Featured image: A Rosneft Vietnam employee looks on at the Lan Tay gas platform in the South China Sea off the coast of Vung Tau, Vietnam April 29, 2018 (Source: author)
Rosneft is drilling for oil off the South China Sea coast of Vietnam in an area claimed by China.
The Russian energy giant is involved in the Lan Do oilfield that narrowly sits within the southwestern border of China’s nine-dash-line but is apparently regarded by the company as being under Vietnam’s de-facto sovereignty. China officially called on all countries to respect its claims without specifically mentioning Rosneft but in obvious reference to it, a sign that it feels uncomfortable with this latest development even though it might eventually turn out to be a step in the right direction.
To explain, Vietnam is under heavy pressure from the so-called “Quad” of the US, Japan, Australia, and India to de-facto join what is essentially a “Chinese Containment Coalition”, though this disruptive influence is counterbalanced through Russia’s Eurasian Union free trade agreement and military deals with its historic partner that have hitherto succeeded in allowing Hanoi to strike a balance between the unipolar and multipolar worlds in the New Cold War.
Rosneft’s controversial move indirectly introduced Russia to the simmering South China Sea dispute, but this might be a good thing because Moscow is known to favor international law and negotiations to any dispute instead of push its partners towards waging war in order to settle problems like the US-led Quad is prone to do. China will probably still not like this because it prefers to handle all sensitive issues bilaterally as a matter of long-standing policy but might come to gradually see something positive in it.
Russia’s newfound role could balance out the “Quad’s” militaristic urgings by getting Vietnam to consider entering into negotiations with China about this, with both parties being diplomatically brought together because of Moscow’s efforts. One prospective solution that might emerge from this could be for their shared Russian partner to extract energy from disputed regions and share the profits & resources with each of them per a formula that they agree to in advance as part of a settlement for officially redefining their maritime border.
Russia already agreed to jointly develop the energy resources located within the so-called “grey zone” of former dispute with NATO-member Norway in the Barents Sea following a 2010 accord, so it’s conceivable that Rosneft could play the third party extraction role in facilitating this same sort of solution between Vietnam and China if they ever reach a similar agreement on the South China Sea. That’s why even though it might seem unlikely at this point in time, China could ultimately end up thanking Russia for indirectly getting involved in this dispute.
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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Trump’s on again, off again, potentially on again tactics in dealing with North Korea reflect a leader out of his depth in dealing with sensitive geopolitical issues.
After agreeing to summit talks with Kim Jong-un, then pulling out, things may be on again, Trump tweeting:
“We are having very productive talks with North Korea about reinstating the Summit which, if it does happen, will likely remain in Singapore on the same date, June 12th, and, if necessary, will be extended beyond that date.”
Separately he said
“(w)e’re going to see what happens. We’re talking to them now…(A) very nice statement (was) put out (by North Korea). We’ll see what happens.”
“We’re talking to them now. They very much want to do it. We’d like to do it. We’re going to see what happens.”
A Pyongyang statement said
“(w)e would like to make known to the US side once again that we have the intent to sit with the US side to solve problem(s) regardless of ways at any time.”
Reportedly White House and State Department officials are heading to Singapore for talks with their North Korean counterparts on summit issues and logistics.
According to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, Trump wants to get something that’s a long-lasting and an actual real solution. And if they are ready to do that then…we’re certainly ready to have those conversations.”
On Thursday, Trump’s John Bolton-led National Security Council discussed imposing new sanctions on North Korea, along with possible military action.
Though likely on hold given the latest comments by both sides, signaling summit talks may be back on, it shows US hostility toward North Korea is unrelenting – talks or no talks.
Washington tolerates no sovereign independent countries, wanting them all transformed into US client states, North Korea no exception.
It’s why summit talks, if they take place, will afford the DPRK no believable commitment by Washington to respect its sovereign independence.
At best, stepping back from the brink short-term alone is possible if talks conclude successfully – a big if.
US duplicity virtually assures no Trump administration commitment for peace and stability on the peninsula, no iron-clad guarantees Pyongyang seeks, no meaningful benefits from dealing with Washington – notorious for consistently reneging on promises made.
Russian upper house Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee Deputy Chairman Andrei Klimov stressed the following:
“Washington was strategically interested (in easing tensions with the DPRK) neither under Obama, nor before him, nor at the moment,” adding:
“Any step that could help ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula removes the reasons for the presence of US military bases in Japan and South Korea.”
Washington invents enemies to justify unconscionable amounts of military spending unrelated to defense, its hostile empire of bases, and permanent war agenda.
Since an uneasy armistice ended Pentagon aggression against North Korea in 1953, the country served as a convenient US punching bag.
China is America’s main regional adversary, wanting the country marginalized, weakened, isolated and contained – regime change Washington’s longterm goal.
The same goes for North Korea. Though wanting summit talks with Trump, its officials clearly know they’re dealing with a duplicitous regime – wanting things one-sidedly its way, delivering nothing in return but empty promises.
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.
According to numerous mainstream media reports, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is about to be forced to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If that happened, he would face imminent arrest by British authorities and extradition to the US, where he would probably face life imprisonment on the one hand or execution on espionage charges on the other. The latter being the preferred option for the Trump administration.
It has now been exactly two months since Assange has been denied visitors and any outside communications since the Ecuadorian government cut off his access on March 28. He has no internet, phone, television and is no longer allowed visitors at all.
The truth is, no-one actually knows if Assange is still actually on the Ecuadorian premises.
Ecuador gave citizenship to Assange prior to their recent general election in the hope of providing safe transit out of England by giving him diplomatic status. However, the British government continued in its assigned role of jailer by fully rejecting Ecuador’s request for diplomatic status for Assange.
A British tribunal refused to release any documents pertaining to the reasons as to why Assange remains in an effective prison, at taxpayers expense, on the grounds that it had to protect the British Prosecution Service’s relationship with foreign authorities – in this case, the USA.
Britain is doing Washington’s dirty work and given the heavily increased ‘chatter’ on Assange’s fate – it is quite likely the British government is looking for public reaction to be muted enough to simply arrest him, go through the motions and send Assange to certain solitary confinement on death row.
The signs are not good. Since the new Equidorian President Mr Moreno was recently elected he described Mr Assange as an ‘inherited problem’ and ‘more than a nuisance.’
Mr Assange’s lawyer, Melinda Taylor, said:
“For the last eight years, the UK has refused to either confirm or deny that they have received an extradition request from the US.”
Taylor continued:
‘At the same time, they have refused to provide assurances that Julian will not be extradited to the US if such a request were to be received, and maintained an ever-present vigil of the Embassy, notwithstanding a UN directive to take steps to ensure Julian’s immediate liberty. Their silence speaks volumes, particularly in light of recent statements from US officials that Julian’s arrest and extradition are a priority.’”
“Britain, as the most servile of Washington’s puppet states rejected the order by the UN Committee on Arbitrary Detention to immediately release Assange from his arbitrary detention.”
The mainstream media have obviously been alerted to quite possibly what will happen next. The language of the salivating establishment press is all too clear and clear:
CNN: Julian Assange’s nearly six-year refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London is in danger, opening the WikiLeaks founder to arrest by British authorities and potential extradition to the US, multiple sources with knowledge tell CNN.
NewYorkPost: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may have overstayed his welcome at the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where his situation is “unusually bad” and he could be forced out “any day now.”
Daily Express: Julian Assange is on the verge of “eviction” from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed out for the last six years.
Daily Mail: Julian Assange’s situation at the London Ecuadorian embassy is ‘unusually bad’ – the new President of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, ordered the removal of extra security at the embassy.
Nowhere does the media report in this latest round of growing excitement that the United Nations has already fully stated that Assange’s detention is illegal based on international law. In a public statement, the UN called on the British authorities to end Julian Assange’s deprivation of liberty, respect his physical integrity and freedom of movement, and afford him the right to compensation.
Julian Assange is a political prisoner of Britain. This is a country who teaches its children by law, through a defined curriculum that British values include: “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith.”
Irrespective of your personal thoughts on whether Assange is a criminal or not, two of the five most basic principles of civil society in Britain has been completely discarded by the state in its subservience to a foreign power, in this case, Washington. It is a further sign of the breakdown of law and order in a country who once prided itself in such characteristics as justice.
This year’s Africa Day, also known as Africa Liberation Day, marked the 55th anniversary of the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the African Union (AU).
On May 25, 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, over 30 independent African states gathered to established the OAU.
Even at the founding of the continental organization, there were generally two political camps within the independent states. The Casablanca Group consisted of Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Algeria, Morocco, and others which advanced the objectives of continental unity and federation. These states initially met in Casablanca, Morocco in 1961 during the Congo crisis which resulted in the imperialist-engineered overthrow and brutal assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
Two additional blocs called the Monrovia and Brazzaville groups rejected the model of rapid unity and its concomitant obligations surrounding economic integration, a military command structure and the imperatives of an anti-imperialist foreign policy. Instead these more moderate and conservative alliances sought to continue their almost complete reliance on the former colonial powers and the leading post World War II imperialist country, the United States.
Consequently, the OAU represented a compromise driven by the upsurge in national independence movements across Africa and the attempts by imperialism to maintain their economic stranglehold over the newly liberated states. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the-then President of the Republic of Ghana issued his pioneering book entitled “Africa Must Unite” to coincide with the first OAU Summit in Ethiopia.
This book made the case for continental unity and warned against the intervention of western military forces in Africa. Based upon developments in Congo and the political capturing of former French and British colonies through international trade, loans, military assistance and diplomatic relations, Nkrumah called for accelerated unification and socialist development.
Image on the right: Kwame Nkrumah speaking at podium
In his address to the founding OAU Summit, Nkrumah emphasized:
“On this continent, it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference.”
Neo-Colonialism and African Unity
These words were spoken at a time when numerous African states remained under colonial rule and apartheid. The Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau were nowhere near independence in 1963. Others such as Zambia, Basutholand, Swaziland, Bechuanaland and Malawi (formerly known as Nyasaland), were yet to emerge from British domination.
The call for unification was also designed to launch a frontal attack on the remaining outposts of colonial rule. Nkrumah’s theory of neo-colonialism which took into account the continuing dependency of African economies to the imperialist centers of finance capital was spelled out in “Africa Must Unite.” Just two years later the book “Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism,” served as a comprehensive guide to understanding the plight of independent African states and their subservience to collective imperialism led by Washington and Wall Street.
Nonetheless, at the founding OAU Summit, Nkrumah noted as well almost prophetically:
“Our people call for unity so that they may not lose their patrimony in the perpetual service of neo-colonialism. In their fervent push for unity, they understand that only its realization will give full meaning to their freedom and our African independence. It is this popular determination that must move us on to a union of independent African states. In delay lies danger to our well-being, to our very existence as free states. It has been suggested that our approach to unity should be gradual, that it should go piecemeal. This point of view conceives of Africa as a static entity with ‘frozen’ problems which can be eliminated one by one and when all have been cleared then we can come together and say: ‘Now all is well, let us now unite.’ This view takes no account of the impact of external pressures. Nor does it take cognizance of the danger that delay can deepen our isolations and exclusiveness; that it can enlarge our differences and set us drifting further and further apart into the net of neo-colonialism, so that our union will become nothing but a fading hope, and the great design of Africa’s full redemption will be lost, perhaps, forever.”
AFRICOM Expands: Events in Niger, Somalia and Nigeria
Three recent examples related to the consolidation of neo-colonialism in Africa involve the presence of Pentagon military troops through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Niger, Somalia, along with an announced deal by the administration of President Donald Trump to sell fighter aircraft and helicopters to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Niger was the country where four U.S. Green Berets were killed under still inadequately explained circumstances in October 2017.Niger is one of the world’s largest producers of uranium. However, the mining and distribution of this strategic energy resource is largely controlled by a French firm Orano (previously Areva). Ostensibly, AFRICOM soldiers are in Niger to assist the national government in security matters in the battle against Islamic extremist. Yet the security situation inside the country and its contiguous states has worsened with the advent of AFRICOM.
The Horn of Africa state of Somalia, located in an oil-rich territory adjacent to the most lucrative shipping lanes in the world, makes it the coveted prize of modern day imperialism. AFRICOM forces have expanded their presence in Somalia leading to greater instability and throughout the East Africa region.
There is still no peace and stability in sight throughout most areas of Somalia. The U.S.-funded African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) after more than a decade on the ground in an attempt to implement western political orthodoxy is now more than war weary. It is only the funding from the West that is sustaining this mission. All the while the people of this nation remain impoverished, underdeveloped and dislocated.
African Union First Ladies Commission at 29th Summit, July 3-4, 2017
President Muhammadu Buhari in a May state visit to the White House glossed over the widely-reported racist derogatory comments Trump made in reference to why it was necessary to curb immigration from Africa, Haiti and El Salvador into the U.S. Buhari was seeking weapons from Washington and some commitment to economic cooperation which has been drastically reduced as a result of energy policies begun during the previous administration of President Barack Obama.
The leading economies on the continent which had experienced phenomenal growth over the last decade are now in recession, near recession and forced to “restructure” their financial obligation to international finance capital. Currency values have declined precipitously in Nigeria, Angola and South Africa among other states. There is a re-emergent debt crisis taking place as well where in countries like Mozambique the state is defaulting on existing financial arrangements with Western banking institutions.
Prospects for Liberation and Unity
One interesting declaration earlier in the year was the signing of an African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) at a summit in Kigali, Rwanda. Some 44 states within the AU signed the protocol and several of the governments involved have ratified the project.
However, some of the leading economic states have not signed or ratified the AfCFTA largely due to considerations stemming from the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism. African states have not broken the linkages which undermine their genuine economic and social development. Much of this growth within African states has not been reinvested in industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, education and healthcare which would even in the short-term unleash the human potential of over one billion workers, farmers and youth.
In order for there to be a long-term acquisition of continental wealth for the masses of people, the workers, farmers and youth must be empowered bringing their interests and concerns to the forefront of the national and regional agenda. There is no evidence whatsoever that such a monumental transformation in priorities can be achieved under the world capitalist system.
Africa must unite under a socialist program to reclaim the natural resources and strategic waterways which belong to the people by right. Consequently, the struggle in the 21st century will have to be anti-capitalist in character seeking to eradicate the exploitation inherent in the existing dominant economic system in the advancement towards a truly equitable and just society for all.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
All images, except the featured, in this article are from the author.
When will they grasp not just the criminality, but the futility of economic sanctions? Could they not learn from the sixty-year abject failure of their sanctions to bring to heel even the tiny island of Cuba? Western “experts,” who may have thought that they could dish out to Russia the Iraq sanctions treatment, so that Nikki Haley could comment on national television that the induced death of half a million Russian children was “worth it,” now after the just closed St Petersburg World Economic Forum (May 24 – 26,2018) have abundant reasons to question the soundness of their doctrines.
Not that they will, of course. It takes cojones to reexamine dilettantish policies dictated by base passions and bankrupt ideology. Cojones they manifestly lack, as well as reasonable intelligence; all they have is the arrogant obstinacy of those who try a failed scheme a hundred times, in the hope that it will work the hundred and first time. That, by the way, is Albert Einstein‘s definition of lunacy.
From its opening about a week ago, this year’s St Petersburg XXII Economic Forum struck everyone with eyes wide open to see as a resounding success: 14,000 participants, including many top western business leaders and even representatives of the British oligarchy (to the great chagrin of London Times).And on the sidelines, be it noted, top world political leaders came to pay their respects to You Know Who: French President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, IMF chief Christine Lagarde, Chinese Vice President Wang,as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who paid their obeisance separately a bit earlier in Sochi.Even American Ambassador Jon Huntsman turned up in Saint Petersburg, no doubt to check up on Vladimir Putin’s isolation and write home a gloating report about it.
As a seasoned observer of Russian affairs wrote the other day,
“now that the ‘economic block’ of the Russian government is firmly in the hands of the Atlantic Integrationists and even Alexei Kudrin declares that the impact of the economic sanctions to only 0.5% of the Russian GDP, and against the background of US arrogance gone berserk (see Pompeo’s 12 point ultimatum to Iran or Trump’s sudden cancellation of this planned meeting with Kim) thereby deeply frightening many European investors, Russia appears to be an island of comparative stability and predictability.Turns out, there are billions of dollars to be made in Russia, who would have thought?”
Indeed. The Saint Petersburg Economic Forum, let us recall, is an annual affair consisting of a gathering of global economic leaders keen to consider key economic issues facing Russia, developing markets, and the world at large.
Each year the gathering brings together over 10,000 participants from more than 60 countries, including business and political leaders, leading scientists, public figures and media. The format includes panel sessions, round tables, and business dialog, all devoted to the economic development of Russia, its integration within the global economic space, and cooperation with the world’s leading economic structures. This year’s Forum was held under the motto of«Создавая экономику доверия», or Let’s build an economy of mutual trust. The overarching topic was economic growth under new conditions indicating that the world economic crisis is subsiding. Accordingly, the event was divided into four major and significantly titled discussion blocks: “Global economy in a period of change,” “Russia: realizing its growth potential,” “Human capital in the digital economy,” and “Technology for leadership.”
Even US ambassador John Huntsman, who cut a rather lonely figure at what — according to the official dogma — should have been a celebration of Russia’s isolation, was moved to observe that “now it is very important to discuss future US – Russia economic relations.”
Russo-German relations were undoubtedly among the hottest topics at the St Petersburg economic summit. Little wonder, as for the first time in five years trade between the two countries is again experiencing growth. According to the data disseminated by the Federal Statistical Bureau in Wiesbaden, in 2017 German manufacturersexported 25,9 billion euros worth of merchandise to Russia, while Russia exported 31,4 billions to Germany.
An understandably important discussion topic was the impact of US anti-Russia sanctions on German firms doing business in Russia. Resorting to an elegantly congruent measure, just the EU is planning to monitor European firms cooperating with American sanctions against Iran, the Russian Duma is ready to adopt a law whereby Russian and foreign firms cooperating with US anti-Russia sanctions will be put on a “watch list.” Such a measure would necessarily also impact some German firms in Russia, which employ about 300,000 workers.
To put it another way, the Germans are in a bind. That is clearly reflected in the recent statement by the Russian-German Foreign Trade Chamber to the effect that “these actions [sanctions] are holding international business hostage to sanctions. Moscow and the West must find ways to settle the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, counting on de-escalating the conflict instead of its escalation” and “putting pressure on German or any other business, as well as demanding that certain companies take sides in this spat would send an ultimately wrong signal”.
These expressions of concern make sense from both countries’ perspectives, given that, according to German Bundesbank data, last year German firms invested 1,6 billion euros directly in Russia. In Russia there are currently operating 4,900 German companies; in Germany there are about 1,000 registered Russian firms.
Prospective losses for German firms resulting from the new round of US anti-Russia sanctions may amount, in the short to medium term, to 1,5 billion euros, while in the long term losses are bound to be significantly more massive. Yet, in spite of the elaborate obstacle course built to obstruct German-Russian trade and other relations, the German economic portal www.ostexperte.de says that three-quarters of German enterprises doing business in Russia plan to maintain their activities at the present level, 20 percent plan to increase their scope, and only 10 percent are anticipating cutbacks. Not a resounding success, to be sure, for the “sanction – isolation” regime with regard to one of the world’s leading economies and traditionally Russia’s major trade partner, Germany.
“The Russian market,” Dr Frank Schauff, CEO of the Association of European Business in Moscow, said recently, “is geographically very accessible to European firms and there are strong cultural and historical links. For me, it has been interesting to watch as Russia’s regions have been getting increasingly professional in their dealings with investors over the last few years. Bureaucratic barriers are being lowered. There are no infrastructure problems blocking setting into motion new investment projects.”
In similar vein, Rainer Lindner, head of Schaeffler AG, one of the largest German firms doing business in Russia, looks on economic links as one of the major pillars of cooperation:
“When political relations are tense, economics often facilitates the preservation of an ongoing relationship.”
At the same time, Donald Trump is using gas delivery as a tool of political pressure against Moscow. Last month, on the occasion of the German chancellor’s visit to the US, President Trump proposed a new trade agreement with the EU in return for Germany’s giving up the “North Stream 2” gas pipeline. He threatened that, in case the Europeans failed to obey, they might be hit with painful customs duties in their trade with the US.
Russian senator Alexey Pushkov wryly called it a “dirty game played by a nervous superpower,” adding that sanctions (which is what the threatened anti-European trade barriers in practice would amount to) imposed by Washington on its own allies merely serve to further dramatize the latter’s already manifest vassalage.
Western unity fractures before our eyes.
“Looking at Donald Trump’s latest moves,” comments European Council President Donald Tusk, “it might well be said that with such friends one does not need enemies. But, let us say it openly, the EU should be grateful to him. Our thanks for helping us to discard our illusions.”
To which the chairman of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker chimes in with the trenchant remark that the EU must take upon itself a global leadership role. His premise for that conclusion is that Trump’s decision to break off the Iranian agreement sends the message that the US is no longer prepared to act in cooperation with other governments, while turning away from friendly intercourse with the rest of the world with “striking fury.”
“We must replace the US on the world stage because it is faltering and its influence is in long-term decline,” added Juncker.
And ditto Frau Merkel who said as much, in as many words, when the US pulled out of the Iranian deal.
Germany finds itself between a rock and a hard place in the tension zone between the US and Russia. It has a legitimate right to search for its proper place.
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Stephen Karganovic is President of the Srebrenica Historical Project.
It is imperative to know that the U.S. “denuclearization” demand in negotiation with North Korea is only an excuse to bring that country under its control. Militarily, North Korea’s small arsenal of nuclear weapons poses no danger to the U.S. However it justifies the U.S. military presence in South Korea. A denuclearized Korean Peninsula means that the American forces have to pack up and leave that region, since their help will no longer be needed.
Based on this understanding, experienced peace activists were not surprised with the sudden disengagement of Mr. Trump from the June 12th summit in Singapore. It was expected; not because Mr. Trump or Mr. Kim are “unpredictable” leaders. On the contrary, peace activists don’t think that the change of events is based on the personality of the “leaders”.
In the history of the American Presidency, Mr. Trump is not an exception as the corrupt media and Democratic Party want us to believe. Mr. Trump is the result of decades of a declining American economy. Politically he represents the weakness of U.S. Imperial power. On the doorstep of WWIII, the President of the country that was a victor of WWII, acts like an old incoherent man who possesses “massive and powerful” nuclear arsenals. When Mr. Trump said “I pray to God they [his nuclear bombs] will never have to be used”, he wanted to portray himself as a tough leader but he looked more like a drunken head of a dysfunctional family that could be scary at times.
Although the language of U.S. foreign policy toward Iran and North Korea is the language of war, the U.S. is not fully prepared to ignite a major conflict yet. Mr. Trump and his administration – regardless of the awesome American military power – know very well that the American people are not in the mood to support a major conflict or any attempt to start a WWIII. They have too many problems at home to be worried about than a bogus possibility of a “nuclear attack” from North Korea now or from Iran in the future! Beside the “International Community” and the European allies feel a little annoyed by the “America First” attitude these days while the powerful Chinese and Russian military forces are sleeping with one eye open!
While Mr. Trump was reading his ultimatum against North Korea live, simultaneously, President Macron of France – after his failed romantic dance in Washington – was practicing his Cossack dance with Mr. Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia! The current frustrated Europe has too much on its plate already to waste time translating what Mr. Trump, Pence, Bolton or Pompeo really mean by talking about the “Libyan Model”.
Peace activists should acknowledge that the new developments could actually be a blessing for Peace movement. It gives us the time and opportunity to unite the forces of peace on a global scale. A peaceful Korean peninsula is possible if working people of the North and South Korea pursue the path of unification and end of hostility despite the Washington’s contradictory and incoherent position. On the path for peace, there is no need for nuclear armaments.
Let’s demand an international denuclearization now. If regional denuclearization is a good thing, then global denuclearization must be even better!
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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.
Gaza is home to almost two million Palestinians, the majority of whom are long-term refugees (a further 3.25 million Palestinians live in the West Bank). It’s been run by Hamas since elections in 2007: the group is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the EU among others. The West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority, which is currently controlled by Fatah, rivals of Hamas.
