rolled back by the governing cliques in The Hague and Amsterdam.

Recent moves by the British government to require its Caribbean and other territories to adopt public ownership registers prior to the end of 2020 or risk having their financial affairs taken over directly from London has resulted in a revolt among the British colonies, especially those in the Caribbean. London maintains that the public ownership registers are necessary to stem the flow of “dirty money” and secret corporate ownership in the wake of the “Panama and Paradise Papers” offshore tax haven financial records’ disclosures. The British territories argued that after the imposition of public ownership records, offshore firms and their money will simply move to other locations where corporate secrecy will continue to be maintained.

Of course, to avoid dictates from London, some British territories are already floating the idea of independence. BVI Premier Orlando Smith said London’s move to infringe on BVI’s self-government calls into question the constitutional relationship between the United Kingdom and the people of the BVI. BVI has moved to establish direct links with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) of independent nations, without the interference of the London colonial authorities. BVI is now represented at CARICOM and Association of Caribbean States meetings by its own External Affairs Secretary. Likewise, Cayman Islands Premier Alden McLaughlin has demanded more control over his islands’ affairs, including national security and membership in the World Trade Organization. British authorities have not only refused but are making moves to impose British financial regulations on the popular offshore business haven.

Caribbean territorial leaders point out that the requirements imposed on them do not apply to the Isle of Man or the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, which, as crown dependencies of Queen Elizabeth, are not subject to the whims of the British Parliament. If London attempts to impose its will on the crown dependencies, they have let it be known that they will move to cut their links with the British Crown and opt for independence.

NATO, of course, does not want to see any moves toward independence from islands within the Irish Sea, English Channel, or Caribbean. The Trump administration has re-established the U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet, which was disbanded by President Obama in 2011 and will have responsibility for the North Atlantic, including Bermuda and Greenland, the latter also seeking independence from its Danish colonial masters. The U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet continues to dominate the American Caribbean territories of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico; the British territories of the Caymans, Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, BVI, and Montserrat; the Dutch territories of Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Saint Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius; and the French territories of Guadeloupe and St. Barthelemy, Martinique, and French Guiana. U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami, exercises an almost viceroy-like political domination over the entire Caribbean region.

NATO is also keeping a wary eye on the French colony of New Caledonia in the Pacific. Neither NATO nor Australia want New Caledonia voters to opt for independence in the upcoming referendum in November of this year. French mainlanders who colonized the island territory are pushing for a “no” vote and French President Emmanuel Macron recently visited the colony to emphasize the importance of retaining the colonial link with France. A major psychological operations campaign is being waged to convince the indigenous Kanaky people that the French colonialists already have the votes to defeat independence. Another psychological campaign is being waged that falsely claims that China is moving in to establish a naval base in nearby Vanuatu.

NATO, while still using the “North Atlantic” designator, does not want to lose its colonial footprints around the world, from Mayotte in the Indian Ocean and Wallis and Futuna in the South Pacific to St. Helena in the South Atlantic and Guam in the West Pacific. NATO has long been accused of waging neo-colonial wars in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. However, when it comes to basic garden-variety colonialism, NATO is intent on maintaining control over of its member states’ territorial toeholds in the seven seas.

*

Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club.

Featured image is from the author.

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Independent Media Under Attack: Your Support Is Essential

May 7th, 2018 by Global Research News

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Netanyahu’s “Nuclear Chutzpah”

May 7th, 2018 by Eric Margolis

‘Chutzpah’ is a wonderful Yiddish word that means outrageous nerve, or unmitigated gall. 

This week’s Chutzpah Award goes to Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  Standing in front of props of data files and cd’s, Netanyahu claimed Israel’s renowned Mossad spy agency had stolen a small mountain of secret Iranian nuclear data from a warehouse in Tehran.

The never-understated Netanyahu claimed that the purloined material proved that Iran was lying about having halted its covert nuclear program and must not be trusted.

Netanyahu’s supposed nuclear bombshell was likely the warm-up act for President Donald Trump to reject Iran’s nuclear freeze deal with the US, Russia, China, Germany, and France, blessed by the UN and the European Union.  The only thing Trump apparently hates more than Muslims is his predecessor, former President Barack Obama (whom he accused of being a secret Muslim). The Iran nuclear deal was the most important foreign policy accomplishment of the Obama administration.

Netanyahu repeatedly warned the world about Iran’s alleged nuclear arsenal while making no mention at all of Israel’s own large, secret nuclear arsenal, which is believed to comprise of over 100 warheads, perhaps even several hundred, that can be delivered by aircraft, missiles and submarines.  Every Mideast nation can be hit by Israeli nukes as well as Russia, which some experts say is or was on Israel’s target list.

Trump, of course, made no mention of the awkward fact that Israel had stolen much of its nuclear technology and uranium from the United States, sometimes with the connivance of very senior US government officials.  France, that paragon of world peace, had the rest.

Listening to Netanyahu accuse Iran of hiding secret nuclear facilities was pure pot calling the kettle black.  Israel’s early nuclear program at Dimona in the Negev desert was entirely concealed from US and UN inspectors, including fake walls in the nuclear complex that completely fooled them.  When Netanyahu accused Iran of cheating, he knows of what he speaks.

Most of what Netanyahu ‘revealed’ about Iran’s alleged nuclear program was old stuff, dating back to 1999-2003 and readily available in reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency.   This respected UN agency now reports that Iran has fulfilled all of its commitments and abandoned its earlier nuclear program that did not produce any weapons before it was ended.

But facts don’t matter in this Trump-produced, made-for-TV drama.  The key point is that with the naming of Michael Pompeo as US Secretary of State, and appointment of the rightwing fanatic John Bolton as US national security advisor, Israel’s rightwing government has completed its virtual takeover of US Mideast policy.  As I’ve previously written, Trump looks more and more like a Trojan Horse for Netanyahu and his extremist allies.

Besides Pompeo and VP Mike Pence, both ardent Christian Zionists, and Bolton, Trump now has around him the UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, of Indian origin, who is the darling of the US far right and a handmaiden of arch-pro Israel billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, a major bankroller of the Republican Party.   Add in Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and, of course, Trump’s daughter and son-in-law.  In short, an amen-chorus for Israel’s far right.

This American Israel-first coalition has joined Netanyahu’s Likud alliance in pressing for war against Iran.  The first skirmishes have already begun with over 100 Israeli air attacks on Syria, ostensibly against Iranian positions. A great propaganda hue and cry against the purported dangers of Iran is being raised in the US and Europe.  According to Israel’s right, Assyrian hordes are about to engulf Israel.

In reality, Iran has very little offensive power.  Like Iraq before it, Iran is militarily dilapidated with 40-year old equipment, a largely grounded air force, little artillery and poor communications.  Tehran has a few inaccurate missiles but no nuclear warheads.

Israel’s powerful air force could easily turn any attacking Iranian forces into chopped falafel.  Iran’s only strength is defensive, in urban combat or mountainous terrain.  Iran has no capability to seriously threaten Israel except by aiding the Lebanese Hezbollah movement in showering northern Israel with light artillery rockets, a nuisance rather than a mortal danger.

Israel is moving to repeat its triumph in 2003 when the Bush administration, US partisans of Israel, and dishonest US media pushed the nation into a war of pure aggression against Iraq.  Israel emerged the victor from this unprovoked war and is trying to repeat its success again with Iran.

Overthrowing Iran’s Islamic Republic would leave Israel the unchallenged power in the Mideast.


