Global Research

Featured image: MP Randall Garrison

Is it appropriate for NDP Members of Parliament to be working for “greater friendship” with a country that is killing and maiming thousands of non-violent protestors?

Would it have been appropriate for any elected member of the party to be a “friend” with South Africa’s government during the apartheid era?

Victoria area MPs Randall Garrison (left) and Murray Rankin are members of the Canada Israel Interparliamentary Group (previously named Canada-Israel Friendship Group).

Garrison is vice-chair of a group designed to promote “greater friendship” and “cooperation” between the two countries’ parliaments.

The chair of the group is York Centre MP Michael Levitt, a former board member of the explicitly racist Jewish National Fund, who issued a statement blaming “Hamas incitement” for Israeli forces shooting thousands of peaceful protesters, including Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani.

The Interparliamentary Group is one of many pro-Israel lobbying organizations in Canada. In conjunction with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, the Interparliamentary Group has hosted wine and cheese lobbying events on Parliament Hill. Three hundred parliamentarians and parliamentary staff attended their 2014 “Israeli Wine Meets Canadian Cheese” gathering in the East Block courtyard.

The group regularly meets the Israeli Ambassador and that country’s other diplomats. Representatives of the Group also regularly visit Israel on sponsored trips. For their part, Garrison and Rankin both participated in CIJA-organized trips to Israel in 2016.

The Interparliamentary Group works with its Israeli counterpart the Israel-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group. In 2016 the Group sent a delegation to the Israeli Knesset and last year they organized a joint teleconference with Israel-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group co-chairs Yoel Hasson and Anat Berko.

Last month Hasson responded to Meretz party Chairwoman Tamar Zandberg’s call for an investigation into the Israel Defense Forces’ killing of non-violent Palestinian protesters by tweeting, “there was nothing to investigate, the IDF is doing what’s necessary to defend the Gaza border.”

Chairman of the Zionist Union Knesset faction, Hasson opposed the UN resolution on a Palestinian state. When the Knesset voted to strip Arab MK Hanin Zoabi of parliamentary privileges for participating in the 2010 Gaza flotilla Hasson and MK Carmel Shama “nearly came to blows” with Zoabi and her fellow Balad party MK Jamal Zahalka. Hasson later called Zoabi a “terrorist”.

Berko is even more openly racist and anti-Palestinian. A Lieutenant-Colonel in the IDF reserves prior to her election with Likud, Berko openly disparaged African refugees. In February Israel National News reported,

“Berko said that the MKs should see the suffering that African migrants have caused South Tel Aviv residents before jetting off to Rwanda” to oppose an effort to deport mostly Eritrean and Sudanese refugees to the small East African nation.

In January Berko co-sponsored a bill to bypass a High Court ruling that Israeli forces cannot use the bodies of dead Palestinian protesters as bargaining chips. The aim of the bill was to make it harder for the bodies to be given over for burial, which should happen as soon as possible under Muslim ritual, in the hopes of preventing high profile funerals. In a 2016 Knesset debate Berko make the ridiculous claim that the absence of the letter “P” in the Arabic alphabet meant Palestine did not exist since “no people would give itself a name it couldn’t pronounce.” In response Richard Silverstein noted,

“Apparently, the fact that the word is spelled and pronounced with an ‘F’ (Falastin) in Arabic seems to have escaped her. It’s worth noting, too, that according to her logic, Israeli Jews do not exist either, since there is no letter ‘J’ in Hebrew.”

Garrison and Rankin must immediately withdraw from the Canada–Israel Interparliamentary Group. If the NDP MPs refuse to disassociate themselves from the pro-Israel lobby organization, party leader Jagmeet Singh should replace them as (respectively) NDP defence and justice critics.

Israel’s slaughter in Gaza should lead to an end of the NDP’s anti-Palestinian past.

Please join me in asking Garrison ([email protected]) and Rankin ([email protected]) to withdraw from the Canada–Israel Interparliamentary Group. Make sure to cc Jagmeet Singh ([email protected])

For the first time since the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria started, the country finally appears to be nearing a “political settlement” to the conflict.

The Meaning Of True Friendship

Syria might very well see the conclusion of a formal peace deal by the end of the year, and it’s all because of President Putin’s masterful geostrategic “chess moves”. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) & Hezbollah allies fought very hard to preserve the Syrian state up until the eve of the game-changing Russian anti-terrorist intervention in September 2015, and these ground forces have still done all the heavy lifting in liberating the majority of the country’s cities since then.

Still, had it not been for the pivotal support of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Syria might never have gotten to this point, though there wouldn’t have been a Syria for President Putin to save had it not been for Iran and Hezbollah.

Those two assisted Syria out of ideological solidarity in their shared anti-Zionist cause and also to “pay back” their close partner for the support that it gave them in the past. The SAA helped Hezbollah for over two decades during its own intervention in neighboring Lebanon, which advanced Iranian strategic objectives and also substantially served them through Damascus’ severing of an Iraqi oil pipeline to the Mediterranean during the First Gulf War (the Iran-Iraq War).

“Chess Moves”

The decision to begin the Russian anti-terrorist intervention was only the first of three major “chess moves” that President Putin made in Syria, with the second being the unveiling of a Russian-written “draft constitution” in January 2017 during the first Astana meeting (which itself was a crucial move) immediately after the Liberation of Aleppo (another important development), while the most recent one was the Putin-Netanyahu Summit that took place in Moscow on Victory Day when the “Israeli” leader was invited to be his Russian counterpart’s de-facto guest of honor.

This visit was bookended by two back-to-back bombings of Syria by “Israel” and represented the largest such attacks against the Arab Republic since the 1973 War, sending the signal that Russia is passively facilitating “Israeli” strikes against IRGC & Hezbollah forces there as part of its complex “balancing” strategy in geopolitically managing the Mideast. Realizing that his erstwhile policy of dilly dallying on making any tangible progress in implementing the Russian-written “draft constitution” and refusing to initiate the “phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah had backfired by putting his country in a weaker negotiating position than expected and triggering the largest-ever “Israeli” bombings in decades (that were even passively facilitated by Russia), President Assad hurried to Sochi to meet with President Putin and discuss what needs to urgently be done to change what had up until last week looked like Syria’s reversing fortunes.

The result of their extensive negotiations was that President Assad publicly announced his wholehearted support for participating in the UN-mediated process of revising his country’s constitution according to some of the suggestions put forth by the Russian-written “draft” one (as tentatively agreed during the “Syrian National Dialogue Congress” at the beginning of this year), but much more important than that was what President Putin said in stating his “assumption” that “foreign armed forces will be withdrawing from the Arab Republic”. Right afterwards, his Special Envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, clarified that this does in fact include Iran and Hezbollah just as much as it does Turkey and the US.

The Fate Of Foreign Forces

It’s difficult to imagine how anyone could forcibly evict the US’ 2000+ troops from their 20 or so reported bases in the country’s northeast without triggering World War III, just like no one can do so with Turkey’s in Idlib and Afrin without risking the same, and neither seems likely to peacefully withdraw even though this possibility would be more probable for Ankara to ever do if it cut a deal with Moscow than for Washington. In all likelihood, the so-called “de-escalation zones” could be expanded in include the American “sphere of influence” in Syrian “Kurdistan” and then used as the basis for implementing the Russian-written “draft constitution’s” “decentralization” proposals that might ultimately end up giving these regions such a high degree of “autonomy” that they’d be “permitted” to conduct foreign military deals in “legally” “allowing” those two occupying forces to remain in order to not jeopardize the “fragile peace”.

As for the IRGC and Hezbollah, neither of them has any exclusive stake in a geographically-defined “sphere of influence” like the US and Turkey do, but a more positive difference between them is that the first-mentioned two are in Syria at the invitation of its democratically elected and legitimate government. This means that those same sovereign authorities could kindly ask them to leave now that their original anti-terrorist mission is largely over following the defeat of Daesh and the serious beginnings of the peace process in the country, seeing their allies off with pomp and ceremony after congratulating them on a mission accomplished and a job well done.

The “Phased”, But Dignified, Withdrawal

The “phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah under dignified circumstances is the most likely eventuality, and the odds are that both of them would actually be happy to oblige, and not just out of respect for their Syrian hosts. Hezbollah is war-weary after playing such a pivotal frontline role for over seven years, while Iran has much more important concerns to focus on nowadays than “keeping the peace” in Syria amidst the US-led Hybrid War destabilization efforts against it.

Withdrawing from Syria would allow Hezbollah to adequately prepare the Lebanese home front for another Zionist aggression while Iran could mollify some of the rising civil society unrest in its cities through a populist move by announcing that the funds that had hitherto been used for its costly peacemaking efforts in Syria would now be redirected to domestic development and sanctions relief efforts. As for both of their sworn missions in fighting Zionism, they can still continue with this campaign outside of Syria after the sobering realization that they’ve become “sitting ducks” there after President Putin gave the green light a week and a half ago to turn the Arab Republic into a large “Israeli” bombing range.

Iran and Hezbollah will not be “allowed” to fight “Israel” “to the last Syrian” through whatever plans they may or may not be hatching against it given their reported military presence near the occupied Golan Heights, and the interests of their allied host country would best be served through a “tactical retreat” from the Arab Republic that enables all three parties to rest, regroup, and reevaluate their strategies so that they can fight more effectively at another day and under better circumstances whenever a more advantageous opportunity for them arises.

So long as they’re offered the chance to leave as heroes, then Iran and Hezbollah should have no problem with this arrangement because it also satisfies their own respective self-interests like it was argued, though refusing to take this deal would just mean that President Putin would stop “restraining” his good friend Netanyahu and let him be as wild as he wants in brutally forcing these two out of the country. “Bibi” is braying for blood and the only thing holding him back is President Putin’s “goodwill assurances” on Victory Day that he would soon succeed in “convincing” President Assad to organize their dignified “phased withdrawal” in the near future and therefore avert the dangerous escalation scenario that Moscow is working so hard to prevent.

Tying Up Loose Political Ends

If everything goes according to plan, then Iran and Hezbollah could leave Syria as soon as this summer, concurrent with the UN-mediated “constitutional reform” process making progress in implementing most (but obviously not all) of the Russian-written “draft” proposals and “freezing” the Turkish and American presences in the country as part of a “cold peace”. Logically, the next step after the constitution has been changed would be to execute UNSC 2254’s other mandated “solution” of new elections, though this undefined demand doesn’t have to be for presidential ones (as President Assad will likely remain in office for a transitional period as a “figurehead” leader per prospectively agreed upon constitutional “compromises”) but parliamentary ones.

There are predictably those who might fear for President Assad’s political future, but the reality is that all players need him to remain in office no matter what they publicly say to the contrary. Without President Assad, who most of the Syrian masses sincerely respect and trust, giving his approval to this entire process, the population will not go along with it and new fault lines could suddenly emerge in society that might perpetuate the armed conflict, so that’s why the US, Turkey, and even “Israel” will implicitly agree to him remaining in office because the alternative would be to jeopardize Russia’s hard-fought “balancing” strategy of “win-win” “compromises” for everybody.

Concluding Thoughts

Conclusively, Syria is a sovereign state that ultimately makes its own decisions, even if the choices that it makes have been heavily influenced by the geostrategic situation that others (especially Russia) have shaped, and President Assad’s presence at his Russian counterpart’s side when the latter spoke about the withdrawal of all foreign armed forces from the Arab Republic is the strongest sign yet that Damascus silently agrees with Moscow’s proposal and is implementing this very sensitive move behind the scenes together with its two Iranian and Hezbollah allies. Once their prospective “phased withdrawal” is completed, then the immediate conventional “Israeli” military threat to Syria will diminish as per the “balancing” understanding reached between President Putin and Netanyahu during their Victory Day Summit, with this occurring together with political advances being made in the UN-mediated “constitutional reform” process and the larger peace more generally.

There is no “perfect solution” to the Hybrid War of Terror on Syria and “maximalist” outcomes — no matter how legitimate they are in the sense of Syria having the sovereign and legal right to liberate “every inch” of its territory like President Assad promised — are impossible to pull off without risking another war, so that’s why Russia is leveraging its key role in the country to “balance” all actors and get them to enact “win-win” “compromises” and “freeze” the most contentious issues (the US and Turkish occupations) until an undefined later date. The priority right now is peace and then reconstruction, and all players — including Iran — will partake in the latter as the entire world marshals support for this gargantuan effort, albeit likely focusing their investments in certain “spheres of influence” such as the Gulf States getting involved in American-occupied Syrian “Kurdistan” while China chooses to do business in the rest of de-facto “rump Syria” that was freed by the SAA, for example.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

OPEC and Russia are meeting in a little more than a month to discuss the progress of their oil production deal and what’s next. On the face of things, there will be no surprises: every country taking part in the deal is still committed to the cuts until the end of the year.

But Russia pumped more than its quota in both March and April. But Energy Minister Alexander Novak hinted that Russia might like to see a gradual easing of the cuts following the June meeting. But Iran sanctions will remove a certain amount of Iranian crude from international markets, making space for more from other producers, and Russia may just surprise its partners in the deal.

Citigroup commodity analysts this week estimated that Russia has 408,000 bpd in idled capacity, which constitutes 4 percent of its total, which stands at 11.3 million bpd. That’s a lot less than Saudi Arabia’s idle capacity, which stands at 2.12 million bpd, but is apparently still a significant enough portion of the total.

Some of Russia’s biggest oil players made it clear long ago that they have ambitious production plans for the future, which the production cuts are restraining. Even with this restraint, however, some are actually expanding production, including Gazprom Neft, which last year produced 4.1 percent more oil than in 2016 despite the cuts. The increase came on the back of new fields in the Arctic and the company’s Iraqi ventures.

Rosneft pumped 7.6 percent more oil last year despite the cuts. For the first quarter of this year it reported a 1.2-percent decline in production because of the cuts, but it has also said that it could return to pre-cut production levels within two months. An advisor to the company’s president told Russian media this week the cuts were implemented with a view to a quick return to production when cutting was no longer necessary, so Rosneft had taken care to ensure the return to pre-cut levels is indeed quick.

Now, this might just be a general statement, or it could suggest that both Rosneft and Gazprom Neft—along with the other companies taking part in the cuts—are chomping at the bit, eager to expand into new fields.

Gazprom Neft, for example, had a very ambitious production plan for the period until 2020, aiming to hit annual production of 100 million tons of crude by 2020. Because of the cuts, the company will now move this target rate by one or two years, it said today.

Rosneft, meanwhile, is drilling new wells in Vietnam and western Siberia. Lukoil is expanding in the Gulf of Mexico and Iraq. Gazprom Neft is boosting production at its three Arctic fields, among others. Russia’s Big Oil is expanding, letting natural depletion take care of some of the production cuts. But they have made it clear that they would rather not curb existing production or stall new projects for much longer.

“The agreement lasts until the end of the year. In June, we can discuss, among other issues, a question about reduction of some quotas during this time, if it is expedient from the market’s point of view,” Alexander Novak said in April.

Now, with Brent close to US$80 and pretty likely to actually hit this price in the coming days, it may have become expedient to discuss some quota reductions. After all, why let Saudi Arabia be the only one to take advantage of the fall in Iranian crude supply after sanctions kick in?

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

An American Doctor and Naval reserve officer who has done extensive medical evaluation of a high-profile prisoner who was tortured under the supervision of Gina Haspel privately urged Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to oppose Haspel’s confirmation as CIA director, according to an email obtained by The Intercept.

“I have evaluated Mr. Abdal Rahim al-Nashiri, as well as close to 20 other men who were tortured” in U.S. custody, including several who were tortured “as part of the CIA’s RDI [Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation] program. I am one of the only health professionals he has ever talked to about his torture, its effects, and his ongoing suffering,” Dr. Sondra Crosby, a professor of public health at Boston University, wrote to Warner’s legislative director on Monday. “He is irreversibly damaged by torture that was unusually cruel and designed to break him. In my over 20 years of experience treating torture victims from around the world, including Syria, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. al-Nashiri presents as one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”

Nashiri was snatched in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2002 and “rendered” to Afghanistan by the CIA and eventually taken to the Cat’s Eye prison in Thailand that was run by Haspel from October to December 2002. He was suspected of involvement in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. He is currently being held at Guantánamo Bay prison.

Despite Crosby’s pleas, Warner and five other Democratic senators have announced their support for Haspel. Warner backed Haspel after she sent him a carefully crafted letter designed to give the impression that she had changed her position on torture while simultaneously continuing to defend its efficacy.

“While I won’t condemn those that made these hard calls, and I have noted the valuable intelligence collected, the program ultimately did damage to our officers and our standing in the world,” Haspel wrote. “With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken.”

Haspel stated that she “would refuse to undertake any proposed activity that was contrary to my moral and ethical values.” But Haspel has refused to renounce torture, her role in its use or to condemn the practice of waterboarding. In fact, under questioning from Sen. Kamala Harris during her confirmation hearing, Haspel explicitly refused to say that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” she oversaw at a secret CIA prison in Thailand were immoral. That fact renders her pledge to Warner meaningless.

“It took her 16 years and the eve of a vote on her confirmation to get even this modest statement, and again, she didn’t say she had any regrets other than it offended some people,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee.

“I urge Senator Warner to oppose Ms. Haspel, who did not have the courage or leadership to oppose the RDI program,” wrote Crosby.

She stated that some of the techniques used against Nashiri are still classified. In her letter to Warner, Crosby stated that among the known acts of torture committed against Nashiri while he was in U.S. custody at several U.S. facilities, included:

• suffocated with water (waterboarding)
• subjected to mock execution with a drill and gun while standing naked and hooded
• anal rape through rectal feeding
• threatened that his mother would be sexually assaulted
• lifted off ground by arms while they were bound behind his back (after which a medical officer opined that shoulders might be dislocated)

(Crosby’s service in the U.S. Naval reserve is not related to her civilian work with victims of torture and, in an email, she made clear that her statements on torture and Nashiri’s case do not represent the Navy or the Department of Defense.)

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed senators that he was fast-tracking the vote in an executive session.

“If confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; the President be immediately notified of the Senate’s action, that no further motions be in order, and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record,” read an internal email obtained by The Intercept sent to Democratic staffers.

“Today we’re seeing what amounts to a secret confirmation,” Wyden said. He told Intercepted: “I’m worried that if you have a proceeding like this, a nominee confirmed this way with zero meaningful declassification, this is not going to be the last secret confirmation. You will see other nominees coming up, and their record will be covered up as well.”

Wyden blasted the CIA and Haspel for refusing to grant the Senate full access to Haspel’s record and choosing instead to provide carefully declassified information intended to burnish Haspel’s image.

“I want the American people to know that the agency is covering up her background. They’re covering it up because they’re trying to prevent what I think is the threshold issue of accountability … because if the American people knew what I know, I believe the Senate would have no choice but to reject her confirmation,” he said, pointing out that as acting director, Haspel is in charge of what the senators see and don’t see about her record. “She started with an enormous institutional advantage — I don’t know of a similar instance where the nominee gets to decide what is declassified about her and what isn’t.”

In a statement provided to The Intercept, Yasmine Taeb, senior policy counsel at the Center for Victims of Torture, said,

“It’s outrageous that Republican leadership is fast tracking this vote. The Senate cannot fulfill its constitutional ‘advice and consent’ responsibilities when the Senate lacks meaningful access to all the documents relevant to this nomination, and when the public — whose job it is to hold their elected representatives accountable — remains largely in the dark.”

Senators have also asked for more detailed information on Haspel’s role in the destruction of 92 video recordings of “enhanced interrogations” conducted in Thailand.

In a May 7 briefing to Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, also obtained by The Intercept, Crosby asserted that during Nashiri’s torture “unauthorized techniques were always used with authorized techniques.” Crosby stated that she could not discuss these “unauthorized techniques” because they remain classified. She cited a public statement from one of the CIA contractors who developed the enhanced interrogation program, psychologist James Mitchell, who said he witnessed an interrogator “dousing Nashiri with cold water while using a stiff, bristled brush to scrub his ass and balls and then his mouth and then blowing cigar smoke in his face until he became nauseous.” She offered to brief senators with appropriate security clearances on other classified unauthorized techniques.

“The bottom line on the Haspel nomination,” said Wyden, “is that the vast amount of information about her background could be declassified without compromising sources and methods, and that really does a disservice to the American people.”

Crosby told Senate staffers that the CIA’s “methodology consisted of strategic assaults — multiple traumas inflicted simultaneously, as well as consecutively, in a manner designed to instill terror and maximize harm in the prisoners.” The interrogation program, she stated, showed that “torture is not just a crime of physical violence, but a way of destroying someone’s humanity.” Crosby added:

“It is important to note that the barbarity of the torture methods used were shrouded and concealed in sterile euphemisms.”

In the briefing, Crosby described the torture in graphic, albeit unclassified, terms:

The terror of being kept naked in pitch-black, shackled to the ceiling while music blared, covered in urine and feces while insects crawled on their bodies, in dank cells that were freezing cold or unbearably hot. The horrific conditions in between interrogations were in some cases as bad as the interrogations. These torture methods were inflicted for hours and days, for weeks at a time, over the course of years. The men became disoriented with no sense of when the abuse would stop. Some of the men wished for death.

She concluded her briefing:

“The devastating human cost to this torture program cannot be overstated. Unfortunately, this toll is largely hidden due to ongoing secrecy and control that the CIA exercises. This is what I can say due to security restrictions.”

Crosby, who is currently at the Guantánamo prison examining Nashiri, told The Intercept that she could not offer further details because they are classified and, for the same reason, cannot speak about Haspel’s specific role in Nashiri’s torture. However, a brief prepared by Crosby’s organization, Physicians for Human Rights, asserts:

The CIA site in Thailand formed the blueprint for the rest of the CIA torture program. After her assignment there, Haspel continued to hold senior operational roles in the program, where presumably she would have been in a position to know about other abuses at other sites. Moreover, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the program and worked to protect it from criticism. This included drafting a cable ordering the shredding of videotapes depicting torture sessions, despite a court order staying their destruction. This act of cover-up should have led to Haspel’s dismissal – and should most certainly disqualify her from the role of leading the CIA.

On Monday, The Intercept reported that a senior Warner adviser wrote an email to Democrats on the Intelligence Committee informing them that a classified memo compiled by the committee’s minority staff and aimed at examining Haspel’s full involvement with torture and destruction of evidence was removed from the Senate. It was supposed to be housed in a secure facility inside Congress, so senators and their staff could read it before voting on Haspel’s nomination.

That memo, according to Democratic sources, provided classified details on Haspel’s role in torture, the destruction of evidence, and her tenure more broadly. The memo was based in part on the investigation conducted by U.S. attorney and special prosecutor John Durham into CIA activities following the September 11 attacks. On the eve of the committee vote on her confirmation, that memo was moved out of the U.S. Congress and Warner’s office said senators needed to ask his office in order to arrange to see it. Democratic sources have told The Intercept that few senators have read the classified memo.

On Wednesday, 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions requesting that he provide the “Durham report” to the committee, saying that it falls under its jurisdiction over “compliance with laws against torture, as well as potential violations of the Freedom of Information Act.”

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Following May 17 and 18 trade talks in Washington, a joint statement said the following:

“To meet the growing consumption needs of the Chinese people and the need for high-quality economic development, China will significantly increase purchases of United States goods and services. This will help support growth and employment in the United States.”

“There was a consensus on taking effective measures to substantially reduce the United States’ trade deficit in goods with China.”

Lead Beijing trade negotiator/Vice Premier Liu He said it’ll take time to resolve differences between both countries. In 2017, China’s trade surplus with America was a record-high $375 billion.

The devil is in the details on what was agreed on – to be discussed in further talks. Nor was anything said about Trump’s announced tariffs on Chinese imports.

Beijing agreed to increase purchases of US agricultural and energy products – insisting “the expansion of US imports must meet the urgent needs of its country’s economic and social development,” according to China’s Global Times (GT), adding:

“China believes that in order to reduce the US trade deficit, the US should further open its domestic market to Chinese buyers.” Beijing wants access to US high-tech products.

GT called this issue a key bilateral trade sticking dispute, certain US products off-limits to Chinese buyers. Beijing wants this policy ended.

Both countries agreed to increase trade in manufactured goods and services, as well as encourage “two-way investment.”

They agreed to cooperate in protecting intellectual property, along with maintaining high-level contacts to resolve trade disputes.

They vowed to avoid a trade war. China’s delegation was led by Vice Premier Liu He, Washington represented by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

According to analyst Suisheng Zhao,

China won’t “offer a $200 billion cut in the trade deficit in the near future. This is a much more long-term effort.”

“Both sides want to reach some kind of deal. It’s just that each side is trying to push the other side to make more concessions.”

“(T)here’s no quick solution” to bilateral differences on trade. It’s unclear when further talks will be held.

Alliance for American Manufacturing president Scott Paul expressed disappointment, saying talks didn’t achieve a bilateral playing field, adding:

“Sometimes it’s better to walk away from the negotiating table to reinforce the point to China that our resolve is strong. We need more details, but I’m not encouraged by the direction these talks are headed.”

China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the reported claim that Liu offered to cut the trade surplus with America by $200 billion, adding talks continue.

For now, it appears a trade war is averted. Whether consensus can be reached on key sticking points could prove another matter entirely. Bilateral differences are far from resolved.

*

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

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The Dispossession of Canada’s First Nations and the Kinder Morgan Pipeline

By Kim Petersen, May 20, 2018

In Canada, the American pipeline conglomerate Kinder Morgan desires to multiply the amount of fossil fuel carried from the province of Alberta to the British Columbia harbor city of Vancouver. Many First Nations and a multitude of British Columbians are against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain project.

Venezuela’s Highly Unusual Presidential Election

By Gregory Wilpert, May 20, 2018

Regardless of who wins, however, Venezuela’s future remains extremely uncertain. US efforts at radical regime change – targeting not just the presidency, but all state institutions – will make governing the country difficult no matter who wins. Already the US, and under its pressure almost all other conservative governments in the region, has pledged not to recognize the result. The pre-emptive non-recognition of an election, despite the use of one of the world’s most secure voting systems, is completely unprecedented in Latin American history.

The Pentagon Can’t Account for $21 Trillion (That’s Not a Typo)

By Lee Camp, May 20, 2018

But the 21 trillion number comes from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General—the OIG. Although, as Forbes pointed out, “after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG’s webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported “accounting adjustments,” was mysteriously taken down.”

Will Trump’s Pyrrhic Victory End with America’s Role as Global Bully?

By Philip Giraldi, May 20, 2018

Iran’s hopes that Europe will develop a spine and will reject the American overtures, joined by China and Russia, is perhaps too optimistic as banks will be reluctant to lend money for Iranian projects and foreign companies will be unlikely to risk entering into anything but very short-term contracts with the Iranian government for much needed infrastructure improvement.

Video: Israel, 200 Nuclear Weapons Targeted against Iran

By Manlio Dinucci, May 19, 2018

For over fifty years, Israel has been producing nuclear weapons at the Dimona plant, built with the help mainly of France and the United States. It is not subject to inspections because Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, does not adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed fifty years ago.

The Kiev Regime: Derogation of Freedoms of Speech

By Mark Taliano, May 19, 2018

On Tuesday, May 15, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) raided the RIA Novosti news agency’s Kiev offices and detained the outlet’s local bureau chief, Kirill Vyshinsky, ostensibly for acts of “treason.”

Serbs, Listen Up! Here’s Why Russia’s Getting Chummy with Croatia

By Andrew Korybko, May 19, 2018

Without a doubt, Russia is reaching out to Croatia in an unprecedented way that’s bound to make some Serbs feel a little surprised since they can’t imagine Russia ever offering them literal billions like Ambassador Azimov just did with Zagreb and then assuring them that Moscow could do more for their country than the US and the EU put together. Russia is undoubtedly Serbia’s top strategic partner and enjoys widespread and sincere love within the Balkan country’s society, but Serbs are forgiven for wondering what’s really going on nowadays between Russia and Croatia.

The American Century, so triumphantly proclaimed in a 1941 Life magazine editorial by US establishment insider Henry Luce, was built on the control of oil and on an endless succession of wars for that control of global oil. Now, ironically, with the illegal and unilateral cancellation of the Iranian nuclear agreement by the US President, oil may be set to play a key, if unintended, role in the downfall of the global hegemony of that same American Century.

Each element of various countries’ recent and increasing steps to get away from dollar dependency, in and of itself is insufficient to end the domination of the US dollar through Washington’s ability to force other countries to buy or sell their oil only in dollars. Yet each unilateral provocation and sanction action by Washington forces other countries to find solutions only four years ago not deemed possible or practical.

Since the 1973 oil price shock following the Yom Kippur War, Washington and Wall Street have moved to ensure that OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, would sell its oil only in US dollars. That insured that demand for the US currency could be more or less independent of the internal state of the US economy or of the Government debt or deficits. That system, dubbed petrodollar recycling by Henry Kissinger and others at the time, was a vital underpinning of US global ability to project its power at the same time it allowed its major corporations to walk away from national domestic taxes and investment, in the process of out-sourcing to places like China or Mexico, Ireland or even Russia. Were a significant group of nations to abandon the dollar and turn to other currencies or even barter at this point, it could start a chain-reaction of events that would lead to sharp US interest rate increases and a new US financial crisis that would be far uglier than that a decade ago.

US Sanction Mania

Ever since September 11, 2001 the US Government has been engaged in a process of transforming its use of financial sanctions, supposedly against financing of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, into a central weapon of warfare in defense of the American Century. The latest decision of the US Treasury to impose radical new forms of targeted sanctions on Russia, which not only ban American citizens from doing business with them, but also threatens sanctions on non-US citizens doing such business, is now being followed by re-imposition of draconian new US sanctions on Iran.

The Trump Administration, unilaterally withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, has announced that other countries trading Iran oil must wind down that trade by November or face sanctions themselves, so-called secondary sanctions. The US Treasury is also targeting vital international reinsurance companies or foreign banks that might be involved in Iran oil trade. The latest Iran sanctions use as justification the Section 1245 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.

What the unwarranted US move is doing is forcing key nations including China, Russia and Iran itself, along possibly with the EU, to distance themselves from the dollar as never to date.

Chinese Yuan Oil Trade

In March this year China launched a yuan-based contract for oil futures. Futures are a key component of today’s global oil trading. It is the first oil futures contract not in US dollars. Until the new Iran US sanctions, Washington regarded it as little than a nuisance that would take years if ever to gain serious acceptance. Now the US effort to block Iran from dollar sales of its oil might give a huge boost to Shanghai’s oil futures, and advance acceptance of what some call a petro-yuan.

China is by far Iran’s largest customer for its oil, importing some 650,000 barrels daily of the recent total export by Iran around 2.5 million barrels a day. India is second largest with around 500,000 a day of import. South Korea is third with 313,000 bpd and Turkey fourth at 165,000, according to a recent report by Bloomberg. The likelihood that Iran, which has recently expressed desire to be independent of the dollar, would sell its oil to China in Chinese yuan, is extremely high. If China were to make yuan sales a precondition of continued buying of Iran oil, saving the cost of dollar exchange, it would also significantly increase use of the Chinese renminbi yuan in global trade at expense of the dollar.

Iran is also a key strategic partner in China’s Belt Road Initiative, its multi-trillion dollar Eurasian infrastructure project. Following the latest US sanctions, on reports that France’s Total oil major may be forced to sell its major share in Iran’s huge South Pars natural gas field, a Chinese state energy industry source stated that China’s giant CNPC oil group is prepared to take over the French share. Currently Total holds 50.1% and CNPC 30% with Iran’s state oil company 19.9%. Trump’s National Security Council head, John Bolton, a long-standing neoconservative warhawk who has earlier advocated going to war against Iran, has stated that EU firms would face US sanctions if they continued to work with the Iranian government.

Further indication of growing China-Iran economic ties, on May 10, China launched a direct overland rail service connecting its Inner Mongolia from Bayannur some 8,000 kilometers across Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Teheran. Freight travel time is estimated at 14 days, some 20 days less than ocean freight time.

Russia Moves

A second significant business partner for Iran, Russia, though plagued itself by US sanctions, has engaged in numerous business agreements in Iran following the 2014 Iran Nuclear Agreement and lifting of sanctions. Russia’s Putin has explicitly declared Russia’s desire to become independent of the US dollar for security reasons related to sanction vulnerability. In that regard, bilateral Russia-Iran trade has been on a barter non-dollar basis for many products since November 2017.

Further, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was in Moscow on May 14 to discuss with Russia’s Lavrov the future of the Russian nuclear power project agreement and both sides pledged to continue economic cooperation. Several Russian oil companies are already engaged in Iran projects.

Trade between Russia and China is also moving out of the dollar, even prior to the latest foolish US rejection of the Iran agreement. Currently China is Russia’s largest trade partner with 17% share, double that between Russia and Germany, number two. Further reduction in Dollar trade between the two is likely to increase. At the April 25 meeting in Shanghai of the Valdai Discussion Club, Zhou Liqun, chairman of the Union of Chinese Entrepreneurs in Russia declared that the two Eurasian countries should increasingly get away from the dollar in their bilateral trade. He stated,

“The leaders of the two countries should think over improving relations, especially in financial cooperation. Why make payments with foreign currency? Why dollar? Why euro? They can be made directly in the yuan and the ruble,” he told a Russian state TV.

Even before latest Russian and Iran sanctions from Washington Russia and China have been carefully moving out of the dollar in their bilateral trade. Russia in late 2016 established an oil futures contract traded on the St. Petersburg Exchange (SPBEX) using its ruble to price Russian Urals oil futures paralleling the Shanghai petro-yuan futures.

This year bilateral Sino-Russia trade is estimated to reach US $100 billion, after increasing some 31% in 2017. The banks and companies of the two leading Eurasian countries are carefully laying the foundations to be independent of the dollar and, thereby, of vulnerability to dollar sanctions, the diabolical advantage of Washington having the world reserve currency.

In 2017 already nine percent of Russia goods to China were made in rubles; Russian companies paid 15 percent of Chinese imports in the renminbi. Those direct ruble and renminbi payments bypass risks of dollar or Euro currencies where NATO sanctions are increasingly a factor. Further insulating the two Eurasian countries from US financial warfare and sanctions, those payments can be made independent of the EU’s SWIFT interbank payments system by using the established China International Payments System (CIPS). Already over 170 Russian banks and brokers across Russia are trading yuan at the Moscow Exchange where China’s large state banks such as the Bank of China, ICBC, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China are represented. The ruble-yuan exchange rate is calculated without the participation of the US dollar.

Will EU Follow?

In recent days there has also been reports that the European Union is looking into possibilities of trading Iran oil in euros rather than the dollar as they have to date. They have condemned the Trump unilateral break with the Iran nuclear agreement and are looking for ways to preserve trade in Iranian oil as well as major aircraft and other technology contracts threatened by the US. EU foreign policy head, Federica Mogherini, told press that the foreign ministers of the UK, France, Germany, and Iran will work on practical solutions in response to Washington’s move in the next few weeks. They reportedly plan to expand economic ties with Iran, including in the area of oil and gas supplies.

Were the EU to make such a move it would rock the foundations of the dollar system and with it, the US power projection. While it is unlikely at present, each move by Washington to damage EU economic interests as have manifestly taken place since 2014 in the Russian sanctions demanded by Washington, the prospects of a major tectonic shift in geopolitical alliances away from the Atlantic become more thinkable.

The role of the US dollar as leading world reserve currency is the cornerstone of Washington power along with its military power. Were that to undergo major diminution, it would weaken the ability of the Pentagon to wage wars for continued superpower dominance using other nations’ resources. The more the unbridled throwing out of US Treasury sanctions forces nations such as China, Iran Russia and potentially the EU to reduce dollar dependency the weaker the power of Washington to dominate other nations. At the heart of the process as for the past century is the fight for control of oil and the role of the dollar for that control.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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.

Featured image: Marcela Florido in her New York City Studio

Marcela Florido is a young woman visual artist who was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has been living and working in New York City for several years. At the time of this discussion she was working as an artist-in-residence on Lamu Island located off the coast of the East African nation of Kenya. 

***

Abayomi Azikiwe: What do you perceive as the connection between your work in Brazil, England, the United States and Kenya?

Marcela Florido: At some point in my practice, I realized that the landscapes I depict do not correspond to real space or time. I understand them, instead, as fabricated memories of all the places I’ve called home over the past 10 years. Influences and imagery from personal experience, history books, and mass media layer over one another in my work, each the trace of a larger narrative. Through imagination, then, I question how I inhabit my place-informed identity, as my “home” is constantly redefined.

Azikiwe: How does the racial and political situation in Brazil compare to the U.S?

Florido: During the 90s, Rio was a dangerous place; guns were part of the landscape. As a child, I had an intuitive sense of the violent tension that separated the people in our society, but it seemed like a solvable issue: I was sure the problem wasn’t about the color of our skin or about being Latinos (what does that even mean in your own country?). For my child-self, all we needed was a fair government to dissolve our problems, which I was sure were all caused by economic inequality.

Fast forward to my first days in New York when I was watching an art critique led by a young African American artist whose work addressed the murders of Black men in his home town. He made a point of saying that his work was not in direct dialogue with the western art-historical cannon. It was new and exciting for me to watch the audience, mostly famous white American critics, struggling to follow the conversation on those terms. At some point, I was asked by someone to share my opinion, but the artist replied faster than I could: “She is not part of the conversation. My work is about Black and white America, and she is Latina.”