2. The event that changed Palestinians
The dominant event for Palestinians in Gaza during the past century has been the Nakba of 1948, when hundreds of thousands were driven from, or else fled, their homes in what is now modern-day Israel as the state came into existence. The right of return to ancestral homes (or “Haq al-Awda”) is the over-riding long-term priority for many Palestinians: it forms part of United Nations resolution 194.
3. Palestinians recall what was lost
Palestinian houses and cinemas, shops and mosques, train stations and markets were all lost in 1948.Tarek Bakri, a researcher and archivist based in Jerusalem, started to collect archive photography which documented these losses. The image below slides left and right: MEE has published more examples.
Above: Israelis looting houses in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Musrara in Jerusalem. Musrara is one of the oldest neighbourhood built outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls in the 1860s.
4. Gaza since 1948
The seven decades after the Nakba have been ones of turmoil and crisis for the residents of Gaza, including occupation, uprisings and Israeli military operations.
5. Daily living
Long-term living conditions in Gaza are some of the worst in the Middle East. A report by the UN in 2015 noted that the economic well-being of Palestinians living in Gaza was worse than in 1995 and that it may be “uninhabitable” by 2020; last year the organisation said that conditions were “unliveable“.
Aside from wrecking infrastructure including electricity lines and power stations, health services and water supplies, Israeli military assaults on Gaza have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians, as well as Israeli soldiers and civilians, most notably during a string of military operations between 2006 and 2014.
8. The protests
On 30 March, Palestinians started regular protests in the lead-up to the 70th anniversary of the Nakba on 15 May. Israeli forces sometimes fired at the demonstrations, saying they were doing so to defend the border – with fatal consequences. The highest number of deaths was on 14 May, the day that the US embassy opened in Jerusalem, when 62 were killed. Many protesters were also demonstrating about the conditions under which they had lived in Gaza for years.
President Trump has cancelled the Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jung-Un. He cited North Korea’s “hostility” as the reason, while using language that leaves open room for future reconciliation.
North Korea then sent back a respectful letter, which Trump described as “warm and productive.” I expect the situation to continue improving, as both sides seem to want negotiations, despite the malign influence of spoilers like National Security Advisor John Bolton.
The media, on the other hand, immediately interpreted Trump’s cancellation and the breakdown of negotiations as proof of North Korea’s bad-faith and intransigence, that it is not serious about its commitments, and that Kim was simply “playing” the victimized US.
A little recap of the actual recent events is therefore in order.
The US Scuttles Peace
North Korea has recently made a number of important concessions. It had agreed to halt its missile tests and has made good on that commitment. It also agreed to accept the end-goal of denuclearization as a prerequisite of negotiations. These were the two main preconditions the US was demanding.
Furthermore, it recently released a number of US prisoners as a further show of good-will, and has completed the destruction of its only known nuclear test site, which foreign journalists were allowed to witness.
It has also pulled-back from its earlier position regarding the US-South Korean military drills, instead accepting that they will take place.
The US, in turn, had scaled back the military drills to not include “strategic assets”, meaning nuclear-capable aircraft. As well, it halted its position of enmity against the North. This can be seen in the marked shift from the beginning of the year when tensions were mounting and the threat of nuclear war was over the horizon.
In short, North Korea made extension concessions, while the US made extremely minor ones. Essentially, the US halted an already illegitimate posture of threatening to destroy a small nation which poses it no threat, while continuing highly threatening military drills, albeit ones that didn’t come with the threat of nuclear destruction attached. However, there were concessions on both sides and the chance of a possible peace settlement was therefore hopeful.
Recently, William J. Perry, who was directly involved in the 1994 negotiations between North Korea and the Clinton administration, described how the success of the current round of negotiations depends on building a mutual “sense of trust” and good faith on both sides.
Its important to note that the 1994 negotiations were the first time the US seriously pursued diplomacy with the North, which proved to be the only strategy that has ever yielded results. The US was able to obtain a temporary halt to the North’s nuclear development. When the Bush administration came in and rejected diplomacy in favor of its own brand of “maximum pressure”, the progresswas undermined and North Korea went on to obtain nuclear weapons and to further build up its arsenal.
How did the administration take Perry’s advice and enhance the “sense of trust” in the face of multiple North Korean good-faith concessions? First, John Bolton, who was a key figure in the Bush administrations derailment of Clinton’s North Korea diplomacy, demanded complete capitulation from North Korea while threatening to destroy the country.
In an interview, Bolton said the US was pursuing the “Libya model” for the negotiations. Libya gave up its nuclear program following US pressure, which then freed the US to later attack and destroy the country. Libya is therefore an example of US duplicity and a testament to the necessity of possessing a nuclear deterrent to ward off US aggression. Evoking the “Libya” model was a barely-disguised threat against North Korea and an effort to derail the negotiations.
Secondly, the US conducted more threatening military drills along the North’s border, which the US would of course find threatening if similar drills were conducted by Russia or China along the Canadian border. This time, the drills were to include nuclear-capable B-52’s, a reneging of the previous US concession to scale back the drills.
According to reports, the original decision to include the B-52’s was done against the will of South Korea, which, if true, exemplifies the neo-colonial relationship the US exerts over its South Korean client, erroneously described as a mutually-beneficial “alliance” in the media.
With these moves, the US tarnished the mutual trust and good-faith that had been building, and North Korea responded by denouncing Bolton and threatening to cancel the Trump-Kim summit. The North was taking advantage of how badly Trump wanted the summit to take place; his desire to be seen as “the great statesmen” and a purveyor of world peace, a leader deserving of the Nobel prize.
The media responded to North Korea’s letter by proclaiming it was proof of the North’s subterfuge and untrustworthiness, blaming them for the breakdown of trust. The obvious effect of these kinds of narratives being to support state power and provide ideological cover to policies aimed only at power projection; to shield policymakers from scrutiny about what they are actually doing in the world, making aggressive actions seem defensive and justified.
In response to North Korea’s denunciation of Bolton and the US’ threats, the administration began to back off. It cancelled the participation of the B-52’s and attempted to roll back comments about the “Libya model.” Trump also walked-back his public demands of complete and immediate denuclearization, saying that a gradual denuclearization was perhaps a possibility.
However, at the same time Trump issued a new threat, saying that if no deal was reached the Libya model would be back on and the US would engage in “total decimation” of the country. In short: either make a deal or we’ll murder you.
Vice President Pence then doubled-down on this by evoking Trump’s ultimatum while directly threatening the country, saying that if they don’t make a deal it will “end like the Libyan model ended” for them.
North Korea responded by lashing out against Pence, saying that it will not be intimidated and will not capitulate to unilateral US demands. The press, again, latched onto this as proof of North Korean intransigence. Journalists cited what they called North Korea’s threat of nuclear war as proof that it was being aggressive. In reality, the statement was much less dramatic and contained no threat:
“Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States,” North Korea’s vice foreign minister wrote.
Not mentioned was how the US had threatened to “totally decimate” their country first, the North’s response therefore being incredibly mild. Also not mentioned was how North Korea has a no-first-use nuclear policy while the US maintains the right to a first strike. Nor that the entire reason for the North even having nukes in the first place is to ward off a US attack, a position that is only further justified by continued US threats and intransigence.
North Korea essentially responded by saying: we’ll accept negotiations, not demands and threats. So if you’d like to go back to threatening us with nuclear destruction, then we’ll respond without backing down.
So, while North Korea employs vitriolic and insulting language, in actuality their position is entirely understandable and has remained consistent throughout the years.
The Unsayable Reality
The core issue of the entire North Korea situation is, and has been, the threat of US attack.
The US divided Korea in pure colonial fashion. It “decimated” its population during the Korean War, burning down “every town in North Korea” while erasing at least 13.5% of its population. It followed this with economic and political strangulation, which is partly responsible for the starvation and famine that has transpired throughout the country’s history, as is conceded in the internalUS record.
Throughout all of this, the US maintained a posture of threatening hostility against the North, repeatedly threatening them with nuclear attack. In response to this existential threat, North Korea developed a nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to US aggression. This has repeatedly been the assessment of US intelligence, and was recently reiterated by James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence.
The position of the US during the negotiations has been one of demanding that North Korea give up its only means of defense against US aggression.
When officials evoke the “Libya model” or demand full denuclearization as a prerequisite, they are demanding that North Korea give up its defenses without any recognition of the country’s legitimate security concerns; that it essentially bow on its knees in complete capitulation to US diktats, which would likely mean the eventual destruction of its country.
It may not seem like much to us in America that our government decimated their population during the Korean War, or that their nation is under existential threat from US power, but it means something to North Koreans. Although Western pundits and analysts in effect have no skin in the game one way or the other – the only way the US is threatened by North Korea is if it launches an attack against them first, provoking a defensive response – for North Koreans and people living on the Korean peninsula it is a matter of life and death, especially when US policymakers threaten their security by making threats, ultimatums, and attempting to fly nuclear-capable aircraft along the peninsula.
Yet for the ideological indoctrinators who service state power, i.e. journalists and “experts”, nothing short of complete North Korean capitulation is acceptable. Anything less and its “proof” of North Korean subterfuge, intransigence, and deviousness.
It is literally unsayable to discuss the relevant history and the core root of the problem. It cannot be said that the US is the aggressor, that the threat of US aggression is the main reason behind North Korea’s nuclear deterrent. These blasphemies contradict the ideological doctrines that the US is always defensive, that it always has the right to threaten or use force and violence against the world, while the world does not have the right to defend themselves against it.
So, while the system of propaganda—commonly referred to as the “free press”—will do everything in its power to back up Trump’s claim of the US simply responding to North Korean “hostility”, the reality shows something entirely different.
Steven Chovanec is an independent journalist and analyst based in Chicago, Illinois. He has a bachelor’s degree in International Studies and Sociology from Roosevelt University, and has written for numerous outlets such as The Hill, TeleSur, MintPress News, Consortium News, and others. His writings can be found at undergroundreports.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @stevechovanec.
The United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech this past Monday targeting Iran may have created a new benchmark for hypocritical, arrogant, and entitled demands by the United States on foreign governments.
The speech included gross misstatements regarding the seven-nation Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump Administration unilaterally abrogated earlier this month.
More critically, it promised to impose “the strongest sanctions in history” against Iran, including secondary sanctions against governments and private companies which refuse to back the U.S. agenda, unless Iran changed a series of internal and regional policies. With the re-imposition of such sanctions, Iran will no longer have any incentive to stick to its part of the nuclear deal.
Most of the Iranian policies cited by Pompeo are indeed problematic, yet are hardly unique to that country. Furthermore, the failure to offer any kind of reciprocity effectively guarantees that the Islamic Republic will reject any changes in its policies.
For example, Pompeo demanded that Iran withdraw its troops from Syria—which are there at the request of the Syrian government—but made no demand that Turkish or Israeli forces withdraw their troops from Syrian territory. Nor did he offer to withdraw U.S. forces.
Pompeo similarly demanded an end to Iranian support for various militia groups in the region, without any reciprocal reduction of support for rebel groups by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or the United States.
And Pompeo demanded that Iran cease providing missiles to Houthi rebels, who have fired them into Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign and siege of Yemen. There was no offer to end the U.S. policy of providing the bombs, missiles, jet fighters to Saudi and Emirati forces which have killed many thousands of Yemeni civilians.
Pompeo further demanded Iran provide “a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program,” despite the fact that this limited research effort ended more than fifteen years ago. Of course, there was no offer that the United States or its allies rein in their own nuclear programs. Israel, Pakistan, and India have never opened up their nuclear facilities to outside inspections, despite two U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on them to do so.
Though most arms control agreements have historically been based on some kind of tradeoff, Pompeo insists that Iran unilaterally cease its ballistic missile program while making no such demand of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, or other allies in the region. Nor is there any offer to limit U.S. ballistic missiles, even though U.S. missiles are capable of striking Iran while no Iranian missiles have the capability of coming anywhere close to the United States.
And while Pompeo was right to criticize the Iranian regime’s corruption, economic mismanagement, and human rights abuses, he expressed no qualms about the even worse records of U.S. allies in the region
Perhaps the most hypocritical demand in Pompeo’s speech was that Iran “must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government,” which the United States has repeatedly subverted for a decade and a half.
In fact, Iran is already in compliance to some of Pompeo’s other demands, such as stopping production of enriched uranium and allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency full access to its nuclear facilities. The Iran nuclear pact already limits Iranian stockpiles to an extremely low enrichment level of 3.67 percent, well below the 90 percent needed for weapons production, and guarantees extensive and intrusive inspections of all nuclear-related facilities.
No nation can be expected to comply with such unilateral demands, particularly coming from a country which is responsible for far more destabilizing policies, civilian deaths, and weapons proliferation in the region than is Iran. Pompeo made his demands knowing they would be rejected.
And that may be part of a deliberate strategy. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario in the not-too-distant future in which the Trump Administration claims that since “sanctions didn’t work,” the only recourse is war.
*
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency has taken a dramatic turn under the Trump Administration with the hiring of Scott Pruitt, the controversial politician who has opened up the floodgates for oil, gas and other high-polluting companies.
The cozy atmosphere has not necessarily extended to the press however, as you might imagine considering the growing movement toward clean, natural energy and other next generation technology.
And now, according to reports from multiple outlets, the EPA has banned reporters from two of the world’s biggest news publications from entering a key summit.
Report: EPA bans CNN, AP from Covering Chemical Summit
According to this report from the website ThinkProgress, the Associated Press and CNN have both been banned from covering the EPA’s summit on chemicals, and one reporter from the AP was also forcibly removed from headquarters after attempting to report on it.
She was reportedly “grabbed by the shoulders and forcibly shoved out of the EPA building,” the report continued.
The events reportedly took place at a national summit on polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAs, which are linked to potentially serious long-term health problems.
Nearly 200 people attended, but missing were reporters from the aforementioned outlet and several others including E&E News.
The AP reporter was said to have asked to speak to an EPA rep. when the alleged incident happened.
Other reporters were allowed into the event but were asked to leave after the first hour, during which a representative from the American Chemistry Council, the main trade association for the chemical industry, was among the speakers.
Is the EPA Limiting Potentially Critical Reporting?
Also according to the article, a Freedom of Information Act request by the Sierra Club recently discovered internal emails showing how the EPA frequently discusses plans to limit reporting on key events with controversial topics like the chemical summit. They’ve even going as far as threatening to call the police on a reporter who wanted to report on a meeting between Pruitt and officials from North Dakota, the article said.
The EPA has sparred with the press for several months now as they seek to protect the chemical industry, critics say.
Last year the EPA’s press office sent out a release titled ‘EPA Response to the AP’s Misleading Story’ during which Michael Biesecker of the AP was criticized for writing what the EPA deemed an “incredibly misleading story” about Superfund sites and Hurricane Harvey, although the article points out that the EPA did not directly contradict any facts in it.
“Scott Pruitt is incapable of running the EPA without trampling on the health of American families and the freedom of the press in the process,” Sierra Club Resist campaign director Maura Crowley said about the day’s events according to the article.
“If Pruitt truly has nothing to hide he should be welcoming reporters with open arms, not ejecting them for trying to do their jobs.”
EPA Could Open the Floodgates for GMOs
In addition to concerns about the current administration’s cozy ties with the chemical industry, their support for genetically engineered foods has also been vocalized, leading many to wonder exactly what may come next.
According to the websiteTechnology Review, Trump gave a speech that the administration is “streamlining regulations that have blocked cutting-edge biotechnology, setting free our farmers to innovate, thrive and grow.”
But considering that GMOs are already not labeled and we’re already spraying millions of pounds of toxic, synthetic pesticides on our farmland each year and Biotech companies like Monsanto seem to be devoid of any strategies that don’t involve this paradigm, it makes sense to wonder if things will ever turn around.
Several other countries have already beaten us to the punch when it comes to drastically reducing pollution and chemical industry influence, but unfortunately it appears as if the U.S. still has a long, long way to go.
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.
Yugoslavia as a state was officially created one hundred years ago on December 1st, 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed on January 6th, 1929 to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). The country emerged legally from the Corfu Pact of 1917 (signed agreement between Serbia’s government and the South-Slavic representatives from the Habsburg Monarchy) and was the extremely heterogeneous state from ethnic, geographic, historical, confessional and linguistic points of view.
Yugoslavia’s religious and ethnic diversity was expressed in two mutually opposite national-political ideas about the nature and future of the new state. It is true that Slovenia and Croatia had joined Yugoslav state for a defensive reason, to protect their ethnonational territories against the Austrian and the Italian revisionist politics of irredentist pretensions. Political representatives of Slovenia (Kranjska) and Croatia demanded a federal Yugoslavia, which would leave each of three federal units (Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia) with extensive political, economic, cultural and educational autonomy.
However, by contrast, Serbia, which lost ¼ of her population during the WWI[1] and sacrificed her state’s independence in the name of Yugoslavia, advocated a concept of a centralized state as the best solution for the protection of Serbs outside Serbia. As a matter of fact, Serbia was a relatively homogeneous country having a high level of self-confidence since her internationally recognized independence at the Berlin Congress in 1878. Nevertheless, this latter conception became accepted, when a centralized constitution was voted by a narrow parliamentary majority on June 28th, 1921, creating the conflict with the leading Croatian political party – the Croatian People’s Peasants’ Party (HNSS).[2]
Surely, the Kingdom of Serbia was a “Yugoslav Piedmont” and a country which mostly suffered during the WWI for the unification of Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and other South Slavs into a single political entity. The first clear expression of the Yugoslav unification by Serbia as a war aim of Belgrade was delivered to the Entente powers already at the end of August 1914[3] but the idea of a South Slavic political unification had much longer tradition dating back in 1794.
The Origins of the “Idea of Union” (1794)
The development of the “Idea of Union”, i.e. of bringing all South Slavs into one state, originated from the idea of South Slavic common ethnic, historical and linguistic origins, which can be historically traced from the end of the 18th century when the most significant Serbian historian of the time, Jovan Rajić, published in Vienna his most important work in 1794 under the title “A History of Different Slavic Peoples, Especially Bulgarians, Croatians and Serbians”. He pointed out in this work that the Croats are Slavic people who established their own national state in Dalmatia (i.e., that Dalmatia was an original Balkan region of Croatian statehood). The Croatian neighbors, the Serbs, came from the north and settled themselves on the area of Macedonia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, Moesia, Rascia, and Bosnia.[4] Finally, according to his opinion, the medieval writers mixed up the Bulgarians with the Balkan Vlachs.
It was a German historian A. L. Schltzer who in his Allgemeine nordische Geschichte(1771) made the first general systematization of the dispersion of the Slavic tribes after their (false?) “great migrations” in the 6th c., and a scholar who created the term – South Slavs (Sd-Slaven). Further, the Slovenian historian Anton Linhart was a person who for the first time introduced this term into the South Slavic culture (in 1802). The terms Yugoslavia and the Yugoslavs were firstly used in 1834 by the Austrian authorities, and further spread up during and after the Revolution of 1848–1849.[5] However, originally, the term Yugoslavs referred only to those South Slavs living within the Habsburg Monarchy.
A Serbian writer from Habsburg Monarchy, Dositej Obradović, at the beginning of the 19th century anticipated an idea of a mutual community of the South Slavs on the linguistic foundation.[6] He, basically, implied in the Balkan case a West European romanticist idea, advanced by the rationalistic philosophers, that one language can be spoken by one ethnonational community. However, he clearly differentiated a Serbian ethnonational speech (a Štokavian dialect) from similar South Slavic dialects. For him, the borders of a common South Slavic language are at the same time and the borders of the same South Slavic ethnic nation, regardless on the current (and historical) situation that the South Slavs have been living in different political entities (states) and confessing different faiths (by belonging to different, and even antagonistic, churches and theological believes – Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam).
The French Illyrian Yugoslavism (1809−1814)
With the creation of the French (by Napoleon) Illyrian Provinces (Provinces Illyriennes), composed by Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, a littoral portion of Montenegro, Istria, South Croatia, and South Slovenia, which as political reality existed between 1809 and 1814, it began a period when the South Slavs from these territories started to live under the rule of a single political entity. All of these provinces became after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 incorporated into the Austrian Empire, renamed in 1867 into the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This new political circumstance in the Balkans (from 1809 to 1918) had a significant impact on the creation of consciousness among the Western South Slavs about their ethnonational common origin and, therefore, a unity. However, a Napoleonic policy of the Illyrian Yugoslavism of the time was, in essence, anti-Austrian, as “these various peoples had to be educated with regard to the idea of one nation in order for all of them to demonstrate similar spirits and ideas”[7] what practically means to be separated from the Austrian Empire. Actually, the French Napoleonic government carried out a policy of the South Slavic (Yugoslav) political-administrative unification under the features of a single Illyrian language and Illyrian ethnolinguistic nation.[8] It was, in fact, a policy of a national unification of the French South Slavs under the Illyrian (Yugoslav) ethnonational name.
At the time of political absolutism in the Austrian Empire after the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), the Austrian emperor retained some institutions and practice, which were established under the Napoleonic rule on the South Slavic territories of the former French Illyrian provinces. For instance, a southern part of present-day Croatia (from Kupa river to Dalmatia) remained in the administrative connection with the Slovenian provinces. In fact, an organization of the Illyrian Kingdom, as an Austrian crown land, marked the beginning of an anti-Hungarian policy by Vienna. However, Vienna, at the same time, carried out a Yugoslav policy, according to which, the Illyrian Kingdomshould be a nucleus of a single South Slavic (Yugoslav) administrative province within the Austrian Empire, in order to avert a South Slavic (or at least a pan-Serbian) political unification under Serbia’s leadership, what means beyond the borders of the Austrian Empire. This “Yugoslav” plan was originally designed by the Austrian chancellor Clemens von Metternich, who intended that the Austrian Illyrian Kingdom would include all Dalmatia in order to be created a South Slavic (Yugoslav) federal unit (province) within the Austrian Empire (Mittägliches Slavisches Reich).[9]
The Croatian National Renaissance – Illyrian Movement(1830−1847)
Originally sponsored by the Austrian authorities, an official propagandistic ideology of the Croatian national renaissance – Illyrian Movement (1830−1847)[10], led by a Croatized German Ljudevit Gaj (Ludwig Gay), understood all South Slavs as a single ethnolinguistic group, who has to live in united national state of Greater Illyria–from the Alps to the Black Sea. It is quite clear from Lj. Gaj’s article Naš narod (1835), in which he thought that in the Magnum Illyricum (as united South Slavic or Yugoslav state, established by the western, central and eastern portions of the Balkans) should be included the Slovenes, Croats, Slavonians, Dalmatians, Bosnians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and finally Bulgarians.[11]
Lj. Gaj formally favored a “total unification” of all South Slavs including and Bulgarians, but for the Serbs and Slovenes, his projected Greater Illyria was nothing else than a renamed Greater Croatia as a part of the Austrian Empire. However, a pan-Yugoslav propaganda in Lj. Gaj ’s writings for the sake to promote an idea of a united Yugoslavia as a common state of all South Slavs was understood by a majority of Serbian and Slovenian intellectuals of the time as a hidden policy of the Austrian imperialism in the Balkans which used the Croats for the realization of foreign policy goals by Vienna. For instance, Lj. Gaj was the first who proposed that a common name for the South Slavs in the Triune Kingdom (Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia) has to be the Serbo-Croats who spoke the common Serbo-Croatian (or Croato-Serbian) language[12] but for the Serbs such proposal was nothing else than a promulgation of the Austro-Croatian policy of denationalization and Croatization of the Austrian Christian Orthodox Serbs who never spoke Serbo-Croatian but only Serbian language.[13] Therefore, the Serbian and other South Slavic lands had to be Croatized within the artificial political-ideological framework of the Illyrian Yugoslavism and incorporated into Roman Catholic Austria. Nevertheless, Lj. Gaj called a common South Slavic state as the Magnum Illyricum, that was territorially divided into the “higher” (Slovenia), the “middle” (the main part of Croatia) and the “lower” (from Bosnia to the Black Sea) units[14] – exactly following the writings of his Croatized German compatriot Paul Ritter (Pavao Ritter Vitezović) from 1700 (Croatia rediviva…) on all South Slavs as the Croats and all South Slavic lands as a Greater Croatia.[15] In other words, Lj. Gaj and his Croatian Illyrian Yugoslavs incorporated the whole Slavic south – from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea, from Villach (Beljak) and Gorizzia to the lower Hungary, and from Skadar to Varna – into the Magnum Illyricum.[16] However, a political center of their Magnum Illyricum had to be Croatia’s capital – Zagreb. Henceforth, a Croatian Illyrian Yugoslavism was nothing else than a form of Austro-Croatian Roman Catholic imperialism in the Balkans.