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PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

Twilight Zone America: Woody Allen Meets Rod Serling

May 7th, 2018 by Philip A Farruggio

Baby boomers should recall the cutting edge television series ( 1959-64) The Twilight Zone. Creator Rod Serling, who wrote many episodes himself, was a genius! The shows had this surreal and fantasy aspect to them, revealing all the flaws and nobilities human beings can possess. In one of the show’s  greatest episodes: The Monsters are due on Maple Street (March, 1960), written by Rod Serling, we can see how fear of the unknown can cause such havoc. A street in a typical American town experiences a giant roar and flashes of light that cannot be explained. Then the power goes out completely. The residents of the street begin to panic and fear that aliens are invading. This causes arguments and physical violence between usually friendly and caring neighbors. The parallels to the aftermath of 9/11 and the run-up to the (illegal and immoral) invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are astounding.

Woody Allen, another literary and cinematic genius, made so many great films depicting the foolishness and ego driven acts by just ‘regular people’. Allen delved into the world of fantasy to make these points so well. His landmark movie using fantasy to make his critique of American society was his 1985 film The Purple Rose of Cairo. A lonely housewife during the Great Depression is seen by a (supposedly) fictional character in a film, causing him to question his own existence. He suddenly ‘leaves the film screen’ and becomes lifelike due to his attraction to her. All hell breaks loose as fantasy and reality become entangled to the Nth degree! To this writer, the ‘hidden’ message of Allen’s storyline is that perhaps this 3rd dimension we operate in is really ‘Just a dream’. Thus, anything goes, as we all create our dream.

Here is the kicker to all of this: Can what is happening here in 21st Century Amerika be real? I mean, come on, Donald Trump is actually president of the United States! It’s somewhat similar to how the truly sophisticated German citizens must have felt in 1933 when Hitler ascended to Chancellor, and his party of far right wing thugs and scoundrels ‘controlled the streets’. Recalling Hitler and his near crazy antics in the 1920s, with the barbarity of many of his SA and later on SS minions, must have given pause to the millions of decent and rational Germans.

They must have said to themselves and their friends “How could this character be leader of our nation now?” Hitler was a cartoon character right out of a Rod Serling or Woody Allen script… and so is Trump!

Of course it is much deeper a problem than just Donald Trump, as it was with Hitler, and Stalin and all the other dictators and despots throughout history. No, it is now and always has been about us, we the people of all those countries. When good people see a trend that is developing and choose to ignore it… bad things usually happen. Empires can only grow and exploit when their citizens refuse or ignore the warning signs. The ‘Big Lie’ can only work when too many of us continue to lie to ourselves. The Pogo cartoon character was correct: We have met the enemy and he be US!

*

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, 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].

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Scheme to Let OPCW Name Perpetrators of Alleged Syria Chemical Attacks

By Stephen Lendman, May 07, 2018

No evidence suggests Syrian use of CWs anytime during years of war. Plenty indicts US-supported terrorists, toxic agents supplied by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, perhaps by Washington and Israel as well – each incident falsely blamed on Damascus.

The Blurred Line Between War and Business

By Julian Vigo, May 07, 2018

In 2009, Rand Paul called out Dick Cheney for supporting the invasion of Iraq to benefit his former company, Halliburton, claiming that Halliburton had received a billion-dollar no-bid contract. KBR, or Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was neck-deep in military contracts with the United States government, under a no-bid LOGCAP III (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) agreement, a contingency-based contract invoked at the convenience of the Army.

NATO in Afghanistan: A Dagger Struck Into the Heart of Asia

By Christopher Black, May 07, 2018

On April 27 the NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg issued an ultimatum to the Taliban fighting the US and NATO allied forces that have invaded and occupied Afghanistan; negotiate–meaning surrender-or be destroyed.

US Navy Resurrects Its Cold War-Era Atlantic Fleet to Counter Russia

By Zero Hedge, May 07, 2018

Admiral John Richardson, chief of naval operations, said the fleet, deactivated in 2011, could oversee roughly 6,700,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean from the North Pole to the Caribbean Sea and from the East Coast of the United States to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Fate of the Iran Nuclear Agreement. Israel Has Begun the Countdown to May 15

By Norman Finkelstein, May 07, 2018

​Today Israel almost certainly killed the six Hamas militants in Gaza just as it killed the six Hamas militants in Gaza on the eve of Operation Cast Lead in 2008.  ​It is desperately trying to provoke a violent Hamas reaction so as to have a pretext to drown the mass nonviolent Great March of Return in a sea of blood.

Trump Disregards Caravan Migrants’ Legal Right to Apply for Asylum

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, May 07, 2018

More than three-quarters of asylum claims from Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans between 2012 and 2017 were denied, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, and this year’s caravan of asylum seekers are facing a climate made even more hostile by the xenophobic Trump administration.

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  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: Militarization, “War is Good for Business”

Well this isn’t good. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency tasked with administering the nation’s supply of fissile materials, announced on Friday that Idaho State University may be subject to fine for losing a gram of weapons-grade plutonium. While the quarter-sized chunk of radioactive rock isn’t nearly enough to generate a mushroom-cloud, it is sufficient for use in a so-called “dirty bomb,” according to agency spokesman Victor Dricks. And to show that the NRC isn’t fooling around, that fine will run ISU a tidy $8,500. Wait, that’s it?

A February 7th inspection revealed a pair of violations,

“the failure to control and maintain surveillance of licensed radioactive material; and the failure to provide accurate and complete information to the NRC in its inventory records,” per the NRC announcement.

The $8,500 levy comes in response to the first infraction only, since the university “took prompt corrective actions after the violations were identified.” The missing sample, however, has yet to be recovered.

“The NRC has very rigorous controls for the use and storage of radioactive materials as evidenced by this enforcement action,” Dr. Cornelis Van der Schyf, vice president for research at the university, told the Associated Press. He blamed shoddy bookkeeping from a decade and a half ago as the primary culprit.

“Unfortunately, because there was a lack of sufficient historical records to demonstrate the disposal pathway employed in 2003, the source in question had to be listed as missing,” he told the AP. “The radioactive source in question poses no direct health issue or risk to public safety.” Well, that’s a relief.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

The OPCW is untrustworthy, its findings notoriously serving Western interests, functioning as an imperial agent.

Last October, Russia blasted the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), probing reported uses of CWs in Syria – totally ignoring evidence and conclusions submitted by Russian experts, according to its Foreign Ministry, saying:

“(I)t is evident after looking through the report that the conclusions and opinions of Russian specialists that were referred to JIM at its own request have been totally ignored.”

“Moreover, it gives no answers to our questions either. Instead, the report has diametrically opposite conclusions derived by some anonymous research centers and ‘independent experts,’ which lack convincing proof to be backed.”

The OPCW’s JIM report lied, wrongfully blaming Damascus for an alleged Khan Sheikhoun CW attack in April 2017, along with another committed by US-supported terrorists, not Syrian forces, in Maarat Umm Hawsh on September 16, 2016.

No evidence suggests Syrian use of CWs anytime during years of war. Plenty indicts US-supported terrorists, toxic agents supplied by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, perhaps by Washington and Israel as well – each incident falsely blamed on Damascus.

Last November, Russia and Washington presented opposing Security Council resolutions on extending the OPCW/UN Joint Investigation Mechanism (JIM).

The sinister US text included a provision for invoking the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, authorizing “action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security” – rejected by Russia.

Its draft resolution called for revising JIM’s conclusions. Work done failed to conform to international standards, it said.

OPCW/JIM inspectors failed to visit the Kahn Sheikhoun site reported on – presenting phony conclusions lacking credibility. Russia and Washington vetoed each other’s resolutions.

A deplorable French-led initiative proposes empowering the OPCW to name perpetrators of CW attacks, a scheme to bypass Russia’s ability to veto US-led Western resolutions, aiming to justify unjustifiable greater aggression on Syria, Iran in the wings for something similar.

The OPCW is charged with promoting and verifying adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Its mandate includes conducting “credible and transparent” on-site inspections to verify use of and destruction of these weapons.