After 10 years of living abroad, I firmly believe that the violence in Brazil is related to racial issues — and I am deeply interested in interrogating how discourse on identity politics has empowered minority communities in the U.S., while still reinforcing culturally-constructed labels such as “Latina.” It is certainly exciting to see more non-white artists, especially non-white female artists, showing their work in major institutions and investigating the particularities of their experience through art. However, I have also felt reduced to those labels — and I still don’t know what being “Latina” really means.

Azikiwe: In which ways does this impact your creative impulses?

Florido: My work is a product of these contradictory feelings and confusing experiences. Through painting, I establish my own language for thoughts, so I can narrate the experiences that have been carved into my memory and my imagination. Art is a way I can play with, and therefore take ownership of, my femininity, sexuality, and body. Through painting, I liberate my sense of self from the restrictive notions of gender, race, and identity that surround me.

Azikiwe: What constraints, if any, do the influence of racially polarized societies such as Brazil and the U.S impose on your ability to reach broad audiences?

Florido: Artists who show their work internationally are always at risk of being misunderstood. I think that, in the U.S., the contemporary art scene has been so infused with discourses of identity politics that every foreign artist who articulates their subjective bodily experiences is at risk of having their work framed in a reductive manner as being simply about ‘identity’. I feel like I am constantly dodging being pigeonholed into categories such as ‘‘Feminist Brazilian Art,” or, more broadly, “Contemporary Latin American Art.”

I’ve seen so many Brazilian peers sticking to conservative arts practices, such as Geometric abstraction. It seems to me as if they linger in these aesthetics to avoid being constantly exoticized by international audiences — they articulate their own subjectivity without portraying bodies, and in that way avoid opening up their work to the complexes of identity and identification. Personally, I also find this approach restrictive, over-cautious, and, even worse, “race- or identity-blind.

It excites me to explore the conventions of the visual languages artists have developed throughout history, but I am primarily preoccupied with finding freedom within these languages. Art is not all about linguistics: there is something that goes beyond the verbal and allows for ambiguity and fluidity. For me, this tension between limits and freedom is what brings me back to the studio everyday.

Azikiwe: How did you get the opportunity to travel and work in Kenya?

Florido: Tilleard Projects is an art residency that invites artists living in New York to work in the island of Lamu, which lies off the Kenyan coast, for a month. I had been recommended to Caroline Tilleard, the founder of the project, by one of the previous residents, and Caroline thought my work would fit well with that of the two artists who were going to be part of the project in March. She was right: we were a perfect group.

Azikiwe: How conducive is the social atmosphere in Kenya for creative artists?

Florido: As a foreign artist, working in Lamu, which is a UNESCO World Heritage listed site, was truly an amazing and fruitful work experience. The restriction of territory meant that I could explore the island and feel like I was part of the community and the landscape. However, in my studio I would again feel removed, a mere observer. In my daily wanderings, I would almost only see and interact with men. In this predominately Muslim population, they’re the ones working in the town as craftspeople, fisherman and driving the boats at the beach. I cannot imagine what it would be like for a woman from Lamu’s community to be working as an independent artist and pushing against the accepted notions of authority, freedom, gender, and politics.

Marcela Florido on Lamu Island in Kenya with fellow artists during May 2018

Over dinner, the Nairobi-based artist Elias Mungora spoke at length about the contemporary art scene in Kenya and the important role of artist collectives within that community. According to him, it is because of these artist-led efforts that younger female Kenyan artists have been able to show their work and participate in the larger public conversation about art. But he was concerned about the level of interest in Nairobi, explaining that, for many different reasons, locals were still hesitant to go to art openings.

Our conversation made me think about New York’s atmosphere for female artists. During my first year in the city I felt artistically and creatively isolated not only from what was being shown in the mainstream galleries but also from the conversations I was having in some of my peers’ studios. Everyone seemed to have such different concerns, and New York as a whole seemed more like an art scene than an art community. It was then that I founded the artist collective Grupo<> with four other female artists from Latin America. Our aim was to generate critical dialogue about the complexities of art-making, while challenging preconceptions based on gender, geography and skin color. Our projects were grounded by the concerns of artists whose practices are interwoven with the history of Latin America. Grupo<> was a beautiful way of carving out a space in NY where we could have the kinds of conversation that we felt were being silenced by the mainstream art gallery system, and to give us strength to continue in our research.

Azikiwe: What is the political atmosphere now in Kenya which underwent considerable turmoil during the election period of 2017?

Florido: Political messages and graffiti are still visible on the walls of the old town of Shela and Lamu, but the island felt very safe and calm. Through conversations with local friends, I got the sense that during election periods tension and violence tends to rise significantly, so much that many people temporarily leave the country. Throughout history, Kenya (and Lamu in particular) has been shared by several different tribes, and visited by Bantu, Arab, Persian, Indian, Chinese and European traders, all of whom left , and continue to leave, their mark. I was amazed by how often politics were discussed; most people I encountered seemed to have an opinion on the current government and a strong grasp of the political history of the country – and everyone agreed that corruption was a major issue.

Azikiwe: In what way have other artists and the general public responded to your work in Kenya?

Florido: It was great to see local friends casually walking into the studio, even when I was not there, to look at the work and spend time with it. I was very happy with their reaction – which seemed one of curiosity for the stories that I was narrating.

Marcela Florido art work on display on Lamu Island in Kenya

While my earlier work has focused on the allegorical nature of paintings, or even on the discipline of painting, the work that I made in Lamu seemed more personal. In the large-scale drawing Mal-criação, two female figures pose together in a garden for what could be a family photograph; while the younger woman sits on the front, the older woman fades in the background. I also found myself depicting a lushness of atmosphere, that I’d never allow myself in NY – probably in the previously-mentioned attempt at dodging being pigeon-holed. Those labels just don’t apply in Kenya to the same degree, just like they don’t apply to the same degree in Brazil. But most importantly, what made me really happy about working in Kenya was the intimacy I felt between the viewers and my work.

Azikiwe: Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses.

Florido: Thank you so much for giving me the platform to share some thoughts.

*

Marcela Florido is a young woman visual artist who was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has been living and working in New York City for several years. From Yale School of Art, she earned a MFA in the Painting Department, New Haven, USA. Her BFA was received from Slade School of Art, London, UK. She also studied at the Foundation in Art and Design, Central Saint Martins, London, UK as well as receiving a Professional Degree in Classical Ballet, Ballet DalalAschar, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

Featured image: Then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during a 2008 visit to Kosovo with U.S. Army troops on foot patrol in the town of Gnjilane. (The U.S. Army / CC BY 2.0)

Twenty-one trillion dollars.

The Pentagon’s own numbers show that it can’t account for $21 trillion. Yes, I mean trillion with a “T.” And this could change everything.

But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

There are certain things the human mind is not meant to do. Our complex brains cannot view the world in infrared, cannot spell words backward during orgasm and cannot really grasp numbers over a few thousand. A few thousand, we can feel and conceptualize. We’ve all been in stadiums with several thousand people. We have an idea of what that looks like (and how sticky the floor gets).

But when we get into the millions, we lose it. It becomes a fog of nonsense. Visualizing it feels like trying to hug a memory. We may know what $1 million can buy (and we may want that thing), but you probably don’t know how tall a stack of a million $1 bills is. You probably don’t know how long it takes a minimum-wage employee to make $1 million.

That’s why trying to understand—truly understand—that the Pentagon spent 21 trillion unaccounted-for dollars between 1998 and 2015 washes over us like your mother telling you that your third cousin you met twice is getting divorced. It seems vaguely upsetting, but you forget about it 15 seconds later because … what else is there to do?

Twenty-one trillion.

But let’s get back to the beginning. A couple of years ago, Mark Skidmore, an economics professor, heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, say that the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General had found $6.5 trillion worth of unaccounted-for spending in 2015. Skidmore, being an economics professor, thought something like, “She means $6.5 billion. Not trillion. Because trillion would mean the Pentagon couldn’t account for more money than the gross domestic product of the whole United Kingdom. But still, $6.5 billion of unaccounted-for money is a crazy amount.”

So he went and looked at the inspector general’s report, and he found something interesting: It was trillion! It was fucking $6.5 trillion in 2015 of unaccounted-for spending! And I’m sorry for the cursing, but the word “trillion” is legally obligated to be prefaced with “fucking.” It is indeed way more than the U.K.’s GDP.

Skidmore did a little more digging. As Forbes reported in December 2017,

“[He] and Catherine Austin Fitts … conducted a search of government websites and found similar reports dating back to 1998. While the documents are incomplete, original government sources indicate $21 trillion in unsupported adjustments have been reported for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.”

Let’s stop and take a second to conceive how much $21 trillion is (which you can’t because our brains short-circuit, but we’ll try anyway).

1. The amount of money supposedly in the stock market is $30 trillion.

2. The GDP of the United States is $18.6 trillion.

3. Picture a stack of money. Now imagine that that stack of dollars is all $1,000 bills. Each bill says “$1,000” on it. How high do you imagine that stack of dollars would be if it were $1 trillion. It would be 63 miles high.

4. Imagine you make $40,000 a year. How long would it take you to make $1 trillion? Well, don’t sign up for this task, because it would take you 25 million years (which sounds like a long time, but I hear that the last 10 million really fly by because you already know your way around the office, where the coffee machine is, etc.).

The human brain is not meant to think about a trillion dollars.

And it’s definitely not meant to think about the $21 trillion our Department of Defense can’t account for. These numbers sound bananas. They sound like something Alex Jones found tattooed on his backside by extraterrestrials.

But the 21 trillion number comes from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General—the OIG. Although, as Forbes pointed out, “after Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG’s webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported “accounting adjustments,” was mysteriously taken down.”

Luckily, people had already grabbed copies of the report, which—for now—you can view here.

Here’s something else important from that Forbes article—which is one of the only mainstream media articles you can find on the largest theft in American history:

Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress.

That’s right. The expenses with no explanation were 54 times the actual budget allotted by Congress. Well, it’s good to see Congress is doing 1/54th of its job of overseeing military spending (that’s actually more than I thought Congress was doing). This would seem to mean that 98 percent of every dollar spent by the Army in 2015 was unconstitutional.

So, pray tell, what did the OIG say caused all this unaccounted-for spending that makes Jeff Bezos’ net worth look like that of a guy jingling a tin can on the street corner?

“[The July 2016 inspector general] report indicates that unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Department’s ‘failure to correct system deficiencies.’ ”

They blame trillions of dollars of mysterious spending on a “failure to correct system deficiencies”? That’s like me saying I had sex with 100,000 wild hairless aardvarks because I wasn’t looking where I was walking.

Twenty-one trillion.

Say it slowly to yourself.

At the end of the day, there are no justifiable explanations for this amount of unaccounted-for, unconstitutional spending. Right now, the Pentagon is being audited for the first time ever, and it’s taking 2,400 auditors to do it. I’m not holding my breath that they’ll actually be allowed to get to the bottom of this.

But if the American people truly understood this number, it would change both the country and the world. It means that the dollar is sprinting down a path toward worthless. If the Pentagon is hiding spending that dwarfs the amount of tax dollars coming in to the federal government, then it’s clear the government is printing however much it wants and thinking there are no consequences. Once these trillions are considered, our fiat currency has even less meaning than it already does, and it’s only a matter of time before inflation runs wild.

It also means that any time our government says it “doesn’t have money” for a project, it’s laughable. It can clearly “create” as much as it wants for bombing and death. This would explain how Donald Trump’s military can drop well over 100 bombs a day that cost well north of $1 million each.

So why can’t our government also “create” endless money for health care, education, the homeless, veterans benefits and the elderly, to make all parking free and to pay the Rolling Stones to play stoop-front shows in my neighborhood? (I’m sure the Rolling Stones are expensive, but surely a trillion dollars could cover a couple of songs.)

Obviously, our government could do those things, but it chooses not to. Earlier this month, Louisiana sent eviction notices to 30,000 elderly people on Medicaid to kick them out of their nursing homes. Yes, a country that can vomit trillions of dollars down a black hole marked “Military” can’t find the money to take care of our poor elderly. It’s a repulsive joke.

Twenty-one trillion.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke about how no one knows where the money is flying in the Pentagon. In a barely reported speech in 2011, he said,

“My staff and I learned that it was nearly impossible to get accurate information and answers to questions such as, ‘How much money did you spend?’ and ‘How many people do you have?’ ”

They can’t even find out how many people work for a specific department?

Note for anyone looking for a job: Just show up at the Pentagon and tell them you work there. It doesn’t seem like they’d have much luck proving you don’t.

For more on this story, check out David DeGraw’s excellent reporting at ChangeMaker.media, because the mainstream corporate media are mouthpieces for the weapons industry. They are friends with benefits of the military-industrial complex. I have seen basically nothing from the mainstream corporate media concerning this mysterious $21 trillion. I missed the time when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said that the money we dump into war and death—either the accounted-for money or the secretive trillions—could end world hunger and poverty many times over. There’s no reason anybody needs to be starving or hungry or unsheltered on this planet, but our government seems hellbent on proving that it stands for nothing but profiting off death and misery. And our media desperately want to show they stand for nothing but propping up our morally bankrupt empire.

When the media aren’t actively promoting war, they’re filling the airwaves with shit, so the entire country can’t even hear itself think. Our whole mindscape is filled to the brim with nonsense and vacant celebrity idiocy. Then, while no one is looking, the largest theft humankind has ever seen is going on behind our backs—covered up under the guise of “national security.”

Twenty-one trillion.

Don’t forget.

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Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America. 

How did a person who should be in the criminal dock both in the US and in the International Criminal Court for running a torture prison get appointed Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency? What is all the Washington talk about defending human rights when a torturer is put in charge of covert operations?

Milosovic, the Serbia leader who tried to defend his country from Washington’s aggression, was sent by Washington to the Hague war crimes tribunal or some such place that only tries victims of Washington’s aggression. He died in prison, some say he was poisoned. The court ended up clearing him of the faked American charges. But little good that did a dead man.

But now Washington has a real criminal, a real person who has committed without any doubt “crimes against humanity” confirmed by the US Senate as CIA director. That tells us a lot about the hypocrisy, double standards, and utter mendacity of the government in Washington.

As some Republicans voted against the torturer in chief, it was the Democrats that put a torturer at the head of the CIA.

Listen to their excuses:

West Virginia’s Joe Manchin said: Haspel prioritizes the safety of America. She is “an unbelievable public servant.”

North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp said that Trump had picked the directer best suited to the job. Heidi said she would make sure that Congress conducts oversight of Haspel’s job, an ambivalent statement if the job is torture, which seems to be enshrined in US practices.

Indiana’s Senator Joe Donnelly said that he believed Haspel “has learned from the past, and that the CIA under her leadership can help our country confront serious international threats and challenges.”

What threats? What challenges? This is blah-blah talk. Think about it for a minute. Imagine a criminal before the judge saying “I have learned from my past crimes and am now fit to be an upstanding citizen who can help our country.”

Florida’s Bill Nelson covered his collapse as a moral person by meeting with Haspel personally and arriving at the conclusion that she was fit to serve.

According to Newsweek these four US Democratic senators face tough re-elections and voted to clear Haspel in order to appease the Trump deplorables. In other words, these four senators think that the deplorables, who voted for Trump because he said he was for peace in Syria and with Russia and was against the US being policeman of the world, want to have a torturer confirmed as CIA director. The Democrats voted for a torturer because they are afraid of Trump voters. If Trump voters want a torturer in office, the senators would be honor bound to stand up to the Trump voters.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D, NH) said that she believes Haspel that she won’t torture again.

“Your honor,” said the murderer in the dock, “I promise I won’t murder again. Just give me this plumb appointment as chief of police.”

Virginia’s Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put Haspel in the job with his assurance that she would stand up to Trump if he ordered her to torture. In other words, Warner associates Trump with torture, not Haspel who has actually tortured.

Please, let us not hear again about America liberating other nations and defending human rights, or having a moral conscience, or being a light unto the world.

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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. 

“Thinking that you actually know a public figure – in the intimate, best-friend kind of way – is not healthy.” – Katie Stow, Harper’s Bazaar, Oct 17, 2017.

The citizenry of the US Republic might well insist on the sanctity of its laws, a prided exceptionalism and the genius that is the Constitution, but there is no provision as to how to combat a known, recurring sickness: royal watching and monarchical mania.  The House of Windsor continues to pull people out of beds and from their tasks with hypnotic appeal, most notably during a wedding occasion.

The nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seem the stuff of a regressive nightmare, a progressive’s conversion to the forces of reaction and misplaced adoration.  As a social statement, it is conservative and defiantly anti-modern.  Nevertheless, networks such as CNN insist that the Hollywood actress is the quintessential opposite: a feminist figure, a modern statement, a potential reformer. The network reported her own remarks of being “proud to be a woman and a feminist” and her determination to make a “bold feminist statement” in walking down the aisle unchaperoned.

The ceremony itself tried to buck the musty, staid manner typical of such occasions.  At times, it seemed that an evangelical stir combined with gospel theatrics would grip the gathering and send it into hysterics.

Bishop Michael Curry of Chicago did his best to take the occasion by the throat, doing a merry zigzag between the “redemptive power of love” (a la Martin Luther King), Jesus not getting “an honorary doctorate for dying” and various lusty references to Promethean fire:

“There was no Bronze Age without fire, no Iron Age without fire, no Industrial Revolution without fire.”

While the heavy American presence at the Harry-Markle show might explain the level of interest back in the US, the fascination from across the Atlantic pond has been a lingering one.  Deposing tyrannical monarchy and creating a republic did not banish the associated romanticism of having hereditary rulers – and inbred ones at that.

 “The American people are quite fond of the royal family,” explained former President Barack Obama to Prince Charles at a meeting in 2015.  “They like them much better than their own politicians.”

Research justifying monarchist mania has been sought with vigour, and inevitably, psychologists have been pressed on the issue. Tara Emrani’s work, done from her perspective as a licensed clinical psychologist, gives a sound tick of approval to the British royal family in finding “a way to stay relevant and present in the media.”  The portrayal of “the family is very relevant to the people in that they have a family, they do normal stuff, they go to normal places, although their royal.”

Such are the delusions of perceived normality, but Emrani wishes to run on it.

“The Duchess [Kate Middleton] recently talked about mental health and hunger and Prince Harry does a lot of charity work and things that people can admire, are inspiring, and feel relevant.”

Home grown substitutes have been sought.  The US Republic has had a lengthy string of dynastic rulers.  The Kennedys and Camelot was a very American attempt to seek the appropriated gloss of an indigenous royal family, to anoint this genetic compound with aristocratic credentials.  It also had the elements of stage management and direction.  Royal weddings serve to generate fantasy and hope, that unenviable and sinister nonsense that little girls can eventually grow up to marry a prince.

The prince who meets the commoner, albeit one birthed in the Hollywood dream bubble, has been the logical extension of that other “commoner” myth sired from the legend of Princess Diana.  It was soon forgotten that Diana was herself an aristocrat rather than being the People’s Princess as designated by the New Labour of Tony Blair.  The response to her death had a certain pathological, even totalitarian quality to it, leading the late Christopher Hitchens to remark that Britain had become, for a time, a “one-party state”.

The tension between modern trends and conservative institutionalism was only artificially demonstrated at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.  Black spiritualism tagged on to exaggerated feminist values mixed with traditional forms certainly gave an impression of difference, but these were daubs rather than extensive splashes.

The trick worked for some, not least the selection of Curry as wedding pastor, “an important move,” assessed Jonah Waterhouse, “as Meghan Markle is the first notable African American member of the British royal family.”  Markle, it has already been forgotten, is not there to inflict change upon the institution of monarchy, but be changed by it.

Between the monarchy and Hollywood lie certain similarities, and the modern British monarchy is very mindful of the power of image, the strength of a manufactured product.  Hilary Mantel’s controversial but entirely sensible summation of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, as “becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung” was apt if slightly cruel.  She had been “a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore.”

The most striking, and somewhat damnable feature of such confections as took place on Saturday is a certain genius on the part of Queen Elizabeth II and company.  They have managed to seduce those of republican tendency, to drive them potty with the seduction of celebrity.  While she will be the last monarch of her type, the institution does not risk going asunder before any bomb throwing revolutionary, actual or metaphorical.  Dolls, and suitable rags, will continue being sought, and royal weddings will persist in enthralling.

*

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]

Imagine that a group of bandits entered your house without permission and booted you and your family members out. Afterwards the bandits continue to occupy the house, but they graciously allow you and your family to stay in the cellar. Would you accept such a state of affairs? Would you not want your house back in its entirety? And would you not want the usurpers evicted?

Now imagine that the usurpers had some dubious code of honor whereby if they made any alterations to the stolen abode that they must consult with the original home occupants. Moreover, if the displaced first occupants sought to legally challenge their dispossession or any alterations to their former domicile, the usurpers would graciously cover the legal expenses of the dispossessed original occupants from the largess of the goods befallen the usurpers through acts of dispossessing others. Of course, the legal proceeding is controlled by the usurpers and ruled according to usurpers’ law with judges appointed by the usurpers.

No intelligent person denies that the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America) were the original inhabitants. In fact, they precede the coming of Norsemen, Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and conquistadores by several millennia. Yet the Catholic Church of later seafarers decreed (in the papal bull Inter Caetera, 1493) that non-believers were savages and that their territory would belong to European monarchs. This was largely overturned by the papal bull Sublimis Deus in 1537.

One might have thought that humankind would have evolved morally such that the egregious crimes of centuries ago would not be perpetuated in the 21st century.

Nonetheless, at the very least, human morality wouldn’t devolve, would it?

**

In Canada, the American pipeline conglomerate Kinder Morgan desires to multiply the amount of fossil fuel carried from the province of Alberta to the British Columbia harbor city of Vancouver. Many First Nations and a multitude of British Columbians are against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain project.

While the NDP-Green Party coalition in BC is opposed to the pipeline project, the federal government has approved it. However, chicanery has been unveiled in the process that led to federal approval.

Investigative reporting by the National Observer revealed documents wherein the federal government had “instructed public servants to find a way to approve the project, even though the government was supposed to be consulting and accommodating First Nations at that time.” Consultation with First Nations is required by the constitution in Canada.

This filliped the Tseil-Waututh Nation, supported by at least four other First Nations (the Coldwater Indian Band, the Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc (SSN), the Squamish Nation, and the Upper Nicola Band), to file an extraordinary motion asking the Federal Court of Appeal to force the government to order the release of uncensored copies of federal documents cited in the National Observer investigation.

The federal government and Kinder Morgan reacted by demanding the Tseil-Waututh Nation pay for their legal fees for the delayed pipeline project.

BC is unceded territory. [1] First Nation oral histories tell of a colonial-settler control wrought over the landmass of the province by genocide. [2] Canadian courts have evaded the question of who has legal jurisdiction over the land. [3] As for the treaties, Andrea Bear Nicholas – a Maliseet from Nekotkok (Tobique First Nation) in New Brunswick, and a professor emeritus at St. Thomas University – pointed out that in the Maritime Provinces, most treaties were nation-to-nation agreements – peace agreements between the encroaching settlers and Original Peoples – not land treaties.

“When you add it all up, for about 90 per cent of Canada, even under the best possible scenario, there is no legal transfer of title from the Aboriginal inhabitants to the Crown,” said Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, an Onyota’a:ka (Oneida) and former Director of Native Studies at St. Thomas University in the audio documentary Hoping Against Hope? The Struggle Against Colonialism in Canada. [4]

Now the federal government which finances itself through the dispossession of First Nations is requiring the First Nations to pay for a legal determination in the court of the usurpers.

Informed people should not be surprised. One brave lawyer, a specialist in Indigenous sovereignty matters, Dr. Bruce Clark charges that the Canadian legal profession and the judiciary are complicit in misprision of treason, fraud, and genocide. [5]

*

Notes

1. Kerry Coast, The Colonial Present: The Rule of Ignorance and the Role of Law in British Columbia (Clarity Press and International Human Rights Association of American Minorities, 2013). See review. 

2. Tom Swanky, The Great Darkening: The True Story of Canada’s “War” of Extermination on the Pacific plus The Tsilhqot’in and other First Nations Resistance (Burnaby, BC: Dragon Heart Enterprises, 2012). See review. 

3. Bruce Clark, from his soon to be published book, Aboriginal Rights and Genocide (Theytus Books). 

4. The link is now dead for the audio series. See review. 

5. Bruce Clark, op cit.

Venezuela will hold its 24th electoral event in 20 years this Sunday, 20 May. The path to this election was perhaps one of the most convoluted and difficult of Venezuela’s now nearly 20-year Bolivarian Revolution.

First, there was a snap election in 2013, a mere five weeks after president Chávez died of cancer on 5 March. The opposition believed this was their best chance since 1998 to oust ‘Chavismo’ from power and so, when its candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, lost to Nicolas Maduro by a mere 1.5 per cent, they cried fraud and launched a wave of violent protests and riots that left at least nine dead.

The following year the opposition launched another wave of violent protests (known as ‘guarimbas’) that lasted about three months and left 43 people dead. This opposition tactic, which the opposition tried again in 2017, was immensely effective on an international level because every time it was applied, and people were killed (most of the time at the hands of the protesters themselves), the international perception of Venezuela – as mediated by international news outlets – was significantly worsened. It was thus only a small step to routinely begin to refer to Venezuela as a dictatorship, despite its more than annual electoral contests.

Meanwhile, following president Chávez’s death, Venezuela’s economic situation began to deteriorate significantly. The inflation rate rose from 21 per cent in 2012 to over 100 per cent in 2015 (and turned into hyper-inflation in 2018), basic consumer items and of food staples became increasingly difficult to purchase because of shortages, oil revenues dropped by two-thirds, from an estimated $77 billion in 2012 to $25 billion in 2016 – all of which gave the opposition additional reasons to launch ever-more uncompromising attacks on the government.

The reasons for the economic crisis are manifold, but its heart can be found in the confluence of: a fixed exchange rate, a concerted business sector effort to undermine the economy, declining oil prices, and – beginning in 2017 – US financial sanctions, all of which combined to create one of the worst economic crises in Venezuelan history.

Seeing its situation as increasingly precarious, the Maduro government decided to engage in a series of negotiations with the opposition, which the government of the Dominican Republic and Spain’s former prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero mediated. In the course of the negotiations there was a general agreement that Venezuela’s presidential election, which normally was scheduled to take place in October or November 2018, should be moved up to the first half of 2018.

At first, the 22nd of April was the agreed-upon date, but in the last minutes before the agreement was to be signed in late February, opposition representatives decided to withdraw. Exactly why they withdrew is not completely clear, but it seems quite plausible that the US government intervened and convinced the opposition not to sign the agreement.

Rodriguez Zapatero went out of his way to criticize the opposition’s last-minute withdrawal, stating,

‘I find it shocking that the document was not signed by the opposition representation. I do not agree with the circumstances and the reasons, but my duty is to defend the truth and my commitment is not to give up on the achievement of a historic commitment among Venezuelans.’

The Maduro government then announced that it would sign the agreement anyway and proceed with the 22 April presidential election, with or without the opposition. The opposition, in contrast, announced it would boycott the election.

At first, the only major opposition leader to break from this decision was Henri Falcon, who immediately announced his candidacy for the presidency. Eventually, Falcon and Maduro agreed to set a new date – 20 May – for the presidential election, to give more time for campaigning.

Henri Falcon has always been a bit of a ‘maverick’ politician. Originally, he was a staunch Chavez supporter and governor of Lara state, one of Venezuela’s more populous states. However, he broke from Chávez in 2010. Already before 2010 Flacon had been regarded with suspicion by many Chavistas, mainly for his somewhat pro-business stance and for his often lukewarm support of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) party. Eventually, in 2012, he joined the opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) and formed his own political party, Progressive Advance. In 2013 he even became Henrique Capriles’ campaign manager in the presidential election of that year.

Falcon’s break with the MUD for the 2018 presidential election has caused hardline opposition leaders to regard him very suspiciously. However, despite this, he is enjoying the support of many moderate opposition leaders, such as Claudio Fermin, a long-time Venezuelan politician, who is now Falcon’s campaign manager, and of Jesus Torrealba, the former chair of the MUD.

The MUD’s decision to boycott the election should be puzzling. This is the best opportunity since 1998 that the opposition has to defeat the Bolivarian Revolution. The economy is now in hyper-inflation territory, real wages have dropped dramatically, and shortages continue to cause problems, especially in the area of medicines. Under such circumstances it ought to be possible to defeat even the enormously popular Chavez himself, were he alive today.

So why is the MUD boycotting the election? The official explanation is that there are insufficient guarantees that there will be no fraud. Key opposition demands and the creation of a new National Electoral Council and the dropping of charges against several key opposition leaders. I will return to the issue of the safety of the vote a little later, but even if the fraud concern were legitimate, no election in history has been successfully challenged with a preemptive boycott instead of participating and subsequently proving fraud.

The only other plausible explanation for a preemptive boycott is that the opposition does not want to win ‘only’ the presidency. That is, it wants a radical break from the Bolivarian Revolution and the only way it can do that is to provoke a political and economic crisis that would lead to a coup or some other form of radical regime change. That is, Chavistas continue to dominate not only the Supreme Court, the National Electoral Council, the Attorney General’s office, but also the National Constituent Assembly, which is in charge of re-writing the constitution.

Under such circumstances governing from an opposition-controlled presidency, even under Venezuela’s somewhat presidential system, would be extremely difficult. Given that opposition leader Julio Borges and others are lobbying for ever tougher sanctions against Venezuela, it seems clear that the strategy is to force a complete collapse of the government and not to participate any longer in any democratic processes within Venezuela.

Those who know about Venezuela from mainstream media no doubt dismiss Venezuela’s electoral system as a sham. However, contrary to popular belief, Venezuela actually has one of the most transparent and fraud-proof election systems in the world. It developed such a system precisely because of the country’s pre-1998 experience with rampant fraud, which led to the development of an exceptionally secure voting system.

This is not the place to go into this in detail, but it is a dual balloting system, in which paper ballots and electronic ballots are both cast and compared against one another. Also, every step of the process, from the voter registry, to the voting machines, to the fingerprint scanners, to the tabulation systems are thoroughly audited by election observers from all political parties. All of this makes Venezuela’s voting system far more secure and fraud-proof than practically any other voting system in the world.

The main problem that opposition candidate Henri Falcon faces now is not the voting system, but the lack of institutional support. With all of the main opposition parties boycotting the vote (only three parties out of over 20 opposition parties are supporting his candidacy), he is having a hard time mobilizing supporters for rallies and for his campaign more generally. On top of it all, Falcon must convince opposition voters not to participate in the boycott. Maduro, on the other hand, has the formidable machinery of the PSUV at his disposal. The country’s severe economic crisis, though, evens the scales quite a bit.

Opinion polls have been all over the place in terms of who is ahead in this race. In the past Venezuelan opinion polls have always been extremely partisan, with pro-government polls reliably showing the government candidate ahead and opposition polls showing the opposition candidate ahead. However, usually in the week before the election the polling numbers of the two sides tended to converge. This time around, though, they have remained as far apart as ever before. Pro-government pollsters, such as the company Hinterlaces give Maduro a 17 point advantage. Opposition pollsters, such as Datanalisis, are giving Falcon an 11 point advantage over Maduro. The main reason for the uncertainty in polling is the boycott. It is extremely difficult to know how many voters will participate. Opposition polls say it will be no more than 35 per cent, while pro-government polls put the participation figure at 70 per cent. In the end, whether Falcon or Maduro will win will depend entirely on how many voters abstain.

Regardless of who wins, however, Venezuela’s future remains extremely uncertain. US efforts at radical regime change – targeting not just the presidency, but all state institutions – will make governing the country difficult no matter who wins. Already the US, and under its pressure almost all other conservative governments in the region, has pledged not to recognize the result. The pre-emptive non-recognition of an election, despite the use of one of the world’s most secure voting systems, is completely unprecedented in Latin American history.

If Maduro wins, the US will no doubt intensify sanctions, perhaps prohibiting the import of Venezuelan oil. If Falcon wins, he would also have to manage an extremely complicated situation, in which most state institutions remain in Chavista hands and in which the opposition and the US possibly refuse to recognize him as the legitimate president.

As president of the Second Republic of Venezuela, Simón Bolívar, explained in the early 19th century, the US thus continues to ‘plague [the] America[s] with misery in the name of liberty.’

*

Gregory Wilpert is author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government (Verso Books, 2007), co-founder of Venezuelanalysis.com, and currently Senior Producer at The Real News Network.

Israel massacred 60 Palestinians on Monday, including seven children, bringing to 101 the total number of Palestinians Israel has killed since Palestinians began the Great March on March 30. In that period, Israel has killed 11 Palestinian children, two journalists, one person on crutches and three persons with disabilities.

Monday’s casualties included 1,861 wounded, bringing total injuries inflicted by Israel to 6,938 people, including 3,615 with live fire. Israel is using bullets designed to expand inside the body, causing maximum, often permanent damage:

“The injuries sustained by patients will leave most with serious, long-term physical disabilities,” says Médecins Sans Frontières (Ha’aretz, 4/22/18).

On the 70th anniversary of Israel’s so-called “declaration of independence,” the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem—a city Israel claims as its own, despite what international law says on the matter—and Palestinians undertook unarmed protests in reaction to the move and as part of the Great Return March. Although to this point, the only Israeli casualty during the entire cycle of demonstrations has been one “lightly wounded” soldier, considerable space in coverage of the massacres is devoted to blaming Palestinians for their own slaughter.

NBC (5/14/18) mentions “what Palestinians refer to as their ‘right of return’”; actually, it’s what international law calls it, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights‘ proclamation that “everyone has the right…to return to his country.”

Two of the first three paragraphs in an NBC report (5/14/18) provided Israel’s rationalizations for its killing spree. The second sentence in the article says that the Israeli military

accused Hamas of “leading a terrorist operation under the cover of masses of people,” adding that “firebombs and explosive devices” as well as rocks were being thrown towards the barrier.

A Washington Post article (5/14/18) devoted two of its first four sentences to telling readers that Palestinians are responsible for being murdered by Israel. Palestinian “organizers urged demonstrators to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them,” read one sentence. “At the barrier, young men threw stones and tried to launch kites carrying flames in hopes of burning crops on the other side,” stated the next one, as though stones and burning kites released by a besieged people is violence remotely equivalent to subjecting people to a military siege and mowing them down.

The New York Times (5/14/18) said that “a mass attempt by Palestinians to cross the border fence separating Israel from Gaza turned violent, as Israeli soldiers responded with rifle fire,” painting Israel’s rampage as a reaction to a Palestinian provocation. Like FAIR (2/21/18) has previously said of the word “retaliation,” “response” functions as a justification of Israeli butchery: To characterize Israeli violence as a “response” is to wrongly imply that Palestinian actions warranted Israel unleashing its firing squads.

A Yahoo headline (5/14/18) described “Violent Protests in Gaza Ahead of US Embassy Inauguration in Jerusalem,” a flatly incorrect description in that it attributes the violence to Palestinian demonstrators rather than to Israel. The BBC (5/15/18) did the same with a segment called “Gaza Braced for Further Violent Protests.”

One Bloomberg article (5/14/18) by Saud Abu Ramadan and Amy Teibel had the same problem, referring to “a protest marred by violence,” while another one (5/14/18) attributed only to Ramadan is headlined “Hamas Targets Fence as Gaza Bloodshed Clouds Embassy Move,” as though the fence were Monday’s most tragic casualty. Ascribing this phantom violence to Palestinians provides Israel an alibi: Many readers will likely conclude that Israel’s lethal violence is reasonable if it is cast as a way of coping with “violent protests.”

In Bloomberg‘s account (5/14/18), the fence seemed to be the real victim.

The second paragraph of the Bloomberg article solely written by Ramadan says that

Gaza protesters, egged on by loudspeakers and transported in buses, streamed to the border, where some threw rocks, burned tires, and flew kites and balloons outfitted with firebombs into Israeli territory.

This author—like the rest in the “Palestinians were asking for it” chorus—failed to note that Israel’s fence runs deep into Palestinian territory and creates a 300-meter “buffer zone” between Palestinians and Israeli forces, which makes it highly unlikely that the kites and balloons of the colonized will have an effect on their drone-operating, rifle-wielding colonizers, let alone on people further afield in Israeli-held territory.

The New York Times editorial board (5/14/18) wrote as though Palestinians are barbarians against whom Israel has no choice but to unleash terror:

Led too long by men who were corrupt or violent or both, the Palestinians have failed and failed again to make their own best efforts toward peace. Even now, Gazans are undermining their own cause by resorting to violence, rather than keeping their protests strictly peaceful.

The board claimed that “Israel has every right to defend its borders, including the boundary with Gaza,” incorrectly suggesting that Palestinians were aggressors rather than on the receiving end of 100 years of settler-colonialism.

Moreover, like the Times and Bloomberg articles discussed above, the editorial attempts to legitimize Israel’s deadly violence by saying that it is defending a border that Palestinians are attempting to breach, but there is no border between Gaza and Israel. There is, as Maureen Murphy of Electronic Intifada(4/6/18) pointed out, “an armistice line between an occupying power and the population living under its military rule” that Palestinians are trying to cross in order to exercise their right to return to their land.