Nevertheless, before the political activities by the Croatian Illyrians, Vuk Stefanović-Karaddžić, a famous Serbian language reformer, and philologist, standardized the literal language for the Serbs based on the historical Serbian people’s speech – a Štokavian dialect. However, this model of Serb standardized language was “borrowed” by Lj. Gaj for the literal language of the Croats and as a result, from the first half of the 19thcentury both Serbs and Croats had a common literal language due to the Croatian appropriation of the Serbian national dialect which was soon renamed by the Croatian philologists firstly as a Serbo-Croatian and then as a Yugoslav language. Among the Slovenes, the language-standardization work was completed by France Prešern and the other Slovenian poets at the first half of the 19th century.[17] As a common standpoint by the pro-Yugoslav 19th century South Slavic philologists was an opinion that after the process of a final standardization of the South Slavic “national languages” they, anyway, have to be understood as only different written expressions of a common South Slavic vernacular.
The Serbs: Between a Greater Serbia or a Greater Yugoslavia
After the fall of the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces and the end of the Serbian Revolution (1804–1833) against the Ottoman lordship, a Serbian society became divided into two camps regarding Serbia’s national policy for the next hundred years:
To run a project of a united Serbian national state (a Greater Serbia).
To become a “locomotive” of the South Slavic unification (a Greater Yugoslavia).
On one hand, a spirit of anti-Yugoslavism established its center of activity among several leading Serbian politicians and academics who saw the “Idea of Union” as nothing else but only the Austrian-created ideological background for the incorporation of all South Slavs into the Austrian Empire within the province of a Greater Croatia.
The Battle of Mišar took place from 12 to 15 August 1806, with a Serbian victory over the Ottomans
In the mid-19th century, there were very important Serbian political designs with regard to geopolitical future of the Balkan Peninsula.[18] The most important of them was a secret plan of Serbia’s foreign policy – Načertanije (1844), or the Draft, written by Serbia’s minister of interior, Ilija Garašanin, who clearly did not project a common Yugoslav state but only a Greater/United Serbia (i.e., the unification of all Serbian people and historical lands within one political entity – a Principality of Serbia). His geopolitical project practically was designed as a pivotal political program against the Yugoslav unification propagated by the Austrian Croats and accepted by some Serbs from the Austrian Empire. I. Garašanin’s Načertanije was, basically, written to oppose an anti-Russian proposal for Serbia’s foreign policy by the Polish agent in Serbia, Francisco Zach, under the instructions given by the Polish count Adam Czartoryski in Conseils sur la conduite a suivre par la Serbie (1843). A basic A. Czartoryski’s idea was that Serbia had to lead a policy of pan-South Slavic unification for the sake of the creation of the Anglo-French supported Balkan Yugoslavia that would be a focal stronghold against the Austrian and Russian penetrations in the peninsula. In other words, the final goal of Serbia’s foreign policy had to be a creation of the common South Slavic state from the Alps Mts. to the Black Sea.[19] However, I. Garašanin rejected A. Czartoryski’s idea and instead of an anti-Russian Greater Yugoslavia designed a Greater Serbia which would have as a prime protector in the Christian Orthodox Russia.
On another hand, however, there were many Serbian public workers, but primarily from the Austrian Empire, who accepted the politics of Yugoslav unification as the optimal solution for the resolving of the “Serbian Question” in the Balkans. They claimed a political leadership of the union for the Principality of Serbia for two political reasons:
Serbia organized two national uprisings against the Ottoman Empire (1804–1813 and 1815) and, therefore, it was together with small Montenegro the only South Slavic land becoming self-independent in the mid-19th century as a consequence of its fighting for the liberation under foreign rule.
Serbia started to create herself as the first Balkan nation and South Slavic society without feudal elements according to modern West European tendency – this social feature became soon the crucial impetus for all liberal movements among the South Slavs.[20]
As a good example of the Austrian pro-Yugoslav camp thinkers or of those who were fighting for the creation of a mutual state of the South Slavs in order to solve the “Serbian Question” was Matija Ban, a liberal Serbian Roman Catholic writer from Dubrovnik[21], who came to live in Belgrade in 1844. His main task was to turn Serbia’s foreign policy from an idea of the creation of I. Garašanin’s primarily Christian Orthodox Greater Serbia towards the formation of the Yugoslav patchwork with the Roman Catholic Slovenes and Croats.[22]
To be continued with the second and final part.
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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is Founder & Editor of POLICRATICUS-Electronic Magazine on Global Politics (www.global-politics.eu). Contact: [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Notes
[1] Andrej Mitrović, Prvi svetski rat, Prekretnice novije srpske istorije, Kragujevac, 1995, p. 82. In some Serbia’s counties the population loss during the war was even up to 80% [Mira Radojević, Ljubodrag Dimić, Srbija u Velikom ratu 1914−1918, Beograd, 2014, p. 245].
[2] Jan Palmowski, A Dictionary of Contemporary World History from 1900 to the Present Day, New York, 2004, p. 706.
[3] Mile Bjelajac, 1914−2014: Zašto revizija. Stare i nove kontroverze o uzrocima Prvog svetskog rata, Beograd, 2014, p. 200.
[4] Jovan Rajić, История разних словенских народов, найпаче Болгар, Хорватов и Сербов, vol. II, Wien, 1794, pp. 168–169; Milorad Ekmečić, Stvaranje Jugoslavije1790–1918, vol. I, Beograd, 1989, p. 47.
[5] Franjo Ilešić, “O postanku izraza ‘Jugoslovenski’”, Prilozi za književnost, jezik, istoriju i folklor, IX, 1–2, Beograd, 1929, p. 153.
[6] Milorad Ekmečić, Stvaranje Jugoslavije 1790–1918, vol. I, Beograd, 1989, p. 53.
[7] Monika Seknowska-Gluck, “Illyrie sous la domination Napoleonienne 1809–1813”, Acta Poloniae Historica, 41, Warszawa, 1980, p. 100; John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, Columbia University Press, New York, 2000, p. 221.
[8] At that time, it was belief that all South Slavs originated from the ancient inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula – the Illyrians.
[9] Arthur G. Haas, Metternich. Reorganisation and Nationality, 1813–1818. A Study in Foresight and Frustration in the Rebuilding of the Austrian Empire, Wiesbaden, 1963, p. 100.
[10] Dragutin Pavličević, Povijest Hrvatske, Drugo, izmijenjeno i prošireno izdanje, Zagreb, 2000, pp. 243−254.
[11] Ljudevit Gaj, “Naš narod”, Danica, 34, Zagreb, August 29th, 1835.
[12] Franjo Fancev, “Ilirstvo u Hrvatskom preporodu”, Ljetopis JAZU, 49, Zagreb 1937.
[13] Petar Milosavljević, Srpski filološki program, Beograd, 2000, pp. 321−322.
[14] Ljudevit Gaj, “Naš narod”, Danica, 34, Zagreb, August 29th, 1835. During the first visiting of Budapest by Ljudevit Gaj in 1846 one of the British intelligence diplomats noticed that he was surely convinced in the fact that “the secret aim of the Croats was and probably is, to create one Illyrian Kingdom which would be consisted by Carniola, Carinthia, Istria, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Dalmatia” [Blackwell to Palmerston, “Memoire on the Agitation in the Austrian Empire. Viewed as a Question of Diplomacy”, London, August 21st, 1846, Public Record Office, Foreign Office, London, 7/333, No 109].
[15] Pavao Ritter Vitezović, Croatia rediviva: Regnante Leopoldo Magno Caesare, Zagreb, 1700; Ivo Perić, Povijest Hrvata, Zagreb, 1997, p. 122.
[16] Franjo Tuđman, Hrvatska u monarhističkoj Jugoslaviji, vol. I (1918–1928), Zagreb, 1993, p. 16.
[17] According to Tuđman, Karadžić’s idea that all Štokavian dialect speaking population of Serbo-Croatian language is of the Serb origin, written in his article Srbi svi i svuda in 1836 and published in Kovčežić za istoriju, jezik i običaje Srba sva tri zakona(Wien 1849), was the crucial reason for Croats to turn back from the idea of Illyrism towards the idea of Croatism. Tuđman, also, pointed out that Karadžić’s theory was a foundation of the “Great Serbism” for the next generations of the Serbian ideologists and politicians in order to create a Greater Serbia [Franjo Tuđman, Hrvatska u monarhističkoj Jugoslaviji, vol. I, Zagreb, 1993, pp. 22–23]. However, Tuđman was wrong in this point for the reason that the Karadžić’s idea of Štokavian Serbdom was in fact taken by him from the leading Slavic philologists at that time and it was publically presented as a Serbian answer to the Croatization of the Roman Catholic Štokavian speakers by the leaders of the Croatian Illyrian Movement.
[18] About this issue see more in [Dragan Simeunović, Iz riznice otadžbinskih ideja. Slobodarski međaši naše političke misli 19. veka, Beograd, 2000].
[19] Dragoslav Stranjaković, “Kako je postalo Garašaninovo ‘Načertanije’”, Spomenik, 91, Beograd, 1939, p. 13; Vasa Čubrilović, Istorija političke misli u Srbiji XIX v., Beograd, 1958, pp. 166–169.
[20] Milorad Ekmečić, Stvaranje Jugoslavije 1790–1918, vol. I, Beograd, 1989, p. 165.
[21] Dubrovnik (Ragusa) was a part of the Austrian Empire from 1814 to 1867 and a part of the Austrian half of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy from 1867 to 1918.
[22] Milorad Ekmečić, Stvaranje Jugoslavije 1790–1918, vol. I, Beograd, 1989, pp. 369–370.
All images, except the featured, in this article are from the author.
Albert Speer, the Nazi architect and war minister, observed how his paymaster Adolf Hitler was “filled with a fundamental distrust of all innovations which, as in the case of jet aircraft or atom bombs, went beyond the technical experience of the First World War generation, and presaged an era he could not know”.
Hitler was indeed involved from the First World War’s outset, having voluntarily enlisted to join the Bavarian Army in early August 1914. As a humble dispatch runner, Hitler was present at a list of major conflicts – from the First Battle of Ypres in November 1914, through to the bloody fighting at Passchendaele (July-November 1917), having recovered from injury to his left thigh during the 1916 Battle of the Somme, after a shell exploded close-by. At war’s end, with Hitler almost 30 years old, there was little indication he would evolve into a dictator set on colossal genocide of Jewish and Slavic populations.
As with many First World War veterans, Hitler had a conventional, old-fashioned view regarding artillery and weapons. Furthermore, like many of those who survived the Great War, the hammering psychological impacts of the conflict remained embedded on the mind.
While writing at Spandau prison in 1952, Speer recalled that,
“Even as a military commander, Hitler was inclined to think of the psychological rather than the military potency of a weapon. That was shown early when Hitler devised the siren for Stukas, and regarded the demoralizing howl as having a greater effect than the explosive force of the bombs. And this bias assumed strange and militarily-unfortunate forms when the sub-machine gun was ready for production – and Hitler delayed its introduction month after month because, he argued, the soldier’s use of the rifle forced him to become a good shot and bayonet fighter, and thus called for soldierly virtues”.
Crucially, Speer further noted how:
“Such psychologizing of all military technology became sheer grotesquery, when Hitler begged Rommel and me to develop automatically-rotating flamethrowers, which would work in the manner of lawn sprinklers. These, he argued, would be the prime defense against [an Allied] invasion. Judging by Hitler’s experiences in the First World War, nothing was more terrifying to a soldier than a jet of flame aimed at him. The prospect of being burned to death spread panic, whereas death from a bullet always came unexpectedly and was more honorable. By the spring of 1944, more than 20,000 flamethrowers were produced and available… The objections of military analysts meant nothing to Hitler once he began ranting about the devastating psychological effect”.
In relation to the possible planet-altering subject of nuclear weapons, by June 1942, at the height of the war, Speer noted Hitler’s “growing resolve not to pursue the matter”. The Nazi leader felt atomic weapons could turn the earth “into a glowing star”, while he further joked that the scientists “might one day set the globe on fire” by their discoveries. The English author and Third Reich specialist, Geoffrey Michael Brooks, wrote that Hitler had a revealing discussion in November 1944 with SS lieutenant-colonel Otto Skorzeny (Benito Mussolini’s chief rescuer the year before).
Regarding the atomic bomb, Hitler told Skorzeny that
“even if the radioactivity could be controlled, and you used fission as a weapon, then the effects would be terrible… it would be the Apocalypse… No nation, no group of civilized people could take on such a responsibility. The first bomb would be answered by a second, and then humanity would be forced down the road to extinction”.
Almost, as it has proved, or not yet perhaps – as numerous near-fatal incidents with increasingly powerful nuclear bombs have occurred in the post-World War II period. Today, threat of global destruction from nuclear weapons is grave, as outlined by the atomic scientists who control the Doomsday Clock. The dangers were all too real from the beginning. In mid-July 1945 Enrico Fermi, the Americans’ chief nuclear physicist, was about to test the world’s first atomic bomb in New Mexico, when “he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico, or destroy the world”. Such were the terrors afflicting him.
In what must be one of the greatest ironies in world history, the leading Nazi dictator (Hitler) – unlike his democratically elected Western counterparts – foresaw, from quite early, the enormous threat nuclear weapons would pose to the earth. Unperturbed, by December 1942, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt had given “final approval” to build the atomic bomb, continuing its unwavering development even after it became clear, in late 1943, that the Nazis’ nuclear program was “stillborn”.
Elsewhere, a further critical influence behind Hitler’s mistrust of nuclear research was his decorated advisor, Philipp Lenard, the veteran Nobel Prize winning physicist – and a supporter of Hitler dating to the 1920s. Discussing such matters with companions at dinner, Hitler cited nuclear research as belonging to “Jewish physics”, backing up his arguments by invoking Lenard’s racist theories. Hitler later appointed the German scientist as “Chief of Aryan physics”.
Lenard was a merciless critic of the great Jewish theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, whom he said was responsible for “the Jewish fraud” of the theory of relativity – which is now considered one of the two cornerstones of modern physics, along with quantum mechanics. Speer wrote that
“Lenard had instilled the idea in Hitler that the Jews were exerting a seditious influence in their concern with nuclear physics and the relativity theory”.
With such an unrepentant anti-Semite as Hitler, Lenard’s words must have carried deep resonance.
Einstein himself, who was born in southern Germany, unwittingly became one of the instigators behind America beginning their unrelenting nuclear program, called the “Manhattan Project”. Einstein signed a letter to president Roosevelt, sent on 2 August 1939, warning that the Nazis could develop an atomic bomb in the near future. Roosevelt replied personally to Einstein over two months later, promising he would “thoroughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestion regarding the element of uranium”, one of the key components in nuclear weapons production.
Unfortunately, Einstein could not have been aware of Hitler’s full personality and anti-modernist nature, nor his distrust of nuclear research. In 1954, the year before Einstein died, he described his signing of the letter to Roosevelt as the “one great mistake in my life”.
While Roosevelt, and successor Harry Truman, were firm advocates of nuclear research, Hitler’s mind was on anything but atomic weapons. By late summer 1942, his German forces were bludgeoning their way toward the southern Russian city of Astrakhan – with the aim of also taking oil-rich Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. While Napoleon had been unable to last the Russian winter of 1812, the Germans were proving to have greater endurance. Though suffering significant losses, the Wehrmacht survived Joseph Stalin‘s counter-offensive of December 1941, before regrouping.
By mid-1942, it seemed the Nazis were comfortably winning the war, with much of mainland Europe under their bloody occupation. Speer went so far as to discern that,
“There actually no longer seemed to be any resistance to Hitler left in Europe”.
Toward the end of August 1942 the Nazi leader met Speer, along with several industrialists, at his Vinnitsa Werwolf headquarters, in central Ukraine.
The atmosphere at Hitler’s Ukrainian compound was “in splendid humor”, as the new armaments minister observed. Following a conference, Hitler outlined his plans to Speer in person:
“For a long time I have had everything prepared. As the next step we are going to advance south of the Caucasus, and then help the rebels in Iran and Iraq against the English. Another thrust will be directed along the Caspian Sea towards Afghanistan and India. Then the English will run out of oil. In two years we’ll be at the borders of India, 20 to 30 elite German divisions will do. Then the British empire will collapse. They’ve already lost Singapore to the Japanese. The English will have to look on impotently as their colonial empire falls to pieces”.
Noting the French emperor’s woes of 130 years before, Hitler continued that
“Napoleon wanted to conquer Russia and the world by way of Egypt. He would have reached his goal if he had not made great mistakes. I shall avoid such mistakes, depend on that!… By the end of 1943, we will pitch our tents in Tehran, Baghdad and on to the Persian Gulf. Then the oil wells will at last be dry as far as the English are concerned”.
Amid his vast military plans, Hitler’s belief in warfare again remained rooted among his experiences of fighting in the trenches. His disdain of the machine gun extended upwards to his mistrust of jet propulsion, which he felt a major threat to classical aerial combat. The dictator consistently interfered with development of the world’s first jet-powered fighter aircraft, the Messerschmitt Me 262 – he delayed its production for months on end, until it was too late, while insisting it should be used as a simple bomber rather than as a fighter aircraft.
Even in Hitler’s efforts to thwart a possible Allied invasion from France, his ideas were remarkably conventional and outmoded. On 20 April 1943, his 54th birthday, Hitler discussed with Speer and State Secretary, Karl-Otto Saur, how best to repel an American and British landing in the West: By designing six-man bunkers, equipped with just anti-tank guns and flamethrowers, which Hitler himself had just sketched on paper.
The dictator said,
“We’ll build thousands of this model [the bunkers] and scatter them along the Atlantic Wall as additional defenses. Later, we’ll use the same model on our final Eastern boundary deep in Russia.”
Sensing the surprised feelings of both Speer and Saur, Hitler continued,
“You see, I have to do everything myself. Nobody hit on this idea. Bemedalled generals, technicians, armaments experts surround me, but everything rests on my shoulders. From the smallest to the biggest! Here I am, 54 years old, and you can see the condition I’m in. But I’ll still have to lead the great clash with the USA”.
*
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.
They are like the camel’s nose, lifting a corner of the tent. Don’t be fooled, though. It won’t take long until the whole animal is sitting inside, sipping your tea and eating your sweets. In countries around the world — in the Middle East, Asia Minor, Central Asia, Africa, even the Philippines — the appearance of U.S. drones in the sky (and on the ground) is often Washington’s equivalent of the camel’s nose entering a new theater of operations in this country’s forever war against “terror.” Sometimes, however, the drones are more like the camel’s tail, arriving after less visible U.S. military forces have been in an area for a while.
Scrambling for Africa
AFRICOM, the Pentagon’s Africa Command, is building Air Base 201 in Agadez, a town in the nation of Niger. The $110 million installation, which officially opens later this year, will be able to house both C-17 transport planes and MQ-9 Reaper armed drones. It will soon become the new centerpiece in an undeclared U.S. war in West Africa. Even before the base opens, armed U.S. drones are already flying from Niger’s capital, Niamey, having received permission from the Nigerien government to do so last November.
Despite crucial reporting by Nick Turse and others, most people in this country only learned of U.S. military activities in Niger in 2017 (and had no idea that about 800 U.S. military personnel were already stationed in the country) when news broke that four U.S. soldiers had died in an October ambush there. It turns out, however, that they weren’t the only U.S soldiers involved in firefights in Niger. This March, the Pentagon acknowledged that another clash took place last December between Green Berets and a previously unknown group identified as ISIS-West Africa. For those keeping score at home on the ever-expanding enemies list in Washington’s war on terror, this is a different group from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), responsible for the October ambush. Across Africa, there have been at least eight other incidents, most of them in Somalia.
What are U.S. forces doing in Niger? Ostensibly, they are training Nigerien soldiers to fight the insurgent groups rapidly multiplying in and around their country. Apart from the uranium that accounts for over 70% of Niger’s exports, there’s little of economic interest to the United States there. The real appeal is location, location, location. Landlocked Niger sits in the middle of Africa’s Sahel region, bordered by Mali and Burkina Faso on the west, Chad on the east, Algeria and Libya to the north, and Benin and Nigeria to the south. In other words, Niger has the misfortune to straddle a part of Africa of increasing strategic interest to the United States.
In addition to ISIS-West Africa and ISGS, actual or potential U.S. targets there include Boko Haram (born in Nigeria and now spread to Mali and Chad), ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Libya, and Al Mourabitoun, based primarily in Mali.
At the moment, for instance, U.S. drone strikes on Libya, which have increased under the Trump administration, are generally launched from a base in Sicily. However, drones at the new air base in Agadez will be able to strike targets in all these countries.
Suppose a missile happens to kill some Nigerien civilians by mistake (not exactly uncommon for U.S. drone strikes elsewhere)? Not to worry: AFRICOM is covered. A U.S.-Niger Status of Forces Agreement guarantees that there won’t be any repercussions. In fact, according to the agreement,
“The Parties waive any and all claims… against each other for damage to, loss, or destruction of the other’s property or injury or death to personnel of either Party’s armed forces or their civilian personnel.”
In other words, the United States will not be held responsible for any “collateral damage” from Niger drone strikes. Another clause in the agreement shields U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors from any charges under Nigerien law.
The introduction of armed drones to target insurgent groups is part of AFRICOM’s expansion of the U.S. footprint on a continent of increasing strategic interest to Washington. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European nations engaged in the “scramble for Africa,” a period of intense and destructive competition for colonial possessions on the continent. In the post-colonial 1960s and 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union vied for influence in African countries as diverse as Egypt and what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Today, despite AFRICOM’s focus on the war on terror, the real jockeying for influence and power on the continent is undoubtedly between this country and the People’s Republic of China. According to the Council on Foreign Relations,
“China surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trade partner in 2009” and has never looked back. “Beijing has steadily diversified its business interests in Africa,” the Council’s 2017 backgrounder continues, noting that from Angola to Kenya,
“China has participated in energy, mining, and telecommunications industries and financed the construction of roads, railways, ports, airports, hospitals, schools, and stadiums. Investment from a mixture of state and private funds has also set up tobacco, rubber, sugar, and sisal plantations… Chinese investment in Africa also fits into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s development framework, ‘One Belt, One Road.’”
For example, in a bid to corner the DRC’s cobalt and copper reserves (part of an estimated $24 trillion in mineral wealth there), two Chinese companies have formed Sicomines, a partnership with the Congolese government’s national mining company. The Pulitzer Center reports that Sicomines is expected “to extract 6.8 million tons of copper and 427,000 tons of cobalt over the next 25 years.” Cobalt is essential in the manufacture of today’s electronic devices — from cell phones to drones — and more than half of the world’s supply lies underground in the DRC.
Even before breaking ground on Air Base 201 in Niger, the United States already had a major drone base in Africa, in the tiny country of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. From there, the Pentagon has been directing strikes against targets in Yemen and Somalia. As AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhausertold Congress in March,
“Djibouti is a very strategic location for us.”
Camp Lemonnier, as the base is known, occupies almost 500 acres near the Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport. U.S. Central Command, Special Operations Command, European Command, and Transportation Command all use the base. At present, however, it appears that U.S. drones stationed in Djibouti and bound for Yemen and Somalia take off from nearby Chabelley Airfield, as Bard College’s Center for the Study of the Drone reports.