Transforming the organization into more of a pro-Western tool than already is totally unacceptable.

Empowering it to name perpetrators of CW attacks assures unjustifiably blaming Syria with greater authority – a step toward escalated US-led aggression rather than stepping back from the brink.

Washington, Britain, France and their imperial partners stop at nothing to advance their destructive agenda – why it’s crucial to challenge their aim for escalated aggression in Syria and elsewhere.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

The Blurred Line Between War and Business

May 7th, 2018 by Julian Vigo

Featured image: Then-Vice President Dick Cheney introduces President George W. Bush at the Black Tie and Boots Inaugural Ball in Washington in 2005. (David Bohrer / White House)

In 2009, Rand Paul called out Dick Cheney for supporting the invasion of Iraq to benefit his former company, Halliburton, claiming that Halliburton had received a billion-dollar no-bid contract. KBR, or Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was neck-deep in military contracts with the United States government, under a no-bid LOGCAP III (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) agreement, a contingency-based contract invoked at the convenience of the Army. Let’s not forget that the official narrative of weapons of mass destruction was the lie sold to the American people to justify an oligarchical class growing wealthier through creating war.

In November 2002, a $7 billion LOGCAP contract was given to KBR for extinguishing oil well fires in Iraq. In 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a public bid contract with a maximum value of $1.2 billion to KBR to continue repairing the oil infrastructure in southern Iraq. In 2004, the Army Corps handed KBR yet another contract, with the value of $1.5 billion, to cover engineering services in the U.S. Central Command’s area of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The contract had a $500 million ceiling for the first year and four one-year options, each with an annual ceiling of $250 million. In 2004, KBR received more orders under the LOGCAP contract for work in Afghanistan, which added up to $489 million. And then there is the $400 million in payments KBR made in subcontracting private securities services like Blackwater in Iraq.

Image result for Halliburton

In 2004, the public was made aware of Halliburton’s monopoly on billions of dollars in Iraq contracts and in the accumulation of tremendous influence over state matters. Or as Rand warned: the dangerous powers given to large corporations when they “get so big that they can actually be directing policy.” The funneling of vast fortunes to KBR was an egregious problem the government ignored. Major media also gave a pass to these contracts, with no questions asked about the larger structures within government that made this all possible.

In total, $138 billion was awarded in federal funds to private contractors for the Iraq War, with Halliburton receiving more than $39.5 billion of the federal contracts related to the Iraq military invasion and occupation between 2003 and 2013. There were three other primary contractors in Iraq: Blackwater Worldwide, a mercenary army responsible for countless murders and massacres of Iraqis; CACI International, which received $66.2 million in state funds while being accused of the beating, starvation, sexual assault, sleep deprivation and torture of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad; and Titan Corp., which supplied interpreters to Abu Ghraib and also was implicated in human rights abuses at the prison.

KBR was not alone in these kinds of dealings. The Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity firm and defense contractor, has had its hand in bringing together private investment and war, largely orchestrated by former heads of state. In a 2001 Guardian article, Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger document what they call the “ex-presidents’ club,” naming former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, former British Prime Minister John Major and one-time World Bank treasurer Afsaneh Masheyekhi.

“Among the companies Carlyle owns are those which make equipment, vehicles and munitions for the US military, and its celebrity employees have long served an ingenious dual purpose, helping encourage investments from the very wealthy while also smoothing the path for Carlyle’s defense firms,” the report states.

While Carlyle was the focus of numerous exposés around the time of the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, major media has provided limited follow-up coverage, and the company has been allowed to “rebrand” itself as an “investment group.” Some might argue “coincidence,” with so many specialized contractors making deals and forming policy with the U.S. government, but it does look suspicious when, for instance, on Sept. 11, 2001, The Carlyle Group was set to hold an investor meeting in Washington with the guest of honor being Shafiq bin Laden, brother of Osama bin Laden. We know the bin Laden family had close ties to George W. Bush; in addition, there were many economic and political links between the Saudi Arabian regime and the financing of 9/11. It is impossible to deny the systemic problems of corruption that occur when private corporations are allowed to dictate government policy.

Tweaking George Santayana’s infamous quote to reflect today’s reality,

“Those who get away with injustices in the past are condemned to repeat it.”

And so it goes. In 2017, The Carlyle Group purchased CMC Networks, Africa’s largest network connectivity provider, based in Johannesburg. In 2016, Carlyle invested in the U.K.-headquartered provider of digital automation intelligence solutions, Testplant, now Eggplant. Carlyle has gone from private military contractor to private equity group to data systems mogul. Carlyle’s interest in big data and security has been covered by Jeffrey St. Claire, who notes,

“Two Carlyle companies, Federal Data Systems and US Investigations Services (USIS), hold multi-billion dollar contracts to provide background checks for commercial airlines, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security.”

There is little not to worry about here.

Peter Eisner, former managing director of the Center for Public Integrity, questions the ethics of private industry making profits while advising the president of the United States. When speaking of George H.W. Bush’s involvement with The Carlyle Group, Eisner notes the conflicts of interest that blur the lines between public policy and business:

“What hat is former president Bush wearing when he tells Crown Prince Abdullah not to worry about U.S. policy in the Middle East? What hat does he use when he deals with South Korea, and causes policy changes there? Or when James Baker helps argue the presidential election in the younger Bush’s favor?”

Now skip to the recent breaches of online user data and the abuses of alleged democracies in creating draconian laws authorizing the spying on its citizens. On the one hand, we have the 2016 case where the FBI tried to oblige Apple to create a backdoor interface that would allow access to an iPhone. On the other hand, the same government that spies on private citizens also takes Mark Zuckerberg to task for similar abuses of data at Facebook. From the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions in the early 2000s, the U.S. government and private sector have numerous conflicts of interest—some might say, a collusion—between private industries making a killing from war and a cabal of current and former politicians who ushered forth this gold rush.

Among the most flagrant examples of corporate and governmental malfeasance is the Trump administration’s link to the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. President Trump’s erstwhile chief strategist, Steve Bannon, oversaw the collection of data by Cambridge Analytica, according to a former employee. U.S. national security adviser John Bolton also is linked to this scandal, given that his super PAC has paid Cambridge Analytica over $1.1 million since 2014 for “research” and “survey research.” Bolton has spoken openly of how his super PAC’s execution of “advanced psychographic data” would help elect “filibuster-proof” majorities in 2018.

More recently, Bannon, when he was a Trump adviser in the White House, pushed the proposal of Erik Prince (image on the left), Blackwater’s founder, to deploy private military contractors in Afghanistan, where 6,000 contractors plus U.S. special operations troops and support personnel would embed with local Afghan units. Beyond this, we have the Trump administration also considering Prince’s plan to build a mercenary force in Syria, despite Prince’s conflicts in the United Emirates, where he brought into the country several hundred Colombians posing as construction workers to fight in Yemen. When it emerged that Prince has collaborated with Oliver North and former CIA officer John R. Maguire to develop a plan to create a private spy network to circumvent the CIA, the White House opened its doors. All this plus a 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with the United Arab Emirate’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev and Prince that ended in a House Intelligence Committee hearing.

Journalist Josh Marshall, from Talking Points Memo, has noted how Prince regularly uses “ex-military and intelligence operatives to build parallel national security forces that operate for profit and outside the rule of law.” However, operating outside the law seems to be more the rule than the exception if we are to honestly approach the common pattern repeating itself wherein U.S. foreign policy and private industries collaborate. We cannot ignore that SCL/Cambridge Analytica (which could be reborn under a new name after announcing it is shutting down) works on the tracking, analysis and manipulation of popular opinion abroad related to both U.S. and U.K. military and diplomatic services, any more than we can negate the questionable ties between SCL and Republican billionaire Robert Mercer, his daughter Rebekah Mercer and Bannon (Mercer’s business partner), who later became Donald Trump’s de facto campaign manager.