A Washington Post editorial (5/15/18) called the Palestinians hunted by Israel “nominal civilians.” Apart from being a logical impossibility (one either is or isn’t a civilian), the phrase illuminates how too much of media think about Palestinians:  They are inherently threatening, intrinsically killable, always suspect, never innocent, permanently guilty of existing.

The Washington Post (5/15/18) condemned the “cruel, cynical tactic” of trying to exercise the internationally guaranteed right of return.

A Business Insider piece (5/14/18) by columnist Daniella Greenbaum described “Palestinian protesters who ramped up their activities along the Gaza strip and, as a result, were targeted by the Israeli army with increasing intensity.” Greenbaum’s use of the phrase “as a result” implies that it was inevitable and perhaps just that Palestinians’ “ramped up activities” led to Israel mowing down a population it occupies,70 percent of whom are refugees Israel refuses to allow to return to their homes.

Greenbaum then climbs into the intellectual and moral gutter, claiming that

absent from the commentary that children have unfortunately been among the injured and dead are questions about how they ended up at the border. On that question, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the extent to which Palestinians have glorified violence and martyrdom — and the extent to which the terrorist organization Hamas has organized the “protests.”

In her view, dozens of Palestinians died because they are primitive savages who take pleasure in sacrificing their own children, not because Israel maintains the right to gun down refugees in the name of maintaining an ethnostate.

In a rare instance of a resident of Gaza allowed to participate directly in the media conversation, Fadi Abu Shammalah wrote an op-ed for the New York Times (4/27/18) that offered an explanation of why Palestinians are putting their lives on the line to march. Life for the people of Gaza, including for his three young sons, has been “one tragedy after another: waves of mass displacement, life in squalid refugee camps, a captured economy, restricted access to fishing waters, a strangling siege and three wars in the past nine years. ” Recalling the concern for his safety expressed by his seven-year-old child, Shammalah concludes:

If Ali asks me why I’m returning to the Great Return March despite the danger, I will tell him this: I love my life. But more than that, I love you, Karam and Adam. If risking my life means you and your brothers will have a chance to thrive, to have a future with dignity, to live in peace with all your neighbors, in your free country, then this is a risk I must take.

Palestinians have a right to liberate themselves that extends to the right to the use of armed struggle, yet as Shammalah wrote, the Great Return March signifies a “nearly unanimous acceptance of peaceful methods to call for our rights and insist on our humanity.” Nevertheless, based on media coverage, readers could be forgiven for concluding that it was Palestinians, not Israel, who carried out what Doctors Without Borders called “unacceptable and inhuman” violence.

*

Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.

Featured image is from the author.

An Israeli government spokeswoman has come under fire for her comments on the situation in Gaza and trying to justify Israeli forces’ use of live fire and the shooting dead of Palestinian protesters.

Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland on Monday, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Michal Maayan said

“Well, we can’t put all these people in jail” when asked why troops were shooting at the demonstrators.

Her comments during a live recording quickly went viral, drawing criticism from all around the world.

Responding to criticism that the U.S. decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will only cause more ‘instability’ in the region and hurt the peace process, Maayan said

“But moving embassies to Jerusalem isn’t stopping peace, it’s actually helping peace because it’s helping the Palestinians realize that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state of Israel and it helps them realize a reality that’s very important to us to go further on.”

“Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, it’s going to be the capital of Israel whatever future settlement we will arrive with Palestinians,” she told the Irish broadcaster.

When asked by an Irish reporter why Israel is shooting Palestinians in Gaza, gov't spokeswoman says "Well, we can't put all these people in jail" https://t.co/yhgqomSGXD pic.twitter.com/5mN5UpNGSM

— DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) May 16, 2018

Israel has come under international pressure after its border forces on Monday killed some 60 Palestinians protesting against the transfer the same day of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in seven weeks of protests, mainly from Israeli sniper fire.

Monday’s demonstration had coincided with Israel’s 70th anniversary – an event Palestinians refer to as “The Catastrophe” – and the relocation of Washington’s embassy to Jerusalem, which also took place Monday.

Last week, the Israeli government said the ongoing protests along the Gaza-Israel fence constituted a “state of war” in which international humanitarian law did not apply.

It’s got to be either one of the stupidest acts that I can recall or a very wicked plan by Washington neocons to sabotage Korean peace talks.

How else to describe the decision by Big Brother USA and junior sidekick South Korea to stage major air force exercises on North Korea’s border.  The prickly North Koreans had a fit, of course, as always when the US flexes its muscles on their borders.  Continuing South and North Korean peace talks scheduled this week were cancelled by the furious North Koreans.  The much ballyhooed Singapore summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is now threatened with cancellation or delay.

Who can blame the North Koreans for blowing their tops?  As Trump administration mouthpieces were gabbing about peace and light, the US Air Force was getting ready to fly B-52 heavy bombers and F-22 Raptor stealth fighters around North Korea’s borders and missile-armed subs lurked at sea.

This provocation was the first of two major spring military exercises planned by the US and its reluctant South Korean satrap.  In case North Korea failed to get the message, the second exercise is code-named ‘Maximum Thunder.’

And this right after Trump and his neocon minions reneged on the sensible nuclear treaty with Iran.  In a policy one could call ‘eat sand and die,’ Trump demanded that Iran not only give up any and all nuclear capacity (Iran has no nukes), but also junk its non-nuclear armed medium range missiles, stop backing the Palestinians, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, roll over and be good, don’t do anything to upset Israel, and pull out of Syria.  In short, a total surrender policy leading to future regime change.   Hardly an encouragement for North Korea.

North Korea was right on target when it accused arch-neocon John Bolton of trying to sabotage the peace deal.    In 2005-2006, Bolton served as the Bush administration’s ambassador to the UN. He established a tradition for the post of being anti-Muslim, pro-Israel and anti-Russian, a policy continued to this day by the current US UN rep, loud-mouthed neocon Nikki Haley.

In the 2005-2006 period, after years of negotiations, the US and North Korea were close to a nuclear/peace deal.

Enter John Bolton. He succeeded in sabotaging the US-North Korea deal.  Why? Because Bolton, as an arch neocon, was fanatically pro-Israel and feared that North Korea might provide nuclear technology to Israel’s foes.  As usual with the neocons, Israel’s interests came before those of the United States. Trump’s newly named Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, is also an ardent neocon.

Last week, Bolton went onto US TV and actually suggested North Korea might follow the course set by Libya, of all places.  Libya’s then ruler, Muammar Kadaffi, bought some nuclear equipment from Pakistan so he could hand it over to the US as a gesture of cooperation after the Bush administration invaded Iraq.  The handover was done with much fanfare, then the US, France and Britain attacked Libya and overthrew Kadaffi.  The hapless Libyan leader was eventually murdered by French agents.

Is this what Bolton has in mind for North Korea?  The Northerners certainly seemed to think so.  Some wondered if Bolton and perhaps Pompeo were trying to sabotage the North Korea deal.  Or were at least being incredibly obtuse and belligerent.  Was Trump involved in this intrigue? Hard to tell. But he can’t be happy. His minions and bootlickers are promoting Trump for the Nobel Prize – rather ahead of events.

Or was the US military rattling its sabers and trying to protect its huge investments in North Asia?  The Pentagon takes a dim view of the proposed Korean nuclear accords.  The burst of sweetness and light coming from Pyongyang just sounds too good to be true.

Veteran Korea observers, this writer included, find it hard to believe Kim Jong-un will give up his nuclear weapons, particularly after seeing Trump’s deceit in dealing with Iran and Kadaffi’s murder.

Speaking of de-nuclearization, why does North Korea not demand that the US get rid of its nuclear weapons based in South Korea, Okinawa, Guam and with the 7^th Fleet?  Many are targeted on North Korea.  US nuclear weapons are based on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.  Others are secretly based in Japan.

Why not demand the US pull out all its 28,500 troops in South Korea and some 2,000 military technicians at air bases? Conclusively halt those spring and fall military maneuvers that raise the threat of war.  End the trade embargo of North Korea that amounts to high level economic warfare.  Establish normal diplomatic relations.

Pyongyang has not even begun to raise these issues.  Smiles and hugs are premature.

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Once a torturer, always one, the high crime an indelible stain on Gina Haspel’s despicable record.

Confirming her as CIA director assures continuation of virtually every conceivable form of agency lawlessness – including torture Haspel publicly repudiated, saying one thing, supporting another.

On Thursday, Edward Snowden tweeted:

“Gina Haspel participated in a torture program that involved beating an (innocent) pregnant woman’s stomach, anally raping a man with meals he tried to refuse, and freezing a shackled prisoner until he died. She personally wrote the order to destroy 92 tapes of CIA torture.”

Six undemocratic Senate Dems joined nearly all Republicans, confirming her by a 54 – 45 margin – following a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing days earlier, mostly lobbing softball questions at her, failing to hold her feet to the fire for ducking semi-hard ones.

Don’t let her gender fool you – a she-devil as vicious as the worst of her male counterparts. Her despicable record speaks for itself.

The White House headlined “Congratulations to our new CIA Director,” turning truth on its head, saying:

“Gina Haspel is the right woman at the right time” – to head Langley’s torture program and other criminal activities worldwide, it failed to add.

She’s “the new face of America’s intelligence community” – its actions incompatible with democratic governance.

Former naval reserve officer/current Professor of Public Health Dr. Sondra Crosby has extensive experience evaluating torture victims.

She evaluated Abdal Rahim al-Nashiri, one of Haspel’s torture victims, saying:

She’s “one of the only health professionals he has ever talked to about his torture, its effects, and his ongoing suffering. He is irreversibly damaged by torture that was unusually cruel and designed to break him,” adding:

“In my over 20 years of experience treating torture victims from around the world, including Syria, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. al-Nashiri presents as one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”

Haspel bears full responsibility for destroying him, currently held at Guantanamo, charged with masterminding the 2000 USS Cole bombing, killing 17 US sailors – being tried in a lawless military commission, a capital case without a death penalty lawyer representing him, in March proceedings suspended.

In 2009, charges against him were dropped, reinstated in 2011.

Before sent to Guantanamo, he was held in five CIA black sites.

Lawyers representing him called proceedings against him a show trial, never to be freed if found innocent of all charges. Earlier his legal team said the following:

“Through the infliction of physical and psychological abuse, the government has essentially already killed the man it seized” years earlier, adding:

“By torturing Mr. Al-Nashiri and subjecting him to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, the United States has forfeited its right to try him and certainly to kill him.”

Bloody Gina’s dirty hands were responsible for bringing him to the brink of death from severe torture, then reviving him for repeated episodes – transforming him to zombie state, a living dead man.

She’s now in a position to order industrial-scale torture and abuse on countless other victims of US savagery.

*

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

Ever since the Israeli-Syrian skirmish (falsely reported as an Israeli-Iranian clash in Syria by the mainstream press), questions have been circulating about what this means for Syria, Israel, Iran and the region, even the rest of the world. Was the retaliation by Syria all that was needed to finally make Israel understand that there might be consequences for its actions? Is this the beginning of a wider war between the two? What will be the response of the United States? The response of Russia?

While a full-on military conflict between Syria and Israel did not happen in the hours after the missiles ceased firing, it was announced by the Russians that Russia would not be sending its famed S-300s to Syria. This was despite a warning by the Russians earlier that the previous U.S. missile strikes against Syria removed all “moral hurdles” previously in Russia’s way to do so. The new Russian announcement seemed to coincide with a trip to Russia made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been campaigning against a transfer of those air defense missile systems for quite some time. As a result, many have been wondering whether or not Russia is going back on its support of Syria or if it is becoming infected with the virus that has made the United States exist in a symbiotic relationship with Israel. Indeed, this one announcement is leading many to question Russia’s entire relationship with Israel.

There are several questions surrounding the announcement that the Russians would not be sending Syria its S-300 air defense missile system. Among those questions are “Why did the Russians decide not to do so? Do the Syrians already have the missiles? Does the truth lie somewhere in between?”

First, it is important to look at the announcement itself. Western mainstream media has been uniform in its suggestion that Israeli lobbying has prevailed upon the Russian government not to provide the missiles to Syria. For instance, in the Reuters article, “Russia, after Netanyahu visit, backs off Syria S-300 missile supplies,” by Andrew Osborn, writes,

Russia is not in talks with the Syrian government about supplying advanced S-300 ground-to-air missiles and does not think they are needed, the Izvestia daily cited a top Kremlin aide as saying on Friday, in an apparent U-turn by Moscow.

The comments, by Vladimir Kozhin, an aide to President Vladimir Putin who oversees Russian military assistance to other countries, follow a visit to Moscow by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, who has been lobbying Putin hard not to transfer the missiles.

Russia last month hinted it would supply the weapons to President Bashar al-Assad, over Israeli objections, after Western military strikes on Syria. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes had removed any moral obligation Russia had to withhold the missiles and Russia’s Kommersant daily cited unnamed military sources as saying deliveries might begin imminently.

But Kozhin’s comments, released so soon after Netanyahu’s Moscow talks with Putin, suggest the Israeli leader’s lobbying efforts have, for the time being, paid off.

“For now, we’re not talking about any deliveries of new modern (air defense) systems,” Izvestia cited Kozhin as saying when asked about the possibility of supplying Syria with S-300s.

The Syrian military already had “everything it needed,” Kozhin added.

The Kremlin played down the idea that it had performed a U-turn on the missile question or that any decision was linked to Netanyahu’s visit.

“Deliveries (of the S-300s) were never announced as such,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call, when asked about the matter.

“But we did say after the (Western) strikes (on Syria) that of course Russia reserved the right to do anything it considered necessary.”

The possibility of missile supplies to Assad along with its military foray into Syria itself has helped Moscow boost its Middle East clout. with Putin hosting everyone from Netanyahu to the presidents of Turkey and Iran and the Saudi king.

Israel has made repeated efforts to persuade Moscow not to sell the S-300s to Syria, as it fears this would hinder its aerial capabilities against arms shipments to Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah. Israel has carried out scores of air strikes against suspected shipments.

On Thursday, Israel said it had attacked nearly all of Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria after Iranian forces fired rockets at Israeli-held territory. S-300s could have significantly complicated the Israeli strikes.

For its part, Israel seems happy to boast that its lobbying efforts have paid off.

“I see here another manifestation of mutual respect, which our countries have toward each other, and also adherence to the principle of accounting for [the partner’s] interests,” said Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz.

“Iran’s presence in Syria poses threats to Israel and is a source of instability both in Syria and in the Middle East. The solution to this problem would be driving Iran out of Syria and restoring stability in the region … Israel will continue its activity aimed at ensuring its security and preventing Iranian presence in Syria,” he added.

But Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that it was unfair to link the announcement to Netanyahu’s visit because the announcement, according to him, was made prior to the visit. However, the statements in question were indeed made two days after Netanyahu appeared at the Kremlin.

“We never announced these deliveries as such. However, we said that after the strikes [by the US, France and the UK on Syria], Russia reserves the right to do whatever it deems necessary,” Peskov said.

Regardless, the Israelis have been arguing against the Russian provision of S-300s to Syria for years.

Clearly, the implication in Russia’s public statements is that Russia has not provided Syria with S-300 missile systems. However, in April, Syrian Ambassador to Russia, Riyad Haddad, stated that the Russians had indeed delivered S-300s to Syria in March. His statements were denied by the Russian military and a diplomatic source.

In 2013, the President of Syria himself, Bashar al-Assad, told Lebanese television station, al-Manar TV, that Syria had received S-300 missile systems.

“Syria has got the first batch of Russian S-300 missiles … The rest of the shipment will arrive soon,” President Bashar al-Assad said.

So what is actually going on? Does Syria have the S-300s or not?

The truth is that no one really knows for sure. Syria has stated publicly that it does. Russia, however, has repeatedly stated that it does not.

There are thus a number of possibilities to consider here. One possibility is that Syria has not received S-300 missiles from Russia and is attempting to ward off Israeli temptations to launch airstrikes inside Syria to destroy those systems. Another possibility is that Syria has received the S-300s, or at least partially received them, but Russia is holding back further deliveries for one reason or other. A third possibility is that Syria does have S-300s but the Russian government wants to keep it under wraps so as not to inflame tensions in the region or tempt Israel further into “acting now” before Syria can effectively end Israel’s ability to conduct strikes. Israel has long launched individual strikes into Syrian territory not only for the purpose of inflicting damage and aiding terrorists but also to get Syria to light up its air defense systems so that, when the time comes, Israel will be able to eliminate those systems before launching a much more massive bombing campaign. It is possible that the possession of these weapons are being kept secret now so that, if a massive air campaign were to take place (via Israel or the US), the S 300s will be able to light up and demonstrate their capabilities with the element all at once with the element of surprise.

Lastly, it should be considered a possibility that S-300s are already in Syria but not manned by Syrians. Given that these systems are so effective, it could be that the Russians are manning these weapons either on Russian bases or elsewhere in the country so as to avoid premature launches and/or the possibility of downing Israeli or American planes before absolutely necessary and risking a wider war. Indeed, we know that S-300s are present in Syria under the control of Russian forces at least on the soil of the Russian base in Tartus.

A mysterious delivery of some type of hardware or material in April (notably around the time that the Syrian Ambassador suggested S-300s had been delivered) which involved unloading several cargo ships under the cover a gas that masked the unloading process and prevented satellite surveillance lends credence to the idea that S-300s are indeed present in Syria at a greater level than what has been publicly admitted by the Russians.

Russia’s Relationship With Israel – Adversary, Sell-out, or Pragmatic?

The question over Russia’s relationship with Israel and the influence the Israeli lobby has over the Russian government is perhaps the most controversial aspect of this entire affair, particularly in the alternative media where some claim that Putin is a secret warrior against Zionism and Israel and master of 5d chess, others claiming Putin has sold Syria down the river, and others still maintaining that Putin is merely a pragmatist.

Political analyst Andrew Korybko seems to believe that Putin is secretly attempting to force Syria to compromise to “federalization” and the weakening of the governmental structure in order to avoid a regional or possibly world war. As he writes in his article, “Could It Be Any Clearer? Russia Is ‘Urging’ Syria To ‘Compromise’ Now!” for Eurasia Future,

The Putin-Netanyahu Summit on Victory Day really did change everything, and Russia is no longer shy about showing the world its desire to “balance” “Israel” and Iran in Syria.

It couldn’t get any clearer – Russia is without a doubt “urging” Syria to “compromise” on a so-called “political solution” to its long-running crisis, and to do so as soon as possible in order to avoid a larger Mideast war. The groundbreaking Putin-Netanyahu Summit that took place a couple of days ago in Moscow on Victory Day was bookended by two back-to-back “Israeli” bombings of Syria within a 24 hour period, all of which was followed by Russia reportedly declining to sell S-300s to Syria. There’s no other way to analyze this than to see it for what it truly is, which is Russia utilizing various means to “urge” Syria to “compromise” on its hitherto recalcitrant position in refusing to make tangible progress in adapting the 2017 Russian-written “draft constitution” for “decentralization” (and possibly even “federalization”) and “complying” with Moscow and others’ “request” that it initiate the “phased withdrawal” of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their Hezbollah allies from the Arab Republic.

Sudden Flip-Flopping Or Scenario Fulfillment?

The suddenness with which Russia moved may have caught many Alt-Media observers by surprise, but that’s only because many of them were brainwashed by the community’s dogma that Russia is “against” “Israel” and supposedly on some kind of “anti-Zionist crusade”, which it definitely isn’t. Instead, Russia and “Israel” are veritably allies and the events of the past couple of days prove it. That said, just because Russian foreign policy seems (key word) to be “pro-‘Israeli’” doesn’t in and of itself make it “anti-Iranian”, at least not how Moscow conceives of it. Rather, Moscow believes that it’s fulfilling its grand geostrategic ambition to become the supreme “balancing” force in 21st-century Eurasia, to which end it’s playing the globally irreplaceable role of preventing the current “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war in Syria from evolving into a full-fledged conventional one all throughout the Mideast.

. . . .

The contradiction between Syria’s “maximalist” approach in wanting to liberate “every inch” of its territory (which is its sovereign and legal right) and Russia’s “pragmatic” one in recognizing the impossibility of this reality and declining to get militarily involved in advancing these plans (which would correspondingly include forcibly removing NATO members Turkey and the US from the Arab Republic) have led to a “strategic dilemma” between the two partners whereby Damascus is intent on dragging its feet and procrastinating in order to avoid the political (“new constitution”)and military (“phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah) “compromises” that Moscow’s “solution” entails. Russia respects that Syria has informally made the choice to avoid committing to either of these two interlinked prospective means for resolving the crisis, but it nevertheless won’t stop trying to “convince” Damascus that the options presented before it are what Moscow believes to be the “best” ones that will ever be offered from this point forward.

In pursuit of its peacemaking objective to get Syria to “compromise” on the terms that Russia has presumably presented it with in order to avoid escalating the “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war inside the country to the point where it becomes a conventional one all throughout the region, Moscow has apparently decided to send very strong symbolic messages to Damascus to let it know just how serious it is about this. The most powerful signals that sent shockwaves through the Alt-Media and likely also the global diplomatic communities came from the Putin-Netanyahu Summit and Russia’s passive “acceptance” of “Israel’s” latest bombing run against what Tel Aviv claimed were Iranian units in southern Syria. Furthermore, Russia’s reported reconsideration of possible S-300 sales to Syria also stands out in the starkest terms as an informal statement declaring Moscow’s unwillingness to contribute to anything that would “compromise” “Israel’s” ability to bomb suspected Iranian and Hezbollah targets at will.

Referring back to the title of this analysis, it couldn’t be any clearer that Russia is “urging” Syria to “compromise” as soon as possible, though it’s uncertain whether Moscow’s latest messages will get Damascus to “comply” or if it will continue digging in its heels to resist all international “pressure” to do so. Time is running out, however, because “Israel” has signaled that it’s run out of patience with this “game” and will utilize all means at its disposal to remove Iran and Hezbollah from Syria once and for all, counting as it will on open US and Gulf backing alongside Russia’s implicit support. Moscow’s passive involvement in these “containment” measures is a real game-changer and dramatically alters the strategic dynamics of the “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war in Syria, making it more likely than not that the odds will decisively shift in Tel Aviv’s favor with time unless Damascus “cuts a deal” and freezes the state of affairs before it gets any worse than it already is.

This raises the question about the skirmish itself. To be clear, Iran was not at all involved despite overwhelming reports in the Western mainstream press that it was. The skirmish began when Israel launched missiles against the Syrian village of Ba’ath located in the occupied Golan and Syria responded by not only taking out a number of those missiles but firing back at Israeli positions. Israel then launched bombing raids inside Syria against what it claims were Iranian military positions. While Syrian missile defense systems did a great job of taking out Israeli missiles, Russia did not intervene, most likely out of a desire to stay out of Israeli-Iranian conflicts and not to further inflame tensions. Russia also would not like to be forced to “choose” between Israel or Iran on the spur of the moment by downing Israeli jets and losing an “ally” and “partner” in Israel. It may also be true that Russia is willing to allow Iran to take as many hits as Israel is willing to give it, due to the fact that Iran is expanding its influence in the country. Russia may figure that the loss of life and material may begin to encourage Iran to head back home, reducing the complication of international relations between itself and Syria as well as itself and Israel.

This lack of defense of Syrian and Iranian positions has been interpreted as a Russian “green light” of the attack, especially since Netanyahu met with Putin in Moscow hours before the strike both by the mainstream press and a portion of the alternative media.

Netanyahu’s statements after the meeting were more upbeat suggesting that Russia would not interfere or block Israel’s routine attacks in Syria. “Given what is happening in Syria at this very moment, there is a need to ensure the continuation of military coordination between the Russian military and the Israel Defence Forces. . . . . . In previous meetings, given statements that were putatively attributed to – or were made by – the Russian side, it was meant to have limited our freedom of action or harm other interests and that didn’t happen, and I have no basis to think that this time will be different,” he said.Israeli lobbying, or “a long-running Israeli courting of Russian sensitivities,” was credited with this alleged decision by Putin and, notably, Israel has not joined the Western countries in imposing more sanctions of the disproven “Skripal affair” which Israel was more than willing to point out. Also notable is the fact that the United States has not responded with sanctions on Israel for ignoring its dictates.

This possible “green lighting” of the attack on the part of the Russians has been reported ad nauseam in the mainstream press. If it is true, then the fact that Russia would agree to such a massive attack – the largest Israeli attack on Syria since 1974 – is a major concern in terms of Russia’s commitment to Syria.

But there is another possibility that few have discussed. Whitney Webb of Mint Press News writes in her article, “Is Netanyahu Playing A Geopolitical Chess Game To Drive A Wedge Between Russia and Syria?”

Indeed, prior to the strikes, there had more or less been a consensus that Israel was increasingly desperate that its involvement in the Syrian conflict was not going it’s way.

Could this new narrative of Russia cozying up to Israel and distancing itself from Syria be a desperate act by Israel to create an impression that it now has the upper hand?

Webb continues by writing,

While reports on the Putin/Netanyahu meeting certainly suggest Putin approved Israel’s strikes beforehand, information from local sources and independent analysts suggest that narrative – based solely on Netanyahu’s post-meeting comments – was largely inaccurate. As journalist Elijah Magnier noted, the meeting with Netanyahu was much more tense than described by most media, with Putin expressing disdain for Israel’s bombing of Syria’s T4 Airbase in early April, just 50 meters from a Russian military position.

Information from sources within Syria and from the Syrian Arab Army also offered counter-narratives that reject the notion that Putin “greenlit” Israel’s strikes on Syria. Those sources alleged that Israeli jets, which took part in the strike, used a U.S. transponder signal to masquerade as U.S. fighter jets. Given that Syrian and Russian forces are under orders not to fire on jets transmitting U.S. transponder signals – in the hopes of avoiding a wider conflict – this ruse would have allowed Israeli jets to fly into Syria via its ally Jordan with little incident.

Earlier this month, a source in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Syria reported that Israeli jets had been using U.S. transponder signals to move freely in Syrian airspace, suggesting the tactic had been used by Israel prior to last Thursday’s strikes.

If true, this would mean that it is highly unlikely that Putin “greenlit” anything, as there was no way of knowing that those jets using U.S. transponder signals were not of U.S. origin and because allowing the jets to use those transponder signals would threaten the understanding between the U.S. and Russian militaries, a risk Putin was unlikely to take.

It would mean that Israel deliberately endangered the understanding between U.S. and Russian forces to respect flight paths of their respective fighter jets, which could potentially have dangerous consequences, as it would erode the trust that served as a basis for that understanding. Sources within the Syrian Arab Army also suggested that Netanyahu approved the use of U.S. transponders before his meeting with Putin, giving the subsequent Israeli strikes the appearance that they were approved by Putin and in turn sowing distrust between Russia, Syria and Iran.

Continuing with her discussion of the possibility that Israel is attempting to sow the seeds of deception between the Syrian, Russian, and Iranian alliance, Webb writes,

If Russia’s alleged “green lighting” was an indeed an intentional ploy on the part of Netanyahu to spread distrust through the key alliance of Russia and Syria and Iran, if would not be without precedent, as Netanyahu has been known to resort to similar tactics, including his recent presentation on Iran’s so-called “Atomic Archive,” where he presented old information on Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions as groundbreaking new evidence. In fact the whole foundation for the “green light” narrative came exclusively from Netanyahu’s comments combined with the timing of the strike, which came just hours after Putin and Netanyahu met.

Israel stands to gain significantly from fomenting distrust between Russia and Syria. As the foreign-funded proxy war targeting the Assad-led government in Syria has largely failed, weakening Assad’s most critical alliance by making Putin appear to have been complicit in a major Israeli air strike against Syrian Army bases would certainly benefit the Israeli government. Even Assad himself noted that Russia is largely to thank for “saving” the country from regime change efforts at the hands of foreign governments and their proxies. Were that alliance to weaken, it would give Israel, whose defense minister just a week ago spoke of “liquidating” the Syrian government, a new opening.

Israel’s apparent influence over Putin also distracts from other embarrassing news that came as a result of its attack on Syria, such as the apparent failure of its much-touted but often dysfunctional Iron Dome missile defense system, which managed to shoot down only four of the twenty Syrian missiles launched into Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. In contrast, Syria’s 30-year-old Russian-made missile defense system downed more than half of the 70 missiles Israel fired in and around Damascus.

The Israeli government has been careful to prevent the proliferation of images or information showing the damage caused by the 16 Syrian missiles that landed in the Golan Heights, instead publicly claiming it has eliminated the “Iranian threat” (i.e., presence) in Syria.

Israel, always ready to point out how its neighbors are terrorizing and threatening it, has now claimed that it has “eliminated the Iranian threat,” signaling to some that Israel is not prepared to go any further in the near future. However, with the backing of the world’s biggest bully, the United States, Israel may also be acting deceptively in that regard as well. Knowing that the U.S. will come running ready to sacrifice as much American blood and treasure as necessary to defend it, Israel is as emboldened as ever.

But Putin’s hesitation to give Syria S-300s (if, in fact, Syria does not have them) may also be rooted both in pragmatism and lack of perceived necessity. As Tony Cartalucci writes in his article “Israel Baits The Hook. Will Syria Bite?”

A cynical reality remains as to why. Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006, conducted with extensive airpower – failed to achieve any of Israel’s objectives. An abortive ground invasion into southern Lebanon resulted in a humiliating defeat for Israeli forces. While extensive damage was delivered to Lebanon’s infrastructure, the nation and in particular, Hezbollah, has rebounded stronger than ever.

The baited hook to which Cartalucci refers is the U.S. strategic plan, developed by corporate-financier think tank, The Brookings Institution, to create a “multi-front war” in which pressure is brought to bear on Syria and/or the plan to provoke an Iranian response that would be used to justify an Israeli or American military invasion.

In its 2012 article, “Assessing Options For Regime Change,” Brookings wrote that Israel’s role, particularly in the Golan is to put pressure on Syria and create a “multi-front war.” It states,

Israel’s intelligence services have a strong knowledge of Syria, as well as assets within the Syrian regime that could be used to subvert the regime’s power base and press for Asad’s removal. Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to preserve itself. Advocates argue this additional pressure could tip the balance against Asad inside Syria, if other forces were aligned properly.

In regards to Iran, Brookings wrote in its article, “Which Path To Persia? Options For A New American Strategy Towards Iran,”

The truth is that these all would be challenging cases to make. For that reason, it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

Conclusion

At the end of the day, Putin’s interests are essentially Russian interests. Putin wants to see an end to the encircling of Russia and the economic isolation foisted onto it by the West. Putin does not want to see Russia’s strategic ally destroyed but Putin has also negotiated his own deals with the Syrian government that not only see Russian bases and ports established in the country but mining rights for Russian companies. It was a deal made at exactly the time when Assad couldn’t refuse. Whether or not Putin has personal feelings about the fate of the Syrian people, Russia entered the Syrian field because Russia’s interests deemed it necessary from a Russian perspective. Make no mistake, Russia is out for Russia’s interests, not Syria’s. This is not a criticism. The first priority a leader has is to his own people and enlightened self-interest is the wisest way to conduct international relations.

With all that being said, however, it is undeniable that Russia has acted as Syria’s savior with its entering the country and assisted the government in liberating territory from Western-backed terrorists. Even more so, Russia has stood as a deterrent to the United States which has attempted to launch direct military invasions of Syria on numerous occasions.

However, Russia is not interested in seeing regional tensions fanned simply because it makes the waters rougher for its own fleet. Thus, Russia is not on some anti-Israel crusade. It is merely looking to maintain stability in the region while at the same time maintaining and boosting trade with all parties and establishing a more equitable balance of power on the world stage along with the United States and China. This is why Russia has opposed Israel’s unprovoked attack on Syrian military targets while saying nothing about its attacks on Iranian military positions. It is also why, despite Israel and Syria being mortal enemies, that Russia has boosted its trade with Israel.

In the future, look for Russia to continue to do whatever it can to aid Assad in his attempt to retake the country while avoiding World War III and a confrontation with Israel. While it is tempting to become emotional and desire a little justice or at least a little revenge, Putin is going to continue to let cooler and more intelligent heads prevail. He is also going to let Russian interests take top priority and there may be a time when Russian interests and Syrian interests do not necessarily line up. For the sake of Syria, we hope that such a divide can be easily bridged.

*

Brandon Turbeville writes for Activist Post – article archive here – He is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. 

A little reported fact at the time, of an outburst by President Trump, last Thursday in the presence of the NATO’s Secretary General who looked and listened to the tirade of mixed subjects with what appeared to be bemusement.

Before going further the White House official video where the remarks were made have to be seen to appreciate, even empathize with the inevitable incredulity and to understand the probable reaction of the North Koreans.

Video at about 9 minutes

Incredibly to partially paraphrase President Trumps words, as you can see from the video, Trump strongly intimated that he would “decimate North Korea like Libya if they don’t accept a deal” adding that Libya though different, was similar and if the North Koreans did not agree with the US terms, Trump would “decimate” that country as was Iraq and Syria. Trump seems to like that word; maybe it’s a new one for him!

This rather shocking outburst indicates perfectly the insanity that prevails in the corridors of power in Washington. And reminds us of the importance in a way of the lead up to the unprovoked Libyan attack by NATO whose only true aim was regime change.

This policy of ‘regime change’ is more articulately described as a predisposition to resurrect a 21st century version of what is imperialistic colonialism by America along with centuries old practitioners of imperialism like Britain and France, is astonishing to most thinking people in this day and age.

Optimistically it is hoped, in the end, this foreign policy insanity will eventually fail. Israel and Turkey are also exhibiting just such Imperialist designs on the MENA region countries as well.

But Social Media in all its forms and a handful of journalists and organizations like THE RON PAUL INSTITUTE and others with integrity have made people much more well informed than ever before to accept master-servant relationships in the world, essentially colonial thinking, to succeed.

In a multi-polar world there is no place for Imperialism. Full stop.

The US’s entire foreign policy seems to an on looker only to consist of the obsessional unconditional support for Israel.

Where is the threat of Imperialism for Libya for example – well imperialism is the precursor to regime change – so the danger for Libyan leaders would be the continuance to accept support from Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, as it is a vassal, a puppet of the US.

The overriding reason for highlighting this being Saudi’s seemingly unholy alliance, brokered by Kushner, with Israeli Military & Israeli Intelligence, who to a man appear to be Zionists, if their recent behavior is anything to go by. In actuality therefore ultimately this would mean that it can be deduced from this that the US, through its surrogates, has Imperialistic designs on Libya, one of many countries no doubt, but as far as MENA countries, in tandem with Israel.

Let’s make one thing clear. Islam isn’t Wahhabism and Judaism isn’t Zionism. AIPAC do not understand this at all.

Given the evolving seriously dangerous situation in Jerusalem and Gaza, and the accompanying major shift in World opinion against Israel, which is daily gaining momentum, being seen to cooperate with the Israeli Military, directly or indirectly, could be a fatal mistake for any country and especially for Libya.

Nationalism can and is prevailing throughout the MENA region and, it could be argued, all over the world.

No wonder the North Koreans reacted so angrily at the strongly intimated warning from Trump that the US would do to them what they did to Libya, Iraq and Syria. Can you blame the North Koreans if they walk away from the table?

Who wouldn’t following such a crass threat?

“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   

I am in Iran speaking at a conference on the future of the Middle East. The timing for the meeting is particularly appropriate due to the recent American withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which limited the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for suspension of sanctions. Initial discussions with Iranians revealed that they are less pessimistic about the development than are the Americans and Europeans present, believing as they do that the situation can somehow be reversed either by Congressional refusal to endorse the Trump decision or by rejection of the demands being made by the White House that all parties who were also signatories to the agreement (Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) should also withdraw or themselves face secondary sanctions.

The Iranians concede that the move by President Donald Trump will bring with it additional economic suffering and will also likely upset the delicate political balancing act prevailing in their country, with President Hassan Rouhani being blamed by conservatives for having entered into the agreement in the first place. It was an agreement regarding which the president had expended considerable political equity, and he has also been accused of exaggerating its benefits, having claimed some months ago that all sanctions had been lifted, which was not the case. The stagnant state of Iran’s economy has produced considerable unrest in recent months and it is anticipated that more will be on the way as the economy continues to decline.

Iran’s hopes that Europe will develop a spine and will reject the American overtures, joined by China and Russia, is perhaps too optimistic as banks will be reluctant to lend money for Iranian projects and foreign companies will be unlikely to risk entering into anything but very short-term contracts with the Iranian government for much needed infrastructure improvement.

The major debate taking place is over where one goes from here. There are two distinct schools of thought, one of which basically asks whether continuation of what is essentially a unipolar world, supported by US power, in which the United States continues to be able to assert its vision of world global good order. This has been defined by Washington as a mixture of expansion of liberal democracy plus more-or-less free trade.

Even though it was Israel and Saudi Arabia that were driving the rejection of the Iran deal, it was the United states that had the economic, military and political muscle to take the steps necessary to disrupt an international agreement that had other major signatories and the endorsement of the UN Security Council.

The alternative view is quite different, asserting that Washington’s blow against Iran will ultimately be a Pyrrhic victory for Donald Trump as the blatant interference in what was a universally accepted largely successful treaty in which Iran was fully compliant will produce a global backlash against American interests. US military power and economic might give it considerable leverage to protect itself against any number of adversaries, but its huge and ultimately unsustainable budget deficits and debt make it potentially vulnerable. It is therefore likely that the first counterstrokes against Trump’s vision of America First will be to accelerate steps directed against the use of the US dollar as the world’s principal reserve currency.