To the discomfort of the U.S. military, the Chinese have recently established their first base in Africa, also in Djibouti, quite close to Camp Lemonnier. That country is also horning in on potential U.S. sales of drones to other countries. Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab emirates are among U.S. allies known to have purchased advanced Chinese drones.
The Means Justify the End?
From the beginning, the CIA’s armed drones have been used primarily to kill specific individuals. The Bush administration launched its global drone assassination program in October 2001 in Afghanistan, expanded it in 2002 to Yemen, and later to other countries. Under President Barack Obama, White House oversight of such assassinations only gained momentum (with an official “kill list” and regular “terror Tuesday” meetings to pick targets). The use of drones expanded 10-fold, with growing numbers of attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, as well as in the Afghan, Iraqi, and Syrian war zones. Early on, targets were generally people identified as al-Qaeda leaders or “lieutenants.” In later years, the kill lists grew to include supposed leaders or members of a variety of other terror organizations, and eventually even unidentified people engaged in activities that were to bear the “signature” of terrorist activity.
But those CIA drones, destructive as they were (leaving civilian dead, including children, in their wake) were just the camel’s nose — a way to smuggle in a major change in U.S. policy. We’ve grown so used to murder by drone in the last 17 years that we’ve lost sight of an important fact: such assassinations represented a fundamental (and unlawful) change in U.S. military strategy. Because unpiloted airplanes eliminate the physical risk to American personnel, the United States has embraced a strategy of global extrajudicial executions: presidential assassinations on foreign soil.
It’s a case of the means justifying the end. The drones work so well at so little cost (to us) that it must be all right to kill people with them.
Successive administrations have implemented this strategic change with little public discussion. Critiques of the drone program tend to focus — not unreasonably — on the many additional people (like family members) who are injured or die along with the intended targets, and on civilians who should never have been targets in the first place. But few critics point out that executing foreign nationals without trial in other countries is itself wrong and illegal under U.S. law, as well as that of other countries where some of the attacks have taken place, and of course, international law.
How have the Bush, Obama, and now Trump administrations justified such killings? The same way they justified the expansion of the war on terror itself to new battle zones around the world — through Congress’s September 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). That law permitted the president
“to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Given that many of the organizations the United States is targeting with drones today didn’t even exist when that AUMF was enacted and so could hardly have “authorized” or “aided” in the 9/11 attacks, it offers, at best, the thinnest of coverage indeed for such a worldwide program.
Droning On and On
George W. Bush launched the CIA’s drone assassination program and that was just the beginning. Even as Barack Obama attempted to reduce the number of U.S. ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, he ramped up the use of drones, famously taking personal responsibility for targeting decisions. By some estimates, he approved 10 times as many drone attacks as Bush.
Screenshot from the Washington Post
In 2013, the Obama administration introduced new guidelines for drone strikes, supposedly designed to guarantee with “near certainty” the safety of civilians. Administration officials also attempted to transfer most of the operational responsibility for drone attacks from the CIA to the military’s only-slightly-less-secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Although the number of CIA strikes did drop, the Agency remained in a position to rev up its program at any time, as the Washington Post reported in 2016:
“U.S. officials emphasized that the CIA has not been ordered to disarm its fleet of drones, and that its aircraft remain deeply involved in counterterrorism surveillance missions in Yemen and Syria even when they are not unleashing munitions.”
It’s indicative of how easily drone killings have become standard operating procedure that, in all the coverage of the confirmation hearings for the CIA’s new director, Gina Haspel, there was copious discussion of the Agency’s torture program, but not a public mention of, let alone a serious question about, its drone assassination campaign. It’s possible the Senate Intelligence Committee discussed it in their classified hearing, but the general public has no way of knowing Haspel’s views on the subject.
However, it shouldn’t be too hard to guess. It’s clear, for instance, that President Trump has no qualms about the CIA’s involvement in drone killings. When he visited the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the day after his inauguration, says the Post, “Trump urged the CIA to start arming its drones in Syria. ‘If you can do it in 10 days, get it done,’ he said.” At that same meeting, CIA officials played a tape of a drone strike for him, showing how they’d held off until the target had stepped far enough away from the house that the missile would miss it (and so its occupants). His only question: “Why did you wait?”
You may recall that, while campaigning, the president told Fox News that the U.S. should actually be targeting certain civilians.
“The other thing with the terrorists,” he said, “is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”
In other words, he seemed eager to make himself a future murderer-in-chief.
How, then, has U.S. drone policy fared under Trump? The New York Times has reported major changes to Obama-era policies. Both the CIA’s and the military’s “kill lists” will no longer be limited to key insurgent leaders, but expanded to include “foot-soldier jihadists with no special skills or leadership roles.” The Times points out that this “new approach would appear to remove some obstacles for possible strikes in countries where Qaeda- or Islamic State-linked militants are operating, from Nigeria to the Philippines.” And no longer will attack decisions only be made at the highest levels of government. The requirement for having a “near certainty” of avoiding civilian casualties — always something of a fiction — officially remains in place for now, but we know how seriously Trump takes such constraints.
He’s already overseen the expansion of the drone wars in other ways. In general, that “near certainty” constraint doesn’t apply to officially designated war zones (“areas of active hostility”), where the lower standard of merely avoiding unnecessary civilian casualties prevails. In March 2017, Trump approved a Pentagon request to identify large parts of Yemen and Somalia as areas of “active hostility,” allowing leeway for far less carefully targeted strikes in both places. At the time, however, AFRICOM head General Thomas D. Waldhausersaid he would maintain the “near certainty” standard in Somalia for now (which, as it happens, hasn’t stopped Somali civilians from dying by drone strike).
Another change affects the use of drones in Pakistan and potentially elsewhere. Past drone strikes in Pakistan officially targeted people believed to be “high value” al-Qaeda figures, on the grounds that they (like all al-Qaeda leaders) represented an “imminent threat” to the United States. However, as a 2011 Justice Department paper explained, imminence is in the eye of the beholder:
“With respect to al-Qaeda leaders who are continually planning attacks, the United States is likely to have only a limited window of opportunity within which to defend Americans.”
In other words, once identified as an al-Qaeda leader or the leader of an allied group, you are by definition “continually planning attacks” and always represent an imminent danger, making you a permanent legitimate target.
Under Trump, however, U.S. drones are not only going after those al-Qaeda targets permitted under the 2001 AUMF, but also targeting Afghan Taliban across the border in Pakistan. In other words, these drone strikes are not a continuation of counterterrorism as envisioned under the AUMF, but rather an extension of a revitalized U.S. war in Afghanistan. In general, the law of war allows attacks on a neutral country’s territory only if soldiers chase an enemy across the border in “hot pursuit.” So the use of drones to attack insurgent groups inside Pakistan represents an unacknowledged escalation of the U.S. Afghan War. Another corner of the tent lifted by the camel’s nose?
Transparency about U.S. wars in general, and airstrikes in particular, has also suffered under Trump. The administration, for instance, announced in March that it had used a drone to kill “Musa Abu Dawud, a high-ranking official in al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” as the New York Times reported. However, the Times continued,
“questions about whether the American military, under the Trump administration, is blurring the scope of operations in Africa were raised… when it was revealed that the U.S. had carried out four airstrikes in Libya from September to January that the Africa Command did not disclose at the time.”
Similarly, the administration has been less than forthcoming about its activities in Yemen. As the Business Insider reports (in a story updated from the Long War Journal), the U.S. has attacked al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) there repeatedly, but “of the more than 114 strikes against AQAP in Yemen, CENTCOM has only provided details on four, all of which involved high value targets.” Because Trump has loosened the targeting restrictions for Yemen, it’s likely that the other strikes involved low-level targets, whose identity we won’t know.
Just Security, an online roundtable based at New York University, reports the total number of airstrikes there in 2017 as 120. They investigated eight of these and “found that U.S. operations were responsible for the deaths of at least 32 civilians — including 16 children and six women — and injured 10 others, including five children.” Yemeni civilians had a suggestion for how the United States could help them avoid becoming collateral damage: give them “a list of wanted individuals. A list that is clear and available to the public so that they can avoid targeted individuals, protect their children, and not allow U.S. targets to have a presence in their areas.”
A 2016 executive order requires that the federal director of national intelligence issue an annual report by May 1st on the previous year’s civilian deaths caused by U.S. airstrikes outside designated “active hostility” zones. As yet, the Trump administration has not filed the 2017 report.
Bigger and Better Camels Coming Soon to a Tent Near You
This March, a jubilant Fox News reported that the Marine Corps is planning to build a fancy new drone, called the MUX, for Marine Air Ground Task Force Unmanned Aircraft System-Expeditionary. This baby will sport quite a set of bells and whistles, as Fox marveled:
“The MUX will terrify enemies of the United States, and with good reason. The aircraft won’t be just big and powerful: it will also be ultra-smart. This could be a heavily armed drone that takes off, flies, avoids obstacles, adapts and lands by itself — all without a human piloting it.”
In other words, “the MUX will be a drone that can truly run vital missions all by itself.”
Between pulling out of the Iran agreement and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Trump has made it clear that — despite his base’s chants of “Nobel! Nobel!” — he has no interest whatsoever in peace. It looks like the future of the still spreading war on terror under Trump is as clear as MUX.
Coming weeks ahead of the scheduled summit alone surprised. Time and again it’s clear. Washington virtually never negotiates in good faith – or pre-negotiates, as the pullout shows. Rare exceptions prove the rule.
If Kim Jong-un/Trump talks are held at a later date and/or different location than Singapore, the DPRK can expect nothing positive short-or-longterm.
Its government was betrayed before. Surely it would happen again, especially with hostile hardline neocon extremists infesting Washington – wanting all sovereign independent governments transformed into US vassal states.
On Wednesday, before pulling out of the summit, Trump said cancellation “could very well happen. Whatever it is, we’ll know next week about Singapore.” He didn’t wait. We know now.
According to North Korean First Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan before Trump’s pullout, summit talks may not happen if Washington demands unilateral denuclearization, adding:
“If the US president’s administration is interested in improving North Korean-US relations, we will respond positively to a summit proposal” – otherwise not.
“The United States is talking about providing us with economic benefits if we give up nuclear weapons. We never expected the US to build the (our) economy and will never accept such a deal in the future.”
Pyongyang is justifiably infuriated over Mike Pence’s hostile Monday comments, saying
“(y)ou know, as the president made clear, this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn’t make a deal.”
DPRK Foreign Affairs Vice Minister Choe Son-hui responded, saying
“what a political dummy he is, trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with them,” adding:
“I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice-president.”
“We will neither beg the US for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us.”
“Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States.”
Choe said she’d recommend that Kim cancel the summit if the Trump administration “clings to unlawful and outrageous acts.” It’s how Washington always operates.
On Wednesday, Mike Pompeo said talks are still on as scheduled. White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin and deputy national security advisor Mira Ricardel headed to Singapore for meetings with their DPRK counterparts to discuss summit details.
If held instead of cancelled, North Korea surely knows it’s dealing with a duplicitous regime – hostile to the DPRK since the late 1940s.
Its promises are made to be broken, a lesson learned by all countries dealing with America sooner of later.
Washington doesn’t negotiate. It demands, offering nothing in return but empty pledges – proved repeatedly time and again.
In Wednesday testimony before House Foreign Affairs Committee members, Mike Pompeo vowed US pressure on North Korea “will not change until we see credible steps taken toward the complete, verifiable, and irreversible de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” adding:
“We are clear-eyed about (DPRK) history. It’s time to solve this once and for all. A bad deal is not an option…If the right deal is not on the table (meaning DPRK capitulation to US demands), we will respectfully walk away” – adding Kim was offered “zero concessions.”
His remarks and America’s long history of bad faith virtually assures nothing positive for North Korea short or longer-term if talks are rescheduled for later – whatever positive spin is reported if they take place.
Hegemons can never be trusted. Washington proved this cardinal rule time and again.
This time is not different. Believing it’s possible is dangerously foolhardy.
North Korea is well aware of the kind of regime it’s dealing with – one that can never be trusted.
Agreeing to a summit and then pulling out is its latest bad faith example – no doubt because the DPRK won’t unilaterally surrender to outrageous US demands.
A Final Comment
By letter to Kim Jong-un, cancelling the June summit, Trump blamed him, not his regime for the pullout saying:
“(B)ased on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”
He said nothing about his own earlier threatening comments, nor recent ones by John Bolton on Fox News and Mike Pompeo in House committee testimony Wednesday – bearing full responsibility for North Korea’s justifiable remarks.
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.
After a week’s travel in Iran, I am able to provide a fresh, different, and unbiased perspective on the country. This is an account entirely at odds with Donald J. Trump’s worldview. It is a story diametrically opposed to the Zionist narrative that has so captivated the American government and media.
Following a surprise invitation to attend an all-expenses paid trip to the 6th International New Horizon Conference (about al-Quds, i.e. Jerusalem), I arrived in Mashhad, Iran on May 11, 2018. Knowing little of Iran, I expected another version of Saudi Arabia, an arch-conservative society, with no mixing of the sexes, rigidly-controlled politics, and little interest in the outside world.
Enlightening Ignorant Me
I found just the opposite. Iran and Iranians, despite the unforgivable and deadly U.S. sanctions, are genuinely warm and welcoming. They possess an economy that, despite American efforts to wreck it, still functions. There are airports, motorways (with toll booths!), and double-decker commuter trains. And the most god-awful traffic outside of Washington, D.C. and Moscow, even if gasoline is the equivalent of US$0.25/liter (quart) and the average salary is only US$309/week.
During the conference, at nearly every moment I wasn’t in my chair, I was being interviewed by Iranian journalists and others. There were no softball questions, they were hard and to the point. Some meetings were pre-arranged, others were “ambush” interviews , catching me as I went to change money or finished an earlier conversation with another journalist. I wasn’t alone in this. Other participants, such as Rabbi David Wise from New York City, Philip Giraldi, ex-CIA, Peter Van Buren, former American diplomat like myself, and Greta Berlin, a member of several supply voyages to Palestine NOT attacked by Israel, all noted the same thing.
Contrary to the reportage in the United States, Iranian women, while covered to a greater or lesser extent in public, mix freely with men, walk the streets without escort, and work openly as photographers and reporters. I saw women and men playing pool and bowling together.
But there is a dark side to things in Iran, a land with more than 80 million people and a history and culture stretching back 5,000 years. Like the now-destroyed Iraq and Syria, it is a target country. America and Israel want the nation eliminated. It does not toe the Zionist-American line, it espouses a disfavored religion (although Christians and Jews have lived there for millenia). It is a unified state with strong armed forces.
Some Iranians vigorously expressed their negative views of the United States, “the West”, and Israel. As well as the likely consequences of any unprovoked attack on the country.
Do They Dare?
In what I believe was more than a chance encounter in the town of Qazvin, the one-time capital of Iran, a group of us met with a well-connected local attorney. At a guest house there, roughly 150 km (90 miles from Teheran), our contact lined out Iran’s options in the event of a strike on the country:
Initially, a measured response, i.e., “tit for tat”
Iran had 120,000 missiles available with which to defend itself
Iran had the key to Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense
Iran had many American hostages, e.g., al-Udeid airbase in Qatar or 5th Fleet HQ in Bahrain
In the event of massive military action against Iran, the country would sink enemy ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandeb. It would only take three (3) ships to block Hormuz, sending oil prices sky-high in Europe and North America.
In the event of an overwhelming attack on Iran, Israeli cities with the largest concentration of Zionists would be hit
In the event of a nuclear attack on Iran, the country would strike the Israeli atomic weapons sites, including the Dimona center
It is that latter point, the existence of Israel’s weapons of mass destruction which “The Donald” and his Zionist advisors are concealing. Israel is not a signatory to the non-proliferation agreement on nuclear weapons. Iran is. In 2013, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists estimated that Israel held 80 atomic bombs (and had enough fissile material to build another 115). Alexander and Leslie Cockburn, in their 1991 book Dangerous Liaison, suggested that the “Jewish state” held hydrogen bombs.
The Takeaway?
When asked if Washington and Tel Aviv knew of Iran’s intentions and capabilities, our interlocutor replied “yes”, adding that their irrationality and hatred of Iran precluded any common sense resolution to the matter. He further asserted that Iran’s nuclear weapons are really in Israel, entirely in Bibi Netanyahu’s mind. Additionally, our contact said that he, like many others, was a patriot. He emphasized that Iran was their country and they would sooner see it destroyed rather than submit to foreign control.
Are his words just bluster? Are they, as a British-Algerian journalist remarked to me, more talk than walk? But, as she said, “Here’s hoping common sense prevails. In these worrying times that’s not asking much but it would make a ‘world’ of difference.”
Can we afford to learn otherwise?
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J. Michael Springmann is an attorney, author, and political commentator. He has written Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World and a second book Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb.
With just over a week to go until the May 31 deadline set by Kinder Morgan for the Canadian Government to resolve all financial and political issues surrounding its highly controversial Trans Mountain pipeline, some 236 civil society groups from 44 countries have today written to Justin Trudeau to tell him to drop his support for the project.
Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline will triple the amount of dirty tar sands being shipped from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia.
The pipeline has become the most toxic Canadian political issue of the day, with Trudeau’s government saying they will underwrite losses incurred by Kinder Morgan in their desperation to see the dirty pipeline be built.
Since that announcement for financial support on May 16, there has been growing national and international hostility to the plan.
Just in the last 24 hours, for example, award-winning Canadian journalist, Andrew Nikiforuk, said that Trudeau was being held “hostage” by Kinder Morgan.
“The Trudeau federal government has made itself a pathetic hostage to a Texas-based pipeline company known for its cheapness and debt,” he wrote yesterday.
Also yesterday, some 200 youths from a number of Vancouver schools walked out of class to protest at the Governmnet’s support for the pipeline.
“This is a chance to show our elected leaders and Kinder Morgan that our lands, livelihoods and future are more important than a pipeline,” said Ta’Kaiya Blaney from Vancouver.
And finally yesterday, protesters unveiled banners at the Canadian Embassy in DC, saying:
And that banner refers to a simple climate circle that Trudeau can’t square, however much he tries to spin it otherwise: Trudeau has signed up to the Paris climate goals, but the amount of carbon that would be transported and ultimately burnt by the Trans Mountain Pipeline means that Canada would miss those goals.
As the letter outlines:
“Canada has been a vocal champion of the Paris Agreement and ambitious climate action, and under your leadership, Canada has finally signed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
It continues:
“However, your unwavering support for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion runs counter to both of these commitments and undermines Canada’s role as a global leader.”
“Climate leaders cannot expand or finance major fossil fuel expansion, and climate leaders must begin to plan for a managed phase-out and just transition away from all fossil fuel production,” says the letter.
The letter, signed by the likes of Amazon Watch, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, Center for International Environmental Law, Christian Aid, The Climate Reality Project, Council of Canadians, Friends of the Earth International, Greenpeace, Hip Hop Caucus, Indigenous Environmental Network, Natural Resources Defense Council, Oil Change International, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, SumOfUs.org, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Wilderness Committee, and 350.org, says that financing the pipeline “with public money, as your government has suggested, is particularly offensive in the face of the global climate crisis.”
The letter goes on to say:
“As global organizations deeply concerned about the climate, communities, workers, and Indigenous Rights, we stand in solidarity with those who oppose the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. We also support communities along the proposed pipeline and tanker routes who are standing up to protect the land, the coast, and the ocean from the risks of spills and other damage”.
It points out that Canada should be leading the world in a “managed decline” of fossil fuels and transition to clean energy. “The time for investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure is over,” say the signatories, before ending with:
“We urge you to reconsider your support for this project, and instead work to make Canada the climate leader that it should be.”
Leila Salazar-López, Executive Director of Amazon Watch, said.
”We stand with our indigenous brothers and sisters in the North in their efforts to protect their territories from the Kinder Morgan Pipeline and other destructive fossil fuel infrastructure. It is past time for governments – including the Canadian government – to respect UNDRIP [United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples] and begin a managed decline of fossil fuel extraction. Our collective futures depend on it.”
May Boeve, Executive Director of 350.org added:
“The Kinder Morgan pipeline threatens to pollute clean air and water, violate the rights of First Nations, and lock us into climate-wrecking fossil fuel extraction. Justin Trudeau has spoken about justice for Indigenous people and addressing climate change, but his actions are miles behind his words. At the end of the day, you cannot be a climate leader while supporting fossil fuel pipelines.”
America’s First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws suppressing speech, press and religious freedoms – along with the right to peacefully assemble and petition government for redress of grievances.
The same goes for NFL owners. Their announced policy on national anthem kneeling or sitting flagrantly violates First Amendment guaranteed free expression.
Near-unanimously banning these practices, excluding the ruling from collective bargaining, San Francisco 49ers owner abstaining, subjects teams to fines if players or other personnel fail to show respect for what deserves none.
Along with its flag, the national anthem represents an imperial state, waging permanent war on humanity at home and abroad, responsible for countless millions of casualties post-9/11 alone.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Last September, Trump disgraced himself by irresponsibly blasting NFL players – kneeling, not standing, during the national anthem, their legitimate right of dissent, and why not. There’s plenty to dissent about America’s rogue state policies at home and abroad.
NFL players and everyone else have a constitutional right to protest peacefully against racial discrimination, police brutality, wars of aggression, social injustice or anything else.
Not according to Trump, roaring at the time “(w)ouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’ ”
During US 1899 – 1902 aggression on the Philippines, Mark Twain criticized America’s flag, saying:
“I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land,” harshly blasting ruthless US mass slaughter and destruction.
It’s far worse today than then, including dismissiveness toward the nation’s most vulnerable, and repression of targeted dissidents, opposing Washington’s debauched system, its anti-democratic agenda, its contempt for rule of law principles, its governance of, by and for the nation’s privileged class exclusively.
Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began what followed, dozens of players kneeling during the national anthem, protesting against racial discrimination and cops killing unarmed, nonthreatening Black youths and men, nearly always accountability.
The newly adopted NFL rule illegally bans the right to legitimately protest injustice by refusing to stand on-field during the national anthem – players, coaches and other staff wishing to protest given the option to remain off-field while it’s played.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said
“(w)e want people to be respectful of the national anthem,” adding:
“We want people to stand. That’s all personnel, and make sure they treat this moment in a respectful fashion. That’s something we think we owe. But we were also very sensitive to give players choices.”
Their choice is to protest publicly as the Constitution allows, not privately in locker rooms or elsewhere out of sight and mind.
An NFL Players Association statement said it’ll review the new rule, “challeng(ing) any aspect” inconsistent with its collective bargaining agreement.
Cleveland Browns quarterback Tyrod Taylor issued a statement, saying
“(t)o make a decision that strong, you would hope that the players have input on it. But obviously not. So we have to deal with it as players, for good or a bad thing.”
In response to the ruling, Players Association director DeMaurice Smith tweeted:
“History has taught us that both patriotism and protest are like water; if the force is strong enough it cannot be suppressed. Today, the CEOs of the NFL created a rule that people who hate autocracies should reject.”
A second tweet said:
“Management has chosen to quash the same freedom of speech that protects someone who wants to salute the flag in an effort to prevent someone who does not wish to do so.”
“The sad irony of this rule is that anyone who wants to express their patriotism is subject to the whim of a person who calls himself an ‘Owner.’ I know that not all of the NFL CEOs are for this, and I know that true American patriots are not cheering today.”
A Final Comment
In Palko v. Connecticut (1937), the Supreme Court called “(f)reedom of thought the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”
In Texas v. Johnson (1989), Justice William Brennan, writing for the majority, said\ “if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.”
According to the High Court ruling, the right to peaceful protests includes public flag-burning – a far stronger action than kneeling or sitting during the national anthem.
Thomas Jefferson once said (f)ree speech and other fundamental rights “cannot be limited without being lost.”
Former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall stressed
“(a)bove all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression (regardless of its) ideas…subject matter (or) content.”
“Our people are guaranteed the right to express any thought, free from government censorship,” along with having all other constitutional protections – eroding toward disappearing altogether.