While everyone worries about his or her data being safe on Facebook, this recent chapter of history is a repeat of the cyclical media stories that every now and then convince us that we should be worried, even if we aren’t quite sure why. Facebook is the cover story here. But we need to insist on answers to the vast conflicts of interest that are dotting American foreign policy. They have created an industry where those who should have nothing to do with big data and private militia are running the show.

*

Julian Vigo is an independent scholar, filmmaker and activist who specializes in ethnography, cultural studies, political philosophy and postcolonial theory. She has been a professor at New York University, the Université de Montreal and Goldsmiths, where she has taught anthropology, comparative literature, performance studies, cultural studies, critical theory, philosophy of science, postmodernism and gender studies. 

Planning for Aggression: Netanyahu’s Nuclear Archive

May 7th, 2018 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It all seems like an effort to confirm offensiveness and instability, to be appalling in order to be relevant.  The Israeli prime minister, handicapped by domestic travails and a watchful Knesset, is very keen to push the Iranian demon into the spotlight, making the case that the wily mullahs in Tehran are not to be trusted on anything from weapons development to security ambitions.  (Such points tend to be of equal application to their accusers: in this case, the refusal to accept, or deny, that Israel is a nuclear state at all.  To each his own.)

The effort of tying Iran to agreements hammered out with the UN Security Council’s Permanent Five and Germany – the so-called Iran nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – had the effect of placing a halt on the Persian nuclear juggernaut, though it did have a heavily qualified sense to it.  The ultimate point there was one of regional stability: the moment Iran acquires such a device, Saudi Arabia has vowed to cause a disturbance of uncertain danger.  But keeping the Islamic Republic on the straight and narrow would, at the very least, maintain some tense status quo.   

Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, will hear none of that.  He has gone through another phase of urgent warning against the deal, donning his doomsday fatigues in the hope that leaders will listen to his blood curdling warnings of theocratic Armageddon. His voice of fear was been heard across various capitals, suggesting nothing less than a degree of incitement.

It all came about with a Monday night bonanza at the end of April, featuring a display of turning intelligence into the raw material of crude politics, a lights-and-camera briefing designed to draw in the ratings and interest of foreign television networks.

“That’s what he was after,” wrote Yossi Verter for Haaretz.  “And that’s also why the presentation was made in English, which is anyway the language in which Bibi feels most at home. We, the natives, are small fry.” 

The title of the speech and overall display was soon assumed: “Iran lied”.  During his speech, he made good use of props, pulling back a curtain to reveal bookshelves stacked with files, CDs and various copies of original Iranian documents gathered by Israeli agents. This was the “nuclear archive” covering Iran’s 1999-2003 nuclear weapons program known as Project Amad, in of itself not a clear breach of the JCPOA.  Having not disclosed the nature or extent of this program, Iran, argued Netanyahu, entered into the 2015 agreement under false pretences. 

As Or Rabinowitz noted with some salience,

“The deal did not require Iran to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”  

The prevailing expectation was that Tehran would supply the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) with “explanations regarding outstanding issues” but those economic with the verite were not made the basis for voiding the deal.

While the archive also reveals morsels beyond the clandestine items usually kept within the intelligence community, Netanyahu’s implied purpose was to impute bad faith, suggesting that weapons development continued after 2003.

This extravagant display had the express purpose not only of tarring the country and its leadership, but also with keeping members of his Cabinet in check.  At the very least, it would grant the PM near imperial powers to go to war even in the absence of the security cabinet convening.     

It was also designed to overturn a perception that Netanyahu has had it rough on the issue of intelligence successes, linked as he was with Mossad’s bungling 1997 effort to assassinate Hamas senior figure Khaled Meshaal in Jordan. (As a trade-off to save exposed Mossad agents from conviction and execution by Jordan, Netanyahu relented in supplying the antidote that revived a poisoned Meshaal.)

As Labor Party leader Avi Gabbay observed, the speech was “a valuable gift” showing that Netanyahu was capable “of mixing political considerations with state security”.  More to the point, the Iran nuclear trove had given Netanyahu a thick life line, with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Gabbay himself striking the no-confidence motion off the agenda.  The theatrics had done the trick.

Netanyahu is so convinced about Iran he has sought to press its ally in Syria.  Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been told to put the brakes on Iranian advances in Syria and Lebanon, a point that brings Tehran into proximity with Israel’s borders.  Moscow, in turn, has made it clear that continued Israeli strikes of the sort that took place on the T-4 airfield in Homs are to stop. Such acts of aggression are deemed destabilising, though they have become very much part of the brutal normality that is the Syrian conflict.

Where Netanyahu has the most sympathetic of voices is in the White House, where he already has a good running. President Donald Trump is certainly doing more than flirt with the idea of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, though he has promise till May 12 to make the decision.

Israeli belligerence and frothy insistence on voiding the JCPOA has one logical and dangerous consequence.  It feeds the reactionaries and super patriots, not to mention the argument that having such weapons is actually what the doctor ordered.  They think us atrocious; why disappoint? 

At most, the archive unveiled by Israel shows cheek on the part of Tehran’s leadership to play loosely with its obligations as a Non-Nuclear Weapon State, being a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But as long as powers such as Israel remain undeclared nuclear states, and Iran maintains its reputation in some quarters for bloody villainy, such violations are bound to be expected.

*

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

Featured image is from Massoud.


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

On April 27 the NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg issued an ultimatum to the Taliban fighting the US and NATO allied forces that have invaded and occupied Afghanistan; negotiate–meaning surrender-or be destroyed. Taking his cue from the Nazi diktats in the countries they invaded and occupied across Europe in the Second World War, he acted like a Reinhardt Heydrich, the Nazi SS Security General, making threats against the resistance on behalf of the warlords in Washington and the other NATO capitals and like the German Nazis before him, repeated the same lies the Germans used; that NATO’s presence “creates the conditions for peace and reconciliation.” But a more severe war lurks under their guise of peace.

The threats did not stop with the Taliban. He also warned Pakistan to “take additional steps to close all “terrorist sanctuaries” and “encouraged Iran and Russia to contribute to regional stability,” meaning that they should accept the American and NATO occupation of the country and abandon the joint Russian, Iranian, Chinese efforts at concluding a peaceful resolution of the war in Afghanistan so that the Americans will have no pretext to stay.

But what is NATO doing in Afghanistan in the first place? Afghanistan has not attacked any NATO nation. No Afghanis have attacked a NATO nation. NATO claims to be a defensive military alliance yet it is engaged in supporting American aggression against a sovereign nation that did nothing whatsoever to justify its invasion by the US in 2001, except of course that it occupies a strategically important region of the world.

The NATO presence there is a violation of the NATO Treaty and a violation of the UN Charter. In fact the very creation of the NATO alliance is a violation of the UN Charter since NATO claims to be able to act outside the rules of the UN Charter that forbids any use of force by one nation against another without the approval of the Security Council. In the Soviet days this evasion or renunciation of the UN Charter was balanced by the answering response by the USSR and its European allies in the creation of the Warsaw Pact. But the counter-revolution in the USSR and consequent abandonment of the Warsaw Pact defensive wall against NATO resulted in the rapid movement of NATO forces from the western Atlantic right up to Russia’s borders. The restoration in Russia of a sense of national sovereignty and pride and the replacement of quislings with those who understood what the big game was all about have saved the day so far. But the threat against Russia continues to mount and there appears to be disagreement within the Russian government on how to deal with it; between those who want to accommodate the US and its allies to, hopefully, end the economic warfare being conducted against Russia under the name of sanctions and those that realise that accommodation will only result in Russia being broken into pieces so that it can never resist the west again; the tragic fate of Korea, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

But what is the war for? As I said in an earlier essay, one of the reasons has to do with gas pipelines and the Taliban not agreeing to the dictated terms put to them by the Bush regime in 2001, similar to the diktats put to Yugoslavia just two years before, “Do what we tell you, or we will bomb you.” In the case of the Taliban, which the Americans helped to create, along with other reactionary groups, when they used those groups to attack and destroy the socialist government of Afghanistan and the Red Army that came to protect it, the diktat was to make sure that the proposed American gas pipeline projects to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean were secure.