There have already been moves in that direction, but they have succeeded in going only so far before being marginalized. This time they might stick because there is a large and growing consensus that America has finally gone too far in its role as global bully. One keen observer opines that the shift to a multipolar polity has now become inevitable due to American insensitivity and political blindness. The economic shifts that will, by some judgments, sink the US economy in five to ten years and lead to the rise of competing economic centers in countries like Russia and Brazil. It will be the beginning of an era in which Washington no longer will have either the resources or the will to attempt to maintain some form of global hegemony.

No surprisingly, the participants at the multinational conference I am attending would welcome the day when an interventionist “leader of the free world” America ceases to be. Many Americans would also welcome it, though without the economic disruption.

*

Featured image is from the author.

“The merger is more power in the hands of criminal corporations. To not just push the agenda, but corrupt governments, subvert democracy.”   

– Vandana Shiva (from this week’s interview)

.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

As much of the world and the media focuses on the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, another ‘royal couple’ is on the verge of completing its own matrimonial arrangement after a 21 month engagement.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently cleared the path for the German pharmaceutical and chemical company Bayer to merge with U.S. based agricultural giant Monsanto in a take-over deal worth more than $60 billion.

Once the partnership attains U.S. anti-trust approval, likely within days, a new entity will emerge, commanding more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides.

Would that this were a traditional wedding ceremony! With profound reasons for opposing this marriage, a robust crop of hands would spring up when prompted to ‘speak now or forever hold your peace!’

According to a recent poll of 48 U.S. States, 94 percent of farmers are concerned about the merger, with 83 percent being very concerned. Their top three concerns: market dominance to push other products, control over farmers’ data, and increased pressure to rely on chemical based farming practices.

This merger has implications not only for what goes on our dinner plate. There are questions of economic and political control that need to be addressed. Critics argue that the power of these economic giants is such that they have ‘captured’ regulatory agencies. Limitless financial resources permit these and similar companies to buy off academics, media and politicians.

The Global Research News Hour radio program takes a devoted look this week to the social and environmental costs associated with the merger of Bayer and Monsanto and the agro-chemical industry more generally with four interviews.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist and anti-globalization author. Her work centers on issues of bioethics, biodiversity, intellectual property rights, and genetic engineering. She founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in 1982, which led to the creation of Navdanya in 1991, a national movement for the protection of biological resources, especially native seeds. In a short discussion recorded in Winnipeg in May of 2017, Dr. Shiva put the Bayer-Monsanto merger and GMO agriculture within the larger frame of colonialism, patriarchy, and anthropocentrism, and points us to alternative perspectives which will allow our species not only to survive, but thrive. She has authored numerous books including her most recent: Who Really Feeds the World? (2016)

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute and the author of hundreds of articles and a dozen books including The Public Bank Solution: From Austerity to Prosperity (2013) and Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free (2007). Ms. Brown speaks about her recent article on the Bayer-Monsanto merger which makes reference to these two companies’ links to the infamous war-time chemical cartel known as I.G. Farben. Brown also makes note of the alternatives to GMO / agro-chemical agriculture being offered up by Russia.

Nick Meyer is a writer with the site March-Against-Monsanto.com. Meyer briefly lays out some of the history and rationale behind the resistance to Monsanto, and gives us some details about the priorities underlying the May 19, 2018 march.

Dr. Stephen Frantz is the Principal with Global Environmental Options, LLC, which specializes in the management of environmental toxicants through sustainable , ecologically sound intervention strategies. He holds a PhD in pathobiology from John Hopkins University and helped pioneer the concept of Integrated Pest Management. He has done extensive research into the effects of glyphosate and similar pesticides over the course of his work. Dr. Frantz confronts some of the misinformation and disinformation coming from Monsanto and its defenders about the safety of its products.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript- Interview with Vandana Shiva, May 26, 2017

Global Research: Dr. Shiva, I’m very interested in a lot of what you had to say in your recent talk and in your writings about this interface between the corporate for-profit model and how it intersects with this need to provide for our basic food needs and basic energy needs. I guess it just…bringing in something that’s fairly timely, this merger between Monsanto, who you’ve been very outspoken against, and Bayer.

Could you maybe quantify exactly how you see that merger making the situation worse, going from the frying pan to the fire? What, in particular, do you think that those … is a concern for farmers and for food security generally?

Vandana Shiva: First thing that people should remember is Monsanto and Bayer were one during the war. They were called Mobay. They worked together to sell poisons on both sides of the war. It’s only after the IG Farben trial at Nuremberg that the separation took place. So, in a way, the Bayer-Monsanto merger of the contemporary times is just a coming together in an open way of a hidden marriage that always was there. Second, even if you look at cross licensing arrangements, they’ve been working together.

When the BT Cotton of Monsanto failed in India in 2015-16 of the states of Punjab, 80% of the cotton was hit by White Fly. Who sold the pesticides? Bayer. So they work as one. As a poison cartel. Right now, buyers trying to push a GMO mustard. At the same time, Monsanto is trying to dismantle our patent laws which say we cannot allow patents and seeds, plants, animals, because these are not human inventions. They have their own self-organizing capacity to organize life, regulate life reproduce life, multiply seeds. What will this new open merger mean?

First is, I think the numbers like 66 billion are just games for the public. I’ve done an analysis. It will be out in my new book on the resurgence of the rial. The true owners of all of these corporations, down to the Coca Colas and Pepsis, all of them are the new investment giants, which are the cartel of the rich men, who have now designed ways of using their money to basically control the future of humanity.

And, for them, there is more future in collecting rents from seeds which they never invented, from selling more poisons, including corrupting governments, including denying the fact that even the W.H.O. said glyphosate is a carcinogen, so they’re putting their money to tell lies to defend killing and destroy democracy.

So, in effect, actually, the merger is more power in the hands of criminal corporations. To not just push the agenda, but corrupt governments, subvert democracy. We are witnessing it right now in India with the GM mustard case. Destroy science, and in the name of science, they say science requires GMOs, but they are knocking out any scientist who does real research on A] the fact that GMOs don’t produce more and B] that they haven’t controlled pests or weeds, they have created super pests and superweeds, C] that they have better ways through biodiversity, through agroecology, to actually produce enough food for people and have enough for other species, which is what the food system is about.

So, I see the merger of Bayer and Monsanto as, in a way, the peak of a contest between a century of ecocide and genocide with no stopping, versus Earth democracy where all species have their rights recognized, and they act. Because most of the subversion of the Monsanto agenda hasn’t taken place because people marched into the fields of Round-Up Ready soya, but the Palmer amaranth rose and defeated the project and that’s why I insist 300 million species and if you assume that even half of humanity will keep thinking and defending their freedom which would mean 3.5 billion people that’s a lot of intelligence against the criminality of a cartel of Bayer-Monsanto, Dow-Dupont, Syngenta-ChemChina all working together with a failed agenda of pushing GMOs.

GR: I find that there’s a sort of a parallel development perhaps – you’re talking about the food system, but there’s also the energy economy. And I noticed that there’s a lot of talk about transition, and about time, transition away from fossil fuel, but I noticed that a lot of investment, corruption, subversion, perhaps, is taking place in the guise of major investors like the Rockefellers and Warren Buffett and all of these major players. They are trying to invest, the Bill Gates Mission Innovation, they’re all trying to invest, get in on this renewable economy, but they’re not seeing the renewable economy as a… well, it seems as if their larger objective is finding a new frontier for capitalistic expansion.

And so, if I look at those sorts of developments when you see major donations to major environmental NGOs and so on, I’m wondering if we aren’t similarly seeing if this is something that we need to be on guard against. To prevent this kind of poison pill, another kind of poisonous cartel, from moving so that the renewable economy is in fact something that’s aligned with natural systems and natural intelligence and not simply another mechanism for for-profit growth and capitalist expansion. Could you address those concerns?

VS: First thing is, food is energy. It gives us energy when we eat nourishing food. Sadly, food itself has become the source of major confidence of a non-sustainable energy model. 90% of the corn in the soil, grown in the world right now, is going for biofuel. So we already have food diverted into a non-sustainable energy model. When it comes to renewable energy, which really began as small initiatives trying to build energy alternatives to fossil fuel, it was so clear in the Paris meetings that this would be the next platform for the Gates of the world and the Buffets of the world.

And do they make windmills? No, they don’t. He just keeps his hands in his pockets and eats hamburgers. Do they make solar panels? No. What do they run for? What is their innovation? Grabbing the patents. So, they are looking for a future where there will be a lot of renewable energy in the world but they will collect rents from the expansion of renewable energy like they seek to collect rents from seed, which is the only agenda for GMOs and the patents of seed.

What we are seeing is the emergence of a new economy that’s a rental economy based on intellectual property, and people who don’t work making the huge money and becoming the 1%, and the people who work and slog and are creative and are innovative punished just because they are hard-working human beings. It’s that – not just – I don’t call it inequality because it is worse than inequality. It is a lie, it is a brutalization, it is a dehumanization. It is a dehumanization of those that are robbed of their share of this Earth and the well-being of the Earth, but it’s a brutalization of those few who think being lords and masters of the universe at this critical time with a very survival of our species is at stake, that their profits come first not the humanity of the planet.

GR: You brought up the term anthropocentrism early in your talk, and that’s a serious concern insofar as it’s something that we just sort of don’t really pay attention or think about, it’s part of like the water that we swim in. And I’m finding that a lot of those technologies has that sort of anthropocentric veneer to it. Could you address the technologies, another vista, the digital technology that we mentioned, spyware, Edward Snowden talks about surveillance… I’m wondering if these technologies are irredeemably anthropocentric, or can we find some aspect to them where we can continue to utilize them?

VS: You know, for me, technologies are not some magical phenomenon that gets sent from the skies to a few privileged men, which is how Bacon used to think of the new technologies, and the new science, and the new Atlantis, and superheroes, etc. That’s not the way the world works. The way the world works is, people are creative and innovative, and they evolved tools.

The problem with the tools that have come from the commons… Microsoft is not the inventor of software. It’s the patenter of software. Monsanto is not the inventor of seed and definitely even not of recombinant DNA. It’s the patenter, and it’s the buyer of others who might have had the patent before them. So, it’s really a race for ownership through any means whatsoever. And the reason I worry about digital technologies is not that humans have worked out ways to deal with digital technologies, but that those who control digital technologies want to use it as an instrument of control.

For example, all of India’s economy was shut down on the 8th of November 2016, for a digital economy. Big cash notes were banned. All the savings of millions and billions of people were wiped out. This privileging of digital basically means that the global financial system where money runs to the U.S. to Wall Street, to these investment funds, that those people get your 6% rental with every transaction, and the hard-working person, through exchange, loses out. Has to pay more.

The second reason why the digital economy is being used as a new digital dictatorship, and I’ve written about this, is the new merger between digital technologies and information technologies on the one hand, and agriculture and biotechnologies on the other, but also digital technologies and finance. Right now, finance economy has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with wealth. It has everything to do with speculation, wire, rapid algorithms.

And I think it is narrowing our possibilities by not allowing the wide intelligences which are not one-dimensional, which are not linear, which play out in all kinds of combinations of hearts and heads and hands working as one to guide us out of crisis. At this moment of crisis, to put your fate of humanity in combinations of zeros and ones, and machines owned and patented, and algorithms owned and a handful of men who have zero real experience of what life is about is a very, very dangerous.

GR: And you also mention the term Terra Nullius, the second coming of Christopher Columbus and that whole mentality that seems to infect so much of our culture including the sciences. I mean, you come from a scientific background, and the way that we approach things, and you had to relearn from meeting with women and peasant folk a different understanding of this. So, could you maybe help us, those of us who wish to relieve ourselves of this infection, what we could do to not unknowingly or instinctively duplicate and replicate these same patterns?

VS: There are no empty lands; there are no empty minds, and the very idea that knowledge starts when someone gets the idea of conquest or extermination is the illusion born of colonialism, it’s the illusion born of fossil fuel age it’s the illusion born the concentration camps of Hitler and those are the kind of sciences that are dominating today especially in agriculture.

I think it is really time for us to recognize that we’ve done agriculture for 10,000 years. And there’s 10,000 years of knowledges, not one but many. It takes a different kind of ability to be able to live on fish in the Arctic in Greenland, and a totally different kind of ability to harvest your food from the Amazon rainforest. Each of these interactions generates its own knowledge, so the idea of one agriculture, one science that Bill Gates is trying to propose is absolutely against the diversity and vitality of the world.

The second thing we need to know and remember now is something – indigenous people never separated themselves from other species, never had an anthropocentric hierarchy, and realized that every plant, every microbe, every animal, was an intelligent and sentient being.

Science is finally waking up to this. The science not controlled by the poison cartel. And I think we need a new alliance of the ability to look through new eyes like microscopes. And the old eyes of wisdom, and join those in a resurgence of the real which is what my new book is about.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . Excerpts of the show have begun airing on Rabble Radio and appear as podcasts at rabble.ca.

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The Russian-Croatian rapprochement might have understandably taken a lot of Serbs by surprise, partly because Moscow hasn’t invested the proper resources into explaining it to the country’s population, but this multidimensional outreach strategy to their regional rival is part of Russia’s larger ambition to “balance” the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative” through pragmatic engagements with the members of its “Austro-Hungarian” sub-bloc.

“Believe Me, We Are The Most Reliable Partner You Could Ever Have…”

Countless jaws must have hit the floor in Serbia immediately after the latest interview with Russian Ambassador to Croatia Anvar Azimov (image below) was released right before the weekend. Speaking to his host country’s media, Russia’s top representative practically made a pitch to its citizens for a full-fledged strategic partnership between these two states, with the following excerpts being the most attention-grabbing statements:

“Economic and energy cooperation was the topic of the historically important meeting in October 2017 when President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin for five hours. I believe she never had such a long conversation…It is said that the (Krk island LNG) terminal will be constructed with 100 million euro invested by the EU, but that is not enough money, and Russia could give you billions. Believe me, we are the most reliable partner you could ever have…We want to invest in Croatia as well, but there must be political will. We are certain that Russia can do more for Croatia than the US and the EU put together…We want Croatia to be strong and self-sufficient and maintain good relations with the EU and the USA…Croatian ministers like me because I am very straightforward and open, and I accomplish what I promise…You need Russia.”

Without a doubt, Russia is reaching out to Croatia in an unprecedented way that’s bound to make some Serbs feel a little surprised since they can’t imagine Russia ever offering them literal billions like Ambassador Azimov just did with Zagreb and then assuring them that Moscow could do more for their country than the US and the EU put together. Russia is undoubtedly Serbia’s top strategic partner and enjoys widespread and sincere love within the Balkan country’s society, but Serbs are forgiven for wondering what’s really going on nowadays between Russia and Croatia.

“Balancing” The Balkans

The author tackled this subject in a three-part analytical series from February 2017 that the reader is encouraged to skim through in order to get a basic understanding of what’s happening:

• “Deciphering The Russian-Croatian Rapprochement”
• “Russia’s New Strategy In The Balkans”
• “Balkan Challenges To The New Détente”

Since the publication of those three texts, two follow-up theoretical ones were released that explain more about Russia’s “balancing” strategy in general:

• “Russia’s Foreign Policy Progressives Have Trumped The Traditionalists”
• “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”

 To be brief, the powerful “progressive” faction of the Russian “deep state” envisions their country being the supreme “balancing” force in 21^st-century Eurasia, though it can only truly fulfill this role if it enters into rapprochements with its non-traditional partners such as Croatia in order to become a “neutral arbiter” in regional affairs. In this case, the tangible basis for the Russian-Croatian rapprochement is being driven primarily by large-scale economic interests stemming from Sberbank’s efforts to protect its investments in Agrkor (the largest employer in the Balkans) following its epic bankruptcy and Russian energy companies’ desire to expand their presence in the Croatian marketplace.

Pretty much, cynics could say that “oligarchic interests” are behind this newfound and fast-moving partnership, though that’s not the entirety of it because Russian tourists are now flocking to this coastal state like never before, with the Croatian National Tourist Board estimating a 15% increase in guests just this year alone. The grand strategic motivations behind the comprehensive betterment of ties between Russia and Croatia is that Moscow is, like always, looking to weaken the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions regime from within by courting countries in “New Europe” who feel neglected by Brussels.

The Austro-Hungarian “Pivot”

There’s more to it than just that, though, because Croatia is involved in a bitter maritime dispute with tiny Slovenia, which just so happens to be one of Russia’s closest partners in Europe. Although Russia will probably never play any formal “balancing” role between these two, just like it’s unlikely to do so between Croatia and Serbia, Moscow is nevertheless in an enviable position by having excellent relations with Zagreb and the two neighbors that it’s in disputes with. Moreover, Russia’s on fantastic terms with Croatia’s northeastern neighbor Hungary and also with Austria, which altogether means that Moscow has “pivoted” to the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

These four countries – Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Austria – importantly form a third of the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative’s” 12 total members, thereby enabling Russia to hinder the working efficacy of any potential anti-Russian agenda that it comes up with or is instructed by the US to implement. The strategic significance of this development can’t be understated because it essentially neutralizes what could have otherwise been a formidable future threat to Russia, though provided that this “balancing” act holds long enough to ensure that that the “Three Seas Initiative” internally fractures along a north-south axis between its more pragmatic Balkan & Central European countries and the institutionally Russophobic ones of Poland & the Baltic States.

The Need For A Narrative

For as masterful of a grand geostrategy as this is, and accepting that the Russian-Croatian rapprochement forms a crucial component of it, the worst shortcoming of this plan is that it was never communicated to the Serbian masses, who are now confused and haven’t the slightest clue why their closest international partner is now on such friendly terms with one of their worst enemies. Russia hasn’t “backstabbed” Serbia, nor “sold it out”, but it did seemingly take it and its loyal population “for granted” by assuming that nothing that it does could ever harm the trust between their two peoples, especially since Serbia’s geostrategic position compels it to pursue strong relations with Russia no matter what.

This “negligent” attitude was touched upon in general in the author’s previously shared piece about Russia’s grand strategy, but it’s certainly apt to reflect upon after Ambassador Azimov’s strong pitch to clinch a strategic partnership with Croatia. Russia must urgently communicate its “balancing” intentions to Serbs, regardless of whether they ultimately agree or disagree with this policy move, via its friendly proponents in the country’s academia and media fields, since remaining silent on the matter and pretending like nothing out of the ordinary is happening in Russian-Croatian relations naturally breeds suspicion, which is unwarranted but understandable in this context due to the absence of any explanatory narrative whatsoever.

The Kosovo Connection

The Russian-Croatian rapprochement is an integral part of Russia’s larger “Austro-Hungarian pivot” in seeking to split the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative” along its north-south axis of Russophobic and pragmatic countries, respectively, but its grand “balancing” intentions in keeping this emerging threat in check have yet to be communicated to the Serbs, who are sitting on the sidelines with their mouths agape as they watch Russia chum it up with their Croatian adversaries. The narrative void that emerged after Russia got “so comfortable” with Serbia that it failed to invest any serious efforts in explaining this to its citizens has resulted in a lot of confusion over Moscow’s ultimate intentions, which is why a concerted effort must be undertaken as soon as possible in order to compensate for this soft power shortcoming.

This is more important than either party realizes at this point because a day of reckoning is soon approaching where President Vucic will probably end up “recognizing” (whether formally or informally) the “independence” of the NATO-occupied Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija as part of a deal for joining the EU, an historically traitorous move that will earn him the unforgettable and everlasting revulsion of his betrayed people. In a deceptive bid to deflect some of this hatred, he’ll likely hide behind the fact that Russia will respect whatever decision the Serbian government makes on this matter because, to paraphrase a saying, “Russians can’t be more Serbian than the Serbs themselves”. Without the masses understanding the basics of Russia’s “balancing” act, then Vucic’s ploy might succeed in getting them to redirect some of their disgust towards Moscow.

Concluding Thoughts

Per all of the aforementioned reasons, it’s high time for Russia to openly reveal its “balancing” intentions to the Serbian public so that it can preemptively defend itself from Vucic’s deflection and preserve its well-earned reputation as their country’s historic partner instead of unwittingly “sacrificing” itself for their President’s political “sake”.

There’s no better opportunity to do so than now, when Serbs are already scratching their head in bewilderment over what Russia’s up to with Croatia, but failure to act at this sensitive moment could doom Russia’s place in the hearts and minds of millions, especially if it comes to expectedly pass that Moscow lends “legitimacy” to Vucic’s likely forthcoming decision to “recognize” Kosovo by deferring to its usual position that this is an “internal affair of the Serbian state”.

The only way to stave off a lasting soft power defeat is for Russia to get Serbs to see that it’s “balancing” the Balkans without “betraying” anyone in the process, and that the realpolitik of the Hyper-Realist “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard” paradigm has replaced rhetorical feel-good slogans about “brotherhood” in its grand strategic calculations.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Featured image is from The Kremlin.

During the last nationwide election, the one before that, and the preceding one as well, I was led to believe my vote really doesn’t count. Why? Because I don’t live in what our political parties define as a “swing state”, or a swing district, or a swing county. Our media focuses on races and on voters in far away Iowa, Ohio, Florida, or Pennsylvania. OK; voting patterns there may be inconsistent and unpredictable. But what about the ‘predictable’ rest of us?

As far as I understand a swing district is one whose loyalty to a party is not guaranteed. Thus, attention and funds from the two major parties’, trailed by media, is directed there in order to ‘swing’ undecided votes towards their candidate. Duly highlighted by all the networks and even our own local media, we’re informed that a viable and genuine race is underway… over there. We can rest assured our democracy is a fair contest and that our election system works… somewhere.

As for the majority of political races in the nation? One concludes there’s no real contest; results are taken for granted whether by gerrymandered arrangements or by discriminatory policies that thwart registration. Then, there are voters– a lot of them– who simply don’t vote. The status quo is undisturbed.

Maybe this process of designating one neighborhood as politically more vital than another explains why voter turnout across the USA is low, why so many citizens feel there’s no point casting their ballots. We feel excluded.

Viewing a political race as in-the-bag can be perilous, as demonstrated by Clinton’s 2016 campaign after it ignored Michigan and Wisconsin contests. In contrast, Republicans targeting voters in those states; with or without Russian interference or data provided by Cambridge Analytica, Republicans swung voters there away from their traditional alliances.

Attribution of districts as swing or solid is more than a misguided strategy; it’s discriminatory. It may also contribute to the cynicism and disinterest we find among American voters today.

When I lived in New York City, any Democratic candidate on the ballot was viewed as a shoo-in. I and left-leaning associates never felt excited about an election; we rarely discussed one candidate’s merits over another, except perhaps for the mayoral seat. Now I understand how Republicans may have felt.

Moving into a less Democratic constituency in Upstate New York, I’m the one feeling disempowered today. You suggest I might evade this binary system by seeking out a third party candidate. Yet there too my vote feels meaningless. (Small parties often don’t run a candidate and instead endorse a contestant representing a major party.)

In NY’s Congressional District 19, currently represented by John Faso, we’re following a vigorous pre-primary campaign. Seven candidates want to represent Democrats to challenge the incumbent congressman in November’s election. Thus far, local press seems non-committal, but articles elsewhere are highlighting CD 19’s Democratic contestants, generating a rumor that this congressional seat will be hotly contested. True or not, the rumor is beguiling; my very own district could move into the swing column!

“It’s still early in the game,” as politicians and sports commentators say; “Anything can happen”. We still have 6 weeks until the June 26 Democratic primary here.

But the mere suggestion of our significance can have a positive effect. Who doesn’t want to feel significant? Forget about CNN and Fox reporters arriving in our farms and hamlets to interview us. If a contest appears evenhanded, our interest grows, and maybe, maybe, we voters can feel that we really count.

Then comes the question: Why wait for outside rumors about the value of our vote? Why wait for a tarnished Democratic Party which blundered in 2016 pursuing so-called ‘minority’ votes and ‘urban-educated’ citizens to the exclusion of others?

Across the nation, there have been some upsets as vacant seats are announced, and where new faces are emerging to fight in their party primaries. The message I’m getting is that every seat, every election, counts.

Whatever the source of these rumors, I say: grab hold, chase after whomever candidate represents some principle, however personal or vague, which you identify with, whether through their personality, their statements, or their party affiliation. Candidates are usually women and men driven by the ideals of public service, of the possibility of change, and by the energy of fellow citizens. Know them, push them, challenge them.

And advise them. Because these newcomers often really don’t know basic facts about us or how to address our local issues. Then lobby your neighbors thought to be on the other side. Try it.

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Barbara Nimri Aziz is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Europe now faces its ultimate ideological fork-in-the-road, which it has thus far ignored but can no longer ignore: They need to decide whether they seek a world of nations that each is sovereign over its own territory but over no other (and this would not be a world at war); or whether they seek instead a world in which they are part of the American empire, a world based on conquests — NATO, IMF, World Bank, and the other US-controlled international institutions — and in which their own nation’s citizens are subject to the dictatorship by America’s aristocracy: the same super-rich individuals who effectively control the US Government itself (see this and this — and that’s dictatorship by the richest, in the United States).

Iran has become this fateful fork-in-the-road, and the immediate issue here is America’s cancellation of the Iran nuclear deal that America had signed along with 6 other countries, and America’s consequent restoration of economic sanctions against Iran — sanctions against companies anywhere that continue trading with Iran. First, however, some essential historical background on that entire issue:

The US aristocracy overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Government in 1953 and imposed there a barbaric dictatorship which did the bidding of the US and allied aristocracies, by installing the Pahlavi Shah there, just as they had earlier, in 1932, installed the Saud King in Saudi Arabia — which land never ever had known democracy. As Wikipedia says of Ibn Saud, who became King in 1932, “After World War I, he received further support from the British, including a glut of surplus munitions. He launched his campaign against the Al Rashidi in 1920; by 1922 they had been all but destroyed,” with Britain’s help. Similarly, the US and its British Imperial partner installed Pahlavi as Iran’s Shah in 1953. This was done by US President Dwight David Eisenhower.

After the death of the anti-imperialistic US President FDR, in 1945, the US Government quickly became pro-imperialistic under President Harry S. Truman (whom imperial England’s Winston Churchill wrapped around his little finger), and then even more so under Eisenhower, so that during the brief presidency of Ike’s successor President JFK, the anti-imperialistic ghost of FDR was coming to haunt the White House and thus again threaten the conjoined US-UK’s aristocracies’ surging global control.

Kennedy was quickly souring on, and coming to oppose, imperialism (just as FDR had done) — he was opposing conquest and dominion for its own sake. So, he became assassinated and the evidence was covered-up, so that the CIA, which Truman had installed and which Eisenhower placed firmly under the control of America’s aristocratically controlled military-industrial complex, became increasingly America’s own Deep State, designed for global conquest (though using an ‘anti-communist’ excuse and cover for their real and ruling motive of global conquest and dominion).

When the US-imposed Shah was overthrown by an authentic revolution in 1979, America’s continued alliance with the UK-US-installed Saud family turned into a US-UK alliance against Iran, which nation has ever since been demonized by the US and UK aristocracies as being a ‘terrorist regime’, even though Saudi Arabia actually dominates global Islamic terrorism, and Iran is opposed to terrorism (except to terrorism that’s aimed against Israel).

And everybody who knows anything on sound basis is aware of these established historical facts. But, actually, the US-Saudi alliance is even worse than that: global Islamic terrorism was invented and organized by the US aristocracy in conjunction with the Saud family starting in 1979 when Iran freed itself from the US-UK dictatorship and restored Iranian sovereignty (even though in a highly compromised Shiite theocratic way, nothing at all like the secular Iranian democracy that had been overthrown by the US and UK aristocracies in 1953). The US and Sauds created Islamic terrorism in 1979 in order to draw the Soviet Union into Afghanistan and ultimately used these terrorist proxy “boots on the ground” so as to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan — thereby draining the Soviet economy in the hope of ultimately conquering the USSR and then conquering Russia itself, which the US President GHW Bush on the night of 24 February 1990 made clear that the US and its allies must do — he gave the European vassal-nations their marching-order on that date, and they have reliably followed that order, until now.

Russia, which the US aristocracy craves to conquer, is an ally of Iran (which they hope to re-conquer). The basic principle of America’s aristocracy is repudiation of national sovereignty. That’s what the US Government globally stands for today. Russian Television headlined on May 11th, “‘Are we America’s vassals?’ France vows to trade with Iran in defiance of US ‘economic policeman’” and reported that US President Donald Trump’s re-imposition of US economic sanctions against any companies that do business with Iran, is being resisted by all the other nations that had signed the Obama-Kerry nuclear accord with Iran, the “JCPOA” treaty: UK, France, China, Russia, US, and EU (which is led by Germany). The US regime knows that if even America’s allies — UK, France, and Germany — hold together with Iran, to defy the Imperial actions punishing them for continuing with Iran even after the US pull-out from the treaty, then the Western Alliance will be jeopardized, if not terminated altogether, and finally the Cold War, which GHW Bush had ordered the allies to continue even after the end of the USSR, and of its communism, and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance mirroring America’s NATO alliance, will finally end also on America’s side, just as it had ended in 1991 on the Soviet Union’s side. Such an end to the Cold War would possibly cause America’s military-industrial complex — and the stock values of mega-corporations such as Lockheed Martin — to collapse.

Thus, the US aristocracy is afraid of peace replacing their existing permanent-war economy. All those trillions of dollars that have been invested in machines of mass-murder abroad, could plunge in value, if UK, France, and Germany, terminate the Western Alliance, and become individual sovereign nations who join with Iran — another individual sovereign nation — to say no to the Imperial power (the US), and yes to national sovereignty, which sovereignty constitutes the sole foundation-stone upon which any and all democracies are constructed. No democracy can exist in any nation that is a vassal to some other (the imperial power). In a world where national sovereignty is honored, democracy would not necessarily exist everywhere, but it would no longer be internationally prohibited by an imperial power, which inevitably is itself a dictatorship, no real democracy at all.

On March 3rd, the 175-year-old imperial magazine, The Economist, headlined against China as an enemy in this continuing Cold War, “How the West got China wrong” and explained “the Chinese threat”:

“China is not a market economy and, on its present course, never will be. Instead, it increasingly controls business as an arm of state power… Foreign businesses are profitable but miserable, because commerce always seems to be on China’s terms.”

The imperialistic view is that the international dictator and its corporations should rule — there should be no real sovereign other than this dictatorship, by the US regime now, since America is today’s imperialist nation.

Perhaps Europe now will make the fateful decision, between international dictatorship on the one side, or else the supreme sovereignty of each and every nation on the other, to determine its own laws — and to require any corporation that does business there to adhere to its legal system and to none other: the supremacy of each nation within its own territory, not of any international corporations, not even of ones that are based in some international-bully country that says it’s “the one indispensable nation” — meaning that every other nation is “dispensable.” Russia won’t accept that. Iran won’t accept that. China won’t accept that. Will Germany accept it — the land of the original: “Deutschland über alles”? Will France? Will UK?

Americans accept it. The US public are very effectively controlled by America’s aristocracy. A Yougov poll at the start of 2017 (the start of Trump’s Presidency) asked over 7,000 Americans to rate countries as “enemy”, “unfriendly”, “friendly”, “ally”, or “not sure”; and, among the 144 rated countries, Americans placed at the most hostile end, in order from the very worst, to the 13th-from-worst: North Korea, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Sudan. Other than Saudi Arabia, which the US Government treats as being its master if not as being its very top ally, and which is, in any case, by far the US military’s biggest customer (other than the US Government, of course), that list from Yougov looks very much like, or else close to, what America’s aristocracy would want to see targeted, as being America’s ‘enemies’. So, other than Americans’ including the top ally both of America’s aristocracy and of Israel‘s aristocracy, Saudi Arabia, on that list of enemies, the list was very much what the US aristocracy’s ’news’media had been promoting as being America’s ‘enemies’. In fact, even though those ‘news’media haven’t informed Americans that 92% of Saudi Arabians approve of ISIS, or that the Saudi royal family financed and organized the 9/11 attacks (in conjunction with others of George W. Bush’s friends), Americans view Saudi Arabia hostilely. That’s acceptable to America’s aristocracy, because the Saud family’s hatred is focused against Iran, the main Shiite nation, and the US public (have been deceive to) prefer Saudi Arabia over Iran. In fact, a 17 February 2016 Gallup poll showed that Iran was seen by Americans as being even more hostile toward Americans than is Saudi Arabia. So, America’s aristocracy have no reason to be concerned that their chief ally and second-from-top governmental customer, the Saud family, are unfavorably viewed by the US public. Both in America and in Saudi Arabia, the aristocracy effectively controls its public. Thus, the American people think in the way that the American aristocracy want them to — supporting any conquest (e.g., Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, Syria 2012-) that the aristocracy want to perpetrate. Of course, the way to achieve this control is by means of the windows through which the public get to see the world around them, which windows on the world are the nation’s ‘news’media.

On May 12^th, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) reported that the American people are very effectively controlled to believe Iran to be America’s enemy and very dangerous to us. The headline was “Media Debate Best Way to Dominate Iran” and the article documented that the American people are being very intensively propagandized by the aristocratically controlled media, to favor aggression against Iran, and are being heavily lied-to, in order to achieve this.

So, though the American public will continue to support the American Government (despite distrusting both their government and their ‘news’media), foreign publics aren’t so rigidly under the control of America’s aristocracy; and therefore Europe’s aristocracies could abandon their alliance with the US aristocracy, if they strongly enough want to. Their ‘news’media would obediently do whatever they’re told, and could begin immediately portraying the reality of the US Government, to their people — including, for example, the reality that the US stole Ukraine, and some of the participants have even confessed their roles; Russia did not steal Crimea (and the Crimea-Ukraine issue was the alleged spark for the ‘restoration’ of the Cold War — which The West never actually ended on its side, only Russia did on its side).

An end of The Western Alliance (America’s empire) could happen. But it would require — from the EU’s leaders (and/or from Turkey’s Erdogan) — courage, conviction, and a commitment to national sovereignty’s being the foundation-stone to any democracy anywhere, and this change-of-political-theory would be something drastically new in Europe (and-or in Turkey), which is a region that has historically been staunchly supportive of empires, and thus supportive of dictatorships (ones that are compliant — foreign stooge-regimes). It would require a historic sea-change.

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Published in September 2009

Michel Chossudovsky, the director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, sits down with The Corbett Report to discuss the real meaning of the banker bailouts.

The banks lend money to the government and with the money they lend to the government, the Treasury finances the bailout.

In turn, the banks impose conditionalities on the management of the US public debt. They dictate how the money should be spent.

The recipient banks are the beneficiaries as well as the creditors. As creditors, they will oblige the government a) to slash expenditures b) to run up the public debt through the issuing of treasury bills and government bonds.

This public debt crisis is all the more serious because the US federal government does not control monetary policy. All public debt operations go through the Federal reserve, which is in charge of monetary policy, acting on behalf of private financial interests. The government as such has no authority over money creation. This means that public debt operations essentially serve the interests of the banks.”

The stated objective of the bank bailout programs is to alleviate the banks’ burden of bad debts and non-performing loans. In actuality what is happening is that these massive amounts of money are being used by a handful of institutions to consolidate their position in global banking.

The exposure of the banks, largely the result of derivative trade, is estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars, to the extent that the amounts and guarantees granted by the Treasury and the Fed will not resolve the crisis. Nor are they intended to resolve the crisis.

The mainstream media suggests that the banks are being nationalized as a result of TARP, In fact, it is exactly the opposite: the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized. The establishment of a Worldwide unipolar financial system is part of the broader project of the Wall Street financial elites to establish the contours of a world government.

In a bitter irony, the recipients of the bailout under TARP and Obama’s proposed $750 billion aid to financial institutions are the creditors of the federal government. The Wall Street banks are the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt, although they hold only a portion of the debt, they transact and trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments Worldwide.

They act as creditors of the US State. They evaluate the creditworthiness of the US government, they rank the public debt through Moody’s and Standard and Poor. They control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board and the US Congress. They oversee and dictate fiscal and monetary policy, ensuring that the State acts in their interest.

Since the Reagan era, Wall Street dominates most areas of economic and social policy. It sets the budgetary agenda, ensuring the curtailment of social expenditures. Wall Street preaches balanced budgets but the practice has been lobbying for the elimination of corporate taxes, the granting of handouts to corporations, tax write-offs in mergers and acquisitions etc, all of which lead to a spiralling public debt.

The Federal Reserve System: Circular and Contradictory Relationship

The Federal Reserve system is a privately owned central bank. While the Federal Reserve Board is a government body, the process of money creation is controlled by the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, which are privately owned.

While the Federal Reserve can create money “out of thin air”, the multibillion outlays of the Treasury (including the Bush and Obama bank bailouts) will require the emission of public debt in the form of Treasury Bills and government bonds. Part of these T-Bills will of course also be held by the Fed.

US financial institutions oversee the US public debt. They are involved in the sale of treasury bills and government bonds on financial markets in the US and around the World. But they also hold part of the public debt. In this regard, they are the creditors of the US government. Part of this increased public debt required to rescue the banks will be financed or brokered by the same financial institutions which are the object of the bank rescue plan.

We are dealing with a pernicious circular relationship. When the banks pressured the Treasury to assist them in the form of a major bank rescue operation, it was understood from the outset that the banks would in turn assist the Treasury in financing the handouts of which they are the recipients.