The NFL Players Association should contest the new rule, suing for the right of constitutionally protected free expression – no matter how politically or otherwise offensive.
Loss of this most fundamental of all rights jeopardizes all others!
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.
A flood of women’s memoirs seem to have landed in the literary marketplace, along with quasi memoirs for children. Not only confessionals and more discoveries about our gender and its vicissitudes, but revelations of rebellious girls of past generations, (Brazen: Rebel Ladies who Rocked the World and the best-selling Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls) chronicling the modest origins of today’s heroines and celebrities– political, academic and artistic. Our herstories seem inexhaustible.
Memoir is the primary genre through which we learn about women. This, with a caveat, is especially true of ‘Third World’ women, where Muslim women are among the most ‘trendy’ and thereby sought after today– especially if we are ‘victims’. (More of that later.)
Among Third World writers, we include those in the Diaspora, for example Arab American women —Suheir Hammad, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Evelyn Shakir, and Ghada Kanafani, to name just a few– now penning an extraordinary number of personal accounts, many of them non-fiction. This, in contrast to Arab and Muslim men (e.g. well known novelists like Abdelrahman Munif,Rabih Alameddine,Rawi Hage, Mohsin Hamid, and Haroon Moghul) most of whom seem to forgo memoir for fiction.
Before being diverted by an abundance of autobiographies and semi-fictional accounts of refugees from Syria and other war zones, I opened two new memoirs by my Arab American colleagues. One is Looking Both Ways (Cune Press, 2017), a collection of essays about ‘being Arab in America’ by poet and short story author Pauline Kaldas. The other is attorney Alia Malek’s account of the ‘trying to be Arab’ –a phrase I apply with some empathy– in her family’s homeland, Syria, an endeavor launched just the year before and then observed during the uprising and war there. With her special interest in civil rights and author of a fine collection of biographies of Arabs in the US (A Country Called Amreeka, 2009), Malek went to Syria nine years ago ostensibly to restore her family apartment in Damascus, then, between unexplained excursions to Egypt, stayed long enough to record the earliest months of what became a terribly destructive and relentless conflict. Malek’s new book is The Home That Was My Country: A Memoir of Syria (Nation Books, 2017). It carries eerie echoes of House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family and A Lost Middle East, by prize-winning journalistAnthony Shadid who died on assignment soon after resorting his ancestral home in South Lebanon.
Differences between Kaldas’ collection and Malek’s war chronicle are sharp. Looking Both Ways takes us on a mostly agreeable journey through Kaldas’ childhood move from Egypt to the USA, graduate studies in literature, her family and college life, and a revisit to her homeland during its post-Mubarak transformation in 2013. Kaldas’ inviting style will make any reader, but especially Americans, feel kinship with her. This, while her carefully crafted chronicle of encounters living in America exposes the often unspoken and nuanced tensions of ‘being Arab’ here. Kaldas infuses her perspective with both humor and a benign philosophy.
Malek’s recounting of her family’s tales is, in contrast, sadly absent of any intimacy. Her chronicle is instead shrouded by an almost inherited bitterness towards the country, an acrimony one sometimes finds among the earlier generation of Syrian immigrants, even middle class families like Malek’s who were voluntary émigrés. Even before the uprising in Syria and despite a decision to write her home-story around a colorful maternal grandmother, she’s unable to convey any warmth in the memories gathered from her circle of relatives and their neighbors she interviews. Malek’s bleak interpretation of Syria is understandable. Having set out to deepen her personal and cultural identity in a house and a homeland largely unknown known to her, Malek chose an inopportune moment to do so. Any view of the many fine qualities and achievements of modern Syria is obscured when the country is fracturing terribly and beginning to unravel. Her account of the uprising and the ensuing crackdown and chaos, although unarguable, is absent of any appreciation of what the country had accomplished over the past quarter century. The book will serve as another indictment of the government.
There is simply nothing redeeming coming out of Syria, whether journalistic chronicles like Malek’s, or Burning Country, or a number of new children’s books, e.g. Escape from Aleppo, My Beautiful Birds, Refugee, The Land of Permanent Goodbyes, all but one authored by women.
Notwithstanding the differences between the locales and the styles of Kaldas and Malek, their writings illustrate the extensive possibilities that lie in memoir. First, memoirs augment the many critical journalistic and political analyses in our (sorrowful) Arab history. Second, they are the voices of women for which there seems to be both literary scope and an infinite market.
Which brings me to the abundance of women authoring Third World memoirs. Why are so few of our men penning personal chronicles? Why the public fascination with our women?
Reviewing over four decades of literature on this part of the world, it seems evident:—it’s the appeal of ‘the victim’. In addition to the inexhaustible stories of hardships by and about Arab and Muslim women, with Palestinian narratives the most pronounced and in a category or their own, we now have Yazidi women of Iraq, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State, The Girl Who Beat Isis,and most recently, TheBeekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq by Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail. Arab women’s painful lives are matched by many others, ranging from Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography to a new memoir coauthored by Celemtine Wamariya, a Rwandan woman (The Girl Who Smiles Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After).
One could posit that narrators of these testimonies are in fact heroines because they survived and overcame adversity. This argument could be valid if they accompany a wide range of stories. However these narratives are often the only personal accounts from those countries and cultures accessible to us. Only when a crisis erupts is a journalist sent there; the suffering witnessed is part of the news, and part of the exoticism.
Others maintain that women’s lives are overshadowed by men in those cultures, so herstories are eclipsed. (But this is a universally recognized feature of every society; male bias is inherent in western world- authored accounts of those cultures too.)
Could the preoccupation with women’s memoirs be an outcome of the western feminist movement of the 1970s where women of European origin, caught up in an inchoate pride of self-discovery, rushed across the globe and into their (own) inner cities, not to find parallel revolutions or third world women to model themselves on but mainly to document how others were still confined and in need of liberation? Anthropologists and journalists enthusiastically documented myriad manifestations of female oppression, abuse, inequality, patriarchy and misogyny practiced elsewhere (including among non-whites in their own culture).
These celebrated– yes, celebrated– sad stories may continue to be published because of a public thirst for victims. Or they may dwindle while Americans and Europeans now turn the lens inward and chronicle a neglected violent, patriarchal, misogynist culture newly exposed in our own unliberated households, board rooms, universities and offices.
Just as suffering ‘Third World’ women’s chronicles present a misguided means of building solidarity and documenting a more evenhanded history, the same may apply to refugee children’s stories. A recent review of several children’s books portrays young war-victims with some sympathy. Yet, it should be remembered that these stories are often the only means through which American and European children learn about Syria, Palestine, Pakistan, and other distant lands; those tales of suffering become a prism through which they may eternally view ‘others’.
I cannot advocate that we not pen memoirs, only that we recognize how market and political forces exclude some stories and champion others. Without women’s memoirs so much of social and political history would remain altogether hidden.
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Dr Aziz is the author of Heir to A Silent Song: Two Rebel Women of Nepal, published by Tribhuvan University in Nepal in 2001, and available through Barnes and Nobel. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Nero played his fiddle, Obama shot baskets and Trump twittered while their empires burned.
What makes empire decay and what makes empires expand has everything to do with their relations between rulers and the ruled. Several factors are decisive. These include: (1) rent, land and housing, (2) the direction of living standards, (3) the rise or fall of mortality rate, (4) decline or rise of families.
Throughout history rising empires incorporate their population to the task of empire by distributing a portion of their plunder to their masses, by providing them with land, low rents and housing. Large scale landlords facing returning young war veterans reduced excessive land concentration to avoid domestic unrest.
Rising empires raised living standards, as salaried employees, workers and artisans, merchants and scribes found employment as the oligarchies expanding conspicuous consumption and expanded the state bureaucracy running the empire.
A prosperous empire is cause and consequence of increases in families, and the growth of healthy and educated plebeians who serviced and served the rulers.
In contrast, declining empires plunder the domestic economy; concentrated wealth as the expense of the labor force, heedless of the diminution of its health and life expectancy. As a result deteriorating empires experience an increasing rate of mortality; homeownership and land is concentrated in an elite of renters living off of unearned wealth via inheritance, speculation, rents which degrades productive work based on skill and knowledge.
Declining empires are cause and consequence of deteriorating families composed of opioid addicted workers suffering from rising inequalities between rulers and ruled.
The US imperial experience over the past century embodies the trajectory of the rise and fall of empires. The past quarter century describes the relations between rulers and ruled at a time of declining empire.
Living standards of Americans have decline precipitously. Employers have ceased paying for pensions; reduced or eliminated health coverage; reduced corporate taxes thus lowering the quality for public education.
Over the past two decades, wages and salaries for the majority of households have stagnated or declined; education and health expenses bankrupting many and reducing university graduates to long-term debt peonage.
Accessibility to home ownership for Americans under 45 years has fallen dramatically from 24% in 2006 to 14% in 2017. At the same time, rents have skyrocketed especially in large cities across the country, in most cases absorbing between a third and half of monthly income.
Business elites and their housing experts divert attention to “intergenerational” inequalities between pensioners and younger wage and salaried employees instead of recognizing rising inequalities between CEO and both workers and pensioners which have risen from 100 to 400 to one over the past three decades.
Mortality rates between the business elite and workers have widened as the wealthy live longer and healthier lives while workers have experienced declining life expectancy, the first time in American history! As the business elites income from profits, dividends, interest increase they can afford high cost private medical care, prolonging life, while millions of workers are prescribed death inducing opioids, to ‘reduce pain’ and precipitate premature death.
Births are declining as a result of the high cost of medical care, the absence of day care and paid maternal or paternal leave. The most recent studies revealed that 2017 experienced the fewest babies in 30 years. The so-called “economic recovery” following the financial collapse of 2008/9 was class based: the real estate and financial elites received over two trillion dollars in bailouts while over 3 million working class households were evicted by financial mortgage holders. The result was a rapid rise in homeless people especially in cities with the highest rate of recovery from the crises.
Homelessness and crowded overpriced rentals and minimum wages are likely causes of declining birthrates and increasing mortality rates.
Imperialism Expands, Living Standards Decline
Unlike the earlier, post WWII decades in which overseas expansion was accompanied by low cost higher education, accessible low cost mortgages and increasing home ownership, and employer paid pensions and health coverage, over the past two decades imperial expansion is based on forced reductions of living standards.
The empire grew and living standards declined because the capitalist class evaded trillions of taxable income via overseas tax havens, transfer pricing and tax exemptions. Moreover, capitalists received massive state subsidies for infrastructure, and cost-free transfers of public funded technological innovations.
Imperial expansion now is based on the relocation of multi-national manufacturing corporations overseas to lower labor costs, increasing the percentage of low wage service workers in the US .
The decline of living standards for the majority is a result of the restructuring of the empire, the advent of the regressive tax system, the redistribution of State welfare transfers from public social spending to private finance and real estate subsidies and bailouts.
Conclusion
In the beginning imperialism involved an explicit social contract with labor: overseas expansion shared profits, taxes and income with labor in exchange for workers political support for imperial overseas economic exploitation, resource plundering as well as serving in the imperial armed forces .
The social contract was conditioned by a relative balance of power: unionized workers represented the majority of manufacturing, public sector and skilled workers. But this balance of power in class relations was based on the capacity of labor to engage in class struggle and influence the state. In other words the entire imperialism and welfare configuration was based on a particular set of conditional relations intrinsic to the social pact.
Over time imperial expansion faced overseas constraints from rising national and socialist opposition which forced or encouraged corporations it to relocate capital abroad. Imperial rivals in Europe and Asia competed for overseas markets forcing the US to increase productivity, lower labor costs, relocate abroad or reduce profits. The US chose to reduce domestic living standards and relocating abroad.
Labor unions divorced from the broader community movements and lacking an independent political movement, corrupted from within and committed to a disappearing social compact, declined in number and capacity to formulate a new combatative post social pact strategy. The capital class gained total control over class relations and, therefore, unilaterally set the terms of taxation, employment, living standards and, most important, state expenditure.
Imperial military and economic expenditures grew in direct proportions to the decline of social welfare payments. Rival power groups fought over the share of capitalist budgets and political-military priorities. Economic imperialists competed with or converged with military imperialists; free market neo-liberals competed for overseas markets with national militarists pursuing territorial occupations, conquests, closed markets and submissive clients. Rival political power configuration competed over imperial priorities – powerful Zionists configurations sought regional wars for Israel while multi-nationals looked to advance their political-economic expansion in Asia – China, India and Southeast Asian markets.
Competing elite factions monopolized budgets, taxes and expenditures driving labor living standards downward. Imperialist classes formed pacts – but only among themselves – but the quality and quantity of workers decreased – through impoverished health care and, educational systems. In contrast Elite offspring attended the best schools and secured the highest posts in government and economy.
Privilege and power did not produce imperial triumphs. China harnessed educational programs and skilled workers to productive work.In contrast privileged US university graduates sought employment in parasitical lucrative financial positions not in science, engineering and social welfare. Military academy graduates joined networks of ‘commanders’ who condoned sexual abusers, trained and promoted officers who sent missiles which targeted military bases and bombed population centers and trained naval captains specializing in own- ship collisions.
Ivy League graduates secured high government positions leading the US into endless Middle East wars, multiplying adversaries, antagonizing allies and spending trillions on wars for Israel, not social welfare and higher wages for American workers . Oh yes the ‘economy’ is recovering…. only the people are doing worse.
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Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
After repeated references to the “Libya scenario” for North Korea – a point not lost on Pyongyang considering that the US destroyed Libya and killed its leader – the North Korean government finally struck back verbally, calling US Vice President Mike Pence a “dummy” for again warning that North Korea could end up like Libya. That was enough for President Trump to cancel next month’s historic summit meeting. Does following the neocons make Trump look tough…or weak? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:
The 20th century is often remarked on by historians to have been one of the most tumultuous periods in human history. Some would go so far as to assert that it was the most violent century in modern times. Certainly, the advances in technology ensured that human life could be destroyed in far greater numbers and with more rapidity. And in an age of warring empires, colonial repression and the coming to power of regimes adhering to the ruthless ideologies of totalitarianism, episodes of the mass murder of innocent civilians are abundant.
The loss of life during the massacre of Nanjing and the bombing of Guernica, for instance, are tragedies that are emblematic of the troubled times leading to WWII, as are the names of the death camps and mobile killing units associated with Nazi Germany during that conflict.
Less well-known, if known at all, is the massacre which was initiated by Fascist Italy in the Ethiopian city of Addis Ababa in February 1937. This savage event, staged as a retributive measure, after an assassination attempt on Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, Benito Mussolini’s viceroy to Italian East Africa, is essentially a half-forgotten one.
The fact that an atrocity of this magnitude was not thoroughly documented, dissected and memorialised until recent times may strike the observer as somewhat surprising.
This amnesia persisted in regard to both perpetrator and victim. There was no war crimes investigation and little scholarship was directed at it. The reasons for this are manifold and are revealed by Ian Campbell in his book The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy’s National Shame, the fruit of two-decades of research.
The task of setting out the chronology of events while striving to maintain accuracy, as well as reaching empirically valid conclusions pertaining to the controversial matter of an overall death count was an onerous one.
For instance, the author had to contend with the large-scale destruction of evidence. This relates both to the destroying of official records as well as to the physical elimination of Ethiopian witnesses.
Thus, he needed to find alternatives to the use of archival documents as historiological sources.
Most notably, this involved painstakingly tracking down and interviewing eyewitnesses over a considerable period of time, recording their recollections and then embarking on a laborious process of cross-checking and cross-referencing.
He also assembled and reproduced a vast array of photographic evidence. Many of the shots were originally published in Sylvia Pankhurst’s anti-fascist journal New Times and Ethiopia News, while other previously unpublished ones taken by foreign diplomats, residents of Addis Ababa, rampaging Blackshirts and Italian soldiers.
The book captures the world on the precipice of an enormous conflagration and serves to remind the reader that the outbreak of WWII had several preludes.
Whereas the Asian prelude is composed of both the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 (with the European prelude occurring in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland), for Africa, the dawning of that conflict was marked by the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy in 1935.
The issue of appeasement looms large in the African context as it did in the European arena. An analogy can be made between the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia at the 1938 conference in Munich, which arguably emboldened Adolf Hitler to pursue his objective of further territorial acquisition, and the failure of the collective security system promised by the League of Nations in restraining Mussolini’s expansionist ambitions in East Africa. Campbell’s work may also remind the reader of the degree to which earlier events on the African continent prefigured the policies followed by the totalitarian powers prior to and during the war.
For instance, the racial experiments conducted by Joseph Mengele at Auschwitz were foreshadowed by those carried out by Mengele’s mentor, Eugen Fischer, on the indigenous population of German South West Africa (Namibia).
Further, the concentration camp system established during pre-world war colonial conflicts by the Italians in Libya, Eritrea and Somaliland was, during the war, extended to Yugoslavia and to Italy itself.
The war crimes committed by Italian forces during the Spanish Civil War, and during WWII in Greece and Yugoslavia, were a continuum of the brutality exhibited during the period of Italian colonisation of East African territory.
Campbell’s book provides clear and ineluctable confirmation of fascism’s inherent tendency towards brutality and violence. The killing of Ethiopians began during the afternoon of Friday 19 February, almost immediately after Graziani was injured by a grenade attack carried out by two Eritreans, Moges Asgedom and Abriha Deboch.
An official declaration promulgating three days of vengeance followed soon after and the author constructs, in harrowing detail, the methodology of revenge. Guns, knives, pick-axes and truncheons were handed out to ‘repression squads’ consisting of black-shirted militias and Italian civilians, who, working in concert with armed soldiers and carabinieri, attacked defenceless Africans.
The victims were stabbed, bludgeoned and incinerated. Flamethrowers were used to set fire to cottages dotted around Addis Ababa in which thousands of innocents – defenceless children, women and the elderly- were immolated. Campbell estimates that 18-19,000 people were killed in Addis Ababa out of a population of 100,000.
The merciless and unrelenting nature of the violence is underlined by the fact that the pogrom continued even after Mussolini sent word for the killings to stop on the day Graziani had awoken from his coma.
Image on the right: Marshal Rodolfo Graziani
Graziani ordered Guido Cortese, the local leader of the Black Shirts, to halt the slaughter. But Cortese had promised his underlings three days, and so the murders, centred now in the outlying suburbs where they were not as visible to the party leadership, continued until the Sunday evening. This marked the first phase of the genocide. The Italian authorities then targeted Ethiopia’s ‘nobles and notables’. Travelling ‘Caravans of Death’, consisting of portable gallows, were used to hang influential members of the community including those of the aristocratic class. The author provides evidence ascertained from the national archives in Rome that this was not an improvised policy but had in fact been planned in advance. There had been a stated policy of the fascists to behead the intellectual leadership of Ethiopia, a cadre of persons specifically selected by Haile Selassie to be educated in European and North American institutions.
The rounding up and summary execution of many of this elite who were referred to as the ‘Young Ethiopians’ fulfilled an order given by Mussolini on 3 May 1936.
Again, it is worth reminding that the merciless forms of homicidal violence employed by the Italians and their attendant rationales presaged their implementation by the Fascists and Nazis in impending war in the European theatre.
The destruction of the social elite –the ‘Young Ethiopians’- with the objective of leaving an occupied population rudderless and more malleable to subjugation, mirrored the Intelligenzaktion employed by the Nazis in Poland which targeted Polish teachers, priests and doctors.
Also, the merciless retribution employed not only in Addis Ababa, but extended to the ruthless destruction of the priests of the monastery of Debre Libanos who were suspected of having harboured Graziani’s assailants.
And of course, the initial invasion of Ethiopia which featured the merciless aerial bombardment of towns and villages predated the notorious bombings by the Luftwaffe of republican enclaves in the Spanish Civil War, during which the Aviazione Legionaria of the Italian Air Force was responsible for the deliberate targeting of civilians in Barcelona.
Campbell brings the reader’s attention to the reasons for Western silence and inaction at the time of the Addis Ababa Massacre. The evidence he provides shows that information compiled by foreign diplomats and journalists in relation to the atrocity was actively suppressed in the futile hope of keeping Mussolini from entering into a military pact with Hitler.
He also addresses the issue of why figures such as Graziani and Cortese were not made subject to war crimes trials, did not face the same punishment as the likes of General Hideki Tojo and SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Hermann Frank did. The answer is simply that the dawning of the Cold War and the fear that Italy could fall into the hands of communists meant that figures associated with fascism needed to be preserved.
A war times trial in East Africa along the lines of the ones in Nuremberg and Tokyo would have been considered impolitic given that it would in essence have presented a situation where black Africans were prosecuting white Europeans – an affront to the sensibilities of the time when most of the black and brown world was still under European colonial rule. Ethiopia was thus denied membership of the United Nations War Crimes Commission.
Selassie’s ostensible act of magnanimity in forbidding reprisals and calling for reconciliation can be understood as a pragmatic response to British pressure consisting the threat not to support Ethiopia in its claims over Eritrea and the Ogaden region if it insisted on pressing its claim for a war crimes trial. He was also keen to recommence his programme of modernisation, in regard to which he would need Western assistance.
The book achieves a great deal. In overcoming the formidable obstacles related to the destruction of original sources of information and the passage of time, Campbell puts a lie to the idea of Italy having governed itself and others through a form of ‘benign’ fascism.
Silvio Berlusconi’s description of the fascist regime’s internment camps as having been ‘like holiday camps’ does not reflect the brutal circumstances in operation at the concentration camps to which Ethiopians were sent during the period of Italian occupation: Danane in the Ogaden region and Nokra in the Dahlak Archipelago.
The book offers confirmation of high-level Vatican support for the Italian conquest which many priests considered to be a ‘holy mission’.
For while the rationales for the colonisation of Ethiopia encompassed the racial doctrine of subjugating a people considered as being of an inferior race, as well as serving as a revenge for the Italian defeat suffered in 1897 at the Battle of Adowa, some within the higher echelons of the Roman Catholic Church considered the Ethiopian Christian Orthodox Church to be a heretical institution.
This research also exposes a chapter of Italian history which has been practically expunged. The unexpurgated truth regarding Italy’s legacy of violent colonial rule in East Africa, as well as its military adventures in the Balkans, has never been made the subject of public debate.
Instead a combination of the institutions of the state, the media and academia has propagated the myth of Italy as having been solely the victim of fascism. An early indication of the sensitivity about these matters came in the 1950s when the makers of a film depicting the Italian invasion of Greece were arrested and jailed.
Also, a 1981 Libyan-financed movie entitled The Lion of the Desert, which depicted Graziani’s pacification of Libya was banned from Italian cinemas. Academic inquiry into Italy’s colonial policies is seemingly verboten (forbidden). Historians such as Angelo Del Boca, who have examined Italy’s colonial crimes, have been subject to obloquy. Italy has in effect remained a nation in denial. The book puts firmly in the public domain a ground-breaking work of history that will add to the overall understanding of how the war impacted on Africa, which for the most part is dominated by renditions of British battles with Italian and German armies in the North African desert.
The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy’s National Shame is a magisterial work which deserves the attention of a wide audience as it provides a sober yet spellbinding narrative of one of the era’s greatest desecrations of humanity.
While some may choose to accuse the author of being overtly prosecutorial, it would be more accurate to describe it as a project which sets the record straight. It points the finger and is accusatory but is by no means defamatory.
That the massacre of Addis Ababa is not as firmly imprinted in the consciousness of history on par with the massacres of Katyn, Babi-Yar and Nanking is an injustice, and with this book, Ian Campbell has played a part in correcting this oversight.
Adeyinka Makinde is a writer and law lecturer based in London, England. He is a geopolitical analyst, historian and aficionado of boxing. He is the author of the book Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal.
In previous print articles I argued there were three groups contending for control of US trade negotiations with China: big bankers and multinational corporations in the US primarily concerned with obtaining deeper access and penetration of China markets; the US defense-war faction concerned with China technology transfer involving nextgen technologies (5G, AI, cybersecurity) that have deep military implications; and Trump who is concerned mostly with pandering to his US domestic political base and getting some kind of China-US trade deficit reduction (preferably big increase in China purchase of US goods) that he can then exaggerate and pump up politically to show his domestic political base in the red states that his ‘economic nationalist’ theme (America First) is alive. Trump is looking at trade gains to boost his support in his base, for the upcoming midterm elections and as a potential bulwark against the Mueller decision soon forthcoming.