The Americans demanded that the Taliban form a coalition government of all factions, a government of “national unity,” in order to stop the ongoing civil war. The Taliban refused the offer. In Berlin, in July 2001, according to Jean Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquiein, the Americans insisted, “either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

The war was never about Bin Laden. The hunt for Bin Laden was just an excuse for the invasion of Afghanistan, an invasion decided upon several months before the incident in New York City on September 11 of that year, the incident that was used as the cover, first for the invasion of Afghanistan, then for the invasion of Iraq.

Bin Laden himself was a long time American asset whose family had strong links to George Bush through interlocking companies such as the BCCI bank and Bush’s Harken Energy, in which Bin Laden’s half brother Salem Bin Laden was an investor. Osama Bin Laden helped the Americans set up Al Qaeda to fight the socialists in Afghanistan and was seen as recently as 1998-99 in Yugoslavia with his mujahidin, under American Army command, fighting to destroy the socialist government there.

Shafiq bin Laden with George H. W. Bush

Just a day before the September 11 incident, his brother Shafiq Bin Laden attended a meeting of the Carlyle Group, an American holding company, at the Ritz Carton Hotel in Washington that was also attended by George Bush senior. Both were investors in the company. The claim that Bin Laden attacked the United States is absurd on the face of it to anyone who knows his connections and his family’s connections to the American leadership and intelligence and military services. They tried to make him a patsy but he refused to play the role and denied he was involved in the tragedy in New York. The American government has never presented any proof that he was.

Another primary reason for the American invasion of Afghanistan is its vast mineral wealth, from oil, gas and coal, to gem stones and rare earths such as lithium, to gold and iron ore; some of the richest deposits of minerals in the world. The Americans invaded to take those resources and to keep them. In the meantime, while the war continues and mineral extraction is inhibited, the Americans exploit the huge production of heroin and other opiates that has grown manifold since their invasion. Essentially Afghanistan has been reduced to an American mining and heroin extraction concession, and others can have access only in regard to their contribution to the invasion and occupation to secure that wealth. The Americans, like all the other colonial powers of the past and present, choose to call this racket “foreign policy.”

But minerals are not the only reason. Afghanistan is strategically located between India, Pakistan, China, Iran as well as Russia, through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north, all of which have their own large mineral deposits. It is an important link for the Silk Road routes of the past and present and for China’s development.

For years the war has spilled into Pakistan with the Afghan puppet regime routinely accusing Pakistan of supporting the groups labeled as Taliban while Pakistan states that it is trying to prevent “terrorist attacks from groups in Afghanistan. Everyone is tired of this endless war, everyone, except the Americans, who seem to lose all purpose if they are not at war. But today the Americans and their Afghan puppets are wondering what will transpire next after Russia began a major diplomatic initiative with a meeting held in Moscow in December 2016 between China, Pakistan and Russia to talk about Afghanistan’s “security.”

Russia knows the presence of ISIS fighters in Afghanistan is a threat to its security. The Taliban also have clashed with them so both have a common interest insofar as dealing with ISIS is concerned. Since there is good reason to believe that some elements of ISIS are supported by the United States these clashes are also skirmishes between Russia and the United States, just as they are in Syria.

The Chinese know that the Americans want to stay in Afghanistan to increase American economic and political power in central Asia as part of its unquenchable lust for world power and control and diminish Chinese development along its new Silk Road connecting Beijing to Berlin and beyond.

To the south lies India, further west Turkey. Whoever holds Afghanistan has an advantage in exerting its power in all these spheres. The Americans invaded to get that control and they care nothing for what the people of Afghanistan want. The reality behind the platitudes is that the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan is a dagger struck into the heart of Asia.

The Americans intend to stay, they say, and “win.” But the phrases they use to express their intent are the same meaningless propaganda that they used before they were defeated in Vietnam.

In August 2017 President Trump unveiled what he called his South East Asia Strategy, centred on Afghanistan. In a speech to members of the American forces in Virginia, Trump played the role of Richard Nixon and repeated the same words Nixon used to justify the continuation of the war against Vietnam. He stated, as did Nixon, that the American strategy can have no timelines attached to it. As Nixon talked about “peace with honour.” Trump referred to an “honourable outcome.” As Nixon claimed that to hastily exit Vietnam would allow communism to flood Asia, Trump claimed that “a hasty exist from Afghanistan will allow terrorists to attack America.” As Nixon claimed Cambodia and Laos were providing safe havens to communist forces and then bombed, invaded and destroyed those countries, Trump claimed that, “Pakistan provides safe havens to terrorists that threaten America.” As Nixon claimed that it was up to the Vietnamese people to decide their own future as American troops killed any Vietnamese who thought they should, Trump claimed it is up to the Afghani people to “take ownership of their future”, as his forces plunder the country and kill anyone who resists them and, to justify their claims of “terrorists” existing there, import their ISIS mercenaries to blow up civilians on the streets so that the Americans can pretend to hunt them down.

Image result for NATO in afghanistan

On March 22, of this year the American general in charge of the US and NATO occupation forces, and the de facto head of state in Afghanistan, General Nicholson, stated that additional military forces are now in place, more are being sent and that “the main effort in the US Central Command area of operations has shifted from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan and that these “additional capabilities will enable the Afghans to get on the offensive,” meaning that they and their puppet forces will go on the offensive.

In parallel with this offensive, Nicholson stated that the overall objective is to reconcile the Taliban with the “nation,” an attempt to undermine the negotiations already underway between Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and the Taliban as part of the Russian initiative to bring about a peace deal that would then require the NATO and US forces to leave. The US has also arranged for “elections” to take place which they hope will give legitimacy to the puppets they control in Kabul and are even trying to put religious pressure on the Taliban through the Ulema Council in Indonesia that is expected to “delegitimise jihad in Afghanistan.

But just as Nixon was whistling Dixie as the USA was going down in defeat in Vietnam, President Trump and his generals are whistling the same tune in Afghanistan since they are unable to defeat the Afghan resistance after all these years and so seek to widen the war to try to win it, just as Nixon decided to widen the Vietnam War to win it and invaded Cambodia, with horrific results.

It is not the first time they have tried bringing Pakistan into the war. We remember that in 2009 Raymond Davis, a CIA officer in Pakistan, shot dead two Pakistani Intelligence officers who were tailing him and when arrested was found to have in his car cameras with which he had been surveilling sensitive installations. He also had in his possession maps of Islamic schools and mosques where bombings had taken place, which had been blamed on Al Qaeda, linked groups, such as Tehreek-e-Taliban with which curiously he was in contact. The Pakistanis also found in his car multiple cell phones that could be used for triggering bombs, bomb making equipment and other paraphernalia. His arrest caused panic in Washington and a lot of pressure was exerted on Pakistan to release him. Pakistan’s President Zardari stated that the US was arranging the “suicide” attacks inside Pakistan. The US denied it but since the arrest of Davis there have been no further bombings of mosques in Pakistan. Those who have read Graham Greene’s essential novel, The Quiet American, will know what I am taking about.