To finance the bank bailout, the Treasury needs to run a massive budget deficit, which in turn requires a staggering increase of the US public debt.

Public opinion has been misled. The US government is in a sense financing its own indebtedness: the money granted to the banks is in part financed by borrowing from the banks.

The banks lend money to the government and with the money they lend to the government, the Treasury finances the bailout. In turn, the banks impose conditionalities on the management of the US public debt. They dictate how the money should be spent. They impose “fiscal responsibility”; they dictate massive cuts in social expenditures which result in the collapse and/or privatization of public services. They impose the privatization of urban infrastructure, roads, sewer and water systems, public recreational areas, everything is up for privatization.

The recipient banks are the beneficiaries as well as the creditors. As creditors, they will oblige the government a) to slash expenditures b) to run up the public debt through the issuing of treasury bills and government bonds.

This public debt crisis is all the more serious because the US federal government does not control monetary policy. All public debt operations go through the Federal reserve, which is in charge of monetary policy, acting on behalf of private financial interests. The government as such has no authority over money creation. This means that public debt operations essentially serve the interests of the banks.”

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Montreal, September 17, 2009

According to the United States Office of the Inspector General, $21 Trillion in taxpayer money is unaccounted for.

As unbelievable and absurd as that sounds, the actual total of unaccounted for taxpayer money at the Pentagon is most likely significantly more than $21 trillion.

“The fact that this mind-blowing amount of missing tax money has not been a lightning rod for mainstream media coverage, congressional investigations, and a lead issue for all political representatives, particularly those who claim to care about our skyrocketing national debt, calls into serious question the integrity and legitimacy of all leadership and responsible parties. … We are trapped in a vicious cycle; increased military spending, with inadequate oversight, leads to billions of our annual taxpayer dollars being given directly to the people who profit of war, terrorism and societal destabilization in general – as evidence clearly demonstrates.”

According to United States government documents, since 1998, the Office of the Inspector General has reported on $21 Trillion in unaccounted for taxpayer money.

As unbelievable and absurd as that sounds, the actual total of unaccounted for taxpayer money at the Pentagon is most likely significantly more than $21 trillion.

Researchers are unable to get data for every year of military spending, many Pentagon agencies do not have any publically available records, hundreds of thousands of transactions have been erased, and an estimated millions of transactions do not have any traceable record.

In fact, the Pentagon, which handles more than half of all of our tax dollars allocated by Congress, has never been properly audited – despite the fact that an annual audit has been required by law for all federal government agencies since 1996.

Read complete report

VIDEO 

Satire on the Missing $21 Trillion. Lee Camp

GR Editor’s Note

Lets be clear as to the implications.

When they ” shoot at children, they are doing so deliberately, under clear and specific orders.” 

What this means is that the Netanyahu government ordered the killing of Palestinian children. The guidelines adopted by the IDF were approved at the highest levels of the Israeli government.

We are dealing with crimes against humanity and the self-proclaimed “international community” applauds. Western leaders, not to mention the media, are complicit: the consensus is that “Israel has the right to defend itself” …. by killing children: 

“So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by… I am not Ahmad Tibi, I am Zvika Fogel. I know how these orders are given. I know how a sniper does the shooting. I know how many authorizations he needs before he receives an authorization to open fire. It is not the whim of one or the other sniper who identifies the small body of a child now and decides he’ll shoot. Someone marks the target for him very well and tells him exactly why one has to shoot and what the threat is from that individual.” (see transcript of Interview Below)

Through omission, the Western media  does not mention the words “Gaza Massacre”.  You won’t see it, because according to the mainstream opinion it did not happen.

Palestinian children are described as “terrorists”. The lie become the truth! Killing Palestinians constitutes a “Responsibility to Protect” rather than a crime against humanity. 

Brigadier-General Zvika Fogal‘s mandate is to kill Palestinian children with a view to protecting the State of Israel:

“And to my great sorrow, sometimes when you shoot at a small body and you intended to hit his arm or shoulder it goes even higher. The picture is not a pretty picture. But … that’s the price that we have to pay to preserve the safety and quality of life of the residents of the State of Israel” . 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, May 19, 2018

***

An Israeli general has confirmed that when snipers stationed along Israel’s boundary with Gaza shoot at children, they are doing so deliberately, under clear and specific orders.

In a radio interview, Brigadier-General (Reserve) Zvika Fogel describes how a sniper identifies the “small body” of a child and is given authorization to shoot.

Fogel’s statements could be used as evidence of intent if Israeli leaders are ever tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court.

On Friday, an Israeli sniper shot dead 14-year-old Muhammad Ibrahim Ayyoub.

The boy, shot in the head east of Jabaliya, was the fourth child among the more than 30 Palestinians killed during the Great March of Return rallies that began in Gaza on 30 March.

More than 1,600 other Palestinians have been shot with live ammunition that has caused what doctors are calling “horrific injuries” likely to leave many of them with permanent disabilities.

Our initial investigation confirms Israeli forces killed 14-year-old Mahmoud Ibrahim Ayoub in Gaza today around 4:30 pm local time. He sustained a gunshot wound to the head & was later pronounced dead at Shifa hospital. #GazaReturnMarch pic.twitter.com/CwJn8xqhPf

— Defense for Children (@DCIPalestine) April 20, 2018

As eyewitnesses and video confirmed, the child Muhammad Ayyoub posed no conceivable danger to heavily armed Israeli occupation forces stationed dozens of meters away behind fences and earthen fortifications on the other side of the Gaza boundary when he was killed.

Even the usually timid United Nations peace process envoy Nickolay Mladenov publicly declared that the slaying was “outrageous.”

? It is OUTRAGEOUS to shoot at children! How does the killing of a child in #Gaza today help #peace? It doesn’t! It fuels anger and breeds more killing. #Children must be protected from #violence, not exposed to it, not killed! This tragic incident must be investigated.

— Nickolay E. MLADENOV (@nmladenov) April 20, 2018

Targeting children

On Saturday, Brigadier-General Fogel was interviewed by Ron Nesiel on the Israeli public radio network Kan.

Fogel is the former chief of staff of the Israeli army’s “southern command,” which includes the occupied Gaza Strip.

תת אלוף(מיל) צביקה פוגל ברשת ב כאן: מי שמתקרב לגדר כדי לבדוק למשל אם יש שטחים מתים דינו מוות!
רון נשיאל המראיין : גם אם מדובר בילד לא חמוש? פוגל: כן , גם אם מדובר בילד.

— Ahmad Tibi (@Ahmad_tibi) April 21, 2018

Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian lawmaker in Israel’s parliament, drew attention to the interview in a tweet.

A recording of the interview is online (it begins at 6:52). The interview was translated for The Electronic Intifada by Dena Shunra and a full transcript follows this article.

The host Ron Nesiel asks Fogel if the Israeli army should “rethink its use of snipers,” and suggests that someone giving orders “lowered the bar for using live fire.”

Fogel adamantly defends the policy, stating:

“At the tactical level, any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation.”

He adds:

“If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order to hide an explosive device or check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us …”

“Then his punishment is death?” Nesiel interjects.

“His punishment is death,” the general responds. “As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs.”

Fogel then describes the careful process by which targets – including children – are identified and shot:

“I know how these orders are given. I know how a sniper does the shooting. I know how many authorizations he needs before he receives an authorization to open fire. It is not the whim of one or the other sniper who identifies the small body of a child now and decides he’ll shoot. Someone marks the target for him very well and tells him exactly why one has to shoot and what the threat is from that individual. And to my great sorrow, sometimes when you shoot at a small body and you intended to hit his arm or shoulder, it goes even higher.”

For “it goes even higher,” Fogel uses a Hebrew idiom also meaning “it costs even more.”

In this chilling statement, in which a general talks about snipers targeting the “small body of a child,” Fogel makes crystal clear that this policy is premeditated and deliberate.

While presenting unarmed Palestinian children as dangerous terrorists worthy of death, Fogel describes the snipers killing them in cold blood as the innocent, vulnerable parties who deserve protection.

“We have soldiers there, our children, who were sent out and receive very accurate instructions about whom to shoot to protect us. Let’s back them up,” he says.

Lethal policy

Fogel’s statements are no aberration but represent Israeli policy.

“Israeli officials made it clear that the open-fire regulations would permit lethal fire at anyone attempting to damage the fence, and even at any person coming within 300 meters of it,” the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem stated in a recent analysis of Israel’s illegal targeting of unarmed civilians who pose no threat.

“Nevertheless, all state and military officials have steadfastly refused to cancel the unlawful orders and continue to issue – and justify – them,” B’Tselem added.

B’Tselem has called on individual soldiers to defy such illegal orders.

Following its investigation of the “calculated” killings of unarmed demonstrators on 30 March, the first day of the Great March of Return rallies in Gaza, Human Rights Watch concluded that the lethal crackdown was “planned at [the] highest levels of the Israeli government.”

Two weeks ago, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court issued an unprecedented warning that Israeli leaders may face trial for the killings of unarmed Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip.

Potential defendants would be giving any prosecutor a gift with such open admissions that killing unarmed people in an occupied territory who pose no objective threat is their policy and intent.

The question remains whether anything will finally pierce the shield of impunity that Israel has enjoyed for 70 years.

*

Full Transcript

Brigadier-General (Res.) Zvika Fogel interviewed on the Yoman Hashevua program of Israel’s Kan radio, 21 April 2018.

Ron Nesiel: Greetings Brigadier General (Res.) Zvika Fogel. Should the IDF [Israeli army] rethink its use of snipers? There’s the impression that maybe someone lowered the bar for using live fire, and this may be the result?

Zvika Fogel: Ron, let’s maybe look at this matter on three levels. At the tactical level that we all love dealing with, the local one, also at the level of values, and with your permission, we will also rise up to the strategic level. At the tactical level, any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order to hide an explosive device or check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us …

Nesiel: Then, then his punishment is death?

Fogel: His punishment is death. As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there …

Nesiel: But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger.

Fogel: Come, let’s move over to the level of values. Assuming that we understood the tactical level, as we cannot tolerate a crossing of our border or a violation of our border, let’s proceed to the level of values. I am not Ahmad Tibi, I am Zvika Fogel. I know how these orders are given. I know how a sniper does the shooting. I know how many authorizations he needs before he receives an authorization to open fire. It is not the whim of one or the other sniper who identifies the small body of a child now and decides he’ll shoot. Someone marks the target for him very well and tells him exactly why one has to shoot and what the threat is from that individual. And to my great sorrow, sometimes when you shoot at a small body and you intended to hit his arm or shoulder it goes even higher. The picture is not a pretty picture. But if that’s the price that we have to pay to preserve the safety and quality of life of the residents of the State of Israel, then that’s the price. But now, with your permission, let us go up one level and look at the overview. It is clear to you that Hamas is fighting for consciousness at the moment. It is clear to you and to me …

Nesiel: Is it hard for them to do? Aren’t we providing them with sufficient ammunition in this battle?

Fogel: We’re providing them but …

Nesiel: Because it does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world.

Fogel: Look, Ron, we’re even terrible at it. There’s nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. But let’s look at it at the strategic level: you and I and a large part of the listeners are clear that this will not end up in demonstrations. It is clear to us that Hamas can’t continue to tolerate the fact that its rockets are not managing to hurt us, its tunnels are eroding …

Nesiel: Yes.

Fogel: And it doesn’t have too many suicide bombers who continue to believe the fairytale about the virgins waiting up there. It will drag us into a war. I do not want to be on the side that gets dragged. I want to be on the side that initiates things. I do not want to wait for the moment where it finds a weak spot and attacks me there. If tomorrow morning it gets into a military base or a kibbutz and kills people there and takes prisoners of war or hostages, call it as you like, we’re in a whole new script. I want the leaders of Hamas to wake up tomorrow morning and for the last time in their life see the smiling faces of the IDF. That’s what I want to have happen. But we are dragged along. So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by. We can’t always take a single picture and put it before the whole world. We have soldiers there, our children, who were sent out and receive very accurate instructions about whom to shoot to protect us. Let’s back them up.

Nesiel: Brigadier-General (Res.) Zvika Fogel, formerly Head of the Southern Command Staff, thank you for your words.

Fogel: May you only hear good news. Thank you.

A former French Prime Minister unveiled a detailed and very ambitious plan to form a Eurafrican Axis in the New Cold War as a means of “balancing” between East and West, but what he’s really calling for is a policy of ‘controlled’ ‘replacement migration’ coupled with refined neo-imperial political and economic models for making France the ‘missing’ African hegemon.

Dominique de Villepin, a career diplomat and France’s former Prime Minister from 2005-2007, unveiled a detailed and very ambitious plan to form a Eurafrican Axis while speaking at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) at the beginning of the week. His strategic proposal deserves to be examined in depth because of the overall significance that it holds in the context of the New Cold War, especially in regards to what he says are his larger motivations in suggesting it.

His opening remarks even included the provocative assertion that he “believes the capacity of America and Asia to avoid a large scale confrontation that could destroy the world order depends on a strong Euro-African backbone”. He later made it clear that “Asia” is basically a euphemism for Russia and China, both of whom pursue a “model based on authority, nationalism and economic state-planning and strict defense of state sovereignty in foreign policy” which he believes justifies the US’ National Security Strategy (“The Trump Doctrine”) labelling them as “revisionist powers”.

Dominique de Villepin speaking at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA)

Based on this understanding as revealed in his speech, there’s no doubt that he envisions a future where the Eurasian Great Powers of Russia and China (and by extension, their Golden Ring partners of Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey) vie with the new Eurafrican Axis for dominance in the Eastern Hemisphere, although he disingenuously states tries to disguise this coming face-off through misleading rhetoric about the latter arrangement being the “logic of multipolarity” that will “not compete, even less confront, the initiatives of America, Russia or China”.

In reality, the Eurafrican Axis is really just a massive longitudinal manifestation of the US’ “Lead From Behind” strategy for adapting unipolarity to multipolarity through the formation of complex proxy coalitions, though in this context through America’s “special” French partner taking the lead in pioneering a neo-imperial continental takeover. The former Prime Minister laments that “there is no natural hegemonic power for the whole continent”, hinting that his country could fulfill that role in order to build the “dedicated governance body” that he says is needed for managing EU-African relations.

Speaking quite candidly, he said that “the Africa-Europe partnership will be driven by crisis management”, pointing to the Sahel, Congolese, and Horn of Africa conflicts that stretch from Africa’s Atlantic coast to its Indian one and contribute to forming what the author recently characterized as “Migrant Crisis 2.0”. Apart from the obvious security implications that this holds in intimating an indefinite and likely expanded French military presence all throughout the continent (to say nothing of the US’ presently existing one through AFRICOM), there’s also an economic-integrational dimension that’s designed to unofficially compete with China’s Silk Road.

In gearing the listeners up for his pitch, Villepin expresses remorse that Africa presently provides “a lack of sufficient financial returns” in spite of France controlling the economies of over a dozen countries through the West African and Central African Francs that are issued by Paris. What he’s probably referring to, then, is the relatively lengthy return on investment that ‘average’ European (French) entrepreneurs have to wait for in Africa and which makes them think that investments there aren’t worthwhile or worth the risk. The solution, Villepin believes, is “a public and collective vehicle to promote investment and hedge against risks, specially (sic) against political risks”.

The former French Premier praised Rwanda’s initiative last month to roll out an EU-like “Continental Free Trade Area” all across Africa, which he thinks would be greatly enhanced by a trilateral partnership “between the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank” in order to counter the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that China founded to fund its Silk Road projects. This in turn is expected to enable enable the construction of “transnational transport infrastructure”, which will again seek to unofficially counter China in Africa.

Considering how far behind France and its allies are in doing this throughout Africa, it’s more than likely that Paris will have to activate the “Hex” (the “Quad” plus Vietnam and France) and then urge its members to throw massive amounts of resources into the Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” as soon as possible in order to stand any chance whatsoever at making a dent in China’s developmental dominance in the continent. Nevertheless, prudently choosing to also invest in “people first” (soft infrastructure) and the creation of a (French-controlled) “special cultural board” dealing with movies, art, and education might give the “Hex” a soft power edge and yield positive perception management  dividends for it.

All in all, Villepin is seeking to sell the Eurafrican Axis to Europeans on the basis of it helping them engage in ‘controlled’ ‘replacement migration’ through the creation of a long-term ‘crisis management  mechanism’, one which he hopes will also appeal to Africans because of its ‘developmental’ dimension even though the entire proposal is essentially a rebranding of Paris’ decades-old “Françafrique” policy of neo-colonialism, albeit this time on a continental scale and qualitatively enhanced through the active participation of the “Hex”. The announcement of this gargantuan “Lead From Behind” structure therefore heralds in a new “Scramble for Africa” that’s bound to eventually lead to a series of Hybrid War flashpoints here as the New Cold War continues unabated.

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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.

On Tuesday, May 15, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) raided the RIA Novosti news agency’s Kiev offices and detained the outlet’s local bureau chief, Kirill Vyshinsky, ostensibly for acts of “treason.”[1]

International criminal lawyer Chris C. Black explains that this occurs at about the same time that the Kiev regime invaded the home of Petro Symonenko, head of the Communist party, (and subsequently interrogated him for seven hours).

Clearly, the Kiev regime equates “treason” with freedoms of speech, freedoms of association, and freedoms of the press.

None of this is surprising, since the Kiev regime is in fact an illegal Neo-Nazi/Banderite-drenched junta – and fully supported by the West, including Canada.[2]

The West itself has also forfeited its freedoms, but its methods for achieving these ends are more sophisticated.  Consent for the most criminal agendas is typically engineered by a controlled media, and puppet politicians.  Whereas the perception of freedom still lingers in the West, Kiev has forgone the niceties. Whereas Canada continues to support neo-Nazis and al Qaeda, it manages public perceptions to such a degree that the public remains oblivious.

No doubt Kiev is envious.

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

Notes

[1] Sputnik International. “Deafening Silence: Western Media Silent on Ukraine’s Russian News Agency Raid.” 16 May, 2018. (https://sputniknews.com/europe/201805161064512985-media-silence-ukraine-raid/) Accessed 17 May, 2018.

[2] Michel Chossudovsky, “The US Sponsored Neoliberal Neo-Nazi Coup d’Etat in Ukraine. An Act of War.” Global Research. 21 March, 2014. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-neoliberal-neo-nazi-coup-detat/5431339) Accessed 17 May, 2018.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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Global Research is a small team that believes in the power of information and analysis to bring about far-reaching societal change including a world without war.

Truth in media is a powerful instrument. As long as we keep probing, asking questions, challenging media disinformation to find real understanding, then we are in a better position to participate in creating a better world in which truth and accountability trump greed and corruption.

*     *    *

Our History Haunts Our Future

By Samah Jabr, May 18, 2018

The Nakba is not only an historical trauma but an accumulative affliction that continues to harm Palestinian identity, both collectively and individually; the Nakba is an ongoing injury that has never been bandaged or healed. The Nakba is a contemporary insult renewed with every Palestinian who is humiliated, arrested, and killed; salt is added to the wound of the Nakba with every demolished home and every bit of confiscated land.

Gina Haspel and Pinocchio from Rome

By Edward Curtin, May 18, 2018

Wherever you go in central Rome, you can hear the screams and smell the blood of those tortured and killed by the Roman Empire and those who ably followed in their stead. And you can see the crumbled stones and the pathetic architectural remains of those who thought they had triumphed. Their triumph turned to dust, and their belated mea culpas, if and when they ever came, always rang as hollow as Gina Haspel’s, Lt. William Calley’s, and Adolph Eichmann’s excuses that they were only doing their jobs and following orders.

World War II: The Murderous Allied Firestorms against German Civilians

By Shane Quinn, May 18, 2018

On 14 February 1942, a British Air Staff directive outlined their bombing campaigns should “be focused on the morale of the enemy’s civilian population”. As Daniel Ellsberg, the veteran former US military analyst, confirms in his recent book The Doomsday Machine, Britain was the first to begin “deliberate bombing of urban populations as the principal way of fighting a war”, starting in early 1942.

United Nations – Celebrating 70 Years of Human Rights – And Condoning 70 Years of Israel Massacring Palestine

By Peter Koenig, May 18, 2018

On 14 of May 1948 – Israel declared unilaterally her independence in a foreign land, called Palestine, supported by a UN Resolution sponsored by the UK (the United Nations “Partition Plan of Palestine” at the end of the British Mandate (euphemism for British ‘colony’), was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 II). 1948 was also the year of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights – this year, 2018, the UN declared Human Rights are, like Israel, celebrating their 70^th Birthday (United Nations General Assembly, Paris, 10 December 1948 – General Assembly Resolution 217 A).

Dangerous Liaison: Industrial Agriculture and the Reductionist Mindset

By Colin Todhunter, May 17, 2018

A minority of the global population has access to so much food than it can afford to waste much of it, while food insecurity has become a fact of life for hundreds of millions. This crisis stems from food and agriculture being wedded to power structures that serve the interests of the powerful global agribusiness corporations.

Korea and the United States: Negotiating a Peace Treaty

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 16, 2018

The Kim-Pompeo secret Easter March negotiations in Pyongyang involving intelligence and national security officials from the US, ROK and DPRK have set the stage for the formulation of a US agenda, requiring unilateral concessions on the part of the DPRK.  And it is this agenda which will be upheld by Washington in the forthcoming Kim-Trump summit in Singapore on June 12.

The biggest obstacle Donald Trump is going to face in his upcoming negotiations with Kim Jong-un, is not Kim’s unwillingness to abandon his nuclear weapons program, but resistance from powerful elements in the foreign policy establishment who will do everything they can to scuttle the agreement. We’ve already seen an example of this just this week when US nuclear bombers were included in the US-Korea joint military drills that are currently underway in the south. The B-52′s were clearly added to the massive “Max Thunder” exercises to provoke the DPRK leadership, increase tensions, and convince Kim that it was pointless to trust Washington. The move was bitterly criticized in North Korea’s state media which summed up the situation like this:

“At a time when the DPRK-U.S. summit is approaching, the U.S. has launched the largest ever drill involving B-52 strategic nuclear bomber, F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and other nuclear strategic assets. This is an extremely provocative and ill-boding act going against the trend for peace and security on the Korean peninsula ….The extremely adventurous 2018 Max Thunder joint air combat exercises are aimed at precision strike on key strategic objects of the DPRK and the seizure of the air control together with the U.S….”

The North’s assessment is entirely correct. The drills are a simulation of a preemptive attack on North Korea that would annihilate the military, level Pyongyang and “decapitate” the leadership. They are a deliberate provocation designed to poison the atmosphere prior to the June 12 summit in Singapore. They’re also a clear violation of the Panmunjom Declaration which affirms the mutual commitment of the North and South “to completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air and sea, that are the source of military tension and conflict.” (Panmunjom Declaration)

What we’d like to know is whether Trump was consulted about the drills? Did he give the go-ahead? Was it his decision to tweak Kim’s nose after Kim had just made a number of conciliatory gestures including the total banning of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles tests, the returning of three US prisoners to US custody, and meeting with leaders in the south in order to end hostilities and normalize relations? Is Trump responsible for this diplomatic disaster?

Of course not. Trump’s objectives are completely clear. He wants to win the Nobel Prize and he wants to be recognized as a foreign policy genius, both of which are within his grasp if he persuades Kim to ditch his nukes. Trump does not want to provoke Kim who, so far, has acted in good faith. He wants to cut a deal with him. The exercises represent the interests of some other constituency, some deeper faction within the national security state who have a stake in the outcome of future negotiations. They want the talks to fail so they can preserve the status quo. They want a divided Korea that “languishes in a permanent state of colonial dependency”. That works just fine for them, which is why the military drills were not postponed or cancelled. It’s also why John Bolton has been making incendiary comments about the “Libya model”, and why the media has been fueling public pessimism while misrepresenting US position. According to many media reports, the North will be expected to ‘totally decommission its nuclear weapons, missiles and biochemical weapons’ without any immediate compensation.

That’s not the deal. That’s never been the deal. No one on the North Korean side ever said that Washington was going to get something for nothing. And it’s not going to happen either. Kim is looking for a tradeoff, a decommissioning of his nuclear weapons in exchange for basic security guarantees. That’s the deal.

So who’s spreading all these false rumors and what is their objective? Here’s more from North Korea’s state media:

“The U.S. is miscalculating the magnanimity of the DPRK as signs of weakness and trying to embellish and advertise as if these are the product of its sanctions and pressure.

The U.S. is trumpeting as if it would offer economic compensation and benefit in case we abandon nukes. But we have never had any expectation of U.S. support in carrying out our economic construction and will not make such a deal in future….

If the Trump administration takes an approach to the DPRK-U.S. summit with sincerity for improved DPRK-U.S. relations, it will receive a deserved response from us. However, if the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit.” (End of statement)

The North doesn’t want Washington’s money or its economic inducements. The North wants assurances that the US will not attack it in the future. That’s it. That’s what Kim wants. He wants an end to the hostilities so he can move ahead with a regional economic-integration plan that will draw the two Koreas closer together, end the North’s isolation, strengthen the North’s economy, and pave the way for prosperity. In other words, Kim is offering to give up his nuclear weapons to (essentially) get Washington off its back and out of its hair.

None of this has anything to do with Trump’s absurd “maximum pressure” campaign, which had no impact on Kim’s decision at all. The North is not motivated by Trump’s hysterical threats of “total destruction”, but by a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to emerge from its long-term seclusion and become an active participant in an ambitious economic integration plan that will link North and South Korea to the rest of Asia via massive infrastructure and energy projects. The only catch to this proposal, is that the DPRK must abandon its nuclear weapons program and agree to resolve its issues with Seoul. In other words, Kim’s eagerness to denuclearize is not an attempt to placate Washington, but an effort to meet the minimal requirements of his economic partners in Beijing, Moscow and Seoul.

The United States is not central to the critical economic-political developments on the peninsula, in fact, the region is making a concerted effort to sever its ties with Washington by creating a giant free trade zone that will connect the region through ” large trilateral infrastructural and energy projects,” to Japan, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Europe. Check this out from the Kremlin website:

“The Korean Government has recently created the Northern Economic Cooperation Committee… This has completed the creation of a management system that will make Korea the leader in the development of the Far East. The Committee is tasked with strengthening economic cooperation with Northeast Asian and Eurasian countries. In the future, cooperation between the Committee and Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District and the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East will play a key role in the development of the Far East.

Next year, we will create a Korean-Russian Regional Cooperation Forum. It should bolster contacts between regional governments in Korea and the Russian Far East. Cooperation channels between regional economic communities and small and medium-sized businesses will greatly expand contacts between people and promote practical cooperation…..

The North Korean nuclear and missile ambitions are the biggest threat to the development of the huge potential of the Korean Peninsula and the Russian Far East. This is why we have come to the conclusion that this problem must be settled as soon as possible.” (Kremlin website)

See what’s going on? Kim has been asked to choose between prosperity or nukes, and he has wisely chosen prosperity. He has decided to participate in a common economic space that allows commerce to flourish without the bulk of the profits to be siphoned off by the voracious western corporations. Is it any wonder why powerful members of the foreign policy establishment want to torpedo the plan?

The integration plan is not some pie-in-the-sky apparition, but a broad and detailed economic blueprint for regional development; power plants, highways, high-speed rail, and pipeline corridors. It’s the whole nine yards. Here’s more from The South China Morning Post:

“President Moon Jae-in gave the North’s leader Kim Jong-un a USB drive containing a “New Economic Map of the Korean Peninsula” at the fortified border village of Panmunjom on April 27. The initiative included three economic belts – one connecting the west coast of the peninsula to China, making the region a centre of logistics; one connecting the east coast to Russia for energy cooperation and one on the current border to promote tourism.

“The new economic map includes railway links between the two Koreas and China’s northeast stretching all the way to Europe….”
…
“The plan would have a huge impact on China’s northeastern region as it would transform the region as a centre of logistics in East Asia, which could function as a driving force for the rapid economic growth of the region….A railway connection would bring a myriad of investments from overseas and would help the economy take off.”

Yet observers added that the initiatives were dependent on Kim accepting Seoul’s definition of denuclearisation – namely the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of the North’s nuclear programme.” (The South China Morning Post)

Kim must denuclearize in order to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity, which is why he is eager to make hefty concessions to Trump while getting very little in return. Think about it: Trump gets the nukes and the Nobel Prize while Kim gets a lousy piece of paper with Washington’s guarantees for security. That’s a great deal for Trump but not a very good deal for Kim. Even so, Kim is prepared to cooperate in order to meet his obligations and move forward with an economic plan that will strengthen his economy and improve the lives of his people. He’s making the right choice.

Some of Trump’s deep state opponents probably think that they can derail Kim’s plans by sabotaging the June 12th Summit. But that’s not entirely true. Kim does not need to reach an agreement with Trump, he merely has to convince his main trading partner, Beijing, that he’s made a sincere effort that was rejected by an unreasonable and tyrannical Washington. If Kim proves that he’s willing to go the extra mile for peace– by offering to decommission his nuclear arsenal– then Beijing is going to reward his behavior by easing the sanctions and restoring the DPRK’s economic lifeline. Bottom line: Kim is going to win one way or another.

In my opinion, the cat-n-mouse game Kim is playing with Trump is a bit of a ruse because, in truth, Kim is going to have to give up his nukes whether he makes a deal with Trump or not. As we said earlier, Moscow, Beijing and Seoul have all made denuclearization a basic requirement for participation in their economic integration plan, so it’s a done deal. Kim is going to have to abandon his nuclear weapons. The fact is, Russia and China don’t want the smaller, surrounding nations to have nukes any more than the US wants Mexico, Canada or Cuba to have them. It dramatically impacts regional security.

Finally, it wouldn’t surprise me if Washington’s deep state powerbrokers are more concerned about the proposed regional free trade zone, then they are about the North’s nuclear weapons. In order for the US to be a major player in the most populous and prosperous region in the world, it must implement its “pivot to Asia” strategy that controls China’s explosive growth and prevents the emergence of an economic or military rival. The so called “Putin Plan” for vast economic integration is a direct threat to Washington’s dream of maintaining its dominant position in the global economy. If successfully implemented, the Putin Plan will greatly accelerate the pace of imperial decline.

So far, I don’t see any indication that Washington knows how to deal with this threat.

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Featured image is from the author.

Russia’s “balancing” strategy was vindicated yesterday after the Syrian President came to Sochi and announced his country’s full participation in the post-Daesh constitutional revisionism process.

Restoring The “Balance”

President Putin’s feting of “Israeli” “Prime Minister” Benjamin Netanyahu as his guest of honor during last week’s Victory Day celebrations shocked many people who were hitherto unaware of the extent of the Russian-“Israeli” strategic and military partnerships, especially given that this visit was bookended by back-to-back bombings of Syria right before and after the summit took place. Even more surprising to some was that Russia almost immediately afterwards announced that it would not be giving its S-300 anti-air missile defense systems to Syria, which led to howling accusations that President Putin “sold out” his Mideast “ally”. The truth of the matter is a lot deeper than the demagogic allegations would lead one to believe because Russia is actually conducting a complex “balancing” act all throughout the Mideast as explained by these following five analyses:

• “Russia’s Foreign Policy Progressives Have Trumped The Traditionalists”
• “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”
• “The Syrian ‘Show’ Must Go On”
• “Could It Be Any Clearer? Russia Is ‘Urging’ Syria To ‘Compromise’, Now!”
• “Russia Is Already ‘Balancing’ Iran In The Mideast”

To sum it all up, Russia is leveraging its predominant military-diplomatic position in Syria after the defeat of Daesh and the beginning of the Moscow-initiated Astana peace process to enter into fast-moving multidimensional partnerships with all regional actors, especially those who are untraditional partners such as Turkey, “Israel”, and Saudi Arabia. The existing state of strategic affairs in the Mideast is such that the presence of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their Hezbollah allies in Syria following President Putin’s announcement of Daesh’s demise is perceived of as a “provocation” by “Israel” in spite of this relationship being entirely within Syria’s sovereign right to maintain however it sees fit. Nevertheless, because of its “disruptive” nature, a regional coalition of forces is increasingly applying ever-intensifying pressure on Damascus to seek their withdrawal, and therein emerges Russia’s pivotal role.

“Israel” Was Putin’s “Cat’s Paw” For Bringing Assad To The Negotiating Table

Envisioning itself as the supreme “balancing” force in 21^st-century Eurasian affairs, Russia is using its de-facto military and political “arbiter” status in Syria to manage the growing tensions between Iran and “Israel” in the Arab Republic, to which end Moscow “passively facilitates” Tel Aviv’s regular bombing raids in the country so long as they’re conducted on an alleged anti-Iranian pretext designed to restore the regional “balance”. Concurrent with this, Russia has been “urging” Syria to make tangible progress on the Astana peace process and specifically in implementing UNSC 2254’s mandate for “constitutional reform”. The “Syrian National Dialogue Congress” in January superficially succeeded in getting all parties to agree in sending delegations to the UN in order to jumpstart this process, something that hadn’t seen any progress whatsoever up until the Putin-Assad Summit.

About this surprise meeting, which in hindsight wasn’t all too unexpected, it can’t be looked at in a vacuum separate from the dynamic events that just took place over the past week. “Israel’s” back-to-back bombings of Syria which bookended Netanyahu’s visit to the Russian capital certainly sent an indirect signal from Moscow to Damascus that the former is going to allow Tel Aviv “free rein” to do as it pleases when it comes to “containing” Iran in the Arab Republic. Shortly afterwards, another signal was sent in the same direction when Russia declined to give S-300s to Syria, with the message this time being that Moscow will not allow Damascus to change the regional balance of forces in such a way as to obstruct “Israel’s” “freedom of action” to strike Iranian forces and their Hezbollah allies.

Under these militarily impossible circumstances, President Assad really had no choice but to beseech his Russian counterpart and reverse his government’s erstwhile unstated policy of procrastinating on the political process by publicly announcing that Damascus will indeed send a commission to the UN-mediated “constitutional committee” for revising his country’s founding document in accordance with UNSC 2254 and the outcome of the “Syrian National Dialogue Congress”. This peacemaking development would never have happened had Russia not “balanced” between “Israel” and Syria, as the latter had no practical intent of participating in this until it literally became the only way for the country to avoid experiencing any more Russian-facilitated “pressure” from “Israel”.

Constitutional Conundrum

The big question that everyone’s wondering about is the fate of the IRGC and Hezbollah, though it’s probable that they’ll be given a “face-saving” and “dignified” exit from the country via a forthcoming “phased withdrawal” as part of the “constitutional reform” process. This isn’t speculation either, as the Russian-written “draft constitution” of January 2017 specifically prohibits non-state military forces such as Hezbollah, as the author explained in his extensive review of this document in his February 2017 analysis about “SYRIA: Digging Into The Details Of The Russian-Written ‘Draft Constitution’”, which all readers should at least skim in order to become familiar with the most interesting aspects of this proposed document. Granted, the whole point of the UN-mediated “constitutional commission” is to agree on amendments to the Russian-written “draft constitution”, so it’s possible that some details might change.

It’s too early to say exactly which of the many controversial clauses included in this document will ultimately be amended, though it’s all but certain that the ones about “decentralization” will remain as they are there’s no way that the foreign-backed “opposition” – and especially those supported by Turkey in Idlib –will allow themselves to be peacefully reintegrated into a centralized Syrian state. To the contrary, the so-called “de-escalation zone” in which they’re presently operating was already predicted a year ago by the author to form the basis for these prospective administrative entities in his May 2017 piece about “Syria: From ‘De-Escalation’ Zones To ‘Decentralization” Units’. Likewise, it’s very possible that the “Israeli”-backed “opposition” abutting the occupied Golan Heights will seek to secure similar administrative “privileges” for themselves too, as will the American-assisted Kurds in the northeast.

That said, there might emerge a consensus decision driven by the many negotiating sides’ shared interests to do away with or at least further clarify several contentious proposals in the “draft constitution”. These concern “compulsory labor” for criminals, the removal of the 2014 Constitution’s prohibition on extraditing Syrians to “foreign entities” (instead changing it to “another state” and leaving open the possibility of sending citizens to the ICC), and the near impossibility of amending the new ‘constitution’ once it enters into force. The second-mentioned point is especially sensitive because it could potentially be abused to send members of the Syrian government and its military to international criminal tribunals despite likely having been originally written with only terrorists in mind.

Concluding Thoughts

Whatever the final outcome of this “constitutional revision” process may be, it needs to be accepted that there wouldn’t be any tangible progress on this whatsoever had Russia not succeeded in “balancing” “Israel” and Syria to this effect, as President Assad had been trying his hardest to hold out as long as possible in the hope that he may be able to negotiate from a better position that prevents him from having to “compromise” on “decentralization” and the presumably eventual “phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah from his country. Unfortunately for him, for as well-intended and deeply rooted as in his country’s national interests as it was, this strategy nonetheless failed to bring about the political-military dividends that it was supposed to and actually backfired to an extent because it made Damascus’ negotiating position much weaker with time.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

First of all, the British Airways is not in the league of airlines such as Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific. Many of its intercontinental planes are old and unkempt; monitors are only bit bigger than a pack of cigarettes, and the selection of films thoroughly pathetic for a ‘global carrier’ – just a mainstream diet of Hollywood and British blockbusters.