After the US trade team went to Beijing in early May, it was clear that the US negotiations leadership had defaulted to the US bankers and multinationals, as Steve Mnuchin, US Treasury Secretary (and former CEO of Goldman Sachs investment bank) assumed formal leadership and direction of the US team and US-China trade negotiations. Further substantiating this internal power shift, anti-China hardliner and representative of the US war-defense faction on the team, Peter Navarro, was dropped from the US trade team. Subsequent trade negotiations shifted to discussions between Mnuchin and his China counterpart, Liu He, in private formats and one-one communications between Mnuchin-He. The shift meant that getting more access to China markets (the big bankers primary goal), and a little something for Trump to boast about to his base, had now clearly taken precedence over the tech transfer issue of primary concern to the US war establishment.
Since early May, however, the defense-war faction has struck back. The US military and their Congressional allies have upped their anti-China rhetoric and moves. Efforts to scuttle the June 12 meeting with No. Korea were launched, and the US military most recently acted to remove China from the pacific naval joint maneuvers. Their Congressional allies also opposed Trump’s unilateral decision to restore China telecom company, ZTE, business in the US. Having made concessions, lifting blockages on US agricultural imports and merger deals involving US-China companies in China, China responded by retreating as well.
In typical Trump flip-flop, opportunist fashion, the US president then reversed himself on ZTE, and joined in with anti-China rhetoric, blaming China for the likely failure of talks with No. Korea on June 12. As this writer predicted, it was unlikely from the outset that talks with No. Korea would actually occur and, if they did, would have no positive outcome. It’s mostly Trump seeking publicity for his base and opportunistically manipulating the possibility of a peace deal with No. Korea. The US war-defense establishment does not want a resolution of differences with No. Korea; nor does it want a deal with China on trade unless it involves a rollback of China tech transfer and tech development. China will not accede on that, but will increase US banker access to its markets and even increase its purchase of US exports. But for now, the US war faction has blunted both the progress of trade negotiations with China as well as possible negotiations with No. Korea.
The splits within the US trade team and the three factions will continue contending with each other, reducing the likelihood of any trade deal with China. Meanwhile, China continues its trade negotiation efforts with Europe, and in particular Germany, which the Trump administration and Congress are intent on increasingly alienating.
Even in defense of its own interests, US capitalists appear intent on shooting themselves in the foot, as they say. The quality of US capitalist leadership, and even more so of its political representatives, has deteriorated badly in the 21st century. Like Trump, their arrogance over-estimates their power to bully and push around allies and adversaries alike. Trump’s pursuit of his ultra right economic nationalist policies, combined with the aggressiveness of US war-defense faction, will have the long run effect of reducing US hegemony in the global economy and not re-establishing it in a new Neoliberal structure int he 21st century.
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This article was originally published on Jack Rasmus.
Jack Rasmus is author of the book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. Dr. Rasmus is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
I would like to tell you something about human depravity and illustrate just how widespread it is among those we often regard as ‘responsible’. I am going to use the Democratic Republic of the Congo as my example.
As I illustrate and explain what has happened to the Congo and its people during the past 500 years, I invite you to consider my essential point: Human depravity has no limit unless people like you (hopefully) and me take some responsibility for ending it. Depravity, barbarity and violent exploitation will not end otherwise because major international organizations (such as the UN), national governments and corporations all benefit from it and are almost invariably led by individuals too cowardly to act on the truth.
The Congo
Prior to 1482, the area of central Africa now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was part of the Kingdom of the Kongo. It was populated by some of the greatest civilizations in human history.
Slavery
However, in that fateful year of 1482, the mouth of the Congo river, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean, became known to Europeans when the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cao claimed he ‘discovered’ it. By the 1530s, more than five thousand slaves a year (many from inland regions of the Kongo) were being transported to distant lands, mostly in the Americas. Hence, as documented by Adam Hothschild, the Congo was first exploited by Europeans during the Atlantic slave trade. See King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.
Despite the horrific depredations of the militarized slave trade and all of its ancillary activities, including Christian priests spreading ‘Christianity’ while raping their captive slave girls, the Kingdoms of the Kongo were able to defend and maintain themselves to a large degree for another 400 years by virtue of their long-standing systems of effective governance. As noted by Chancellor Williams’ in his epic study The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. the Kingdoms of the Congo prior to 1885 – including Kuba under Shyaam the Great and the Matamba Kingdom under Ngola Kambolo – were a cradle of culture, democracy and exceptional achievement with none more effective than the remarkable Queen (of Ndongo and Matamba), warrior and diplomat Nzinga in the 17th century.
But the ruthless military onslaught of the Europeans never abated. In fact, it continually expanded with ever-greater military firepower applied to the task of conquering Africa. In 1884 European powers met in Germany to finally divide ‘this magnificent African cake’, precipitating what is sometimes called ‘the scramble for Africa’ but is more accurately described as ‘the scramble to finally control and exploit Africa and Africans completely’.
Colonization
One outcome of the Berlin Conference was that the great perpetrator of genocide – King Leopold II of Belgium – with the active and critical support of the United States, seized violent control of a vast swathe of central Africa in the Congo Basin and turned it into a Belgian colony. In Leopold’s rapacious pursuit of rubber, gold, diamonds, mahogany and ivory, 10 million African men, women and children had been slaughtered and many Africans mutilated (by limb amputation, for example) by the time he died in 1909. His brutality and savagery have been documented by Adam Hochschild in the book King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa which reveals the magnitude of human suffering that this one man, unopposed in any significant way by his fellow Belgians or anyone else, was responsible for inflicting on Africa.
Now if you were hoping that the situation in the Congo improved with the death of the monster Leopold, your hope is in vain.
The shocking reality is that the unmitigated horror inflicted on the Congolese people has barely improved since Leopold’s time. The Congo remained under Belgian control during World War I during which more than 300,000 Congolese were forced to fight against other Africans from the neighboring German colony of Ruanda-Urundi. During World War II when Nazi Germany captured Belgium, the Congo financed the Belgian government in exile.
Throughout these decades, the Belgian government forced millions of Congolese into mines and fields using a system of ‘mandatory cultivation’ that forced people to grow cash crops for export, even as they starved on their own land.
It was also during the colonial period that the United States acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo without, of course, any benefit to the Congolese people. This included its use of uranium from a Congolese mine (subsequently closed in 1960) to manufacture the first nuclear weapons: those used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See ‘Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th century’.
Independence then Dictatorship
By 1960, the Congolese people had risen up to overthrow nearly a century of slavery and Belgian rule. Patrice Lumumba became the first Prime Minister of the new nation and he quickly set about breaking the yoke of Belgian influence and allied the Congo with Russia at the height of the Cold War.
But the victory of the Congolese people over their European and US overlords was shortlived: Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in a United States-sponsored coup in 1961 with the US and other western imperial powers (and a compliant United Nations) repeating a long-standing and ongoing historical pattern of preventing an incredibly wealthy country from determining its own future and using its resources for the benefit of its own people. See ‘Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th century’.
So, following a well-worn modus operandi, an agent in the form of (Army Chief of Staff, Colonel) Mobutu Sese Seko was used to overthrow Lumumba’s government. Lumumba himself was captured and tortured for three weeks before being assassinated by firing squad. The new dictator Mobutu, compliant to western interests, then waged all-out war in the country, publicly executing members of the pro-Lumumba revolution in spectacles witnessed by tens of thousands of people. By 1970, nearly all potential threats to his authority had been smashed. See ‘“A Nightmare In Heaven” – Why Nobody Is Talking About The Holocaust in Congo’.
Mobutu would rape the Congo (renamed Zaire for some time) with the blessing of the west – robbing the nation of around $2billion – from 1965 to 1997. During this period, the Congo got more than $1.5 billion in US economic and military aid in return for which US multinational corporations increased their share of the Congo’s abundant minerals. ‘Washington justified its hold on the Congo with the pretext of anti-Communism but its real interests were strategic and economic.’ See ‘Congo: The Western Heart of Darkness’.
Invasion
Eventually, however, Mobutu’s increasingly hostile rhetoric toward his white overlords caused the west to seek another proxy. So, ostensibly in retaliation against Hutu rebels from the Rwandan genocide of 1994 – who fled into eastern Congo after Paul Kagame’s (Tutsi) Rwanda Patriotic Army invaded Rwanda from Uganda to end the genocide – in October 1996 Rwanda’s now-dictator Kagame, ‘who was trained in intelligence at Fort Leavenworth in the United States, invaded the Congo with the help of the Clinton Administration’ and Uganda. By May 1997 the invading forces had removed Mobutu and installed the new (more compliant) choice for dictator, Laurent Kabila.
Relations between Kabila and Kagame quickly soured, however, and Kabila expelled the Rwandans and Ugandans from the Congo in July 1998. However, the Rwandans and Ugandans reinvaded in August establishing an occupation force in eastern Congo. Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia sent their armies to support Kabila and Burundi joined the Rwandans and Ugandans. Thus began ‘Africa’s First World War’ involving seven armies and lasting until 2003. It eventually killed six million people –most of them civilians – and further devastated a country crushed by more than a century of Western domination, with Rwanda and Uganda establishing themselves as conduits for illegally taking strategic minerals out of the Congo. See ‘Congo: The Western Heart of Darkness’.
During the periods under Mobutu and Kabila, the Congo became the concentration camp capital of the world and the rape capital as well. ‘No woman in the path of the violence was spared. 7 year olds were raped by government troops in public. Pregnant women were disemboweled. Genital mutilation was commonplace, as was forced incest and cannibalism. The crimes were never punished, and never will be.’
Laurent Kabila maintained the status quo until he was killed by his bodyguard in 2001. Since then, his son and the current President Joseph Kabila has held power in violation of the Constitution. ‘He has murdered protesters and opposition party members, and has continued to obey the will of the west while his people endure unspeakable hells.’
Corporate and State Exploitation
While countries such as Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Switzerland and the UK are heavily involved one way or another (with other countries, such as Australia, somewhat less so), US corporations make a vast range of hitech products including microchips, cell phones and semiconductors using conflict minerals taken from the Congo . This makes ‘companies like Intel, Apple, HP, and IBM culpable for funding the militias that control the mines’. See ‘“A Nightmare In Heaven” – Why Nobody Is Talking About The Holocaust in Congo’.
But many companies are benefitting. For example, a 2002 report by the United Nations listed a ‘sample’ of 34 companies based in Europe and Asia that are importing minerals from the Congo via, in this case, Rwanda. The UN Report commented: ‘Illegal exploitation of the mineral and forest resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is taking place at an alarming rate. Two phases can be distinguished: mass-scale looting and the systematic and systemic exploitation of resources’. The mass-scale looting occurred during the initial phase of the invasion of the Congo by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi when stockpiles of minerals, coffee, wood, livestock and money in the conquered territory were either taken to the invading countries or exported to international markets by their military forces or nationals. The subsequent systematic and systemic exploitation required planning and organization involving key military commanders, businessmen and government structures; it was clearly illegal. See ‘Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’.
Has there been any official attempt to rein in this corporate exploitation?
A little. For example, the Obama-era US Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act of 2010 shone a spotlight on supply chains, pressuring companies to determine the origin of minerals used in their products and invest in removing conflict minerals from their supply chain. This resulted in some US corporations, conscious of the public relations implications of being linked to murderous warlords and child labor, complying with the Act. So, a small step in the right direction it seemed. See ‘The Impact of Dodd-Frank and Conflict Minerals Reforms on Eastern Congo’s Conflict’ and ‘Congo mines no longer in grip of warlords and militias, says report’.
In 2011, given that legally-binding human rights provisions, if applied, should have offered adequate protections already, the United Nations rather powerlessly formulated the non-binding‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’.
And in 2015, the European Union also made a half-hearted attempt when it decided that smelters and refiners based in the 28-nation bloc be asked to certify that their imports were conflict-free on a voluntary basis! See ‘EU lawmakers to limit import of conflict minerals’.
Despite its corrupt exploitation for more than 500 years, the Congo still has vast natural resources (including rainforests) and mineral wealth. Its untapped deposits of minerals are estimated to be worth in excess of $US24 trillion. Yes, that’s right: $US24trillion. With a host of rare strategic minerals – including cobalt, coltan, gold and diamonds – as well as copper, zinc, tin and tungsten critical to the manufacture of hitech electronic products ranging from aircraft and vehicles to computers and mobile phones, violent and morally destitute western governments and corporations are not about to let the Congo decide its own future and devote its resources to the people of this African country. This, of course, despite the international community paying lip service to a plethora of ‘human rights’ treaties.
Hence, violent conflict, including ongoing war, over the exploitation of these resources, including the smuggling of ‘conflict minerals’ – such as gold, coltan and cassiterite (the latter two ores of tantalum and tin, respectively), and diamonds – will ensure that the people of the Congo continue to be denied what many of those in western countries take for granted: the right to life benefiting from the exploitation of ‘their’ natural resources.
In essence then, since 1885 European and US governments, together with their corporations and African collaborators, have inflicted phenomenal ongoing atrocities on the peoples of the Congo as they exploit the vast resources of the country for the benefit of non-Congolese people.
But, you might wonder, European colonizers inflicted phenomenal violence on the indigenous peoples in all of their colonies – whether in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean or Oceania – so is their legacy in the Congo any worse?
Source: Medium
Well,according to the The Pan-African Alliance, just since colonization in 1885, at least 25 million Congolese men, women and children have been slaughtered by white slave traders, missionaries, colonists, corporations and governments (both the governments of foreign-installed Congolese dictators and imperial powers). ‘Yet barely a mention is made of the holocaust that rages in the heart of Africa.’ Why? Because ‘the economy of the entire world rests on the back of the Congo.’ See ‘“A Nightmare In Heaven” – Why Nobody Is Talking About The Holocaust in Congo’.
So what is happening now?
In a sentence: The latest manifestation of the violence and exploitation that has been happening since 1482 when that Portuguese explorer ‘discovered’ the mouth of the Congo River. The latest generation of European and American genocidal exploiters, and their latter-day cronies, is busy stealing what they can from the Congo. Of course, as illustrated above, having installed the ruthless dictator of their choosing to ensure that foreign interests are protected, the weapon of choice is the corporation and non-existent legal or other effective controls in the era of ‘free trade’.
The provinces of North and South Kivu in the eastern Congo are filled with mines of cassiterite, wolframite, coltan and gold. Much mining is done by locals eking out a living using Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM); that is, mining by hand, sometimes with rudimentary tools. Some of these miners sell their product via local agents to Congolese military commanders who smuggle it out of the country, usually via Rwanda, Uganda or Burundi, and use the proceeds to enrich themselves.
Another report on South Kivu by Global Witness in 2016 – see ‘River of Gold’ and ‘Illegal gold trade in Congo still benefiting armed groups, foreign companies’ – documented evidence of the corrupt links between government authorities, foreign corporations (in this case, Kun Hou Mining of China) and the military, which results in the gold dredged from the Ulindi River in South Kivu being illegally smuggled out of the country, with much of it ending up with Alfa Gold Corp in Dubai. The unconcealed nature of this corruption and the obvious lack of enforcement of weak Congolese law is a powerful disincentive for corporations to engage in ‘due diligence’ when conducting their own mining operations in the Congo.
In contrast, in the south of the Congo in the former province of Katanga, Amnesty International and Afrewatch researchers tracked sacks of cobalt ore that had been mined by artisanal miners in Kolwezi to the local market where the mineral ore is sold. From this point, the material was smelted by one of the large companies in Kolwezi, such as Congo Dongfang Mining International SARL (CDM), which is a smelter and fully-owned subsidiary of Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Company Ltd (Huayou Cobalt) in China, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cobalt products. Once smelted, the material is typically exported from the Congo to China via a port in South Africa. See ‘“This is what We Die for”: Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt’.
In its 2009 report ‘“Faced with a gun, what can you do?” War and the Militarisation of Mining in Eastern Congo’ examining the link between foreign corporate activity in the Congo and the military violence, Global Witness raised questions about the involvement of nearly 240 companies spanning the mineral, metal and technology industries. It specifically identified four main European companies as open buyers in this illegal trade: Thailand Smelting and Refining Corp. (owned by British Amalgamated Metal Corp.), British Afrimex, Belgian Trademet and Traxys. It also questioned the role of other companies further down the manufacturing chain, including prominent electronics companies Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Dell and Motorola (a list to which Microsoft and Samsung should have been added as well). Even though they may be acting ‘legally’, Global Witness criticized their lack of due diligence and transparency standards at every level of their supply chain. See ‘First Blood Diamonds, Now Blood Computers?’
Needless to say, despite beautifully worded ‘corporate responsibility statements’ by whatever name, the record rarely goes even remotely close to resembling the rhetoric. Take Glencore’s lovely statement on ‘safety’ in the Congo: ‘Ask Glencore: Democratic Republic of the Congo’. Unfortunately, this didn’t prevent the 2016 accident at a Congolese mine that one newspaper reported in the following terms: ‘Glencore’s efforts to reduce fatalities among its staff have suffered a setback with the announcement that the death toll from an accident at a Congolese mine has risen to seven.’ See ‘Glencore reports seven dead in mining accident’.
Or consider the Belgian Forrest Group International’s wonderful ‘Community Services’ program, supposedly developing projects ‘in the areas of education, health, early childhood care, culture, sport, infrastructure and the environment. The FORREST GROUP has been investing on the African continent since 1922. Its longevity is the fruit of a vision of the role a company should have, namely the duty to be a positive player in the society in which it operates. The investments of the Group share a common core of values which include, as a priority, objectives of stability and long-term prospects.’
Regrettably, the Forrest Group website and public relations documents make no mention of the company’s illegal demolition, without notice, of hundreds of homes of people who lived in the long-standing village of Kawama, inconveniently close to the Forrest Group’s Luiswishi Mine, on 24 and 25 November 2009. People were left homeless and many lost their livelihoods as a direct consequence. Of course, the demolitions constitute forced evictions, which are illegal under international human rights law.
Needless to say, it is difficult for Congolese villagers to feel they have any ‘stability and long-term prospects’, as the Forrest Group’s ‘Community Services’ statement puts it, when their homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. Are company chairman George A. Forrest and its CEO Malta David Forrest and their family delusional? Or just so familiar with being violently ruthless in their exploitation of the Congo and its people, that it doesn’t even occur to them that there might be less violent ways of resolving any local conflicts?
Tragically, of course, fatal industrial accidents and housing demolition are only two of the many abuses inflicted on mining labourers, including (illegal) child labourers, and families in the Congo where workers are not even provided with the most basic ‘safety equipment’ – work clothes, helmets, gloves, boots and facemasks – let alone a safe working environment (including guidance on the safe handling of toxic substances) or a fair wage, reasonable working hours, holidays, sick leave or superannuation.
Even where laws exist, such as the Congo’s Child Protection Code (2009) which provides for ‘free and compulsory primary education for all children’, laws are often simply ignored (without legal consequence). Although, it should also be noted, in the Congo there is no such thing as ‘free education’ despite the law. Consequently, plenty of children do not attend school and work full time, others attend school but work out of school hours. There is no effective system to remove children from child labour (which is well documented). Even for adults, there is no effective labour inspection system. Most artisanal mining takes places in unauthorized mining areas ‘where the government is doing next to nothing to regulate the safety and labour conditions in which the miners work’. See ‘“This is what We Die for”: Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt’.
In addition, as noted above, given its need for minerals to manufacture the hitech products it makes, including those for western corporations, China is deeply engaged in mining strategic minerals in the Congo too. See ‘China plays long game on cobalt and electric batteries’.
Based on the Chinese notion of ‘respect’ – which includes the ‘principle’ of noninterference in each other’s internal affairs – the Chinese dictatorship is content to ignore the dictatorship of the Congo and its many corrupt and violent practices, even if its investment often has more beneficial outcomes for ordinary Congolese than does western ‘investment’. Moreover, China is not going to disrupt and destabilize the Congo in the way that the United States and European countries have done for so long. See ‘China’s Congo Plan’ and ‘China vs. the US: The Struggle for Central Africa and the Congo’.
Having noted the above, however, there is plenty of evidence of corrupt Chinese business practice in the extraction and sale of strategic minerals in the Congo, including that documented in the above-mentioned Global Witness report. See ‘River of Gold’.
Moreover, Chinese involvement is not limited to its direct engagement in mining such as gold dredging of the Ulindi River. A vital source of the mineral cobalt is that which is mined by artisanal miners. As part of a recent detailed investigation, Amnesty International had researchers follow cobalt mined by artisanal miners from where it was mined to a market at Musompo, where minerals are traded. The report summarised what happens:
‘Independent traders at Musompo – most of them Chinese – buy the ore, regardless of where it has come from or how it has been mined. In turn, these traders sell the ore on to larger companies in the DRC which process and export it. One of the largest companies at the centre of this trade is Congo Dongfang Mining International (CDM). CDM is a 100% owned subsidiary of China-based Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Company Ltd (Huayou Cobalt), one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cobalt products. Operating in the DRC since 2006, CDM buys cobalt from traders, who buy directly from the miners. CDM then smelts the ore at its plant in the DRC before exporting it to China. There, Huayou Cobalt further smelts and sells the processed cobalt to battery component manufacturers in China and South Korea. In turn, these companies sell to battery manufacturers, which then sell on to well-known consumer brands.
‘Using public records, including investor documents and statements published on company websites, researchers identified battery component manufacturers who were listed as sourcing processed ore from Huayou Cobalt. They then went on to trace companies who were listed as customers of the battery component manufacturers, in order to establish how the cobalt ends up in consumer products. In seeking to understand how this international supply chain works, as well as to ask questions about each company’s due diligence policy, Amnesty International wrote to Huayou Cobalt and 25 other companies in China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, UK, and the USA. These companies include some of the world’s largest and best known consumer electronics companies, including Apple Inc., Dell, HP Inc. (formerly Hewlett-Packard Company), Huawei, Lenovo (Motorola), LG, Microsoft Corporation, Samsung, Sony and Vodafone, as well as vehicle manufacturers like Daimler AG, Volkswagen and Chinese firm BYD. Their replies are detailed in the report’s Annex.’ See ‘“This is what We Die for”: Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt’.
As backdrop to the problems mentioned above, it is worth pointing out that keeping the country under military siege is useful to many parties, internal and foreign. Over the past 20 years of violent conflict, control of these valuable mineral resources has been a lucrative way for warring parties to finance their violence – that is, buying the products of western weapons corporations – and to promote the chaotic circumstances that make minimal accountability and maximum profit easiest. The Global Witness report ‘Faced with a gun, what can you do?’ cited above followed the supply chain of these minerals from warring parties to middlemen to international buyers: people happy to profit from the sale of ‘blood minerals’ to corporations which, in turn, are happy to buy them cheaply to manufacture their highly profitable hitech products.
Moreover, according to the Global Witness report, although the Congolese army and rebel groups – such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a rebel force opposed to the Rwandan government that has taken refuge in the Congo since the 1994 Rwanda genocide – have been warring on opposite sides for years, they are collaborators in the mining effort, at times providing each other with road and airport access and even sharing their spoils. Researchers say they found evidence that the mineral trade is much more extensive and profitable than previously suspected: one Congolese government official reported that at least 90% of all gold exports from the country were undeclared. And the report charges that the failure of foreign governments to crack down on illicit mining and trade has undercut development endeavors supposedly undertaken by the international community in the war-torn region.
Social and Environmental Costs
Of course, against this background of preoccupation with the militarized exploitation of mineral resources for vast profit, ordinary Congolese people suffer extraordinary ongoing violence. Apart from the abuses mentioned above, four women are raped every five minutes in the Congo, according to a study done in May 2011. ‘These nationwide estimates of the incidence of rape are 26 times higher than the 15,000 conflict-related cases confirmed by the United Nations for the DRC in 2010’. Despite the country having the highest number of UN peacekeeping forces in the world – where the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has operated since the turn of the century – the level of sexual violence soldiers have perpetrated against women is staggering. ‘Currently, there is still much violence in the region, as well as an overwhelming amount of highly strategic mass rape.’ See ‘Conflict Profile: Democratic Republic of Congo’.