Interestingly President Zardari said at the time the US was engaged in a plot to destabilise Pakistan so the US could justify an invasion and seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and that the CIA linked terrorists assassinated his wife Benazir Bhutto. Eight years later President Trump stated, “We must prevent nuclear weapons”, meaning Pakistani nuclear weapons, “from coming into the hand of terrorists and being used against us…”

The United States and NATO are not in Afghanistan to fight ‘terrorists” for they are the terrorists, creating conditions that give a pretext for their aggression and occupation and for a wider war; a war to save themselves from their endless folly, a strategy which will ultimately bring about, after much death and destruction, their own defeat, as it did in Vietnam.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

In a stunning surprise, the United States Navy announced Friday that it would reactivate its Second Fleet to counter the increasing threat from Russia.

Admiral John Richardson, chief of naval operations, said the fleet, deactivated in 2011, could oversee roughly 6,700,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean from the North Pole to the Caribbean Sea and from the East Coast of the United States to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Our National Defense Strategy makes clear that we’re back in an era of great power competition as the security environment continues to grow more challenging and complex,” said Admiral Richardson.

The re-establishment of the US Second Fleet is part “of re-orientating the US armed forces towards a world of renewed big power competition and away from the counter-insurgency campaigns they have been fighting over recent decades,” said BBC.

The strategy makes countering Russia a top priority. Admiral Richardson added,

“that’s why today, we’re standing up Second Fleet to address these changes, particularly in the north Atlantic.”

The Fleet was established following World War II for the sole purpose of supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Before the 2011 deactivation, the Second Fleet had approximately 126 ships, 4500 aircraft, and 90,000 personnel situated at major naval installations along the East Coast.

Adm Richardson also said that the Second Fleet would “exercise operational and administrative authority over assigned ships, aircraft and landing forces.”

BBC said the revived fleet would be headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, where the United States Department of Defense (DoD) will build a staff of about 15 personnel for the intermediate timeframe, then increase to more than 200.

At the moment, it is a mystery who will command the Second Fleet, nevertheless, what military assets it will include.

According to Military.com, the reactivation of the Second Fleet could bring some relief to other fleets stretched around the globe.

“Bringing the Second Fleet back to life will free up Fleet Forces to focus on such bigger-picture issues as manning, training and equipping the entire fleet, which took on increased scrutiny in the wake of two deadly collisions involving U.S. warships in Asia. Davidson led the Navy’s comprehensive review of those incidents, which called for restructuring how the Navy operates.”

NATO has recently suggested that Russia expanded its naval patrols in the Baltic Sea, the North Atlantic and the Arctic regions, along with its submarine activity at levels not seen since the Cold War.

Back in 2011, the prospect of U.S.-Russia relations seemed healthy, after the Obama administration declared a reset in 2009. Now, it appears as the Trump administration has performed an about-face with a dramatic reversal to reactivate the Second Fleet amid Moscow’s continued support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. War is coming…

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All images in this article are from Zero Hedge.

Dialogue between a master (A) and his pupil (B):

B: The Universe, or what is referred to as ‘space’, seems to be a kind of ethereal void, populated here and there by stars, planets, occasional meteors, comets and such like.

A: The Universe seems like a vast and mysterious place, but when you consider that it is contained within a dew drop or a human cell, it becomes less distant. In fact, it becomes very immediate. I refer, of course, to the microcosmic condensation of the macrocosm.

What is ‘space’? It is not what it seems. The word does not describe the reality. It seems void because you are only using your five senses to analyse it. There is no ‘space’, the area referred to is full of energy. An energy field. But you don’t recognize that which you can’t experience with your five senses.

B: What other sense do we possess, other than that which recognizes reality through touch, sight, taste, smell and sound?

A: We have our perception and intuition; these are receptors that pick up vibrational messages due to the absolute interconnectivity of all matter and energy. When you connect up with the source of all that is, you find that you are part of it, not distant from it. You cannot observe or experience it dispassionately – from a distance – because you yourself are part of the composition.

B: But rational observation forms the basis of all science, it enables us to understand the nature and structure of things, including the Universe. We want to understand how and what life is.

A: Such curiosity is a perfectly acceptable condition in mankind, but it arrives at the wrong answers;
unless man feels himself to be part of that which he observes. Not only this, but recognizes that he affects that which he focus’s upon. Both intentionally and unintentionally.

B: How is this achieved?

A: One cannot say ‘how’ it is achieved, unless one is prepared to come at it from the opposite dimension and perception from that which one is accustomed to, in one’s experience of everyday life.

B: Oh?

A: What we experience in our typical daily lives is that which operates, almost exclusively, within the realm of the five senses. Take sight: Visible light- what we ‘see’ – constitutes less than 0.5% of what is actually ‘out there’ in our Universe. Or ‘in here’ within our microcosmic and internal Universe. So we cannot understand, within the scientific discipline which belongs to the Newtonian school of thought, how and what life is, if we only rely upon our five senses to reach our conclusion. There is a missing dimension.

B: What holds us back from being able to experience this missing dimension?

A: Almost everything which forms the experience of what we call life, here on Earth. We operate within a three dimensional framework which has become so institutionalized that we take it to be the sum total of everything that is. Whereas actually, it constitutes something quite alien and divorced from the true state of existence: that which we experience in the fourth dimension and beyond.

B: Tell me more about the fourth dimension and beyond..

A: You already know something about this. When you fall asleep and dream, you are entering this dimension, subconsciously. When you get an ‘inkling’ about something – and then find that this inkling turned out to be true – you are also touching the fourth dimension. The problem is that, most of the time, you dismiss these experiences as being irrelevant to the tasks and needs to which you address yourself. Those tasks which form the daily diet of a materialistically aligned world. That superficial repetitive pattern which forms the central point of focus of life on earth at this time. That which broadly operates within what we call ‘the status quo’.

B: I want to understand what this ‘other dimension’ is and how to have greater access to it. I do get these ‘inklings’ from time to time, but never really questioned where they come from.

A: Alright. Intellectually, you can already get closer to the higher dimensions by using something of what (well focused) three dimensional thinking has already been able to ascertain, concerning further dimensions.

Take that chair you’re sitting on. It appears to be hard, doesn’t it? But actually, when seen/experienced from the higher dimensional state, it is not. It is just a mass of whirling atoms, clustering together in such a way as to provoke the sense of shape and form we call a chair. If we understand correctly from science what atoms are, we would not describe them as ‘hard’. Simply as ‘energy’. Mutable energy.

Now, look at me, or look at yourself. We too, seen from the higher dimension, are also a whirling mass of energetic particles (called atoms). The only difference between us and the chair, is that we are imbued with a whole host of sentient, sensitive attributes which operate on a vibrational wave length tuned to a different (higher) frequency than that of the chair.

The fourth dimension and beyond, is actually our true home – where we come from. And in it, we exist as spirit energy. This spirit experiences life as a quantum event. Everything interconnected with everything, everywhere, at all times. This quantum state is our true reality, and everything else is a falsehood.

B: A falsehood?

A: Yes, because in our true state we are at one with all creation. Which means at one with our Creator. The Divine Source of all that Is. Whereas, in a purely five sense, three dimensional state of existence, we do not allow ourselves access to the vibrational waves of higher awareness that constitute the true universal state of reality. The 99.5% of existence we think of as ‘beyond the realms of possibility’.

B: Is this ‘lack of connection’ the cause of our seemingly endless problems, here on Earth? Are we really living in such a tiny match box and imagining we are having a universal experience?

A: Essentially, yes. We experience most of our lives as something completely divorced from what Life actually Is. This has not come about by chance. It is a design which has been imposed upon mankind by a force whose motivation is alien to the will of the Creator, yet which vampires energy from creation. However, since we are gifted with powers that originate with our Creator, but have largely failed to apply them, we are complicit in the problem. We possess all that is needed to return life on Earth to its true state of creative resonance, but fail to do so.