While almost all first-rate airlines like Qatar Airways, Emirates, Thai, Singapore, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, but even KLM, Air France and Lufthansa, are offering cutting-edge films from Iran, China, Russia, Argentina, India and all other corners of the world, British Airways remains arrogantly and unapologetically US/UK-centric. Judging from the selection of its films, who would ever think that Great Britain used to colonize almost half of the world, and to this day is still meddling in the affairs of dozens of countries worldwide?

The BA’s selection of films, TV programs and news could only be described as shockingly dogmatic. That is of course expected from and fitting for the national airline of the country that acts as the chief propaganda producer and supplier for the entire West.

Judging by the selection of the ‘entertainment’ offered on UK and US carriers, it appears that both the UK and US are ‘scared of the world’, consequently trying to ‘protect’ their citizens and guests from ‘dangerous influences’ flowing out of Russia, China, Latin America, Iran and other countries with the best cinema in the world.

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On my 12 hour flight in BA’s ‘premium economy’, from Bangkok to London Heathrow, two British films caught my attention: “The Death of Stalin” and “Darkest Hour”.

I watched them both, first amused, then horrified, and by the end simply outraged.

Death of Stalin in one of British Airways’ monitors

The Death of Stalin, directed by Armando Iannucci (a BBC and HBO veteran), is simply a bad movie. BA’s brief introduction of the film is seasoned with the usual vulgar, lowest grade of contemporary British propaganda, which lately is so common in the mainstream UK media and even inside the British Parliament: “the horrors of Soviet Russia”, or the, “horrific insanity of life during the Great Terror”.

Seriously, is this the kind of language one would expect to encounter on the pages of a flagship airline magazine which is promoting a movie?

As for the film, it simply vulgarizes one of the most complex figures of the 20^th century, while simultaneously smearing everything about the Soviet Union – which stood and fought, for decades, against Western colonialism and imperialism.

BA magazine and Stalin

It is supposed to be a comedy, or perhaps a parody, but it absolutely doesn’t work; it is not funny at all. And it is clear that the film was made ‘to order’ (who gave the order can only be guessed), precisely during this time when the British regime is on a bizarre offensive, discrediting, attacking and provoking everything Russian and Soviet.

The British anti-Communist and anti-Russian propaganda has always been there, and it has always been effective and toxic. But it has never been brought to such an extreme; to this low and pathetic level.

Perhaps this film is part of those millions of dollars and pounds that both the US and UK regimes have pledged to spend on fighting the truth that, lately, has been pouring out from non-Western media sources.

It is worth noting (and readers can easily check it on the YouTube and elsewhere) that Soviet propaganda and its anti-Western counter-propaganda never sank as low as what is now being produced by the desperate and frustrated Western indoctrinators – Soviet propaganda at least had some artistic style and quality.

Now to the second film that I managed to watch on the tiny screen of my Bangkok to London flight: Darkest Hour (directed by Joe Wright). This is yet another film about Winston Churchill, a man responsible for the terror that the British Empire unleashed in various parts of the world, responsible for the tens of millions of human lives lost as a result of Western colonialism. Here, BA’s synopsis talks about, a “leader at a pivotal point in WWII…”

What discipline, what blindness it takes, to maintain that Winston Churchill was just a ‘war hero’, not also a racist, bigot and a criminal. In British pro-Churchill, nationalist propaganda (including countless films produced on the topic), not a word is uttered about the dark, even monstrous side of the man. Nothing about the gassing of people, about triggering famines that took millions of human lives in India and elsewhere, nothing about the brutality he unleashed in Africa. Not the slightest of hesitation or a sign of soul-searching can be detected!

It is simply unbelievable how indoctrinated, how intellectually obedient the British public has become. And the more it is, the more it actually dares to preach to the entire world, defending and even unceremoniously spreading its ‘values’.

So many films have been made in the West about Churchill and his stand against Nazi Germany. While not even one has ever been produced, even of recent, about Stalin and his monumental effort to mobilize his enormous country, effort that actually saved the world from the monstrous forces of fascism.

Could it all be as a result of the new Cold War unleashed by London and Washington? Or should that war be, perhaps, called the First Ideological World War – a war that could easily bear a subtitle such as: ‘the West against the rest of the Planet’?

To find out, fly British Airways. You will have to endure the tiny and outdated video screens, but at least you will get a glimpse of the latest propaganda ‘art work’ brought to you by the Empire. Enjoy!

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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.

All images in this article are from the author.

Egypt and Israel have blocked Turkish aircraft from using their airports to transport thousands of Palestinians wounded by Israeli troops during protests in Gaza, Turkey’s deputy prime minister has said.

Recep Akdag made the announcement on Wednesday, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, amid a growing rift between Ankara and Tel Aviv over Israeli massacres of Palestinian protesters.

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians and wounded over 3,000 others mostly with live gunfire on Monday during protests against the transfer of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Israeli forces shot dead two more protesters on Tuesday as Palestinians marked the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled in the 1948 war.

Since border protests and clashes began on March 30, 116 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the Gaza Strip.

Turkey has offered to evacuate the wounded from Gaza for emergency medical treatment.

Israel has rejected the request over “security concerns”, local media has reported.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday lashed out at the international “silence” over the Israeli killings.

“If the silence on Israel’s tyranny continues, the world will rapidly be dragged into a chaos where banditry prevails,” Erdogan said at a dinner in Ankara.

Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador in Tel Aviv for consultations and told Israel’s ambassador to Ankara to leave, also for an unspecified period of time.

That drew retaliation from Israel, which ordered the Turkish consul in Jerusalem to leave for an unspecified period of time.

A French colleague once asked me, “Why are the Palestinians stuck in the Nakba? They commemorate villages no longer present on any map and bequeath to their children the keys to homes that have been long abandoned. Why don’t they leave it all behind, and look to the future?”

The answer is that the Nakba is not only an historical trauma but an accumulative affliction that continues to harm Palestinian identity, both collectively and individually; the Nakba is an ongoing injury that has never been bandaged or healed. The Nakba is a contemporary insult renewed with every Palestinian who is humiliated, arrested, and killed; salt is added to the wound of the Nakba with every demolished home and every bit of confiscated land.

The memory of the Nakba is not kept alive by the key that moves from the hand of the grandfather to the hand of the grandson. The memory lies in the damaged identity and self-image that has been thrust upon us and which is passed from generation to generation. We inherit the Nakba from the oppressed, expelled generation which came before–an anguished heritage which carries bad memories as if our genes themselves were anguished.

Neither an attempt to forget or the senility of old age can dispel these memories. Silence cannot undo its shocking impact.  On the contrary, commemoration of the Nakba is necessary in order to understand the present and to redress the injury of the past. A collective trauma requires a collective healing through popular narrative, rituals, and symbolic representation, as well as restorative justice. Silence and denial will only deepen the wound and inflict future calamities upon us.

“But the Palestinians who approach the fence in Gaza must be suicidal!” proclaims my colleague emphatically, without curiosity about the thoughts and feelings of these Palestinians. My colleague’s quick diagnosis does not acknowledge that these Palestinians may intend to communicate a need, may intend to alter the unchanging conditions of the status quo. These Palestinians may intend to protest the theft of their land or the siege or the partition of their people. But by making a quick diagnosis, my colleague forecloses the opportunity to listen and to negotiate better strategies; by drawing judgments on the basis of surface behavior, genuine understanding is short-circuited.

There is a difference between the psychological profile of a person who attempts suicide because of personal problems and the person who undergoes self-sacrifice in the context of social struggle. The suicidal person is hopeless and desperate, withdrawing from others pessimistically or fearing to be a burden upon them. Suicidal actions are often egocentric because the individual’s spark of life has lost its meaning in interpersonal terms. In contrast, the self-sacrificing person–even on the pathway to death–may be full of hope, indeed perhaps too much so. The act of self-sacrifice often involves an altruistic dedication to others and an eagerness to improve their future chances. Their hope is to extinguish their own soul in the service of giving light to others and brighten the road ahead.

I remember a dream that I had a few years ago. I was walking in the darkness and beheld creatures with brown fur walking slowly on their four legs. Every now and then, one stopped and turned its head upwards. It was too dark to see clearly, but I finally recognized a human face. That was a dream about my people and the poor insight in the world.

When Palestinians fight for their national rights, we are called “terrorists.” When we demonstrate in non-violent ways and are killed by the occupying forces, we are called “suicidal;” Avi Dichter, the Chairman of the Israeli Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, called peaceful demonstrators “idiots.”

Are there people who are willing to open their eyes in this darkness to see the Palestinian human face?

Throughout history, millions have marched to have their voices heard. Human beings often make sacrifices for the sake of their values or on behalf of others for whom they care. When such persons die, they are glorified and considered to be martyrs to their cause. Why should it be so different when such persons are killed by Israeli forces? Two months ago, Arnaud Beltrame, a French policeman, exchanged himself with a hostage in a terrorist attack in Trebes; he was unfortunately killed, but his behavior was lauded as brave and heroic, not suicidal.

The great march which started on Land’s Day and continues as I write this text, on the bitter occasion of the establishment of the American Embassy in my occupied city of Jerusalem, is meant to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Nakba. This march signifies the special meaning of this land to the Palestinians. Whereas some landowners may regard their lands as mere property that generates economic profit and can be exploited for water, energy, and food, the Palestinians feel otherwise. As a landless people, the Palestinians view land as an aspect of their own souls, representing their injured identity. Attached to their land with deep emotion, many Palestinians are ready to die for it. Advocacy, strategies, planning and calculation of risks are needed so that Palestinians do not need to be killed in order for their plight to be recognized. Premature judgment, psychiatric labeling, or exploitation of self-sacrifice cannot advance understanding of this plight.

Land is the material space for the life story of Palestinians, as with all people. Let there be space on earth for the Palestinians, so that human beings will not search for their life stories underground. It is a great anguish that so many Palestinians are killed in defense of their dreams. Our only solace is to believe that if they have left us by choice to sleep forever, they continue somehow to pursue those beautiful dreams.

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All images in this article are from Middle East Monitor.

“I want the Britain of the future to be a truly Global Britain, which is a force for good in the world. Steadfast in upholding our values – not least our fierce commitment to protecting the natural environment.” PM Theresa May, January 2018

As Britain heads for an uncertain post-Brexit future, the prospect of a deregulated corporate global free-for-all operating from offshore accounts with damaging environmental impact is the nightmare envisaged by many. But that future may be closer than people realise.

DeSmog UK has identified a hub of a dozen companies based around Mayfair, drilling for oil in Africa, and making use of tax-havens in British overseas territories and crown dependencies such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Jersey.

This is Empire Oil, a neocolonial snapshot of the future simultaneously revisiting Britain’s Imperial past in countries such as Somaliland, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa – and forging a new path for Global Britain.

At the centre of it is the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), London’s junior stock exchange. AIM operates ‘light touch regulation’, leading it to be described as a ‘casino’. It’s a system where nominee advisors – or ‘nomads’ – can act as both regulators of the system and brokers, potentially creating serious conflicts of interest.

Companies are using London’s reputation as a financial powerhouse to raise funds, while taking advantage of rules that allow them to keep ownership details hidden in offshore accounts

This makes public scrutiny challenging and once again demonstrates the value of independent media. With no corporate-backing, DeSmog UK is free to pursue stories the mainstream press often shy away from.

Source: Desmog.co.uk

Take for example Soma Oil and Gas, which was founded in 2013 by the former leader of the Conservative Party and now company chairman Michael Howard to pursue oil and gas opportunities in Somalia.

Since its creation in 2013, Soma Oil and Gas has changed its registration address five times in central London according to Companies’ House. In 2015, it was the subject of a criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud office (SFO) “in relation to allegations of corruption in Somalia”. In 2016, the SFO closed the case because of “insufficient evidence”. No charges were ever made.

Another company embroiled in controversy is London-based New Age African Global Energy – which was formed in Jersey in 2007 by Steve Lowden, an oil executive who had previously worked with Marathon Oil and Premier Oil.

The company is backed by US hedge-fund Och-Ziff, which had to pay more than $400 million (£295 million) in bribery settlements following an investigation by the US government that found the company had paid more than $100 million (£74 million) in bribes to government officials in Libya, Chad, Niger, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo to secure natural resources deals and investments.

The director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division Andrew J. Ceresney, said:

“Och-Ziff engaged in complicated, far-reaching schemes to get special access and secure significant deals and profits through corruption.”

A lawyer for Och Ziff told a federal judge presiding over the case in New York that “Och-Ziff has taken substantial remedial efforts to improve its compliance program to ensure something like this can never happen again”, Reuters reported.

DeSmog UK’s investigation does not identify illegal activity. However, the companies’ London residence combined with their use of tax havens and international activities raise serious questions about the UK’s commitment to being a global leader on environmental and corporate accountability issues.

The current system is allowing outsourced extraction in far-off lands by companies that are unregulated and untraceable.

The UK is one of 51 countries signed up to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global scheme that compels oil, gas and mining companies to disclose any payments made to governments. But companies registered in crown dependencies and overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands do not have to make financial disclosures under the EITI.

Pressure is mounting to reform AIM.

Last year, AIM itself called for submissions around proposed changes to its admission rules. AIM’s discussion paper included “consideration of further supervisory powers and sanctions to ensure consistency of standards across the market”.

Responding to AIM, the NGO Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) called for “urgent action to halt the laundering of assets” and warned that the light regulation system needed to be scrapped in order to stop London attracting “dirty money”.

RAID’s submission, seen by DeSmog UK, stated:

“It is highly doubtful that self-regulation, relying on private firms with vested interests as gatekeepers and designed to be ‘light touch’ will ever eliminate or even significantly reduce the use of AIM to launder assets and dirty money through London.”

AIM subsequently announced a series of minor changes to its listing process, none of which faced the structural reforms campaigners had called for to transform its system. It currently seems inconceivable that such a volatile and profitable forum will reform itself.

Such a move would have to come from government, but that also seems unlikely given wild rhetoric about Britain’s golden future as a global trading nation.

Earlier this month, the government was defeated in the UK parliament when MPs voted through a new amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill which would require 14 British overseas territories to publish registers of beneficial ownership by 2020 or face having them imposed.

Campaigners have seen the vote as a sign the mood may be changing over corporate openness and transparency.

But for now it seems that Empire Oil is London’s dirty secret, and it’s back to the future for Mayfair’s money boys.

Read the full special investigation here.

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Mike Small is Editor of Bella Caledonia and Deputy Editor of DeSmogUK.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today is deeply disappointed and concerned at the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Gina Haspel as CIA director. Haspel, who helped manage the CIA torture program, and who oversaw the waterboarding of detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, has yet to release any information about her precise involvement in the program and its cover-up, and did not adequately address questions on this throughout the confirmation process. Despite the CIA’s egregious campaign of secrecy and Haspel’s pointed refusal to repudiate torture during and after her hearing, she was confirmed, with among the fewest votes for CIA directors.

Donna McKay, executive director of PHR, called the Senate’s approval a critical setback to accountability for the use of torture by the United States and to its commitment to human rights.

“It is unacceptable that the United States’ intelligence agency will be led by someone who supervised torture, including waterboarding. As a senior official in that program, Gina Haspel helped the CIA conduct unlawful torture, systematically breaking the lives of detainees, and she helped destroy evidence in order to conceal these acts. Her promotion perpetuates secrecy and impunity for torture. It invites a return to the abuses of the CIA rendition, interrogation, and detention program, and sends a message to the world that the United States has retreated from its commitment to human rights, including the absolute ban on torture.

“What is known about Haspel’s role in torture and destruction of evidence, based on the limited public record, should have been more than enough to end her confirmation. The victims of the program she helped oversee will suffer lifelong mental and physical effects. Torture is illegal, immoral, and profoundly harmful – three facts that Haspel has disregarded to date. With Haspel’s confirmation, it is more critical than ever for Congress to exercise oversight over the intelligence agencies. In addition, all parts of civil society – including and especially health professionals – should continue to advocate for human rights. If we don’t demand responsibility for torture and insist on truth-telling, accountability, and cooperation, we diminish the role that the United States can play in advocating for human rights globally,” McKay added.

PHR, joined by other organizations, pushed vigorously for Haspel’s nomination and confirmation to be blocked. For more than a decade, PHR and its network of partners have led efforts advocating against torture, documented the devastating long-term health consequences of torture, and called attention to the complicity of some health professionals in the post-9/11 U.S. torture program.

Being in Rome, Italy and thinking of Gina Haspel, the CIA nominee and admitted torturer who says her “moral conscience” has changed after the fact, seems most fitting.  Wherever you go in central Rome, you can hear the screams and smell the blood of those tortured and killed by the Roman Empire and those who ably followed in their stead. And you can see the crumbled stones and the pathetic architectural remains of those who thought they had triumphed. Their triumph turned to dust, and their belated mea culpas, if and when they ever came, always rang as hollow as Gina Haspel’s, Lt. William Calley’s, and Adolph Eichmann’s excuses that they were only doing their jobs and following orders.

Throughout Rome there are hawkers dangling Pinocchio trinkets in your face, constant reminders of the cost of lying.  Or perhaps more aptly, the fame that ensues from lying followed by a childish semi-apology, even when it’s as obvious as the nose on your face that you are lying still.  So in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Haspel was asked by Senator Mark Warner, D-VA., the kind of question that allows a respondent to answer in a deceptive way that means nothing, but seems profoundly sincere. Warned asked:

If this president asked you to do something that you find morally objectionable, even if there is an [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, what will you do?  Will you carry out that order or not?

To which Haspel replied:

Senator, my moral conscience is strong.  I would not allow the CIA to carry out any activity that I thought was immoral – even if it was technically legal.  I would absolutely not permit it.

From all reports, neither Warner’s nor Haspel’s nose grew longer, but perhaps such deceptive phrasing slyly falls beyond the parameters of Pinocchio’s sins and the Blue Fairy’s  sanctions.

So the woman who oversaw detainee torture at a CIA “black site” in Thailand tells us she has a strong moral conscience, but she doesn’t tell us what that conscience considers intrinsically evil, if anything. Nor what that “strong” moral conscience considers moral or immoral in any way, just that the “CIA must undertake activities that are consistent with American values,” whatever they might be.  And if she were ordered to carry out an action – let’s say kill a foreign agent or assassinate a political leader – that was technically illegal but accorded with her strong moral conscience, would she do so?  Don’t ask; she wasn’t. Even Pinocchio would get confused with this legerdemain, and his “strong” moral conscience, Jiminy Cricket, would be utterly bamboozled.

The good Senator, adept at playing deceptive verbal games as befits his stature, is happy to have his non-question answered with a non-answer, and both he and Haspel are happy.  Good question, good answer, good conscience.  Nothing bad about that.  Then Warner goes and votes for Haspel, who he says is “among the most experienced people to be nominated” to head the CIA, and Haspel says she thinks torture – excuse me, “enhanced interrogation” – doesn’t work anyway.  Practicality wins the day.

But here in Rome so many regular people are not so practical.  They seem to relish life, not as a task to accomplish, but as a pleasure to enjoy.  Despite the history that surrounds them, and the dismal political economy that weighs heavy on their lives and country, they seem less anxious and terrorized than Americans. Of course this may be a visitor’s myopic vision, and when seen clearly, Romans might be as stressed as Americans.  But I doubt it.

But for this visiting American, it is hard to dismiss thoughts about the disgraceful charade happening back in Washington D.C.  Thinking here in Rome of the Haspel vote, I am reminded of the ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles’s and long-time Chief of Counterintelligence James Angleton’s organized “Ratlines,” the escape routes for Nazi and fascist killers and torturers, so many of whom were brought to the United States and other countries after World War II through Italy to help the newly formed CIA torture the truth out of detainees and assassinate opponents. Operation Paperclip, they called it.  No big deal; just a joining of two like-minded organizations by a tiny device.

Post September 11 torture is nothing new, and Haspel is nothing if not a traditionalist just doing her job. Is this what Haspel meant by “American values”?  Many victims would attest to that.

In an old city like Rome one tends to think old thoughts: that the history of torture, human treachery, lying, and violence has a long history; that secular and religious fanatics are nothing new; and that empires rise and fall and everyone dies, even those who build monuments to their own “glorious” deeds.

But if one wanders around Rome and through life with no itinerary, one also encounters beautiful people and small pockets of faith, love, and devotion.  One encounters magnificent art that embodies the heights to which humans can aspire.  One realizes that despite the gory history of the human race, the killers and torturers, humans have and do rise above their worst inclinations and do the work of angels, despite the devils.

As we were sitting at a café in the Piazza della Rotonda, my wife said to me, “You have your back to the Pantheon.” It was true. Those monumental gods bored me. My glass of vino rosso whirled my mind to better things.  Lighter. Not stone idolatry. Not empires, except their death. Not stone gods, nor inquisitors or black sites or hooded torturers with Ph’ds from Harvard. No palaces to Renaissance princes or Central Intelligence agents, corrupt bastards of different times and places. No Wall Street/CIA nexus. No dastardly gross stupid rich Trump with his orange hair and phallic towers, nor his doppelganger Berlusconi here in Italy. No basilicas, nothing petrified,despite the city of stone that enclosed me. Like the sparrow that alighted on the next table and was pecking at the bread in a basket, my thoughts flew to lighter and more sustaining images of life and love and the spirit of care that sustains this beautiful world despite the torturers and killers.

Gina Haspel seemed so far away – yet so very near.  My thoughts kept returning to all the U.S. Senators who have voted for this torturer to lead the CIA. Will they say they were only doing their jobs and following orders? Do they think of themselves as civilized?

I then looked up as the bird took flight and saw a cross silhouetted against the blue sky. Enough said.

Where will we conduct the next Nuremberg trials?

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

In the beginning of the internet back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when you for the first time had large and contentious discussions online at bulletin boards like Usenet, attorney Mike Godwin noticed that the longer a discussion went on, the more likely it was that someone would make a Hitler comparison. Some internet aficionados even declared a thread over when someone evoked the National Socialists of the 1930s. The implication was that such a comparison was always hyperbolic.

The problem with Godwin’s law is that it emerged at a time when we did not expect to have a Neonazi president. Not being able to point to the real similarities of Trump’s White Nationalist discourse with Nazi premises about racial hierarchies would actually be dangerous at this point. And we have seen Mr. Trump defend self-avowed Neonazis and Klansmen at Charlottesville. It is not an optical illusion.

So yesterday Trump again called some undocumented migrants into the US “animals.” Calling people animals has been a parlor sport with Mr. Trump, and he has often gotten things wrong, as when he used his wealth to persecute the falsely accused Central Park 5.

Calling people “animals” is not just the use of an ugly epithet. It is not merely impolite.

It is a call to mistreat the class of people so designated, to fear them and blame them and ultimately to seek to wipe them out.

“Animal” functions similarly in this regard to the Nazi technical term “Untermensch” or underman, subhuman.

Richard A Etlin in Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich translates passages from the infamous SS pamphlet of 1941, entitled Der Untermensch:

“It is a frightening creature, a mere shadow of a man, with humanoid racial features, yet spiritually and psychologically more base than any animal. Within this being rages a vile chaos of wild, uncontrolled passions, a nameless desire for destruction, the most primitive desires, and naked vulgarity.”

The pamphlet goes on to be more specific about the identity of this horrible category of apparent human beings, who are actually animals or worse. It specifies eastern Slavs (Russians and Poles) and Jews, among others. Not even some members of those groups, but all of them. The pamphlet functioned as a call for and a justification for the genocide against the Jews, Gypsies, gays and other groups as well as the slaughter of Russian boys at the eastern Front.

That is, denigrating people as less than human is a step toward permitting their elimination.

Trump apologists would say that he is only calling gangbangers “animals,” not all Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. But anyone who actually has listened to him talk about those groups knows that he tars them all with the brush of gang violence. It is worth underlining that the vast majority of immigrants are law-abiding, since they fear that tangling with law enforcement could get them deported.

There are some 55 million Hispanic people in the US. Less than one percent of them are gang members. Of the some 16,000 murders a year, only small percentage appear to be tied to gangs. Of the total, typically nearly a quarter are cases of close family members killing one another. Over half of women victims of homicide in the US are killed by an intimate, i.e. boyfriend, spouse or former such. In general, most murder victims are killed by someone they know, not by a stranger from among the Undermen or “animals.” Only about 12% of victims are killed by a complete stranger. The best predictor for perpetration of violent crime is not ethnicity but poverty. Nor should we give up on rehabilitating people who commit crimes, even violent crimes. They are human beings, not animals.

Although Trump’s initial move in eliminating those he sees as Undermen is to make sure they are deported if their papers are not in order, we have already seen at Charlottesville that he condones white nationalist violence against anyone who disagrees with him. He could be pulling our society into more and more frequent racial confrontations. Minorities who fight back will be labeled terrorists by the president of the United States. That this polarization Trump is trying to provoke could ratchet up into anti-Latino pogroms cannot be ruled out.

It is unfortunately worth pointing out that although the Jews were on the receiving end of discourse about dangerous subhumans in the Germany of the 1940s, today in Israel it is all to common to hear politicians refer to Palestinians as “animals.” That discourse is how you get rules of engagement where it is all right to shoot down unarmed, peaceful protesters in Gaza.

There are no Undermen. All human beings have the same rights.

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Featured image is a screenshot from C-span video.

The newest version of the 2018 Farm Bill, set for a vote on Friday, includes an unprecedented provision allowing the widespread killing of endangered plants and animals with pesticides.

The bill launches the broadest attack on the Endangered Species Act in 45 years, eliminating the requirement that federal agencies analyze pesticides’ harm to the nation’s 1,800 protected species before approving them, greatly increasing the risk of extinctions.

“House Republicans are putting salmon, killer whales and other wildlife on the fast track to extinction,” said Lori Ann Burd, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health program. “This is a stunning gift to the pesticide industry, with staggering implications for endangered species.”

Earlier this year the National Marine Fisheries Service released a “biological opinion” showing that three widely used insecticides — chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon — are putting killer whales and 37 different salmon and sturgeon species on a path to extinction.

In response the pesticide industry has sought to exempt pesticides completely from the Endangered Species Act. During this session of Congress, the pesticide industry has spent more than $43 million on congressional lobbying to achieve that goal.

In addition to the attacks on endangered species, H.R. 2 weakens Clean Water Act protections from pesticides, includes a sweeping provision that would gut protections for forests, and has 46 different provisions that would curtail public input and common-sense protections provided by the National Environmental Policy Act.

Late additions to the legislation would also roll back virtually all protections for old-growth forests in Alaska.

“This farm bill should be called the Extinction Act of 2018,” said Burd. “If it becomes law, this bill will be remembered for generations to come as the one that drove the final nail in the coffin of some of America’s most vulnerable species.”

The director of disgraced energy company EPM told Colombian media on Thursday that the country’s largest hydroelectric dam could burst.

Jorge Londoño conceded that it is “difficult to answer if the Hidroituango (dam) will be saved,” a stark assessment that if true, could cause an unprecedented amount of damage to the environment, the nation’s economy and ultimately lives.

The company and regional authorities called in the help of the national government on Wednesday after losing control over the dam that was only months from being inaugurated.

If authorities and EPM can’t figure out a way to prevent the dam’s walls bursting and flooding into the Cauca river, “an avalanche of huge proportions” may take place.

According to one expert,

“if the dam is irreparably damaged and the Cauca (river) floods, Armero’s tragedy would pale in comparison,” referring to the 1985 volcanic disaster that killed 23,000 Colombians.

Project workers had been advancing to raise dam walls to the “fundamental” elevation of 410 meters, yet due to the impending risks of the dam rupturing, workers have been evacuated, leaving the wall at an elevation of 403 metres.

Under this worst-case scenario, 12 municipalities downstream in the Antioquia, Cordoba, Sucre and Bolivar provinces could be flooded by the Cauca river. More than 100,000 people that live in the risk area could be affected.

Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez said that in such an event, floods would reach municipalities such as Nechi in 18 hours, Caucasia in 10, Caceres in five and Puerto Valdivia in just an hour.

Evacuation efforts have already begun in the municipalities that could be flooded in the event the dam breaks.

“Everyone is worried, especially since no one knows what will happen,” Ituango-based journalist Nicolas Bedoya told Colombia Reports.

“No one knows when road access will open up again and no one knows if the dam will be hiring again knowing that hundreds of families depend on the project,” said Bedoya.

National authorities are scurrying to create contingency plans on preventing a disaster and evacuating residents while EPM has sought international advice on how to deal with the situation.

Rating company Fitch alerted investors last week that the problems at EPM’s billion-dollar project could affect its financial stability for years. The rating agency’s negative observation was issued before the company was forced to abandon the project as a whole.

The Negative Observation of the rating reflects a higher probability of delays in the construction of the Ituango hydroelectric project, which will likely increase the pressure on the capital structure of EPM Inversiones in a sustained manner. In addition, logistical and environmental aspects have increased the uncertainty surrounding the possibility of significant cost overruns and associated liabilities.

As the national authorities try to respond to the emergency, tens of thousands of Colombians live in fear that they could lose their homes on both sides of the dam.

Celebrating the ‘historic win’ in the Senate on Wednesday for only the briefest of moments, advocates for the open Internet who have worked relentlessly to reverse an effort by the telecommunications industry and Trump’s FCC to kill net neutrality protections have immediately turned their attention to the U.S. House of Representatives where they say victory is possible if the American people keep up the pressure.

“The people saying we can’t win on net neutrality in the House are the same people who, just 5 months ago, were saying we could never do it in the Senate,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Thursday. “Ignore them. Just keep fighting.”

Markey led the opposition to the FCC in the Senate as lead sponsor of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that passed on Wednesday in a 52-47 victory that was celebrated across the Internet.

Now, say organizers, it’s time to turn that same energy—coupled with the momentum from the Senate win—to force the GOP-controlled House to allow a vote on the same CRA.

“With the majority leadership in the House opposed to this bill, the only way to bring it before the full House for a vote is through a discharge petition,” Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.), who is filing the petition, said Wednesday. “I’m sure that every member of the House will want to know where their constituents stand on this issue.”

Back by powerful corporate interests and the telecom lobby, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has expressed confidence that the Democrats will not succeed.

But in a detailed explainer about the battle to come, Fight for the Future, one of the consumer advocacy and net neutrality advocates that has led the charge so far, said the fight in the House will be an “uphill battle,” but one that it intends to win.

“DC insiders and pundits claim that we’ll never get anywhere in the House,” the group stated, echoing Markey. And, they added, “those are the same DC insiders that never thought we’d get a Senate vote.”

In order to implement the “discharge petition” introduced by Rep. Doyle, the group the noted, they’ll need 218 House members to sign on in support:

That means we’ll need to convince all the Democrats, and about 25 Republicans, to support the CRA. And the clock is ticking — if the CRA resolution doesn’t get a vote this year, it dies when the new Congress comes into session.

Outside of Washington, DC, net neutrality is not a partisan issue. But with the Republicans in power, the big ISPs have been putting all of their eggs into that basket, spreading misinformation that targets conservatives and trying to turn the net neutrality debate into a political circus. But we’re seeing cracks in that wall. Several Republican Senators have been openly considering voting for the CRA, while one of President Trump’s own high level advisors encouraged him to support it should it arrive on his desk.

If we can seize the momentum around this Senate vote and mobilize massive pressure on the House, we could see a small landslide of Republican lawmakers who choose to side with their constituents rather than cast a vote against net neutrality just months before the midterms. Either way, we need to harness as much political power as we can coming out of this CRA fight to ensure that we’re negotiating from a place of strength in any future congressional debates on the issue.

In a blog post for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, policy analyst Katharine Trendacosta provided links to where constituents could find out “where your representatives stand[s]” on net neutrality and also a link to a portal that would allow votes to “give [House members] a call telling them to use the Congressional Review Act to save the Open Internet Order.”

Free Press, another key member of the pro-net neutrality coalition, said there is not a minute to lose and put it this way:

Victory in the Senate!

Now, we go on the House.

START NOW: Call your representatives and tell them to get on the right side of history. The momentum is in our favor! Help save #NetNeutrality: https://t.co/vDFg24dtAv pic.twitter.com/2gvV2HB38Y

— Free Press (@freepress) May 16, 2018

“We’ve turned net neutrality into a mainstream issue for the first time ever,” declared Fight for the Future in their explainer. “And now we’re building a movement to make sure that we protect it for generations to come. The fight ahead is not going to be easy, but victory is within reach.”

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Featured image is from Fight for the Future.

Robert J. Barsocchini is a graduate student in American Studies. Years working as a cross-cultural intermediary for corporations in the film and Television industry sparked his interest in the discrepancy between Western self-image and reality. 

Shortly after becoming Britain’s prime minister in May 1940, Winston Churchill said the war will be directed “against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it’s in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest”. Such statements were a warning of what was to come. With the Nazis then rampaging across Europe, it would take time before Britain’s firestorms could be unleashed on the German people.

On 30 June 1940, Hitler’s Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering, then at the height of his popularity, declared just days after the fall of France,

“The war against England is to be restricted to destructive attacks against industry and air force targets… It is also stressed that every effort should be made to avoid unnecessary loss of life amongst the civilian population”.

By contrast, on 14 February 1942, a British Air Staff directive outlined their bombing campaigns should “be focused on the morale of the enemy’s civilian population”. As Daniel Ellsberg, the veteran former US military analyst, confirms in his recent book The Doomsday Machine, Britain was the first to begin “deliberate bombing of urban populations as the principal way of fighting a war”, starting in early 1942.

The murderous assaults on German civilians, often with incendiary bombs, were specifically to the liking of not just Churchill. Also a vociferous supporter of these methods was England’s Air Marshal, Arthur “Bomber” Harris – or “Butcher” Harris as he was known in the Royal Air Force. Among his first public broadcasts in the beginning of 1942, Harris said the Nazis had “sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind”.

Britain’s unscrupulous intentions were being signaled in even earlier military pronouncements. On 23 September 1941, a British Air Staff paper outlined that:

 “The ultimate aim of an attack on a [German] town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it… first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim is therefore twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction and (ii) fear of death”.

It was only after Britain began their mass targeting of residential areas that the Nazis responded in kind. On 28 March 1942, the RAF firestormed the medieval city of Lubeck, northern Germany, which persuaded Hitler to alter his tactics. During the British night raid on Lubeck, over 60% of all buildings there suffered damage, severe or light. The attacks lasted less than four hours, in which hundreds of Lubeck’s civilians were killed in the lightly-defended city.

“Bomber” Harris was satisfied with the destruction, saying Lubeck “was built more like a fire-lighter than a human habitation… it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance [Lubeck] than to fail to destroy a large industrial city”.

Lübeck Cathedral burning following the raids (Source: CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Britain’s outright targeting of German cities enraged Hitler. Just over two weeks after the Lubeck bombing, on 14 April 1942, a command was forwarded at his behest:

“The Fuhrer has ordered that the air war against England be given a more aggressive stamp… preference is to be given to those where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life”.

It would be unwise to suggest, however, that until April 1942 Hitler was a soft touch in relation to bombardment. For example, in September 1941, as his forces surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad (Petersburg), Hitler relayed the following order:

“The Fuhrer has decided to raze the city of Petersburg from the face of the earth. There is no reason for the future existence of this large city”.

Along with the people in it.

Soon, America willingly joined their British ally in the annihilation of German cities. In July 1943, US and British bombers killed over 40,000 civilians in Hamburg in a 10 day campaign – even more than was killed during the Luftwaffe’s eight month blitz of Britain. An eyewitness account of the Hamburg firestorms noted that

“Some people who tried to walk along, they were pulled in by the fire, they all of a sudden disappeared right in front of you”, while afterwards “Rats and flies ruled the city”.

Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1942-1945. Oblique aerial view of ruined residential and commercial buildings south of the Eilbektal Park (seen at upper right) in the Eilbek district of Hamburg, Germany. These were among the 16,000 multi-storeyed apartment buildings destroyed by the firestorm which developed during the raid by Bomber Command on the night of 27/28 July 1943 (Operation GOMORRAH). The road running diagonally from upper left to lower right is Eilbeker Weg, crossed by Rückertstraße.

The German historian and author, Jorg Friedrich, outlines that in total   About 600,000 German civilians were killed, including 76,000 children. It led Friedrich to describe Churchill as “the greatest child-slaughterer of all time”, with ample assistance provided by “Butcher” Harris, living up to his other nickname.

Little of these unwanted realities are outlined in Western mainstream records, historical accounts or school books. It seems not to fit with Western leaders’ saintly notion of the war being fought between “good” and “evil”. While Hitler’s Reich was one of the most murderous regimes in world history, Britain and America had hardly been angels of virtue until that point.

During Britain’s long subjugation and plundering of India, beginning in the mid-18th century – the imperial power’s policies were responsible for killing tens of millions of Indian people, mainly due to starvation caused from unnecessary droughts. In the year 1700, India had been one of the world’s richest countries, boasting 27% of global gross domestic product. By the time India finally gained independence from Britain in 1947, it was one of the earth’s poorest nations, while further plagued by widespread illiteracy and disease.

The United States’ foundation was built on settler-colonialism. Its basis was laid after Christopher Columbus, a mass murderer himself, “discovered” the continent in the late 15th century – often overlooked is that the indigenous population of 80 million or more had already long resided there. What followed was the Native Americans being “exterminated” in the words of America’s founding fathers, as the “superior” Anglo-Saxon race moved in and took their lands.

Meanwhile, as the Second World War advanced, one German city after another was incinerated by firestorms. Even small towns like Pforzheim, in southwest Germany, were obliterated by the RAF, killing a third of its 63,000 inhabitants in February 1945. Such atrocities came long after victory in the war was assured, mainly due to the Red Army’s exploits in the east.