Unsurprisingly, given the international community’s complete indifference, despite rhetoric to the contrary, to the plight of Congolese people, it is not just Congolese soldiers who are responsible for the rapes. UN ‘peacekeepers’ are perpetrators too. See ‘Peacekeepers gone wild: How much more abuse will the UN ignore in Congo?’
And the Congo is a violently dangerous place for children as well with, for example, Child Soldiers International reporting that with a variety of national and foreign armed groups and forces operating in the country for over 20 years, the majority of fighting forces have recruited and used children, and most still exploit boys and girls today with girls forced to become girl soldiers but to perform a variety of other sexual and ‘domestic’ roles too. See Child Soldiers International. Of course, child labour is completely out of control with many impoverished families utterly dependent on it for survival.
In addition, many Congolese also end up as refugees in neighbouring countries or as internally displaced people in their own country.
As you would expect, it is not just human beings who suffer. With rebel soldiers (such as the Rwanda-backed M23), miners and poachers endlessly plundering inadequately protected national parks and other wild places for their resources, illegal mining is rampant, over-fishing a chronic problem, illegal logging (and other destruction such as charcoal burning for cooking) of rainforests is completely out of control in some places, poaching of hippopotamuses, elephants, chimpanzees and okapi for ivory and bushmeat is unrelenting (often despite laws against hunting with guns), and wildlife trafficking of iconic species (including the increasingly rare mountain gorilla) simply beyond the concern of most people.
Some visionary Congolese continue devoting their efforts, in phenomenally difficult circumstances including lack of funding, to building a society where ordinary Congolese people have the chance to create a meaningful life for themselves. Two individuals and organizations who particularly inspire me are based in Goma in eastern Congo where the fighting is worst.
The Association de Jeunes Visionnaires pour le Développement du Congo, headed by Leon Simweragi, is a youth peace group that works to rehabilitate child soldiers as well as offer meaningful opportunities for the sustainable involvement of young people in matters that affect their lives and those of their community.
And Christophe Nyambatsi Mutaka is the key figure at the Groupe Martin Luther King that promotes active nonviolence, human rights and peace. Christophe’s group particularly works on reducing sexual and other violence against women.
There are also solidarity groups, based in the West, that work to draw attention to the nightmare happening in the Congo. These include Friends of the Congo that works to inform people and agitate for change and groups like Child Soldiers International mentioned above.
If you would like to better understand the depravity of those individuals in the Congo (starting with the dictator Joseph Kabila but including all those officials, bureaucrats and soldiers) who enable, participate in or ignore the violence and exploitation; the presidents and prime ministers of western governments who ignore exploitation, by their locally-based corporations, of the Congo; the heads of multinational corporations that exploit the Congo – such as Anthony Hayward (Chair of Glencore), Richard Adkerson (CEO of Freeport-McMoRan), George A. Forrest and Malta David Forrest (Chair and CEO respectively of Forrest Group International), Christopher L Coleman (Chair of Randgold Resources) and Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan (CEO of AngloGold Ashanti) – as well as those individuals in international organizations such as the UN(starting with Secretary-General António Guterres) and the EU (headed by Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission), who ignore, provoke, support and/or profit from this violence and exploitation, you will find the document ‘Why Violence?’ and the website ‘Feelings First’ instructive.
Whether passively or actively complicit, each of these depraved individuals (along with other individuals within the global elite) does little or nothing to draw attention to, let alone work to profoundly change, the situation in the Congo which denies most Congolese the right to a meaningful life in any enlightened sense of these words.
If you would like to help, you can do so by supporting the efforts of the individual activists and solidarity organizations indicated above or those like them.
And if you would like to support efforts to remove the dictatorship of Joseph Kabila and/or get corrupt foreign governments, corporations and organizations out of the Congo, you can do so by planning and implementing or supporting a nonviolent strategy that is designed to achieve one or more of these objectives. See Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.
If you are still reading this article and you feel the way I do about this ongoing atrocity, then I invite you to participate, one way or another, in ending it.
For more than 500 years, the Congo has been brutalized by the extraordinary violence inflicted by those who have treated the country as a resource – for slaves, rubber, timber, wildlife and minerals – to be exploited.
This will only end when enough of us commit ourselves to acting on the basis that 500 years is long enough. Liberate the Congo!
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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.
Featured image: Israeli F-35 Flying over Beirut (Source: author)
“We are flying the F-35 all over the Middle East, and have already attacked twice on two different fronts”. General Amikam Norkin, Commander of the Israeli Air Force, made this announcement on 22 May at the conference on aerial superiority at Herzliya (a suburb of Tel Aviv), with the participation of the Air Force chiefs of staff from 20 countries, including Italy.
The general did not specify where the F-35’s had been used, but he hinted that one of the attacks was carried out in Syria. He also showed images of Israeli F-35’s flying over Beirut and Lebanon, but they have almost certainly also been used for non-attack missions in Iran.
Israel, one of the 12 “global partners” of the F-35 program led by US Lockheed Martin, was the first to buy the new fifth-generation fighter, which it renamed “Adir” (Powerful). So far, Israel has received nine of the 50 F-35’s ordered, all model A (conventional take-off and landing), and it is likely to purchase 75. This is a realistic goal, given that Israel receives about 4 billion dollars annually in military aid from the United States.
The training of the first Israeli F-35 pilots began in July 2016, at Luke air base in Arizona. After having attended a three-month course in the USA, in order to be certified as operational, they have to complete several months of training for “real flight” in Israel. Approximately 30 F-35 Israeli pilots have been trained so far. On December 6, 2017, the Israeli Air Force declared its first F-35 fleet fully operational.
Israel’s military industry also participates in the F-35 programme. Israel Aerospace Industries produces wings for the F-35A; Elbit Systems-Cyclone produces fuselage components for the F-35; and Elbit Systems Ltd. are developing the Generation III helmet-mounted display system, which all F-35 fleet pilots will wear.
Video in Italian
Source: PandoraTV
General Norkin’s announcement that the F-35 is finally “combat proven” therefore has the primary practical effect of boosting the F-35 programme, which has already encountered numerous technical problems and needs continual costly upgrades which increase the already enormous cost of the programme. The fighter’s software has been modified over 30 times and requires further updates.
General Norkin’s announcement was therefore particularly appreciated by Lockheed Martin’s Chief Executive Officer, Marillyn Hewson, one of the speakers at the conference on “aerial superiority”.
The announcement that Israel has already used the F-35s in “real war” operations serves at the same time as a warning to Iran. The F-35A’s supplied to Israel are designed primarily for the use of nuclear weapons, in particular the new B61-12 precision-guided bomb. The B61-12, now in its final stages of development, will be deployed by the United States in Italy and other European countries. It will almost certainly also be supplied to Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, whose arsenal is estimated at 100-400 nuclear weapons.
Israeli nuclear forces are integrated into the NATO electronic system, as part of the “Individual Cooperation Program” with Israel, a country which has a permanent mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels, although it is not a member of the Alliance.
Italy, Germany, France, Greece and Poland participated with the USA in Blue Flag 2017, the largest international aerial warfare exercise in Israel’s history, in which nuclear attack tests were also carried out.
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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto.
Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Gina Haspel, a 33 year veteran of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has gotten clearance to head the agency.
The U.S. Senate approved the hire on May 17th in a 54-45 vote, which included six Democrats.
Haspel’s nomination was controversial, owing to her involvement in ‘enhanced interrogations’ of terrorism suspects. These included use of ‘waterboarding’ on a single detainee at a secret U.S. site in Thailand. Haspel was also implicated in the destruction of videotapes of interrogations that had been characterized as torture.
At her May 9th Senate confirmation hearing, a few citizens stood up and spoke out against the nomination, citing her record of overseeing torture.
One of those citizens was Ray McGovern.
McGovern found himself being dragged out of the hearing room and violently restrained by Capitol police. Video of his ‘take down’ outside the courtroom was captured by Allie McCracken, a campaigner with Amnesty International.
Mr. McGovern (78) will appear in Criminal Court on Friday May 25th at 9:30 am EDT to face charges of ‘Disrupting Congress’ and ‘Resisting Arrest.’
In the days leading up to Friday’s hearing, GRTV got hold of Mr. McGovern and tapped his thoughts about the significance of the appointment, his insights into the Agency’s history and internal dynamics, his understanding of the forces directing U.S. foreign policy, and his appraisal of a near future conflict with Iran.
Ray McGovern is a 27 year veteran of the Agency who served as an analyst, and provided President Ronald Reagan with his Presidential Daily briefing. Following his retirement, McGovern became an outspoken activist and founded a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which has since early 2003 been questioning many government talking points being used to justify war or similar provocative actions. His website is raymcgovern.com
Global Research: So Gina Haspel has been approved by the Senate, as of last Thursday, as director of the CIA. This 33-year veteran has, in fact, a record of having overseen Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, which were a focus of controversy in her appointment, and, of course, there were a number of individuals that attended the May 8th hearing, including my next guest, who was very opposed to this decision.
Ray McGovern is a 27-year veteran of the CIA. He presented the presidential daily briefing to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and was one of the cofounders of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He joins us now, just a few days before he’s expected to go to court in relation to the way he was dealt with in that hearing.
So, Ray McGovern, it’s a pleasure to have you on our program.
Ray McGovern: Thank you.
GR: Now, first of all, maybe just give us a bit of an update in terms of what happened there. What precisely were the charges they brought up against you?
RM: Well, they charged me with the obstruction of congress and resisting arrest, which if you see the video, you can see is a kind of a sick joke. I was not under my own power when they dragged me out of the hearing room and then took me to ground, as the personal notes of the arresting officer puts it. I have the notes. They’re in his own handwriting
GR: It’s been, well, I guess a couple of weeks. I mean, to what do you attribute that.. what looks like on video to be rather excessive use of force? I mean, it’s not like you were rushing the, running up to Miss Haspel or anything like that. What makes…?
RM: Well, clearly they had instructions. Now, the senator who’s the chair of the senate intelligence committee, Richard Burr, he was giving hypocrisy a bad name when he started out by saying now we have a public hearing here, and I suppose, some of you will want to make a statement, so go ahead. Make it quick, make it swift, and be gone.
And I said to myself, wow, I never heard an opening statement like that from a senate chair. I may have to take advantage of that. And as things went along, Haspel was allowed to bob and weave with the support of many of the committee members, and when she was finally asked by Ron Wyden, who apparently cares about torture, Ron Wyden, the senator from Oregon, he said, now, Miss Haskell I’m running out of time, now tell me, just yes or no, were you supervising the water boarding of al-Nashiri in Thailand, yes or no.
Senator, I wish I could tell you, but that’s classified. Now, if Wyden had some more time he certainly would have said, now tell me Miss Haspel, who classified that? And she would have had to say well, Senator, I did.
The whole thing was a charade. Now Wyden was out of time so he’s forgiven. But the chair? Richard Burr from North Carolina? He should have intervened in there: now, Miss Haspel, we have the documents. You have the documents. You know that we know so please, yes or no, were you supervising the waterboarding of al-Nashiri in Thailand? And she would have had to say well yes, or I still think that’s classified, and he’d say well did you classify this, and she would say yeah I classified it.
So we had this ridiculous charade of the nominee being able to classify incriminating evidence that should have disqualified her, that did disqualify her according to Senator McCain and many others from being the head of the CIA.
So, when there was the opportunity, when the policeman between me and Haspel left, probably to go to the bathroom or something, I went up and I said, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think that Senator Wyden is due a straight answer to his question. She was.. of course, you know that…then rather than letting me make my first statement then be gone, I was be gone quickly by these four Capitol Police who dragged me out, took me to ground and so forth.
So it was an unwelcome interruption by me. And of course they threw the book at me.
Usually, of course, you get released that same day. I was forced to spend well, all told, 27 hours in conditions that I would suggest every white American should subject themselves to, to understand what it means to be marginalized. What it means to be dehumanized. What it means to be in the total power of people that don’t give a rat’s patootie about you.
So anyhow, I was released the following day after appearing in court before the judge, so I… You know, people say what did you think you could achieve? Well, I suppose, when it comes right down to it, I have nine grandchildren, and I see how this is playing out. And I want to be able to tell them that I did all I could, including throwing my body into it, to make sure that the world knew that somebody cared about Haspel’s torture, her record of torture and, just as I did in May of 2006 when I gave my big Intelligence Commendation Medallion back to the head of the House Intelligence Committee, say, I don’t want to be associated with the agency I worked with for 27 years, since it’s openly identified with torture, and now we have the director herself being Queen of the May, so to speak, queen of the torture regime.
You know it’s not only, well, I like to say that yeah, it’s illegal, of course it’s illegal. The US law and the UN convention on international law. But it’s not wrong because it’s illegal. It’s illegal because it’s wrong. Human beings don’t do those things to other human beings. It falls in the category of what we learned in philosophy and theology: intrinsic evil. Slavery. Rape.
GR: I was wondering if you could comment then on, I mean given that, I think that this idea that torture is wrong, that covers the entire political landscape, it doesn’t fit into any particular ideologies, so what do you make of the fact that the Senate actually ended up approving of this nomination in spite of all of the facts that are out there.
RM: Instead of being an oversight committee looking at what the CIA and others are doing, the Senate Intelligence Committee, not the house just now, but the Senate Intelligence Committee, is the overlook committee. They’re afraid of the ones they’re supposed to be watching and supervising. It was really hard to watch the senators, including my senator from Virginia, Mark Warner, do all kinds of little charades to make sure that she wrote the right letter to him, and he said, oh, well, now I’m convinced you would never torture.
Well, you know, she’s all, the president ordered me to torture. Well, give me a break. The president thinks torture works. And he said we should do waterboarding and worse. Now why would that same president pick Gina Haspel if she’s going to, like, really disobey the president when he tells her to do that?
It defies belief. You know the business of “it works,” okay, unfortunately most Americans sadly, very sadly, most Americans think that torture works. Why do they think that? Because of Hollywood, because of the TV programs and all that kind of stuff. It doesn’t work, okay?
Now there are lots of reasons why that doesn’t work, but I like to quote the head of army intelligence, John Kimmons. Now, this is back in 2006. They were leaks about the black sites, and George Bush was going to come before the cameras and the microphones on the 6th of July to explain Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Which most people don’t realize is a literal translation of Verschärfte Vernehmung, sharpened interrogation, right out of the Gestapo manual. I have the manual – it’s the chapter heading. Verschärfte Vernehmung, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.
Anyhow, John Kimmons, the head of army intelligence, learned that this was supposed to happen. And so on the morning, about an hour before George Bush got up, he got up at his own press conference in the Pentagon, and he said this:
“No good intelligence has ever come from abusive techniques. History shows that and the experience, the empirical experience, of the last five years, hard years, also demonstrates that.”
The last five years 2006, minus 5, 2001 when Haspel and her betters, her uppers, in the CIA Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, most of which appeared in that gestapo manual. So, that’s what Kimmons said. And I think Kimmons knows a lot more then Dick Cheney or George Bush, or anybody else about the effectiveness of harsh techniques, so we call them.
The other thing of course is we know that this is the biggest recruitment tool for Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And we know that Matthew Alexander was a major in the Air Force and he led the interrogation camp right in the middle of Iraq when the Jihadis were coming in from abroad, and most of the people captured were foreign Jihadis, and to a man almost about 90% says Matthew Alexander, when they asked well, why’d you come in here, they said, Guantanamo, they said, Abu Ghraib.
So maybe this… It’s hard to believe, it’s just so cynical. But you want to keep these wars going? You want to keep the recruitment lines before, in front of Al Qaeda and and other terrorist organizations? No better way to do it than to keep Guantanamo open and appoint a known torturer as head of the CIA.
GR: So I’m wondering if you could give us some insights into…I mean, as a veteran of the CIA, maybe you could take us into the Sausage Factory, so to speak.
RM: Well, it’s a long story, and I’ll try to be brief. Truman set the CIA up for one purpose and one purpose only. To have his own assessment group, his own analysis group, that would give him the straight story on what was going on in the world, without any shading, without any slant. He didn’t want to hear from the Pentagon that the Russians were 10 ft tall, he didn’t want to hear from the State Department stuff that always defends their policy.
We reported directly to the president okay? Now, through the National Security advisor but sometimes directly to the president. So what happened was these swashbuckling guys to the office of strategic services, not to demean them, they did an incredible job during the war, imaginative, enterprising, great. So they came back after the war and they said well, how about us? Should we hang around here or should we go back to our law firms, our corporations, academe? Is there a job for us?
And George Kennan head of the state department policy planning said, my god, the Russians are always overthrowing governments and doing all kinds of nefar–of course we need you! We got to be able to do that.
Now, they couldn’t set up with department for overthrowing governments. That just didn’t sound quite right, at least in those days. And so they s– I know what we’ll do, some idiot, and I use the term advisedly, I know what we’ll do, we’ll put these overthrowers of government in with these analysts, and we’ll all just be one big happy family. Yeah, you could see structural fault from the beginning, okay.
In the beginning, when I started in 1963, there were turnstiles between the assessment or the analysis part and the operation part. You needed a special little code to get through the turnstiles. So we kept separate. And I relished that because I didn’t know half of what was going on on the other side of those turnstiles. I learned it from The New York Times. But the end result here is that all the money gradually got to go to the overthrowers of governments, Iran 53, Guatemala 54, Chile 68, or whatever it was, and, you know, you get people that are really devoted to action and provocation and making wars or targeting drones and people who are supposed to be watching important things like Soviet strategic forces.
Now, the mind boggles that the first the US Intelligence Committee really learned about these incredibly sophisticated Russian strategic weapons was when Putin got up on the 1st of March and told them that. Hello? Now what were they doing? Were they probably targeting drones, these analysts? Or maybe they were looking for ties between Russia and the the Trump campaign? So even the assessments, even the analysis part of the agency, is suborned, is kind of bent into a shape which supports the action which is in turn is ordered by very strange people like John Bolton.
And so that’s what’s come…now, 11 years ago we were just about to attack Iran. Don’t take my word for it. Read George W Bush’s memoir. Now what happened? He kept saying Russians are about to get a nuclear weapon. They’re going to get a nuclear weapon real quick. Now that was in September of 2007. Meanwhile some honest intelligence analysts were working on what we call a National Intelligence Estimate, the highest genre of intelligence analysis, and they concluded and published and gave to the Congress the results which said both Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003, so four years prior, and has not resumed work on a nuclear weapon.
This was unanimous – all 16 intelligence agencies at the time expressed with high confidence. Whoa – what happened? Well, it leaked, of course, and George Bush writes in his memoirs – this was eye-popping. How could I authorize an attack on a country that the intelligence community says has no active nuclear weapons program? Bummer. Now, you would think that if he was really worried about that. the reaction would have been wow really? And he check that out? Call the Israelis! Hey!
No. Now, at the end of 2007 when that hit the fan, when the estimate was published, Bush went off to Tel Aviv, and he said, you know, I don’t agree with that estimate, I don’t agree with it, but a lot of people think it’s right, so we can’t do what we plan to do. This was all on the record. And it’s happening again, that’s why I mention it. Eleven years later, but you know, what the difference is there’s no honest broker.
There’s no honest chair for this intelligence estimate, which there was back then. He wasn’t from the CIA. They had all kind of been discredited. His name was Tom Fingar, he was from State INR, the intelligence shop over there, he was the assistant Secretary of State, and to his credit, he did an honest bottom-up estimate and found out that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003, and every year since then, the honest directors of National Intelligence have reaffirmed and updated that judgment. So Bibi Netanyahu goes before the cameras with a slideshow based on contrived evidence which we can prove was manufactured by Mossad his own intelligence unit. Give me a break! And The New York Times are, oh my God, look what the Iranians…
The Iranians are not working on a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency has certified it. So what’s Pompeo’s evidence? There isn’t any evidence. It’s just as much a crock as Weapons of Mass Destruction before Iraq. and it’s dangerous. It’s more dangerous and I’ll tell you why if you’re interested.
GR: Sure. Ray, that brings the question to mind, since you’re bringing up the issue of Iran, what drives American foreign policy if it’s not..if intelligence is you know, somewhat, almost a sideshow. They seem to have some other forces that are driving this, and I mean I don’t know, is it Israel, is that what they call the neocons? What is behind the whole focus on rattling sabres at Iran when it seems pretty clear that nukes is not the issue here?
RM: Well, clear to us, not clear to anyone reading The New York Times, and that’s part of the big problem.
GR: Well, what about the people on the other side… I’m just wondering what’s driving the policy? The people aren’t, right?
RM: It’s the same thing as before the catastrophic invasion of Iraq which just left that whole area in shambles. At the time, people ask me, okay you were right, the weapons of mass destruction was not a mistake it was fraud, which it was, demonstrably fraud, and there were no ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. That was also a fraud. So what was it.
And I came up with an acronym: OIL. Now Jon Stewart, to his great credit, made great fun of that on one of those evening things. OIL McGovern is violating the rules for acronyms! You can’t have an acronym OIL meaning, well, it went on for 10 minutes but he left the OIL up there.
I testified before Congress, and I said O for oil, I mean, oil has to play a role, Iraq sits on the second largest deposit of oil in the world, Israel, now when I said Israel, all the Congress people there, and they’re all Democrats, this was Conyer’s committee, they started to go just… I said Israel… we’ll come back to Israel, I said L for Logistics, the permanent, later we called it enduring, enduring sounds better than permanent, military bases that we coveted in Iraq.
So let’s come back to Israel. I said, I see you are all very nervous about Israel. You know, you keep talking about Israel as an ally, you know, you ought to look up the definition of ally. It is a country with which your country has a mutual defense treaty. Is there one? No, there isn’t any one.
So, why do you keep calling it… Now, you should realize that we offered Israel a treaty, a mutual defense treaty, with the, at the time, the sole indispensable country in the world, the United States of America, that was after ‘73, when the Arabs did attack Israel. We don’t want that to happen again, Kissenger and those guys said, well, we know what we’ll do, we’ll devise a treaty and then no Arabs are going to attack Israel ever, ever again. And they approached it to the Israelis, and the Israelis said – I know people who were involved in this, okay? The Israelis said all that so sweet that’s so sweet but thanks, but no thanks.
Now, I ask you, why would any country, much less Israel, turn down a mutual defense treaty with the United States of America? Two reasons. One is that such treaties require mutually internationally recognized orders. The Israelis had occupied all those territories in 1967, and the last thing they wanted to do is talk about International borders. The second one, well if the Israelis can always do what they want, you know, without asking, but maybe saying they’re sorry, it’s a mutual defense treaty requires each party, if they’re going to start a war somewhere else, if Israel’s going to attack Syria, it’s sort of de rigueur that they would go to their allies and say, now don’t be surprised and blindsided by this,but next week we’re going to attack Syria.
The Israelis didn’t want any part of that. They like the system where you say sorry rather than asking for permission. So those were two reasons they turned us down. So they’re not an ally, so get that through your head, it’s not an ally. And you know, what I was immediately, some of them left right away, trotted off to the press: I disassociate myself from McGovern. He’s anti-semitic, he’s anti-semitic.
So, just because I said that and also that the main policy is simply to ensure that Israel and the United States dominate that part of the world, well that was beyond the pale. But here I am, I’m not running for anything, running for any office, I don’t need any more money than I already have, I’m an intelligence analyst. And I look at it, the C-Span cameras and the the CNN and say wow you know what…really going on here, and so I said all that.
So I thought the same thing fasting forward here, fast forward to last, well, the ninth of May when I was at the hearing with Haspell. And she was allowed to dance around and not answer a direct question as to whether she’s supervised waterboarding. And that’s why I got up, because I said, well maybe the cameras will record what I said. In the event, I’m not sure any of them got my actual meaning, but I’m glad I did it anyway.