We have instead, allowed ourselves to be won-round by an alien force and its accompanying false agenda: its deception. So, as we awaken to our true reality, we must use the creative, imaginative powers with which we are richly endowed, to dismiss the three dimensional imposter. The imposer of the three dimensional deception – that we have confused with reality. The task of mankind is to rediscover and re-establish its connection to the source of all life.

B: Are we making any progress in that direction?

A: It is called ‘waking-up’. This is an apt expression, as it suggests coming round from a state of unproductive dormancy. Universal energies, whose origins are the higher dimensions, are manifesting strongly on planet Earth at this time. The pace is quickening. The attempt to block that quickening pace and its accompanying awakening, is equally manifesting itself, increasingly obliquely. As a result, people are experiencing a critical confluence of disparate forces. The feeling, for many, is of being pulled apart; a type of dying.

The man and woman emerging out of this storm will be closer to their true state of being. Much closer. They will understand that they embody both sides of the disparate energy mix now manifesting. The alien and the true state.

They will recognize that both the creator and the destroyer exist within, and that each individual has the power of ‘free will’ to choose which to nourish into fullness. They will discover that they are in possession – and always have been – of higher instinctual and intuitive energies. Energies which, when properly directed, make it possible to avoid returning to a repetition of past errors.

They will realize that the source of their power is not their own. Does not belong to them, but is an inherited gift, a seed, whose origins rest with their Creator. Thus, rather than puff themselves up with false pride, they will honour the source from which their divine powers emanate. The life to come, here on earth and beyond, will be uniquely directed towards building upon the fruits of this deepening recognition.

In this way God and Man will be reunited – to put it better – will rediscover their unity. Their oneness. And the quantum Universe, with open arms, will welcome back the profusion of its presently disconnected and alienated parts, and thus become whole.

At that moment, the dance of all joyous dances will manifest throughout. And the purpose of Life will be revealed.

B: Blessed be that day!

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, a writer, actor and international activist.
He is President of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside. Julian is the author of two acclaimed titles: Changing Course for Life and In Defence of Life, which can be purchased by visiting www.julianrose.info. His third book ‘Beyond the Mechanistic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ will shortly be available.

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US Issues Trade Ultimatum to China

May 7th, 2018 by Nick Beams

US representatives issued a series of demands in Beijing during talks on May 4, ranging from an insistence that China take no action against US measures undermining its development of high-tech industries to the impossible ultimatum that it cut its trade surplus with the US by $200 billion within two years. These demands are not intended as the basis for negotiations, but to escalate economic conflict and military tensions.

“The US demands amount to a call for unilateral Chinese disarmament ahead of a potential trade war and for Beijing to abandon key elements of its industrial policy, which have led Washington to grow increasingly wary of China as a long-term economic rival,” the Financial Times commented.

China economy expert Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the newspaper:

“These meetings could end up going into the books as a formalisation of hostilities rather than as a basis for a negotiated settlement.”

The US delegation included Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and anti-China trade hawks, US trade representative Robert Lighthizer and White House trade policy adviser Peter Narvarro. The demands were set out in a four-page document entitled “Balancing the Trade Relationship.”

The Trump administration claimed it sought to “facilitate candid and constructive exchanges between the two sides.” In fact, the US document resembles the ultimatum handed to Serbia by Austria in July 1914, which led to the outbreak of World War I.

The US had previously demanded that China take immediate action to reduce its $375 billion goods trade surplus with the US by $100 billion. This has been doubled to $200 billion—a reduction of $100 billion in the 12 months beginning June 2018, and a further $100 billion reduction beginning June 2019.

The rest of the document consisted of equally imperious and impossible-to-fulfill demands that China cease its moves toward high-tech development and take no action, nor even issue complaints through the World Trade Organization (WTO), against US measures targeting it.

“China will immediately cease providing market-distorting subsidies and other types of government support that can contribute to the creation or maintenance of excess capacity in industries targeted by the Made in China 2025 plan,” it stated.

In effect, this means China must scrap its industrial program and become completely subservient to the demands of the US.

The document demanded that China take “immediate, verifiable steps” to ensure the cessation of Chinese government-conducted, sponsored or tolerated measures targeting US trade secrets and confidential business information, in line with US claims that China is stealing intellectual property.

China has denied that such theft is taking place and insisted that what the US calls “forced technology transfers” are part of agreements made by US firms wanting to do business in China through joint-venture operations.

The document stipulated that China take no retaliatory action “whether in the form of tariffs on imports of US products or in any other form” against US agricultural products and “cease all retaliatory actions currently being pursued.”

China has threatened tariffs against US agricultural products if the US goes ahead with a 25 percent tariff against Chinese goods, due to come into effect by the end of this month under section 301 of the 1974 US Trade Act.

The US further demanded that China withdraw its current WTO challenge to the US measures and “take no further action related to this matter” under WTO rules and procedures.

In sum, the US is demanding complete subservience by China in its industrial and economic policies. Above all, Washington is focusing on high-tech development, which it regards as a threat to its economic and military supremacy, as made clear in the following paragraph of the document:

“In light of China’s prevailing investment restrictions and state-directed investment in sensitive US technology sectors, including industrial plans such as ‘Made in China 2025,’ China confirms that it will not oppose, challenge, or otherwise retaliate against the United States’ imposition of restriction in investments from China in sensitive US technology sectors critical to US national security.”

On US investment in China, the document said Beijing must list by July 1 any restrictions it had imposed. The US would then identify restrictions that “deny US investors fair, effective and non-discriminatory market access and treatment.” Following such identification, “China is to act expeditiously to remove all identified investment restrictions on a timetable to be decided by the United States and China.”

The delegation demanded that Beijing give Washington carte blanche to impose measures against China. The document stated:

“China also recognizes that the United States may impose import restrictions and tariffs on products in critical sectors, including sectors identified in the ‘Made in China 2025’ industrial plan.”

If China failed to implement US demands,

“China acknowledges the likelihood that the United States will impose additional tariffs or other import restrictions on Chinese products, or on Chinese supply of services to such extent as the United States deems appropriate.”

Moreover, “China understands” that it “will not oppose, challenge or take any form of action against the United States’ imposition additional tariffs,” including action through the WTO.

China must also give up its opposition to US objections to it being declared a “market economy” under WTO regulations. The granting of full WTO market status to a country makes it more difficult for rivals to impose restrictions on it.

Chinese counter-demands included the lifting of the proposed 25 percent tariffs on Chinese exports to the US; open access for Chinese goods in US government procurement; equal treatment for Chinese companies in any national security review; an adjustment on the ban imposed on the Chinese technology company ZTE; and a commitment by the US not to initiate any section 301 investigation into China in the future.

As the US document itself indicated, there will be no concessions by Washington on any of these issues.

No doubt there will be conjecture over the coming weeks as to what concessions both sides could make in future talks—if any take place—now that they have set out their basic positions.

While there may be some moves in this direction, any assessment that regards the conflict as simply a “trade” dispute would completely misread it. The US trade war measures are part of a much broader agenda aimed at turning China into nothing less than a semi-colony, if necessary by military means.

The US National Security Strategy, issued last December, labelled China a “strategic competitor” practising “economic aggression” against the US. In January’s National Defense Strategy (NDS), Defense Secretary James Mattis declared that “great power competition,” rather than terrorism, was “now the primary focus of US national security.” The NDS designated China, along with Russia, as a “revisionist power” seeking to create a world consistent with its “authoritarian model.”

In July 1914, the crumbling and decaying Austrian regime issued an impossible-to-meet ultimatum to Serbia, following the assassination of Austrian archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Austria knew its demands would provoke war, but made a desperate attempt to maintain its threatened European empire.