It was previously hoped the Allies’ policies would turn Germany’s population against Hitler. It never happened. Not envisaged was that, from the mid-1930s until war’s end, millions of Germans were exposed to Joseph Goebbels‘ daily propaganda methods. Goebbels had, through devious marketing campaigns, ensured increasing numbers had access to radio sets. Through this medium, the virulently anti-Semitic propaganda minister had monopoly over the German mind. Come 1942 sixteen million households, about 70% of the German population, had confirmed radio reception. It should also be noted the dangers in rebelling against a dictatorship protected by Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the genocidal SS.

As the destruction mounted, by 20 April 1944 – Hitler’s 55^th birthday – adorning Berlin’s wrecked buildings were hundreds of miniature swastikas and banners, addressed personally to Hitler. Some messages read, “Our walls have broken, but not our hearts”. To avoid seeing the ruins, Hitler’s rare visits to Berlin were made by night. And yet, contrary to popular perception, Albert Speer observed that Hitler did not react to news of the Reich’s bombardment with apoplectic outbursts – rather, he responded to bombing reports with austere, reserved expressions.

The dictator only betrayed pained feelings when he learnt a particular theater or museum was damaged, such buildings being among his most prized possessions before the war. Residential areas were always of secondary importance. As a result, Hitler was oblivious to much of the German people’s suffering.

Indeed, from 23 June 1941, the Nazi leader spent over 800 days at the heavily wooded Wolf’s Lair headquarters, in East Prussia – 700 kilometers east of Berlin. The enormous military compound was built specifically for Hitler’s overseeing of Operation Barbarossa, on the Eastern Front. Remarkably, the heavily guarded headquarters escaped the attention of both Allied and Soviet intelligence. Hitler’s private secretary Traudl Junge said “there was never more than a single aircraft circling over the forest, and no bombs were dropped”.

At the Wolf’s Lair, secured from the realities of war, and surrounded by obsequious followers, Hitler eventually entered into a type of fantasy realm, as – despite a string of initial successes – the war slowly closed in around him. On 20 November 1944, Hitler departed the Wolf’s Lair for the final time, with the Soviet Army just 15 kilometers away having reached the small town of Angerburg.

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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.

Israel launched waves of air attacks and ground shelling on a score of alleged Iranian military positions in Syria this week.   Was this a big step forward in the plan by Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally Donald Trump to provoke a major war with Iran?

It certainly looks so.  The US, Saudi Arabia and Israel all recently suffered a stinging defeat in Syria. Their campaign to overthrow the Assad government in Damascus by using the rag-tag ISIS movement, then Sunni Muslim jihadist wild men, was defeated by the Syrian Army, backed by Russian air power, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and some Iranian militia groups and army advisors.

Israel now claims to have wiped out more than a score of Iranian positions in Syria.  As far as we can tell, these were minor logistics or communications facilities, not the backbone of a supposed Iranian offensive against Israel.

In fact, the alleged Iranian rocket barrage was directed at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that were illegally annexed and occupied after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and are still held, legally, as part of Syria. Israel is very nervous about having world attention drawn to its continued occupation of the strategic Golan Heights from which Israeli heavy artillery can reach Damascus.

But now that the Trump administration has fallen fully under the influence of the pro-war neocons, an attempt to overthrow the Iranian government appears highly likely, using both military intervention and intensified economic warfare.

Iran has been under siege by the US since the American/British installed shah was overthrown by a popular revolution in 1979. The CIA and Britain’s MI6 have mounted numerous attempts to oust the Islamic Republic and re-install a client ruler.

Ironically, the ‘democratic’ western powers – the US, Britain and France – rely on medieval monarchs and dictators to control the Mideast while democratic politicians and movements are ignored.  Iran, in spite of its many rigidities and failings, remains one of the region’s more democratic states.   Ask our Saudi or Kuwaiti allies when was the last time they held a real election?

The failure of western intelligence services to provoke serious uprisings in Iran (or Russia), means that the military option is increasingly tempting.   This probably means provoking military clashes with Iran in the Gulf leading to full-scale attacks on its nuclear infrastructure and industry.   US warplanes and warships are actively probing Iran’s borders.  In addition, US forces are getting ever more deeply involved in the Yemen War.

When the US last considered a major attack on Iran during the Bush years, the Pentagon (which opposed the idea) estimated it would need 2,800 air strikes against Iran on Day One alone.

Many of the same war party crowd that engineered the 2003 US invasion of Iraq are now running the Trump administration.  Their goal is to cripple Iran and leave the Mideast to joint Saudi-Egyptian-Israeli control.

Recall President George W. Bush’s assertion that once he had crushed Iraq the next targets of US military intervention would be Lebanon, Syria, Iran and then Pakistan.

Invading Iran would not be easy.  Iran has very little capability to project power beyond its borders.  Its air force, artillery and tanks are decrepit.  America controls the skies from Morocco to Afghanistan.  Iran is vulnerable to raids and small incursions but subjugating this large, mountainous nation of 80 million would be very difficult.

In fact, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander once told me, ‘let the Americans invade. They will break their teeth on Iran.’  Over-confidence, of course, but he had a point.  Fighting on the defensive in urban areas, Iran could offer fierce resistance.

America’s imperial machine, like its British Imperial predecessor, likes small, easy wars against small, backwards nations.  Iran would be very different.

As we have just seen with North Korea, Iran’s best survival strategy, short of security guarantees by Russia and China, would be to race to produce a small number of nuclear weapons to deter attacks by the US and Israel.  Europe, which co-sponsored the Iran nuclear act and is now humiliated by Trump reneging on the deal, is too weak and disorganized to guarantee the pact and stand up to Washington.  This is too bad.  Now would have been a fine time for the EU to assert its independence from US hegemony and begin building its own independent European military forces.

On the opening day of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers were murdering the children of Palestine as a sacrifice offering to their American masters. Mr. Jared Kushner “the messenger” not only did not stop this sacrificing offer, he even encouraged it. In his speech as the new American “peace broker” in the Middle East, Mr. Kushner said:

“As we have seen from the protests of the last month and even today, those provoking violence are part of the problem and not part of the solution”.

It is needless to say while he was blaming Palestinians as the “problem for peace”, Israeli snipers stationed about 45 miles from his podium, were busy solving this “problem” literally by gunning down and injuring the Palestinian protesters. According to the New York Times (May 14, 2018)

“By late in the evening, 58 Palestinians, including several teenagers, had been killed”.

An 8-month-old Palestinian infant Laila al-Ghandour was among the victims who died after inhaling tear gas. More than 2,700 were wounded by barrages of tear gas as well as live gunfire. Human Rights Watch described the killings as a “bloodbath”.

The battle between the civilized savages of the U.S./Israel and the outraged and desperate innocent Palestinians pose the undeniable challenge of drawing an effective strategy.

True and principled peace activists historically support and honor those who fearlessly scarify their lives for freedom with bravery. But this bravery needs to be guided by a conscious leadership. Peace activists around the world should introduce a unified plan of action between the endless battles of blood against bullet.

Only those peace activists who are armed with facts can organize a global union for peace to stop the warmongers’ war machine.

In 2018, the blood of Palestinian youth defeated the Israeli bullets; however this temporary bleeding victory is not a strategy, it is just a tactical move driven by empathy. For an effective strategy in advancement of the peace movement, there are dos and don’ts that need to be discussed freely.

But first, let’s review the political amplification of relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

The reality is that the U.S. and Zionist regime of Israel have lost their “Jerusalem Embassy” card. The picture of Ms. Haley leaving the U.N. Security Council meeting when she found herself at odds with just about every other member of the Council including the European allies; was a clear image of a defeated Imperial plan. When President Trump on November 6th 2017 announced that he had made up his mind to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he hoped this political maneuver would fulfill the vacuum of having an “elusive enemy” in the Middle East after the fall of ISIS in Syria and Iraq in the recent months. The White House administration and Mr. Netanyahu were hoping that by this stunt, the majority of people in the Muslim world would be challenged and respond desperately. However they underestimated the international backlash when the split images of the opening of the new U.S. embassy ceremony in Jerusalem were displayed live around the world next to the images of massacre of Palestinian youth on the Gaza borders. Upon this reality and experience, let’s discuss dos and don’ts.

Don’t’s: We should be independent from the Republican and Democratic parties in the U.S. and the similar parties in other countries. We should not rely on the corporate media and their 24/7 TV channels which at best could only produce boring and redundant political gossip shows. We also should reject those activists who are driven by anti-smite or other form of racists agenda or those irresponsible intellectuals who propagate anti-Semite phobia in the name of pure “Socialist” or “Progressive” formula. We condemn the sectarian attitude among peace activists. A peace movement is an exclusive and democratic movement which relies on the direct participation of the peaceful working people on a global scale.

Do’s: Organize locally and strive to connect to the other organizations that are against war and occupation. Our strength is in our unity. Understand that the lack of coherent leadership is not an excuse to act separately in despair. Support and trust the independent media such as the Global Research site and many other informative source of information which are listed as targets for internet censorship. Share opinions freely and contribute as free thinkers. Finally and more importantly, always rely on the glorious heritage and achievements in the past.

The true peace and justice activists call for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and strive for peace among all working people around the world.

Toward a Global Peace Union!

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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.

Introduction by Michael Brenner, May 17, 2018

The Middle East is in turmoil – with mortal risks at every point of the compass. While each crisis is presented in its own discrete terms in the mainstream media, we blind ourselves to two compelling realities: these conflicts are inter-twined; and the United States bears the main responsibility for this descent into mayhem and chaos. The chances of major conflagration mount even as American national aims and purposes are kept obscure. An unhinged nation is hurtling toward a disaster of choice.

Alastair Crooke is one of the few who have perceived the depth of our folly and the full import of what is occurring. He is a former British diplomat,  founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, and has a sterling record of integrity as well as insight into Middle Eastern affairs.

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Nahum Barnea writing in Yedioth Ahronoth sets out, plainly enough, the gamble underway between Israel and Iran (and to which Trump is willing accessory): In the wake of the US exit from JCPOA, Trump will threaten a rain of ‘fire and fury’ onto Tehran, should the latter attack Israel directly, whilst Putin is expected to restrain Iran from attacking Israel, using Syrian territory – thus leaving Netanyahu free to set new rules of the game by which the Israel may attack and destroy Iranian forces anywhere in Syria (and not just in the border area, as earlier agreed) when it wishes, without fear of retaliation.

Barnea calls this a this ‘a triple gamble’: “Netanyahu is counting on Khamenei’s caution, on Trump’s credibility, and on Putin’s generosity, three character traits that they have never been known to possess before today… The question is what will happen, if instead of breaking – the ayatollahs choose war, or more likely, the region devolves into war as a result of a hasty, uncalculated course of action by one of the players. Will Trump be willing, in order to defend Israel and Saudi Arabia, to open a new front in the Middle East? If he does, that will contrary to everything that he promised the voters during the election campaign”. Barnea’s colleague, Ben Caspit, however, asserts that this issue – US military support – is already assured:

“The United States [has] promised Israel full and total support on all fronts… if a regional war does break out, the United States will immediately make its position clear, express support for Israel, and send Moscow the right signals. This is to ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin stays out of the conflict, and does not try to intervene, whether directly or indirectly, on behalf of his allies, Iran and Syria. Upon returning from Washington, (Israeli Defence Minister) Liberman informed the prime minister that he had received a “green light” in security matters.”

Caspit candidly characterises the relationship, post JCPOA, between Bibi and Trump, thus: “There is only one thing that isn’t clear,” one of the people closest to Netanyahu told Al-Monitor, speaking on the condition of anonymity:

“That is, who works for whom? Does Netanyahu work for Trump, or is President Trump at the service of Netanyahu…From the outside, at least, upon close inspection, it looks like the two men are perfectly in sync. From the inside, this seems even more so: This kind of cooperation between the two leaders and their two offices — the Oval Office in the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem — sometimes makes it seem as if they are actually just one single, large office”, a senior Israeli Defence official told Caspit.

“For now, the gamble is paying off: The Iranians, have not (so far) responded. Now they have another good reason to display restraint: the battle for public opinion in Europe”, Barnea adds. “Trump could have declared a US withdrawal and made do with that. But under the influence of Netanyahu and of his new team, he chose to go one step further. The economic sanctions on Iran will be much tighter, beyond what they were, before the nuclear agreement was signed. ‘Hit them in their pockets’, Netanyahu advised Trump: if you hit them in their pockets, they will choke; and when they choke they will throw out the ayatollahs. As of last night [Trump’s exit from JCPOA], Trump had warmly adopted this approach.”

This then – from the horse’s mouth – is the Israeli view: Iran will be hit everywhere in Syria, (and much less plausibly) isolated diplomatically, and its economy shredded. The Iranian ‘regime’ is ‘ obbling’; its economy is “in a death spiral” and the Iranian rial is in freefall – if we are to believe the mainstream Israeli and American ‘hawk’ narrative.

Incidentally, the escalation and exchange of missile fire across the Israeli border on Wednesday and Thursday morning, was not Iranian in origin (there are no IRGC near the Golan). Nor was the exchange initiated by Iran, but rather by Israel, striking Syrian targets as it has done regularly over recent weeks. On this occasion, however, Israel intended to cast Iran as ‘the accused’ (the pre-announced opening of the shelters in occupied Golan by Israel was something of a ‘give-away’ to a coming false flag event), to further the pressures on Tehran.

In fact, that it was Damascus that broke convention by firing twenty missiles into occupied Golan, without taking into consideration Russian requests for restraint, is of greater import, than were it the Iranians that had fired the missiles. This missile exchange represented the first occasion, in decades, that Syria has fired missiles at Israeli military targets inside the Golan.

This represents the first ‘unintended consequence’ to Trump’s announcement: Israeli coat-trailing aimed at Iran, paradoxically, has forced the Syrian government to put the occupied Golan Heights into play, as the next battlefield.

“If Israel continues its attacks, Syria will think of sending its missiles or rockets way beyond the Golan Heights – to reach Israeli territory”, regional war commentator, Elijah Magnier forecasts.

But, contrary to the mainstream presentation, Trump’s ‘war’ on Iran has a much wider geo-political ramification than just a deepening of Iran-Israeli tensions. We will witness further ‘unintended consequences’ for the US, in the weeks ahead.

The wider significance to the above Israeli reading of the ‘Trump – Netanyahu understandings’ (if accurate – and probably, it is), is that it represents a strategic change: This is no longer Art of the Deal belligerence, as foreplay to a coupling – and ultimately to a negotiated settlement.

Barnea and other Israeli commentators may be correct: Netanyahu (and his team of hawks) has taken Trump, one step further. It has become the Art of ‘Regime Change’; a war of attrition against Iran – a medieval siege – by any other name.

Not only Iran, but North Korea, Russia and China will need to pay close attention. It seems that Kim Jong Un’s volunteering to talk de-nuclearisation with Trump has electrified, and seemingly legitimised, Trump’s enthusiasm for Art of the Deal style, ‘fire and fury’, threats-and-make up, tactics. Netanyahu however, seemingly has succeeded in waving the succulent scent of regime change before Trump’s nose, and lured him, to follow it on Bibi’s heels, hoping for a big ‘win’. Promising ‘fire and fury’, Trump seems convinced, is a ‘sure thing’ to achieving capitulation by the other party.

The problem is that Trump may find that he is building on sand. Was it Trump’s tough stance that brought Jong Un to the table? Or, perhaps contrarily, might Jong Un see a meeting with Trump precisely as the necessary and required price that he has to pay in order to get China ‘have his back’, as it were – in the event that a ‘de-nuclearisation for de-Americanisation’ of the region deal, just doesn’t work – and to develop his re-unification diplomacy with a South which now – for the first time – given its mandate to unification – irrespective of American wishes?

Is Trump even aware of this possibility? China is the Goliath in Korea’s back yard. It is its main – almost only trading partner – and it effectively controls the settings on the North Korea sanctions vice. And China has been tightening that vice, turn by turn. China has long, and insistently, advocated talks between Jong Un and Washington. Xi wants de-nuclearisation of the neighbourhood, and reconciliation with the South. Kim is complying with his powerful neighbour’s wishes; but, in turn, no doubt has been asking China to ‘have his back’ if it all goes wrong.

Trump’s ‘step beyond’ Art of the Deal strategies, to regime change (in Iran) does not bode well for China’s North Korea strategy. If Trump expects capitulation from Jong Un – and doesn’t get it, then China will have little option but to get involved in order to deter Trump from any ‘bloody-nose’ exercise, or from attempted regime change. China does not want Jong Un’s capitulation or removal — It has no desire to have an US proxy – or its missiles – on its border.

Trump’s rapture with his Art of the Deal – and newly, Regime Change approach – makes it more likely that Trump will mis-read Jong Un’s readiness to ‘kneel’ – with the ‘unintended consequence’ of finding that China has Jong Un’s ‘back’, and not Trump’s. The consequences may be profound.

In a similar vein, Israel has been predicting the overthrow of Iranian state by its people for decades (just as Israeli officials have been announcing Hizbullah’s weakness, and disavowal by the Lebanese people, with a constant regularity – at least until this week’s Lebanese elections).

Iran’s economy has been somewhat flaccid, it is fair to say; but it is not – at all – as weak (or in a ‘death spiral’) as the mainstream has it. Sure: Young people lack jobs (but that is the same across much of Europe). And 2018 is not 2012. Iran will not be either so financially or politically isolated in the wake of Trump’s JCPOA edict as before – in fact the Israeli-American initiative likely will bind Iran’s alliance with China and Russia, tighter. Iran will turn East, of course.

For, Russia, America’s message could not be plainer: The US and Israel want to keep Syria as an open wound, into which Israel can stick its finger at any time – primarily in order to deny President Putin any foreign policy ‘achievement’, but also just to keep Damascus ‘weak’. And Trump wants either the full capitulation of the Iranian government, or its overthrow.

With JCPOA exit, and the handing of Jerusalem to Israel, Putin will be contemplating a de-stabilised, conflicted and fragile, Middle East – just what China and Russia did not want to see. The paths of Syria, Iran and Russia are now deeply interwoven. They may have their differences, but Syria was the reason why they fight together, as comrades-in-arms, and why, in the wider context, they behave jointly as partners in a military and strategic alliance with China.

These three states are in a de facto alliance whose strategic domain, properly understood, is the entire Middle East, whether in terms of China’s Road and Corridor initiative, or Russia’s energy ‘heartland’ matching structure. Their interest is in a stable region, not a de-stabilised one. Trump’s two moves (JCPOA and Jerusalem) are fragmentation, explosive grenades tossed into the matrix of Chinese and Russian strategic interests.

Trump’s ‘step beyond’: his Art of exiting the deal in favour of regime change however, poses a different order of threat to Moscow. Of course, Putin is aware that the American ‘deep state’ wants its Atlanticist ‘fifth column’, economic power-base in Russia, to remove Putin from power – and for Russia to be brought to embrace the American-led global order.

Perhaps Putin had thought that somehow Trump would overcome the internal US ‘civil war’, to find his way towards détente. But the series of signals is unmistakeable: the initial US Defence Statements moved from seeing Russia as a ‘competitor’; then to ‘revisionist power’; then to number ‘one’ threat (above terrorism); then, to an much elevated ‘threat’ — demanding the up-grading of US missile systems, the replacement of its nuclear submarine fleet and the re-working of its nuclear arsenal; then to a doctrine of conditions-based use of nuclear weapons – and now, to the ‘step beyond’: regime change.

Putin understandably wants to avoid military conflict with the US, if at all possible, but, at the same time, he must know that if he does not draw Russia’s line in the sand for America (and Netanyahu), somewhere, soon, he will be perceived as being weak by the US hawks, who will just push him harder. Putin has been trying to mediate between Israel and Iran, but that prospect has been damaged by Pompeo and Trump’s anti-Iranian, Redemptionist passion. And Putin, too, must prepare for the worse with the US – and yet not prematurely damage the conditions for his Partner, Xi Jinping’s elaborate ongoing sparring match with Washington, over trade and tariffs and North Korea.

The greatest ‘unexpected consequence’ will be that Putin and Xi determine that Trump’s ‘step beyond’ precisely is the time to draw the ‘line in the sand’ – and resolve to enforce it. If this happens, everything changes. Does Trump understand this?

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

Featured image is from the author.

On 14 of May 1948 – Israel declared unilaterally her independence in a foreign land, called Palestine, supported by a UN Resolution sponsored by the UK (the United Nations “Partition Plan of Palestine” at the end of the British Mandate (euphemism for British ‘colony’), was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 II). 1948 was also the year of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights – this year, 2018, the UN declared Human Rights are, like Israel, celebrating their 70^th Birthday (United Nations General Assembly, Paris, 10 December 1948 – General Assembly Resolution 217 A). During 70 years of Human Rights, the UN has tacitly allowed Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, who lived in their own land, Palestine.

The UN has allowed Israel’s massacre of Palestine against dozens of UN Resolution to restrain Israel from their aggressions on Palestine, killing tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians, women, children and men. Destroying their livelihood, schools, hospitals and living quarters. Worse, confining 2 million Palestinians in an open torture and terror camp, called Gaza.

All this under the “watchful eye” of the United Nations, thousands of Blue Helmets patrolling ‘disputed’ – aka Israeli stolen territory from Palestine and surrounding Arab nations. And the world at large – by now 193 member-nations that make up the UN – watching, observing, but not saying beep loud enough to be heard.

New York Times 1945

It is a shame. Israel is a miserable and criminal disgrace – but a worse shame is the United Nations, the collectivity of 193 countries who collectively hide behind the mantle of the UN. Those who have dared to protest in the defense of human rights and in defense of Palestinians’ self-determination are few and far in between, risking the sword of the emperor and his poodles. Most have bent to and are still bending to – the king bull, Washington – and to its master, Israel. This is what is lamentable, that humanity has become a spineless bunch of nations – all kneeling in front of the big Satan, the torturing and killing monster, the US-armed to the teeth killing machine – the little dog that counts on the unlimited support from the most horrific bulldozer. That is an atrocious and unspeakable shame. – At least one honorable country, South Africa, has expelled Israel’s Ambassador over these most recent bloody atrocities.

That is the ignominy of our humanity in the 21^st Century. – Yes, there are Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria… and a few more sovereign nations that stand-up in protest, trying to use the corrupted UN system to right the wrongs – to no avail. Of course not. The majority counts – and the majority is being blackmailed by Washington on behalf of Israel into submission – or else – sanctions loom, in the form of blocked trade, blocked international monetary transfers, confiscation of assets abroad – or worse.

Where are the all so revered Human Rights that nobody dares to even cite, let alone enforce, in the case of Israel’s atrocities on Palestine, with the explicit support of the United States and most of her puppet “allies”?

When Trump in December 2017 declared that the US will transfer her Embassy to Jerusalem, he endorsed just once more a promise made over the last 30 years by several US Presidents, from the Bush dynasty to Clinton to Obama – but none of them implemented that promise, lest it would undermine peace negotiations. These promises by Washington were, of course, full of hypocrisy, as Washington always knew that peace was not on the table, that neither Israel or Washington were in favor of peace. Peace would have meant, as per the 1993 Oslo Accord, a two-state solution, meaning Israel and Palestine would live side-by-side in peace;two sovereign nations with equal rights.

The Oslo Accords are a number of agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO]. The Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington DC in 1993; and the Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995. These Accords marked the start of the Oslo process, aimed at achieving a Peace Treaty, based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, fulfilling the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The Oslo Accords are valid to this day. They counter then and today the larger objective of Israel and the United States – of a “Greater Israel”, stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile, a nuclearized Israel, dominating the Middle East – and disposing of the energy and other mineral riches of the entire region.

Well, Trump, has made his campaign promise true. He – ordered by his darkest handlers –has cut the hypocrisy, using Israel’s 70^th Birthday, 14 May 2018 to make Israel’s obsessive and oppressive dream come true, officially inaugurating the US Embassy in Jerusalem – to the detriment of peace and the total destitution of Palestine. The Oslo Accords saw Jerusalem as the final jewel in the mosaic for peace in a two-state solution – the Capital of both Palestine and Israel.

Trump’s decision – although refuted vehemently by the UN – has not only pushed peace light-years away into a phantom distance, but it has brought about a massacre – an unpardonable massacre – with Israeli soldiers armed to the teeth killing with live ammunition. Tens of thousands of unarmed Palestinians were protesting on the Gaza-Israeli border, in the middle of nowhere, at least 100 km away from the US Embassy inaugural celebration in Jerusalem. Israeli soldiers and police killed at least 60, twenty or more of them children and women, and injuring about 3,000 – people who could not be properly treated at hospitals. Israel has blocked the shipment of medication and is systematically bombing Palestinian health facilities.

The protesters were far away from Jerusalem, where the inaugural US-Embassy celebrations took place, cordoned-off by armed security forces and where the protesters could do no harm. The demonstrations were an expression of anger, of helplessness in the face of so much injustice which nobody, but nobody on this planet manifestly and effectively objected and intervened against. Palestinians know, this will mean more oppression, more subjugation to Israel’s terror tyranny – more killing, more starvation as Israel is blocking vital food shipments to Gaza – where 50% of children below 5, are already chronically malnourished.

What happened on 14 May 2018 in Palestine, those who are behind the apartheid, ethnic cleansing and outright Holocaust Israel has imposed on Palestine during the last 70 years,belong, no doubt, before a Nuremberg-type tribunal – with sentences as harsh as those inflicted by the allies after WWII on the Nazis and their Holocaust.

Trump and his Zion-handlers are responsible for a massacre of unprecedented dimensions since Israel’s war on Gaza in 2014. And how many vassals of the tyrannical and criminal pair, United States and Israel, will now also shift their Embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem just to stay in the limelight of US favors, and, of course, to cement this universal Wrong?

And where are the UN declared Human Rights, ironically also celebrating their 70^th Birthday this year? – Under the Human Rights Act the UN has a right to intervene in countries and situations, where massive human rights infractions are committed, like in Palestine. Dozens of such resolutions had been submitted to the UN Security Council, they were all vetoed by Washington. What good is the UN? None, whatsoever. No longer, not today, the system is totally corrupted, bought and blackmailed into submission to the wishes and political whims of the US and Israel.

Likewise have all the related UN agencies been corrupted and swayed to favor the Exceptional Nation and the Chosen People. There is no way that the International Courts of The Hague would ever prosecute a war crime committed by the west, let alone by the west’s chief criminals, the US and Israel. It’s simply not going to happen. Not while the current power structures are in place. Why then even believe in this fake justice system?And who still dares quoting them as beacons of international justice? – This is a farce, if there has ever been one.

The noble ideas behind the creation of the United Nations and the Declaration of universal Human Rights have in the last 70 years been corrupted to the point of non-recognition. Corrupted by political pressure, blackmailing, by fear of sanctions, or actual economic sanctions – all of which is only possible because the west is also living with a totally fraudulent US imposed fiat dollar-based monetary system that controls every financial transaction of every “sovereign” nation, hence can block any monetary move, seize assets abroad, and block international contracts, as they (almost) all are written in US dollars.

The latter is gradually fading, as nations are aware of their vulnerability by sticking to the US dollar. Many are now dealing directly in their own currencies, trying to circumvent the US monetary control.But that recognition, again, is weakened itself by the fear of sanctions, or condemnation by US courts which have in fact absolutely no jurisdiction in another sovereign land. But, since under the current western Ponzi fiat scheme all financial transactions have to flow through a US bank either in New York or London, potential non-adherence to the rule is “punishable”, and that mostly by economic strangulation, regime change or death. – It’s a vicious circle, under which Human Rights are just a slogan and a farce; and under which the rights of sovereign nations, for example of Palestine, remain not more than a pipe dream.

But despite all war crimes and massacres – JUSTICE – as human spirituality is still there, cannot be killed. It may be pushed away, subjugated, ignored, castrated and violated, but it doesn’t go away. It’s in all of us; just deep down and asleep in western minds, indoctrinated and brain washed by daily propaganda lies.

The combined neoliberal onslaught with impunity from all sides reaches a level of increasing awareness and rejection; the fearlessness of diabolical actions by neofascist governments is about to cause an awakening, a consciousness that dares to say – enough is enough. Take France’s Macron’s labor reforms – since February this year France has been plagued by strikes no-end – and no end is in sight. This is the worst – or the best – France has known since the 1968 student up-raisings. France, under Macron, the Rothschild-implant, is also the most militarized country in Europe. The European Union – at least for now –and since Washington’s stepping out from Iran’s Nuclear Deal, is distinctly distancing herself from the extremist, unfettered neoliberal politics of Washington. It’s perhaps too soon to call Victory – but this abject, unjustified and criminal slaughter of Palestinians, of another blow of violent oppression of Palestine (there is no word that can properly describe what happened on 14 May 2018), may signal that the monster vessel on high sea is losing notch-by-little-notch its diabolical North.

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

Featured image is from Voice of the Cape.

America’s Republican politicians complain that “entitlements,” by which they mean pensions and medical care, are leading the country to bankruptcy even as they fatten the spending on the Pentagon, which now takes 12 percent of the overall budget. And it should be noted that while workers contribute to the social programs during all their years of employment, the money that goes to the military comes straight out of the pockets of taxpayers before being wasted in ways that scarcely benefit the average citizen unless one seriously thinks that folks over in Syria, Iran and Afghanistan actually do threaten the survival of the United States of America.

I was in a Virginia supermarket the other day checking out when the woman behind the cash register in a perky voice asked me “Will you give $5 to support our troops?” I responded “No. Our troops already get way too much of our money.” She replied, “Hee, hee that’s a funny joke” and I said “It’s not a joke.” Her face dropped and she signaled to her boss over in customer service and asked her to take over, saying that I had been rude.

If there is any group in the United States that exceeds the sheer greed of our politicians it is the military, which believes itself to be “entitled” as a consequence of its role in the global war on terror. I am a veteran who began service in a largely draftee army in which we were paid “twenty-one dollars a day once a month” as the old World War 2 song goes. When we got out, the GI Bill gave us $175 a month to go back to college, which did not cover much.

Today’s United States has 2,083,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen on active duty plus reserves. Now that the military is an all-volunteer rather than a conscript force, it is understandable that pay and benefits should be close to or equivalent to civilian pay scales. Currently, a sergeant first class with 10 years in service gets paid $3968 a month. A captain with ten years gets $6271. That amounts to $47,616 and $75,252 a year respectively plus healthcare, food, housing, cost of living increases and bonuses to include combat pay.

Though there are several options for retirement, generally speaking a soldier, sailor Marine or airman can retire after 20 years with half of his or her final “high three” pay as a pension, which means an 18-year-old who enlists right out of high school will be 38 and if he or she makes sergeant first class (E-7) he or she will be collecting $2338 a month or more for a rest of his or her life adjusted for cost of living,

Many Americans would be astonished at the pensions that general officers and admirals receive, particularly since 80% of them also land in “retirement” generously remunerated positions with defense contractors either in active positions soliciting new contracts from their former peers or sitting on boards. General David Petraeus, whom The Nation describes as the “general who lost two wars,” pulls in a pension of $220,000 even though he was forced to resign as CIA Director due to passing classified information to his mistress. He is also chairman of a New York City based company KKR Global, which is part of a private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts. He reportedly is paid in six figures plus bonuses for “oversee[ing] the institute’s thought leadership platform focused on geopolitical and macro-economic trends, as well as environmental, social, and governance issues.”

It apparently is difficult to take money away from general and flag officers. An Air Force four-star general named Arthur Lichte was reduced in rank to a two-star in 2017 after he was found guilty of having raped a lower ranking woman officer. His pension went down from $216,000 to $156,000 due to the reduction. Normally, however, America’s 1,000 general and flag officers can look forward to comfortable retirements.

But on top of that rather generous bit of cash there are the considerable other benefits, as the old recruiting sergeants would put it, the “bennies.” Military retirees can receive full tuition and expenses at a college or technical school if they choose to go back to school. This is why one sees so many ads for online universities on television – they are trolling for soldier dollars knowing that it’s free money. The retiree will also have access to heavily subsidized medical care for him or herself plus family. The medical care is a significant bonus under the Tricare system, which describes itself on its website as “the gold standard for medical coverage, [that] is government managed health insurance.” A friend who is retired recently had a hip replacement operation that would have cost $39,000 for only a few hundred dollars through Tricare.

What is significant is that even enlisted military personnel can start a second career on top of their pension, given that many of them are still in their thirties. Some that have security clearances can jump into highly paid jobs with defense contractors immediately while others also find places in the bureaucracy with the Department of Homeland Security. Working for the government twice is called “double dipping.”

Some would argue that military personnel deserve what they get because the jobs are by their very nature dangerous, sometimes fatal. Indeed, the number of maimed and PTSD-afflicted soldiers returning from the endless wars is a national tragedy and caring for them should be a top priority. But the truth is that only a very small fraction, by some estimates far less than 20% of Army and Marine personnel in so-called “combat arms,” ever are in danger. Air Force and Navy personnel rarely experience combat at all apart from bombing targets far below or launching cruise missiles against Syrians. It is true that given the volatile nature of war against insurgents in places like Afghanistan many soldiers in support roles can come under fire, but it is far from normal and most men and women in service never experience a gun fired in anger.

Some numbers-crunchers in the Pentagon have already raised the alarm that the current pay, benefits and retirement levels for military personnel is unsustainable if the United States continues its worldwide mission against terrorists and allegedly rogue regimes. And it is also unsustainable if the U.S. seeks to return to a constitutional arrangement whereby the nation is actually defended by its military, not subordinated to it and being bankrupted by its costs.

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Featured image is from the author.

Iran, under a renewed threat of U.S. sanctions returning, two months ago decided to switch using the greenback as a currency in its imports and banned all traders from using USD. A directive came from the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade. Iran was being backed into a corner and was facing a situation of having has no access to dollar transactions because of the sanctions. Hence, it decided to remove that threat. Now instead of using banks, it has to use a network of foreign exchange bureaus and even gone the distance by saying it wants no transactions at all in USD.

This was quickly but quietly followed up with a Reuters report at the same time in March that China was now ready to start testing its new system and that regulators had asked a handful of financial institutions to prepare for pricing China’s crude imports in the yuan. Since the launch in May, the interest in the renminbi-backed oil contracts has steadily increased. Traded daily volumes hit a record 250,000 lots within two weeks and surprisingly the share of yuan contracts in global trading jumped to 12 percent from 8 percent just eight weeks earlier.

Then, an industry news source for the oil and gas industry reported on April 9th that Russia was considering replacing the U.S. dollar in crude oil payments on deals with Turkey and Iran, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said.

According to Novak,

“There is a common understanding that we need to move towards the use of national currencies in our settlements. There is a need for this, as well as the wish of the parties. This concerns both Turkey and Iran – we are considering an option of payment in national currencies with them. This requires certain adjustments in the financial, economic and banking sectors.”

Two weeks later Novak then announced that Russia had put together an oil-for-goods program with Iran and confirmed that the first shipments had been made.  The deal aims for five years of trading and gets around the USD trade.

So far, no reader should be surprised that Russia, Turkey and Iran have decided to ‘ditch the dollar.’ It may be news that China is preparing the way to follow through as well.

However, a major turning point in relations between the US and EU is not far from an announcement. After infuriating the European Union over a series of deals like the Paris Climate Accord, TTIP and others, the final straw came when after twelve years of EU negotiators being the linchpin to the Iran nuclear deal, Donald Trump decided the best course of action – is to withdraw from the deal and impose even harsher sanctions.

With the USA giving the green-light under Obama in 2015 to allow Iranian trade, the EU struck lucrative deals worth tens of billions. In 2017, EU trade with Iran increased 45 percent from the previous year with the same growth expected by 2020. By contrast, the USA managed less than one-tenth of the trade available.

The USA has now not only scuppered EU growth plans but dangerously caused an inflationary spike in oil prices, meaning the EU is hit with the double whammy of inflationary pressures and economic growth plans turning into unemployment statistics.

As we reported last week, the EU has lost patience and all but declared it is now on an economic collision course with the United States of America.

A source told RIA Novosti –

 “I’m privy to the information that the EU is going to shift from dollar to euro to pay for crude from Iran.

In the last few hours, OilPrice.com the industry sector news outlet has just reported that the “EU Could Switch To Euros In Oil Trade With Iran” and so has the International Business Times.

Other measures are being considered. The 1996 Blocking Statute, which prohibited European companies from complying with US extraterritorial laws may be restored. Twenty years ago, when the Clinton administration threatened sanctions against European companies in the same Iran sanctions battle against Europe, the EU passed these blocking statutes giving companies cover to continue with business as usual. Clinton was forced to back down. The George W. Bush administration kept the sanctions on the go but did not enforce them for fear of sparking a trade war with Europe.

Some EU banks have declared they are already in a position to provide trading services to European corporations wishing to do trade with Iran.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

On Wednesday, May 16th, Russian Television reported recent crackdowns against the press, on the part of both Ukraine’s Government and Israel’s Government. One headline story, “9 journalists injured by Israeli gunfire in Gaza ‘massacre’, total now over 20”, reported that Israel had shot dead two journalists:

“Yaser Murtaja, 31, a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media agency, died on April 7 after he was shot by Israeli forces the previous day while covering a protest south of the Gaza Strip. He wore a blue protective vest marked ‘PRESS’.”