Today, US imperialism, considering itself threatened on all sides by rivals, old and new, regards China’s economic expansion—above all, in the critical area of high-tech development—as an existential threat to its global economic and military dominance. In issuing its ultimatums to China, Washington has made clear that it is no less prepared to plunge the world into war.

Featured image: A US aircraft carrier in the Atlantic (Source: author)

Russia’s military spending has been declining in recent years, and is expected to shrink even more in the next few years. Despite this, the US seems to have no problem using Russia as an excuse to keep justifying more military spending. The latest move, from the US Navy, is to form an entire new naval fleet.

The US Second Fleet was dismantled in 2011, both to save money and because there is realistically no need for them. This fleet, which is responsible for the US East Coast and the northern Atlantic, is making a comeback, with Navy officials claiming a “great power competition” against Russia.

Even a cursory examination shows this is nonsense. Russia’s Navy is much older and far smaller than America’s. Moreover, Russia doesn’t have a fleet in the Atlantic in the first place. The closest thing to such a fleet would be Russia’s Northern Fleet, in the Barents Sea, which is focused on the Arctic.

There is no purpose to forming a new fleet on the American East Coast, to counter Russia or anyone else. Yet there appears to be no public debate against doing so. The US Navy knows that Russia can be used to justify anything, and with President Trump promising to build more warships, a new fleet fits nicely into the plan to continue the surge in US military spending.

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Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Finkelstein comments:  A few days ago I wrote this to several correspondents:

Trump has to renew/not renew the Iran agreement every 120 days.  It’s true that back in January 2018 he said the next renewal date would be decisive.  But Trump has not been very punctual about his own deadlines.  So why is Netanyahu investing so much in this particular deadline? 

I am averse to conspiracy theories but I can’t resist this thought:  The next deadline is May 12.  The Great March of Return climaxes on May 15.  If Trump pulls out of the agreement on May 12, the media will be riveted on the fate of the Iran agreement.  It’s the perfect moment for Netanyahu to commit a large-scale massacre when Gazans attempt to breach the fence.  Netanyahu (and Israeli leaders generally) are finely attuned to the US news cycle, so this must be considered a real possibility.

Recall, e.g., that Netanyahu launched the ground invasion phase of Protective Edge the night of the same day that the Malaysian airliner was shot down over the Ukraine, when all the news cameras turned away from Gaza and towards the Ukraine.  Already as far back as 1989 during the First Intifada, Netanyahu criticized the Israeli government for not carrying out a large-scale expulsion of Palestinians while cameras shifted to the China’s Tienanmen  Square massacre.  The other possibility is, Netanyahu will carry out a large-scale atrocity or assassination of Hamas/Islamic Jihadi leaders on May 12 in order to provoke a “rocket” attack from Gaza, which will provide Israeli with a pretext to attack Gaza preempting the May 15 march.  In 2008, Israel waited until November 4, the day of the historic election carrying Obama into power, to launch the commando raid into Gaza that broke the ceasefire. No one noticed the commando raid because all the cameras were focused on Obama.  When the ceasefire broke down after the murderous Israeli provocation, Hamas was blamed.

​Today Israel almost certainly killed the six Hamas militants in Gaza just as it killed the six Hamas militants in Gaza on the eve of Operation Cast Lead in 2008.  ​It is desperately trying to provoke a violent Hamas reaction so as to have a pretext to drown the mass nonviolent Great March of Return in a sea of blood.  It is a very sad commentary that, as Gazans prepare to march into the Valley of Death in one last desperate bid to break out of the ​”​largest concentration camp ever to exist​” (Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling), the international Palestine solidarity movement is missing in action.​

The philosopher Étienne Balibar is one of the figures behind the solidarity fund in support of striking railworkers — a fund that now stands close to €1 million. Responding to questions from workers who are taking part in the rolling strike action, Balibar emphasised the need for what he calls “collective resistance against social regression.”

Anasse, a pointsman at Le Bourget: How can an intellectual today show solidarity with workers’ strike action?

There are (at least) two reasons for them to do so, and indeed these reasons overlap. The first reason is that the railworkers who are today defending fundamental social rights are also fighting to stop the rail service itself being dismantled. This is not just any company. It is an essential public service, and now we see various attempts to privatise it (opening it up to competition and aligning its rules of functioning with the managerial norms of private businesses). This is part of a general offensive, which we might call a “neoliberal” offensive. After the attacks on the post office and telecommunications, they are trying to get rid of an essential public service. And other important sectors are also in the firing line.

The second reason is connected to this. As a teacher and researcher (I entered the education system as a trainee teacher in 1960, and today I am an “emeritus” professor) I spent my life working to serve citizens, and not so that a company could make profits. The railways and education are not the same thing, but they do together make up part of a wider whole. And now competition-based standards of evaluation and management are also penetrating into the education system. So I welcome the railworkers’ strike, for the strikers are in the vanguard of the collective resistance to this social regression.

Karim, Landy maintenance centre: It is said that our status is a privilege dating back to a time that has now passed. In your view, what, today, is a right and what is a privilege?

That’s an essential question! The terminology around “privilege” is a propaganda tool, which is used to discredit the railworkers’ resistance against their status being dismantled (or condemned to future extinction). Their status is presented not only as somehow archaic, but as if it were indirectly exploiting other workers. This is the height of nonsense, when we actually look at the railworkers’ wages and working conditions. Without doubt, there are privileged people in our society, in which we can see an exponential rise in inequalities of wealth and power, inequalities before the tax system, and inequalities in terms of who gets to have their say. But these privileged types are not working on the railways. We would be better off looking for them in the Stock Exchange or in Neuilly [posh neighbourhood on the western edge of Paris].

Besides, the very idea of democracy (from the French Revolution onward) has always been based on the elimination of privileges — which have a class character — and the recognition of rights — which are, on principle, universal. Rights belong to everyone. In the nineteenth and particularly the twentieth century, these rights also began to include social rights, social security, and protections for workers. This was not the result of the ruling classes’ goodwill, but long and arduous struggles, and exceptional — sometimes even dramatic — circumstances. We should remember that the railworkers’ current status was established in two phases, in the aftermaths of the First and then the Second World War. That is no coincidence! In resisting the dismantling of their status, today’s railworkers are defending this historical inheritance and its continuation for the future generations, who risk living in a society of generalised precarity.

Laura, a pointswoman in Le Bourget: The strike could get tougher over time. They are talking about us as if we were taking people hostage. What do you think about this?

First of all, I should say that my hope is not that the strike “goes on” indefinitely, but that it wins, especially considering the general interest that it embodies. But given the positions to which the government is currently holding firm, it is possible that the strike will indeed have to get tougher, and endure for longer, if it is to emerge victorious. It will be essentially important, therefore, to win the battle of public opinion, to secure the understanding and if possible the active support of the service users (the large majority of whom are also workers). Given the inconvenience that a transport strike will cause for everyone, it is hardly self-evident that the strike will indeed win over public opinion.

“Intellectuals” like us have to do as much as possible to help make this happen. That is, insofar as intellectuals are able to make ourselves heard and affect public opinion (a French tradition that also needs protecting). Just like when they speak of “privileged” workers, the reference to the strikers “taking people hostage” is also mere propaganda. It is so over-the-top that I would be astonished if it worked. But we never know how public opinion could turn, and the government will stop at nothing to make the strikers look like “hardliners,” “selfish,” “terrorists,” etc. So, a lot will depend on the force of the movement, which will need to be united, to keep its cool, to be democratic, and to be clear in its objectives. Here, too, we intellectuals can play a role, even without ever substituting for the railworkers in struggle.

*

First published at Révolution Permanente. Translated from French by David Broder

Étienne Balibar is a French philosopher and the most celebrated student of Louis Althusser. He is also one of the leading exponents of French Marxist philosophy and the author of Identity and Difference and The Philosophy of Marx.

Featured image is from the author.

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