And:

“Ahmad Abu Hussein, 24, was shot by Israeli forces during a protest in the Gaza strip on April 13. He died from his injuries on April 25. He was also wearing a protective vest marked ‘PRESS’ at the time.”

The other 18 instances were only injuries, not murders, but Israel has now made clear that any journalist who reports from the Palestinian side is fair game for Israel’s army snipers — that when Palestinians demonstrate against their being blockaded into the vast Gaza prison, and journalists then report from amongst the demonstrators instead of from the side of the snipers, those journalists are fair game by the snipers, along with those demonstrators.

Some of the surviving 18 journalists are still in critical condition and could die from Israel’s bullets, so the deaths to journalists might be higher than just those two.

Later in the day, RT bannered “Fist-size gunshot wounds, pulverized bones, inadmissible use of force by Israel in Gaza – HRW to RT” and presented a damning interview with the Israel & Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch.

The other crackdown has been by Ukraine. After the U.S. Obama Administration perpetrated a very bloody coup in Ukraine during February of 2014, that country has plunged by every numerical measure, and has carried out raids against newsmedia that have reported unfavorably on the installed regime. The latest such incident was reported on May 16th by Russian Television, under the headline, “US endorses Kiev’s raid on Russian news agency amid international condemnation”. An official of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) stated there:

“I reiterate my call on the authorities to refrain from imposing unnecessary limitations on the work of foreign journalists, which affects the free flow of information and freedom of the media.”

An official of the CPJ (Committee to Protect journalists) stated:

“We call on Ukrainian authorities to disclose the charges and evidence they have against Vyshinsky or release him without delay. … We also call on Ukrainian authorities to stop harassing and obstructing Russian media operating in Ukraine. The criminalization of alternative news and views has no place in a democratic Ukraine.”

However, as reported by RT, Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General called the editorial policy of the anti-regime RIA Ukraine “anti-Ukrainian” in nature, amounting to “state treason.” So, the prosecutor is threatening to categorize and prosecute critical press under Ukraine’s treason law.

The U.S. regime is not condemning either of its client-regimes for their crackdowns. (It cites Ukraine’s supposed victimhood from “Russian propaganda” as having caused Ukraine’s action, and justifies Israel’s gunning-down of demonstrators and of journalists as having been necessary for Israel’s self-defense against terrorism.) In neither instance is the U.S. dictatorship saying that this is unacceptable behavior for a government that receives large U.S. taxpayers funds. Of course, in the U.S., the mainstream press aren’t allowed to report that either Israel or today’s Ukraine is a dictatorship, so they don’t report this, though Israel clearly is an apartheid racist-fascist (or ideologically nazi, but in their case not against Jews) regime, and Ukraine is clearly also a racist-fascist, or nazi, regime, which engages in ethnic cleansing to get rid of voters for the previous — the pre-coup — Ukrainian government. People who are selected individually by the installed regime, get driven to a big ditch, shot, with the corpses piling up there, and then the whole thing gets covered over. This is America’s client-‘democracy’ in Ukraine, not its client-‘democracy’ in Israel.

May 16th also was the day when the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10 to 5 to approve as the next CIA Director, Gina Haspel, the person who had headed torture at the CIA’s black site in Thailand where Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times and blinded in one eye in order to get him to say that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks; and, since then, Zubaydah, who has never been in court, has been held incommunicado at Guantanamo, so that he can’t testify in court or communicate with the press in any way. “The U.S. Government has never charged Zubaydah with any crime.” And the person who had ordered and overseen his torture will soon head the agency for which she worked, the CIA.

Whether the U.S. regime will soon start similarly to treat its own critical press as “traitors” isn’t clear, except that ever since at least the Obama Administration, and continuing now under Trump, the U.S. Government has made clear that it wants to seize and prosecute both Edward Snowden and Julian Assange for their journalistic whistleblowing, violations of “state secrets,” those being anything that the regime wants to hide from the public — including things that are simply extremely embarrassing for the existing rulers. Therefore, the journalistic-lockdown step, from either Israel, or Ukraine, to U.S., would be small, for the United States itself to take, if it hasn’t yet already been taken in perhaps secret ways. But at least, the Senate Intelligence Committee is strongly supportive of what the U.S. Government has been doing, and wants more of it to be done.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Nation.

Over the last two years, academic researchers have identified various methods that they can transmit hidden commands that are undetectable by the human ear to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant.

According to a new report from The New York Times, scientific researchers have been able “to secretly activate the artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, making them dial phone numbers or open websites.” This could, perhaps, allow cybercriminals to unlock smart-home doors, control a Tesla car via the App, access users’ online bank accounts, load malicious browser-based cryptocurrency mining websites, and or access all sort of personal information.

In 2017, Statista projected around 223 million people in the U.S. would be using a smartphone device, which accounts for roughly 84 percent of all mobile users. Of these 223 million smartphones users, around 108 million Americans are using the Android Operating System, and some 90 million are using Apple’s iOS (operating system). A new Gallup poll showed that 22 percent of Americans are actively using Amazon Echo or Google Assistant in their homes.

With much of the country using artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, a new research document published from the University of California, Berkeley indicates inaudible commands could be embedded “directly into recordings of music or spoken text,” said The New York Times.

For instance, a millennial could be listening to their favorite song: ‘The Middle’ by Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey. Embedded into the audio file could have several inaudible commands triggering Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa to complete a task that the user did not instruct — such as, buying merchandise from the music performer on Amazon.

“We wanted to see if we could make it even more stealthy,” said Nicholas Carlini, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in computer security at U.C. Berkeley and one of the paper’s authors.

At the moment, Carlini said this is only an academic experiment, as it is only a matter of time before cybercriminals figure out this technology.

“My assumption is that the malicious people already employ people to do what I do,” he added.

The New York Times said Amazon “does not disclose specific security measure” to thwart a device from an ultrasonic attack, but the company has taken precautionary measures to protect users from unauthorized human use. Google told The New York Times that security development is ongoing and has developed features to mitigate undetectable audio commands.

Both companies’ [Amazon and Google] assistants employ voice recognition technology to prevent devices from acting on certain commands unless they recognize the user’s voice.

Apple said its smart speaker, HomePod, is designed to prevent commands from doing things like unlocking doors, and it noted that iPhones and iPads must be unlocked before Siri will act on commands that access sensitive data or open apps and websites, among other measures.

Yet many people leave their smartphones unlocked, and, at least for now, voice recognition systems are notoriously easy to fool.

There is already a history of smart devices being exploited for commercial gains through spoken commands,” said The New York Times.

Last year, there were several examples of companies and even cartoons taking advantage of weaknesses in voice recognition systems, including Burger King’s Google Home commercial to South Park‘s episode with Alexa.

While there are currently no American laws against broadcasting subliminal or ultrasonic messages to humans, let alone artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warns against the practice, calling it a “counter to the public interest,” and the Television Code of the National Association of Broadcasters bans “transmitting messages below the threshold of normal awareness.” However, The New York Times points out that “neither says anything about subliminal stimuli for smart devices.”

Recently, the ultrasonic attack technology showed up in the hands of the Chinese. Researchers at Princeton University and China’s Zhejiang University conducted several experiments showing that inaudible commands can, in fact, trigger voice-recognition systems in an iPhone.

“The technique, which the Chinese researchers called DolphinAttack, can instruct smart devices to visit malicious websites, initiate phone calls, take a picture or send text messages. While DolphinAttack has its limitations — the transmitter must be close to the receiving device — experts warned that more powerful ultrasonic systems were possible,” said The New York Times.

DolphinAttack could inject covert voice commands at 7 state-of-the-art speech recognition systems (e.g., Siri, Alexa) to activate always-on system and achieve various attacks, which include activating Siri to initiate a FaceTime call on iPhone, activating Google Now to switch the phone to the airplane mode, and even manipulating the navigation system in an Audi automobile. (Source: guoming zhang) 

DolphinAttack Demonstration Video 

While the number of smart devices in consumers’ pockets and at their homes is on the rise, it is only a matter of time before the technology falls into the wrong hands, and unleashed against them. Imagine, cybercriminals accessing your Audi or Tesla via ultrasonic attacks against voice recognition technology on a smart device. Maybe these so-called smart devices are not smart after all, as the dangers of these devices are starting to be realized. Millennials will soon be panicking.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

China is the world’s largest oil importing/consuming nation. Trading on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange since March, its petro-yuan poses the first ever challenge to petro-dollar dominance.

Will an EU petro-euro be a petro-dollar challenge too great to overcome? Will US sanctioned nations and their trading partners weaken dollar dominance by bypassing it in trade entirely?

China is shaking up the oil futures market at the expense of the dollar. Will the EU go the same way, freeing itself from observing US sanctions at the expense of its own interests?

Will the petro-yuan and a petro-euro, if introduced, prove game-changing longer-term?

The dollar as the world’s reserve currency remains dominant. Are its dominant days numbered?

Will Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal weaken dollar dominance? Iran’s trading partners have 90 days to decide whether to observe or bypass US sanctions in trade with the Islamic Republic – 180 days for Iranian oil.

Heavy US pressure is being exerted to go along with US sanctions, especially on EU nations, significant buyers of Iranian oil and other products.

Since Trump’s announced JCPOA pullout, Shanghai crude oil futures have been steadily rising. China effectively circumvents US sanctions by petro-yuan trading, along with creating companies operating in Iran and cooperating solely with the country.

Following Trump’s JCPOA pullout, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said his government remains committed to the international agreement, stressing:

Beijing “will continue with normal and transparent practical cooperation with Iran on the basis of not violating our international obligations.”

His government “oppose(s) the imposition of unilateral sanctions and the so-called long-arm jurisdiction by any country in accordance with its domestic laws.”

Will Brussels go the same way by switching from dollar trade to euros in dealings with Iran through the European Investment Bank (bypassing US ones), perhaps going the same way in trading with other countries?

At stake is 20 billion euros in annual EU/Iran trade. Increasing bilateral and multilateral trade in yuan, euros, and other currencies would greatly diminish dollar dominance, perhaps end it entirely – a significant blow to US hegemony if things develop this way.

In April, Iran switched from dollars to euros in international trade. According to EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini:

Brussels and Tehran are discussing ways of “maintaining and deepening economic relations with Iran; the continued sale of Iran’s oil and gas condensate petroleum products and petrochemicals and related transfers; effective banking transactions with Iran; continued sea, land, air and rail transportation relations with Iran; the further provision of export credit and development of special purpose vehicles in financial banking, insurance and trade areas, with the aim of facilitating economic and financial cooperation, including by offering practical support for trade and investment.”

According to Oilprice.com, some refiners and traders are concerned about financing issues if buying Iranian oil continues despite US sanctions, adding:

Insuring tankers is another major issue, “some shipping companies…already refusing to commit tankers to new Iranian cargoes, for fear of complications in the cargo and insurance related payments.”

The EU and Washington are the world’s largest political, economic and military partners. Most EU nations are US-dominated NATO members.

While Brussels at times disagrees with US policies, most often the EU goes along – notably by imposing sanctions on Russia along with Washington, despite harming its own self-interest.

The EU and America represent around 60% of global GDP, about a third of world trade in goods, over 40% in services – Europe and the US highly dependent on access to each other’s market.

Will Brussels risk harming political and economic relations with Washington by going its own way in dealings with Iran?

RT cited an unnamed source, saying the EU intends circumventing US sanctions on Iranian oil by using euros to keep buying it – perhaps continuing overall trade with Iran the same way.

Federica Mogherini was quoted, saying

“(w)e’re not naive and know it will be difficult for all sides.”

In relations with Washington, the EU most often is subservient to its interests. Will this time be different?

Will EU countries risk losing free access to the US market and possible sanctions if it continues normal economic and political relations with Iran – defying Washington?

Based on past history, the odds are long. Yet the jury is very much out. If this time is different, it’ll represent a major change in EU/US relations – perhaps the same way ahead on Russia.

It’s too soon to know, but it begs the question. Will Trump’s JCPOA pullout prove hugely counterproductive for Washington?

Will it be a long-remembered major mistake? Will it trigger belligerent US actions on Iran for failing to achieve its economic aims if things turn out this way?

Lots of questions remain unanswered – the fullness of time alone to explain how things will unfold ahead.

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

Overview

Since 30 March 2018, the Gaza Strip has witnessed an enormous increase in Palestinian casualties in the context of mass demonstrations taking place along Israel’s perimeter fence with Gaza. The demonstrations have occurred as part of the ‘Great March of Return’, a series of mass protests, expected to continue up to 5 June.

The large number of casualties among unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, including a high percentage of demonstrators hit by live ammunition, has raised concerns about excessive use of force by Israeli troops. Gaza’s health sector is struggling to cope with the mass influx of casualties, due to years of blockade, internal divide and a chronic energy crisis, which have left essential services in Gaza barely able to function.

Key humanitarian needs

• Rapid deployment of quality-assured emergency medical teams to conduct complex lifesaving surgery.
• Procurement of essential drugs, disposables and medical equipment to ensure accurate diagnostics and treatment of the injured.
• Increase in the number and presence of civil society partners to document possible human rights violations.
• Legal aid to address restrictions impeding medical patients from receiving treatment outside Gaza.
• Mental health and psychological support for children and families impacted by violence.
• Access to critical medical cases to treatment outside Gaza.

Download PDF (5.47 MB)

The news that Israel killed more than 60 Palestinians on Monday alone, has sparked criticism from Americans who are frustrated with the United States’ failure to hold one of its closest allies accountable for the human rights violations it is committing—and individuals in one state will soon be labeled as “anti-Semitic” for openly voicing their opinion.

South Carolina will become the first state to legally define criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism” when a new measure goes into effect on July 1, targeting public schools and universities. While politicians have tried to pass the measure as a standalone law for two years, they finally succeeded temporarily by passing it as a “proviso” that was slipped into the 2018-2019 budget.

According to the text of the measure, the definition of “anti-Semitism” will now include:

• a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities;
• calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews; making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as a collective; accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, the state of Israel, or even for acts committed by non-Jews;
• accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust;
• accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations;
• using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism to characterize Israel or Israelis;
• drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis;
• blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions;
• applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;
• multilateral organizations focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations;
• denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist, provided, however, that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.

As can be determined by the long list of ways in which South Carolina will now define “anti-Semitism,” individuals will be forced to tiptoe around a legitimate subject, and expressing an opinion that is no longer considered politically correct can now be legally used against them.

Calling out this bill is not antisemitic, it is pro free speech. Criticizing the Israeli government as well as any other government is the right and duty of all free humanity. Just as TFTP advocates for the freedom of Americans, we advocate for the freedom of Israelis and the Palestinians. Only through discussion and peaceful criticism will peace ever be achieved.

What’s more, even the chief of the IDF would be considered in violation of this law because in 2016, he gave a speech comparing the “contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

For as long as this bill has been proposed, it has been criticized by many who argue that it infringes on Americans’ First Amendment rights. With the measure currently focusing on public universities, it has left protesters concerned that it will hurt one group while allegedly helping another. Caroline Nagel, a professor at the University of South Carolina, told The State that she is concerned the law will discourage discussions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will hinder pro-Palestine student groups.

“This bill, I fear, will silence professors and student groups who are trying to explain and to give voice to a diversity of opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am frankly baffled as to why any legislator would consider an ideal to curtail our freedom of speech,” Nagel said.

The United States is a country that prides itself on the “freedom and democracy” it has shared with other foreign nations over the years, and there is no doubt that if the governments in Syria, Iran or Russia were openly shooting and killing civilian protesters, the U.S. would be calling for war and championing a full-scale invasion.

But when Israel shoots and kills 60 civilians and injures around 1,700 in just one day, the U.S. responds to the bloodshed by blocking the United Nations Security Council’s attempt to push for an independent investigation into Israel’s actions.

Unfortunately, the idea that Israel should be exempt from criticism, and that all of its actions are automatically justified—when a very different standard applies to its neighbors—is nothing new in the United States.

As The Free Thought Project reported, 41 other members of Congress came together to champion proposed legislation in July 2017 that would “make literal criminals of any Americans boycotting Israel—a brazen, if not explicit, attack on the BDS Movement, incidentally exploding in popularity worldwide as the belligerent nation continues its occupation of Palestinian lands.”

Then when a hurricane caused massive destruction in Texas in October 2017, residents in Dickinson received a notice from the city that they would only receive funds to repair their homes if they agreed “not to boycott Israel.”

The new measure in South Carolina may focus on public universities right now, but it is setting a blueprint for other states to follow, and in addition to chipping away at the First Amendment, it is serving as a clear reminder that the United States only seems to care about oppressive governments who commit human rights violations when those governments are not considered “close allies.”

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Rachel Blevins is an independent journalist from Texas, who aspires to break the false left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Follow Rachel on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Steemit and Patreon.

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: Original art by Amna Alsalmi. (Photo: Karim Naser)

As Palestinians marked the 70th anniversary of the Nakba — or theft of their land by the creation of Israel in 1948 — the U.S. celebrated the transfer of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in another victory for Israeli colonialism.

Palestinians participating in the March of Great Return have been organizing since May 14 in Gaza to demand the right for exiled Palestinians to return to their ancestral lands, but have faced Israeli snipers that have killed 62 and injured 2771 thus far, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. During a White House press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah dismissed the killings of Palestinians at the border as an “unfortunate propaganda attempt,” which he blamed on Hamas.

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan also blamed Hamas for the killings. According to Erdan,

“with Nazi anger, [Hamas] endlessly shed blood to erase from people’s memories their own failures in the management of the Gaza Strip.” The death toll, he said, “didn’t indicate anything.”

The international community remained tethered to its usual condemnations while ignoring the existence of UN Resolution 194.

Between the stipulated right of return as enshrined in UN Resolution 194, and the outcomes inflicted upon Palestinians by Israel and the international community, there is a vacuum that is inhabited by dreams and legacies. Art provides the medium for communication when words alone seem insufficient.

On May 5, the Palestinian Conceptual Art Forum organized an event on the Gaza borders at the return encampments in Malacca, east of Gaza City, which brought together Palestinian artists expressing their right of return through art. Thaer al-Tawil, the principal of the organization, spoke to MintPress about the origins of the Forum and its initiative to participate in the Great Return March through what he terms “art protest.”

Artists work on original pieces in the art protest tent near the Great Return March protests on the Gaza border. (Photo: Karim Naser)

The artistic project organized by the Forum is reminiscent of a perpetual struggle. Themed “For the Return, we draw,” Al-Tawil explains the inspiration behind the event is rooted in a right that has sustained itself through generations since 1948:

The idea of this artistic project was formed when Palestinian artists wanted to participate in the Great Return March by organizing a big event that reflected the shedding of Palestinian blood on the Gaza borders.”

Al-Tawil expounds upon the link between art, resistance and return:

The art protest is also about sending a message to the Zionist occupation. The rifle, the painting and the artists’ pencil are all symbols of Palestinian unity. The Palestinian artist is humane in the fullest sense of the word. The artist is like the bird of peace that paints to impart the suffering of Palestinians over the years, to emphasize our right to return despite the persecution imposed on us by the Zionist occupation.”

Al-Tawil explains that the Forum has aims and ambitions — in terms of both psychological and artistic empowerment, as well as to enable Gaza’s artists’ recognition abroad. Sharing experiences and narratives through art is one of the main aims. The Forum provides courses for artist-students up to university. It also seeks to establish a union for artists, to safeguard their rights as well as provide protection for their creative expression. Al-Tawil continued:

The Forum was founded due to the political vacuum caused by the Palestinian political divisions between Hamas and Fatah and the absence of anybody, or party, that cares for the artists or supports them. A number of artists came up with the idea of founding a platform through which the young artists’ creativity can be channeled. That is how the Palestinian Conceptual Art Forum started.”

Communication through art is key for Al-Tawil. Despite the blockade, which has prevented Palestinians in Gaza from traveling freely, one of the Forum’s aims is to connect with artists abroad:

The Forum aims to bridge between artists inside and outside of Palestine and strengthen their relations. It also aims to have an existence abroad through artistic expeditions, traveling abroad and participating in artistic exhibitions.”

“For the return, we draw”

On March 30, which marks the commemoration of Land Day among Palestinians, the Great Return March protests started in Gaza. Israeli snipers targeted and murdered 19-year-old Palestinian artist Mohamed Abu Amr. Well known for his sand sculptures on Gaza’s shores, his last depiction, created and posted on his Facebook page on the eve of the protests, read “I will return.”

Al-Tawil remembers Abu Amr’s legacy and unfinished dreams. One of these was to sculpt a massive map of Palestine on Gaza’s shores:

The Palestinian artistic movement lost the martyr Mohamed Abu Amr – the sculptor who, a few days before being murdered by Israeli sniper fire, sculpted the words ‘we are returning.’ To remember his legacy, we artists collaborated to sculpt the Palestine map he had planned. We fulfilled what he had wanted to do. The largest map of Palestine ever sculpted.”

Al-Tawil explains that Palestinian collective memory has found an expressive avenue through art.  Referencing the Nakba of 1948, when Palestinians were massacred, ethnically cleansed, and forcibly displaced from their lands by Zionist paramilitaries to pave the way for the establishment of colonial Israel, Al-Tawil says it became an artistic duty “to portray and depict all of this collective memory through paintings and artwork.”

He mentions Ismael Shamoot, Ismael Ashoor, Bashir Sinwar and Fathi Ghabn as being among the first to utilize art as a form of resistance, and whose influence has lasted throughout the decades. Palestinian artists, he says, have been routinely persecuted by Israel, with methods ranging from restricting their freedom of movement to being targeted for assassination, like Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali.

Art, resistance, and return

Palestinian artists Somaia Shaheen and Wae Ziada discussed their participation in the art protest in terms of their art and the ongoing colonization of Palestine.

For Shaheen, her presence affirmed a message to the international community, as well as a constant yearning to return to places of which she has been deprived by Israel. Lifting the siege on Gaza and praying at Al-Aqsa constitute Shaheen’s main thoughts about the right of return. Her art, she says, conveys her feelings:

It’s a harsh feeling — knowing you would love to visit the mosque and pray there, but you find yourself unable to do so due to the occupation and the political situation that prevent us from reaching a place so close to our hearts.”

Ziada echoes al-Tawil’s musings:

I was motivated to come to the Eastern borders in order to prove to the whole world that the art, the rifle and the stone are together in the same vein.”

A view inside in the art protest tent near the Great Return March protests on the Gaza border. (Photo: Karim Naser)

Artist Amna Alsalmi shared her inspiration with MintPress. She learned about the Forum through events organized for artists and describes her experience in the art protest as “so different.”

Her art depicts a revolutionary young man with a slingshot:

As you see, the man is standing bravely in front of the occupation. I painted the background to mirror our reality — see the smoke coming out of the burned tires. The painting seeks to portray bravery and strength, in spite of the difference between our home-made weapons and the Israeli military’s latest technology.”

Alsalmi adds:

Everyone resists in their own way — the revolutionary youth with slingshots and stones, the photographer with the camera, and the artists with their pencils. All of us are delivering the same message to the world: we have the right to get our homeland back.”

Basel el-Maqosui, whose art depicts a man wearing a keffiyeh against a Palestinian background, explains his use of monochrome:

The painting is done in black acrylic. It is an expression of strength and challenge. The man masked with a keffiyeh is a Palestinian symbol that is known by all the world’s free people — it symbolizes good morals and values, and a behavior that is derived from these qualities.”

Basel el-Maqosui stands in front of his one of his paintings. (Photo: Shareef Sarhan)

Of the artist’s role in resistance, el-Maqosui states:

The artists is always the first to resist and the last to be beaten. As a conceptual artist, I work on spreading my message to the whole world — we are a nation that deserves to live. In Gaza, there is an abundance of artists, actors, authors, poets and people from every artistic field, who are conveying our message internationally. Our art is a means of resisting the occupation until return and freedom.”

Metaphor of the phoenix

Ismaeel Y Dahlan discussed his participation and artwork in profound detail, evoking discourse steeped in inspiration, resistance and metaphors. His painting depicted an abstract background that, at the fore, is dominated by a brightly colored phoenix.

He describes his participation in the art protest as having two distinct messages, a critical commentary that highlights the discrepancy between alienation and human rights with regard to the Palestinian right of return:

There are two messages in my participation – one to the usurper entity that we are the owners of rights and owners of this land.”

Dahlan’s emphasis on the right of return for all generations of Palestinians, encompassing the entire social structure, is the premise for his next point:

The other message is to the international community, which is not immune to this issue. Palestinian refugees have been under siege and oppression, deprived of their basic rights and forced to die, just so that the world’s attention can be drawn to their just cause.”

Ismaeel Dahlan paints his phoenix, inspired the Great Return protests in Gaza. (Photo: Karim Naser)

His painting, he says, was inspired by the Great Return March and its mobilization of Palestinians:

The movement was a source of inspiration for this painting. The youth were heading to the border — to the area of death — in order to identify their lives through the connection with the land and the history of their ancestors. The Canaanites’ symbol was the phoenix, which, according to myth, burst into flames to regenerate.

The new approach of these young Palestinians is reminiscent of this — they are pushing themselves towards the fire. Their options are returning with an injury or an amputation of one of their limbs, and a wheelchair or a crutch will accompany them for the rest of their lives. Otherwise, they return on the shoulders of Palestinians, to heaven to live a new life, just like the phoenix.”

Of his art, he speaks of continuity — both in terms of artistic expression as well as memory — that is crippled by the blockade on Gaza. The artist faces the same challenges as the rest of society and no privilege is associated with art:

I was hoping that this work would become a sculpture made out of the remnants of war and located at the return encampments to eternalize this movement. However, I couldn’t achieve this because the artist is not a separate component; he is part of the society under siege. The Great Return March protests may provide the opportunity to achieve this aim.”

Ultimately, Dahlan concludes:

“We are fighting the culture of force with the culture of power.”

*

Bisan El-Yazuri from Gaza assisted with translating interviews in this article from Arabic to English.

Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer, and blogger. She writes about the struggle for memory in Palestine and Chile, historical legitimacy, the ramifications of settler-colonialism, the correlation between humanitarian aid and human rights abuses, the United Nations as an imperialist organisation, indigenous resistance, la nueva cancion Chilena and Latin American revolutionary philosophy with a particular focus on Fidel Castro, Jose Marti and Jose Carlos Mariategui. Her articles, book reviews, interviews, and blogs have been published in Middle East Monitor, Upside Down World, Truthout, Irish Left Review, Gramsci Oggi, Cubarte, Rabble.ca, Toward Freedom, History Today, Chileno and other outlets, including academic publications and translations into several languages.

Oil, weapons and drugs are among the products with the largest turnover in the world. According to the International Energy Agency, the world demand for oil is between 94 million barrels per day with the United States being the largest oil consumer in the world, 11,500,000 barrels of oil per day. Likewise, according to the International Institute of Studies for Peace in Stockholm, the United States is the leading producer and exporter of weapons worldwide, controlling 31% of the international market.

Regarding drugs, according to the United Nations report, 255 million people – slightly over 5 per cent of those aged 15 to 64 years worldwide – consume drugs. 182 million people consume only marijuana, 48.9 million people use heroin, 17 million users consume cocaine and the rest of people consume amphetamines, ecstasy and other types of drugs. According to the UN Drug Report, an unacceptable number of drug users worldwide continue to lose their lives prematurely, with an estimated 190,000 drug-related deaths in 2017.

Today the United States is the first marijuana producer in the world. As for heroin, Afghanistan (invaded by the United States since 2001) is the world’s leading producer of this drug. Cocaine continues to flow mainly from Colombia (where the United States has been operating since 2000 with the “Plan Colombia”). This country ranks first in the world for its illegal production that increased over the past years.

By the way, the case of Afghanistan is very interesting. According to the United Nations, the country, before the US intervention, had almost eradicated the production of heroin. However, since 2002 its production increased significantly, considering that only in 2014 there were estimated 6,500 tons of opium. It is even more amazing to know that 90% of the heroin consumed in Canada comes from Afghanistan. The heroin market of Europe is supplied by this invaded country as well.

The same thing happens to the production of cocaine in Colombia. The United States has implemented an alleged plan to shovel the cultivation of this illegal product since 2000 and has deployed 7 military bases in this country.

However, contrary to these measures drug production keeps on increasing and Colombia continues to supply cocaine to the American and European markets. According to the UN, Colombia has increased the production of this drug by 52% in 2015; it is about 442 metric tons per year.

How does the United States relate to the drug trafficking business?

The United States used the drug business to finance the subversive activities of the Central Intelligence Agency against other states. The CIA and the DEA – expelled in Venezuela and Bolivia – have acted hand in hand to support the world drug trade, thus turning the United States into an Empire of Drug Trafficking.

The CIA began using the drug trade to generate income since the 1950s, financing operations in Thailand and other Asian countries with a great amount of drugs. The climax of these American activities became evident in the 1980s when the United States used the funds obtained from heroin taken from Afghanistan to Western Europe for financing the organization led by Osama Bin Laden.

The same case occurred in Central America, when the United States with the mediation of the CIA, funded the Nicaraguan contras on the money taken from the sale of cocaine they received from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia and imported into their territory. Reports published by the US Congress and declassified documents confirm how the CIA and the DEA worked with drug traffickers and provided material assistance, including using their bank accounts in Bank of Credit and Commerce International to launder the drug money with which they financed their secret activities in the world.

Due to the international scandal the US position to “fight against drug trafficking” was under question and all the officials involved in these cases were prosecuted, however none of them was punished in fact and were reinstated by George Bush Jr.

Does the United States use this scheme today?

The monetary income from the sale of narcotics continues to be used by the United States to finance clandestine operations, but it has also served to finance its own crises. In 2009, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, stated that drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis. Later, in 2012, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released the report on U.S. vulnerabilities to money laundering, drugs, and terrorist financing stating that every year almost 300 billion dollars of criminal origin are washed by the banks throughout the world and half of those funds pass through the American banks.

Such allegations of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee were confirmed in 2012 when the New York Federal Court made public the participation of HSBC, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Banks of America in the laundering of money from drug trafficking.

In 2008, it was confirmed that HSBC had laundered 1,100 million dollars of the Sinaloa cartel for the United States. The Court imposed fines but none of its directors or staff was imprisoned. This indicates that we are facing a society of accomplices, where the state finishes legalizing drug money through the fines. There are more US banks that are identified to be involved in the laundering of drug dollars, such as City Group, Bank of New York, and Bank of Boston, however, everything indicates that they have the protection of the US authorities.

There are countless confirmed scandals around DEA in Latin America. This US entity maintains close relations with drug cartels in Colombia despite being presented as the one that fights them. In March 2015, the US Department of Justice published the report confirming the deformed behavior of these officials participating in sex parties organized by drug traffickers using the facilities of the DEA and receiving gifts from criminals.

The US intelligence flagrantly uses drug trafficking to keep its activities hidden under the international law, as well as to raise money for special operations. The policy chosen in the 1980s is currently maintained, and both the CIA and the DEA continue to protect their drug trafficking corridors. What continues to attract attention is that the UN Office against Drugs and Crime, despite having decisive information to blame US officials of being drug criminals, maintains an inert attitude towards this illegal activity that takes thousands of lives every year and causes so much harm to the society. In other words, interests of the White House and Wall Street prevail over those of humanity.

Ukraine must follow the example of Israel and strike blows on the territories that Kiev doesn’t control. This was stated on the air of the “112” TV channel by the adviser to former president Leonid Kuchma, political scientist Oleg Soskin.

“There were hopes for the ‘Minsk Agreements’ and there was a so-called Anti-Terrorist Operation, and not the operation of United Forces. Actually the ‘Minsk Agreements’ have sunk into oblivion, the law doesn’t say anything about them, and we have already moved on to a certain stage of the war with the Russian Federation. In the Donetsk-Lugansk enclave we must say that constant and total military operations are already being conducted.

People from our side die either every day or every other day, but people are wounded every day. And this is already war… Farther will it be necessary to wage war against Russian banks, it will be necessary to do what Israel does to West Bank and Gaza Strip, it will be necessary to strikeblows to their enclaves, to their leadership and to neutralise them. The period of physically liquidating terrorist leaders will begin,” said Soskin.

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Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard

Russia will not be the only country to use the Crimean Bridge which President Putin is opening today, on May 15. Ukraine and European countries will be able to use the bridge for profitable transit to Asia, Senator Sergei Tsekov of the Republic of Crimea said.

On May 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in the opening ceremony of the automotive section of the Crimean Bridge – a super 19-kilometre-long construction from mainland Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.

The state contract for the construction of the bridge provided for the launch of the automotive section in December 2018, but the first stage of the project has been delivered six months ahead of the deadline. For motorists, car traffic on the bridge will be opened on May 16 at 05:30 MSK. Local residents – Crimeans and Kuban residents – will be the first to drive through it.

Sergei Tsekov, Senator from the Republic of Crimea, a member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, told Pravda.Ru that the bridge has established direct connection with Russia.

“Crimea has now been linked to Russia. This gives us additional opportunities in economy, social sphere, logistics,” the official said.

Indeed, the construction of the bridge to the Crimea removes the transport blockade of the Crimea, which will be broken completely when the railway section of the bridge is launched in 2019.

“This is a major event for the country after Russia’s reunification with the Crimea,” Sergei Tsekov said in an interview with Pravda.Ru.

According to the senator, Russia has showed itself as a highly developed technological country having built the bridge. Russia used state-of-the-art technologies for the construction of support structures installed deep into the seafloor. This bridge is not only the longest one in Russia, but also in Europe.

Sergei Tsekov is convinced that the bridge will be protected accordingly from saboteurs. A special service will be established to protect both the surface and the underwater elements of the bridge.

“The bridge is important for both the Crimea and Russia. It is important for Ukraine, it is important for Europe, and I am confident that over time the bridge will be used by various economic structures of Ukraine to transport products to the territory of the Crimea. When the relationship between  Ukraine and Russia becomes normal – and it will become normal –  both the territory of the Crimea and the bridge itself will be used for the transit of goods from Ukraine and Europe to Asia. Therefore, the opening of the Crimean Bridge is a landmark event in the life of the European community,” the official told Pravda.Ru.

This report confirms Pyongyang’s response to recent U.S. foreign policy statements, not to mention conduct of US-ROK war games directed against North Korea. 

North Korea will “reconsider” a planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump if Washington forces the country to unilaterally abandon its nuclear weapons, the DPRK’s first Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Kye Gwan said on Wednesday.

In a Korean-language report carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim said the Trump administration had issued “ludicrous statements which are extremely provoking” ahead of the DPRK-U.S. summit – scheduled to be held on June 12 in Singapore.

The vice foreign minister denounced several senior officials at the White House and the U.S. State Department, including National Security Adviser John Bolton, for raising, among other things, the potential for a “Libyan model” for denuclearization.

Kim condemned comments calling for “Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible Denuclearization (CVID)” and “complete discarding of nuclear arsenals and chemical and biological weapons.”

“If the Trump administration comes forward to the DPRK-U.S. summit with sincerity for the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations, it will receive the deserved response,” Kim said in the written statement.

“But if it forces the abandonment of our nuclear arsenal unilaterally while driving us into the corner, we won’t have any interest in such dialogue, we can’t help but reconsidering if we acceded to the DPRK-U.S. summit.”

The DPRK vice foreign minister said the comments showed the U.S.’s “impure intention” to push the DPRK into a Libya or Iraq-style situation instead of resolving the  issue through dialogue.

The statement particularly singles out John Bolton.

“We’ve explicitly clarified who Bolton is, and we don’t hide the repulsion toward him now,” it reads.

“I can’t hold my violent anger over the U.S. behavior, and I doubt if the U.S. sincerely hopes for the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations through wholesome dialogue and negotiation,” he said.

Kim said it was “stupid” to compare the DPRK  – a nuclear weapons state – to Libya, which was at the early stages of developing nuclear weapons.

In his statement, the DPRK diplomat also reiterated Pyongyang’s stance that Washington had downplayed the North’s “generosity and bold measures” in pursuing dialogue, instead citing it as the result of a maximum pressure campaign.

“We’ve expressed the intention of the denuclearization on the Korean peninsula, we’ve clarified several times that the prerequisite is to terminate the U.S. hostile policy against the DPRK and nuclear blackmail,” he said.

Kim also, notably, dismissed claims economic incentives could be given in return for North Korean denuclearization.

“The U.S. is clamoring that they will offer economic rewards and benefits if we abandon nuclear arsenals,” he said. “But we’ve never built our economy while having expectations on the U.S, and we will never make such deal.”

The comments are likely a response to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s comments earlier in the week that “private sector Americans coming in” could be allowed to go to the North to improve its energy, infrastructure, and agriculture sectors in the event of a nuclear deal.

Wednesday’s statement also saw the DPRK vice foreign minister warn the Trump administration not to repeat the mistake of his predecessors, and that bilateral ties will suffer should Washington follow the opinion of “pseudo-patriots.”

In a marked shift from the diplomatic niceties of the past few weeks, Wednesday also saw the North cancel a planned high-level inter-Korean meeting, citing the ongoing joint ROK-U.S. Max Thunder military exercise.

An accompanying statement also warned that the North might withdraw from the upcoming summit.

“The U.S. will have to think twice about the fate of the DPRK-U.S. summit now on high agenda before a provocative military racket against the DPRK in league with the south Korean authorities,” it said.

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Featured image is from KCNA.