GR: I guess I only have time for one more question, but it’s something I want to raise and you look at some of the figures in place, and now we have Gina Haspel as head of the CIA. You’ve got former CIA director Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, you’ve got James Mad Dog Mattis and you’ve also seen certain other people like Mike Flynn and Rex Tillerson left by the wayside. If structure is strategy in slow-motion, does that mean that we are looking at pretty much a guarantee of some sort of a military conflict with Iran in the next couple of years?
RM: Next couple of years? Some of my very expert colleagues predict next couple of months. Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Israel are driving our policy. Whether the people in charge know enough to realize that or not is problematic. I don’t know. They’re not the brightest people, they’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Now what’s going on here? They’re operating out of an old paradigm. A good example is this: after the first Gulf War when we be that Iraqi Nation so glorious and…General Wesley Clark, who had been head of NATO, came to talk to Paul Wolfowitz, one of the NATO cons at the Pentagon. Paul! Great job there, great job! What’s the main lesson that you learned?
You know what Wolfowitz said? He said we learned that we can do these things and the Russians won’t stop us. 1991 folks. Fast forward 2014 we mount a coup in Ukraine to get Ukraine into NATO, Russia stops us. We’re causing all kinds of mischief in Syria, Russia stops us. They’re acting out of this old 1991 paradigm, when it’s not only Russia that can stop us, but there is an alliance.
You know where I heard this first okay? There is an alliance, a de facto alliance. No mutual defense treaty needed here between China and Russia. This is a sea change that has happened over the last five decades. When I used to monitor the Sino-Soviet dispute, that was a big thing, and they hated each other. We thought they would hate each other forever.
So what happened? Well, the Chinese defense minister just appointed goes to Moscow during all this turmoil a month ago, and he says, I’m here to show support for my Russian colleagues. They are the same in their policy towards Syria, the Chinese support their policy towards Ukraine, and, if there’s a dustup, and I just wish I could talk to these guys in the White House, if there’s a dustup, if there’s some sort of clash between Russian and American troops in Syria or sort of proteges in Iraq or in Iran or anywhere else in that part of the area, it’s not only Russia. It will be Russia primarily, but you can expect a lot of trouble in the South China Sea, mark my words, the Chinese are sailing habitually around Taiwan now, that’s another flashpoint, so that the only hope here, you mentioned Mad Dog Mattis, well, I don’t think he’s a strategic expert, but he doesn’t like to get into wars that he can’t win, okay? Now we haven’t gotten into a war that we could win since World War II, when I was just a little guy.
Now is he going to want to order his Marines up the cliffs at the Strait of Hormuz? Is he going to want to order his Marines to do something with respect to those fortified islands in the South China Sea all at the same time? I think not. The question is whether with this array of, well we used to call them a lot of things, but we call them the neocons really strange things, and… are they going to prevail or people like Mattis who has some sense with the strategic realities here going to prevail.
And I haven’t even mentioned in this context the new evidence that the Russians have strategic weaponry that will defeat any us defense. That doesn’t mean we won’t keep spending more money, more money on ABM systems, but if they can be defeated, it just proves that this is the largest corporate welfare system ever devised by man and it’s not benefiting the workers it’s benefiting the high-tech corporations, the CEOs of which make 30 million dollars a year.
GR: Ray McGovern, we really appreciate these insights, and I’m glad you were able to make some time for this interview. We really appreciate it. Is there a website that people can go to if they want to see more of your writing?
RM: Yes, Ray McGovern.com is my website. What most people don’t realize is it’s easily searchable, and there’s a search button right there. They can just click on anything they like, and it’s got about 13 years of articles I’ve written, interviews I’ve given and speeches I’ve made, and occasionally some really good articles from other folks. Ray McGovern.com
GR: Well, all the best for your upcoming court case on the 25th.
RM: Thanks Michael.
GR: I’m speaking with Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
A lot of people want to become political analysts but few have any idea where to begin. Here’s what you need to do.
I’ve been asked for the past couple of years by many people what they should do to become political analysts. It’s a good question but there really isn’t any official career path to follow, and everyone in this industry has more or less entered it through their own way. Furthermore, being a political analyst doesn’t even have to be a formal job since many people who analyze international events do so as a pastime or side job, with few actually being employed in this field as a full-time job. Among those who are, many find themselves pressured to conform to “editorial standards” or “political correctness”, therefore limiting their true freedom of thought and leading to the publication of what are more like opinion pieces than actual analysis.
That’s why there’s a tendency for people all across the world to follow “unofficial” political analysts because it’s presumed that they’re less tied to any vested interests that could taint their final information products. Of course, this is literally only just that – a presumption – and isn’t a “social law” of any kind but rather just a widespread perception that’s increasingly gaining traction, though in any case, a lot of people in today’s interconnected globalized society want to try their hand at making a difference and explaining the rest of the world to their peers, ergo the interest in entering the field of political analysis whether formally or informally. I’ve decided to give my readers some advice for what they can do if this is something that they’re really interested in, and hopefully my words will help at least one person achieve their dreams.
For those of you who want to become political analysts, here are the seven steps that you should follow:
1. Dispel All Dogma
The world is in the throes of full-spectrum paradigm changes from the highest level of geopolitics down to the lowest level of local affairs, and you need to accept this if you want to stand any chance at entering this hyper-competitive space in the future. The old way of doing things is changing, but the vast majority of the “old guard” hasn’t yet realized this and probably never will until it’s too late. You need to understand that someone’s professional title (“expert”), education (“Ph.D.”), place of birth (the “Golden Billion”), and present location (“Brussels”) no longer matter and that the only thing that’s becoming important is what should have been the priority in the first place, and that’s the merit of your ideas.
Iconoclasm and heterodoxy are the order of the day, not “political correctness” and the prevailing orthodoxy.
A documented education (“university degree”) is only useful insofar as it improves your job placement prospects through inter- and intra-institutional networking and superficially appealing enough to the “old guard” to get hired, and while we should always respect those who have fulfilled this lifetime achievement, we don’t need to unquestionably accept whatever they say about anything as “correct”. An “informally educated” person from the Mideast might have better insight into Russian affairs than a “formally educated” one from the US who has a “degree” in Russian studies and works for a leading media outlet or think tank. If you were taught something from the “old guard”, treat it with caution because their personal experiences might be useful but their insight could be outdated.
2. Use Open Source Information As A Gateway To New Topics
We’re all trying to learn something new about the world around us, whether reactively after an event happens or proactively before a scenario unfolds, but it can be overwhelming when starting from scratch. There’s always something useful to be gained from reading a book or a think tank report, but if we want to make up our own minds, then it’s best to be equipped with as many opinion-free facts as possible. Herein lies the dilemma because it’s almost impossible to do that in today’s world, but for convenience’s sake, relying on open source information as a gateway to new topics could be useful for many people, though provided that you’re able to discern fact from opinion and pull the former out of the latter.
Stepping stones aren’t solutions, but they’ll help you get to the bottom of things.
Wikipedia, for example, is a marvelous resource for novices who are only just beginning to learn about something new because it does a comparatively better job of introducing people to a lot of facts than mostly anything else does, albeit selectively presented, imperfect, and obviously slanted, though that’s why it’s so important for someone to be politically mature enough before diving in to this website. It’s not a be-all and end-all at all, but a starting point to learn about some indisputable facts such as historical events and figures, after which you can then conduct your own independent research to learn more about them and broaden your understanding. Other resources can fulfill this role too, but Wikipedia is the most globally known and easily accessible one for many folks.
3. Regularly Search Google News To Stay Up To Date
Google is biased, we all know this, and its algorithm is tweaked to suppress Alt-Media, but its Google News function is still very useful for easily staying up to date about a lot of different topics. Simply typing in a country’s name, for example, can yield the latest news about it, though this is oftentimes more accurate when dealing with “Global South” states like those in Africa that are less of a current Hybrid War focus than Russia or Syria are. To be clear, Google News doesn’t offer up the best news articles or most insightful analysis about a given country, but it does allow politically mature people to get an idea of what’s more or less happening there at any given time, especially if they learn how to “tweak” the algorithm.
Figuring out how to use existing tools for novel purposes is a creative tactic that will help you in any field, whether political analysis or whatever else you put your mind to.
Just typing in “Pakistan”, for instance, might not lead to interesting results, but searching for “Russia Pakistan” will generally provide the most up-to-date information about their bilateral relationship that slipped through Google’s censors. For the most part, factual information will predominate over analysis in these sorts of cases, although the occasional Western hit piece will probably be thrown in every once in a while, especially if searching for “Russia Balkans”, as but one of many “controversial” examples that are bound to trigger the algorithm into manipulating some of the results. Whatever the case may be and accepting that Google News will never be entirely accurate especially when it comes to actual analysis, using this tool can help many people stay up to date about different countries, events, and bilateral relationships.
4. Find An Alt-Media Outlet To Contribute To
There are public analysts (whether formal or informal) and private ones, but most people will probably only end up becoming the first-mentioned one because the second is usually restricted to government institutions and business or private intelligence agencies, so the best place to “spread your wings” is through Alt-Media by finding an outlet to contribute to. Unfortunately, the economics of this informational space are such that you probably won’t be paid, or at least enough to make it a full-time job (or even a side one) depending on where you live, but it’s the experience that counts. Don’t do this, though, until you’re comfortable enough with whatever topic it is what you want to write about because you don’t want to embarrass yourself by prematurely and publicly jumping into something that you’re not all that aware of.
Sometimes it’s best to stop and think instead of react and regret it later.
Even if that happens, though, there’s a lot that you can learn simply by virtue of having done that, and readers typically respect analysts who go against the industry’s grain of egoism in acknowledging shortcomings in their work and when they were wrong. Remember, political analysis is about interpreting events as accurately as possible and conveying to people what really happened, why, and where it might lead. It is not about “shaping public opinion” and conducting “perception management”, although these two are sometimes inextricable from it because you can’t control how people will react to what you wrote and they might nevertheless be influenced by your work. It’s therefore always best to begin by resisting the temptation that you might feel to “reverse engineer” a predetermined “narrative outcome” and focus instead on building your own unique worldview.
5. Engage In Social Media Networking
This is perhaps one of the most crucial steps, and it’s that aspiring analysts need to share their analytical work on social media, both under their own profiles and in groups. It might also be a good idea to consider creating your own group if you tend to focus on a certain region or topic, or joining and becoming an administrator or moderator on an already existing one. Social media allows you to not only share your work with countless people, but to get into contact with those who are from the countries or regions that you analyze. This in turn can lead to a very productive mutual exchange of ideas and give you the opportunity to follow their updates and the conversations/debates that they have with their friends. All of this will enrich your analyses with time.
The best thing about the internet is that it connects you with people who you would probably otherwise never have a chance to interact with.
Another great advantage of social media networking is that you can follow your “professional” (both formal and informal) peers or even those who are more experienced than you and comment under their posts in order to draw the attention of their audiences to your analyses. This might also draw their attention too, which could be useful in getting their feedback or entering into contact for joint collaborations. If the person who you’re following is already an established force, then this approach will likely be more successful than if they aren’t, but definitely take care to never spam anyone’s wall or do anything obnoxious that could get you reprimanded or blocked. That would defeat the entire purpose of this “guerrilla marketing” strategy and negatively affect your reputation. Network, but don’t nag or annoy.
6. Conduct Crowd-Sourced Social Media Brainstorming
Social media networking isn’t just a one-way street where you’re sharing your work and reaching out to new contacts, but a dialogue between you and the many new people who you’re going to get into contact with as a result. Private messenger chats are great for discussing sensitive topics with trusted friends, but always try to redirect conversations to the comments section under your article or other people’s posts who you already shared your work with (such as your “professional” peers or those more experienced than you). Having a public dialogue about something that others might find interesting is a great way to encourage them to participate too, therefore leading to a diversity of discourse through crowd-sourced social media brainstorming that benefits everyone, whether they took part in the exchange or just passively observed it.
Your role should be to provide the friendly space on social media for this dialogue to take place.
Candid conversations, especially with those who hold contrarian views, can be very exciting and all parties can learn a lot from the experience, but certain etiquette standards must be maintained at all times. Ad hominem attacks and trolling are absolutely uncalled for because they create a toxic atmosphere of distrust that ruins any constructive outcome from the interaction. Similarly, you shouldn’t ever troll or attack your “professional” peers or those more experienced than you for the very same reason, but respectfully responding to them or their articles with your own public comments or piece on the given topic is acceptable. Don’t ever forget that brainstorming might inadvertently provoke some intense emotions, but that it’s never a good idea to let those get the better of you and end up writing something that you’ll later regret. Focus on your work, not drama.
7. Rinse And Repeat
Follow steps 1-6 over and over again because this cycle will lead you to success. The internet is the great equalizer because it democratized the path to becoming a political analyst. Anyone can do it, but not everyone can succeed. You need to dispel all dogmas before you even begin because the world is changing at such a rate that the “old guard” and their ideas are largely outdated. Don’t judge anyone, least of all yourself, based on gatekeeper labels such as education and homeland but focus solely on the merits of your ideas. Use open source information as an introduction to new topics but then diversify away from it to Google News and others to deepen your understanding of the world and learn a lot more.
Never become reliant on one source or means of information, though, and always take the time to at least occasionally read contrarian analyses.
Ultimately, though, your self-education won’t be sufficient if you’re only reading static words on a screen because you must get actively involved in this field by finding an Alt-Media outlet to contribute to and then sharing your unique analyses on social media while you network with others. Both your “professional” peers and the general audience can help you with crowd-sourced brainstorming, which is a mutually enriching exchange of ideas provided that it’s conducted respectfully per basic online etiquette and without an inflated ego. Remember, analysis isn’t activism and vice-versa; they’re two different but related fields. An analyst’s view naturally evolves while an activist’s doesn’t until the “politically correct” capos in charge of their cause “permit” them to “think” differently.
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You’ll get some things right, some things wrong, but never stop learning and always aspire to reflect reality as objectively as you can. Also, don’t ever apologize for any well-intended analytical piece that you produce no matter whether it ages well with time or not. We’re human beings, no one’s perfect, but don’t let your anyone intimidate you into discontinuing your passion for political analysis. Instead, if something seemingly unexpected happens that goes against your established model or worldview, don’t deny that it happened or “shoot the messenger” who tells you of it (so long as they’re not trolling you, that is), but decipher what drove the event in question and then incorporate that honest insight into your analyses going forward. That’s the only way to remain a true political analyst and avoid becoming an activist without even realizing it.
DISCLAIMER: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.
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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales claims to hold high standards of objectivity and balance in the content of the online encyclopedia and the integrity of his volunteer army of editors.Indeed this is largely true; except when it comes to the composition and editing of alternative medical systems and natural healthcare.
A group of individuals and organizations, collectively known as Skeptics, who assert they represent “science-based medicine” now portend to be the final arbiters of what is and is not good medical science practice. However, it is our opinion the Skeptics are extremely biasedtowards erroneous, preconceived ideas and categorically refuse to accept an enormous volume of published medical research because it is contrary to Skepticism’s narrow and limited understanding of medical science.
Among the many alternative health modalities that are targeted, criticized and debunked by the leaders and followers of Skepticism and Science Based Medicine (SBM) are the medicinal uses of botanical plants and herbs.Unfortunately Wikipedia increasingly parrots Skepticism’s biased attacks against medicinal herbs. As we reported in our earlier article “Wikipedia: Our New Technological McCarthyism,” the Skeptic community has now hijacked the editorial functions on Wikipedia’s entries dealing with alternative medical practices.
Of course, Skeptics do not claim to have any expertise in naturopathy, Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, nor the medicinal use of herbs. Nor are they well-educated about botanical photochemistry and the use of botanical medicines for treating illnesses for centuries, even millennia, in traditional settings. Skeptics’ claims against botanicals are specious; they ignore the well-known fact that approximately 40 percent of drugs prescribed by conventional medical physicians are derived from botanicals that have been used for centuries. Furthermore, most of the top 20 drugs sold in the US today, including aspirin, are based upon a plant phytochemicals.[1] So are some common anti-cancer drugs such as Taxol (from a northwest pacific conifer/yew tree) — often given as a first line of treatment for certain breast cancers, the anti-leukemia drug Vinblastine or Vincristine (from an African periwinkle) and the anti-tumor drug Lapachol (from the Hawaiian trumpet tree).[2]
Image on the right: Jimmy Wales
The history of world civilizations and their societies’ ability to persevere through lethal epidemics and disease is synonymous with the history of botanical medicine.One of the earliest findings to account for botanical medicine was found in a 60,000 year old burial site of a Neanderthal man in northern Iraq.[3]
Among the remains were eight plant species, seven of which are still recognized for their medicinal value today.Before the advent of modern drug-based medicine and a profit-driven pharmaceutical industry built upon patented molecules, humans have relied upon the plant kingdom to treat health conditions, fight parasites and infectious diseases, treat wounds and gastro-enterological conditions and much more with their knowledge about plants’ healing properties. Our forbearing “doctors” had far keener insight into the biology of the human body than modern science grants them credit for. Through trial and error, certain plants were discovered to relieve adverse symptoms better than others, and over the course of centuries this became common traditional medical science. In the Skeptical utopia, however, thousands of years of human ingenuity and investigation into botanical medicine would be wiped clean and leave us only with drugs and their long lists of adverse effects and contraindications.
Nor should the research of the renowned pharmacognosist and internationally respected medicinal plant expert, Dr. Norman Farnsworth be forgotten for his pioneering work in validating numerous botanical plants’ bioactive medical properties. From 1970 until his death 2011.Farnsworth was head of Pharmacology department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He brought together scientists and researchers from around the world to collaborate on drug discovery from medicinal plants. Many current plant-based pharmaceutical drugs are the fruits of his research. It is also largely on Farnsworth’s account efforts that high quality supplements are available today, having been part of Bill Clinton’s Commission to pass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).[4]
Back in the 1990s, the small biotech startup Shaman Pharmaceuticals employed ethnobotanists and anthropologists to visit healers and shamans in their native settings, such as the Amazon and the Andean mountains, to learn which plants were used and for which conditions. For a short period of time the company was successful enough to go public and was traded on Wall Street. The hypothesis was that if a certain botanical herb had been used for centuries by traditional healers to treat a certain health condition, in theory, a long historical clinical trial had already been conducted. This in turn would help the company’s laboratory scientists to zoom in on the particular bio-molecules that were effective for a known disease. Traditional healers for centuries have followed a strategy of trial and error to identify plants or combinations thereof for treating numerous illnesses and infections. Some scientists understand this objectively, but not so the Skeptics who pride themselves today as the arbiters of medical truth.
According to a 2011 market report published by the University of Minnesota, the top botanical medicinal plants sold in the US include Ginkgo Biloba, Ginseng, Echinacea, Black Cohosh, Milk Thistle, St John’s Wort and Saw Palmetto.[5] Each of these hold an important place in traditional medical systems for treating specific health conditions. Since then Curcumin, the bioactive phytochemical in turmeric root and a medicinal herb used in every South Asian household, and resveratrol (a natural phenol found in the skins of grapes, blueberries and other berries) are now among the more popular botanicals recommended by naturopathists and increasingly among integrative physicians.
But if you were to search on Wikipedia to learn more about the medical benefits of these plants, you would come away severely shorthanded. In many cases the medicinal properties are altogether denied, the research ridiculed and the positive scientific evidence ignored in the online encyclopedia. In addition, the SBM-Skeptic community is largely a monolithic Anglo-American movement, which regards legitimate and accurate medical science as the proprietary privilege of developed nations such as the US.Underpinning its prejudices is a denial that good, creditable science can be executed in developing nations such as India, China, Iran, Brazil and elsewhere. On the other hand, these nations have a much higher respect for botanical medicine and are as eager, and perhaps far more sincere, to investigate the medicinal properties of plants that have been part of their cultures’ heritage for centuries. We have the same in the US among the Native Americans, yet the Skeptics attempts to colonize modern medicine has disregarded traditional Native American medicinal wisdom.
Therefore we will look at a few of these more popular botanical herbs that have been used medicinally for centuries and show how Wikipedia is a source of gross misinformation and fabricated facts when it deals with botanical medicine.
Curcumin:
Wikipedia states,
“Although thoroughly studied in laboratory and clinical studies, curcumin has no confirmed medical uses.”[6]
Wikipedia also cites a 2017 review of over 120 studies that disclaims any of curcumin’s therapeutic effects.[7]
Screenshot from Wikipedia
For the moment we can ignore the 2017 review until we look later at the failures of the Cochrane Collaboration, the flagship medical review project of Evidence Based Medicine. However, the review only looked at 120 studies. In fact, there are over 11,800 entries for curcumin in the peer-reviewed literature found in the National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) PubMed database. According to the nonprofit HerbMed site, which has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal, Science magazine and the Western Journal of Medicine, there have been 375 human clinical trials and 499 animals studies, 74 observational case reports, 553 papers looking at curcumin’s pharmacodynamic properties and other studies investigating the plant’s chemistry, genetics and use in traditional societies.[8]
Contrary to the Cochrane review that only looked a 120 studies, a recent larger meta-analysis of curcumin’s ability to lower plasma leptin concentrations was conducted by universities in the US (Weill Cornell Medical), Greece (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Italy (University of Pavia), and Iran (Mashhad University of Medical Science) and concluded that curcumin significantly decreased adverse leptin levels.[9]
A double blind randomized controlled study, with 4-week monitoring, found that curcumin successfully improved all parameters of metabolic syndrome under investigation, including enhanced body-mass index, body-fat percent, blood pressure, lipid profile and C-reactive protein.[10]
An Australian study conducted at the universities of Newcastle and Southern Queensland found curcumin sharply improved neurocognitive functioning and cerebral endothelial vasodilator function in elderly patients that may reduce dementia risks.[11]
To further reinforce the health benefits of curcumin and discredit Wikipedia’s Skepticism, the federal government has provided $150 million in curcumin research through the National Center for Complementary and Integrative (CAM) Health. For a period of time the MD Anderson Cancer Center had a separate laboratory conducting curcumin research. As we wrote in our previous article, Skeptics and SBM appear to abhor CAM medicine. However, as foolish as the US government is with ridiculous spending, we must also consider a sliver of wisdom’s light in our federal health agency’s recognition of curcumin’s medicinal value.
For Ginkgo biloba
Wikipedia states,
“Although extracts of Ginkgo biloba leaf sold as dietary supplements may be marketed to improve cognitive function, there is no scientific evidence for effects on memory or attention in healthy people…. Systematic reviews of clinical trial results have shown there is no scientific evidence for effectiveness of ginkgo…”[12]
Screenshot from Wikipedia
Ginkgo is a large Asian tree commonly found in China, Japan and Korea. It is most often associated with improving memory disorders, including dementia, memory loss and to enhance concentration. It has also been associated with improving blood flow, which may contribute to its cognitive benefits as well as treating sexual dysfunction.[13]Ginkgo has been utilized in Asian herbal medical systems for many centuries.
Wikipedia relies upon limited Cochrane Collaboration reviews to discredit Ginkgo’s medicinal properties. As with curcumin, it takes into account only a small percentage of the published scientific literature. Pubmed lists over 4,200 medical papers for Ginkgo. According HerbMed, there have been 375 human clinical trials and 499 animal studies, 74 observational case reports, 553 research papers on the plant’s pharmacodynamic properties, 81 studies on Ginkgo’s use in traditional cultures, and 290 additional peer-reviewed papers.[14]
In 2016, researchers at the Technische University and Hannover Medical School in Germany conducted a randomized placebo-controlled double blind study on 61 elderly patients to determine Ginkgo’s effects on memory. The study concluded that Ginkgo indeed improved cognitive flexibility without changes in brain activation. The results were compatible with that associated with the prescription drug dopamine.[15]
There are many studies on Ginkgo’s cognitive and memory enhancement properties published in Chinese journals; unfortunately, many have not been translated. One multi-institutional meta-analysis conducted by researchers at Guangzhou Medical University in China, Australian universities and Chinese University of Hong Kong found that Ginkgo’s antioxidant potential was an effective and safe treatment for tardive dyskinesia associated with schizophrenia.[16]
One growing health risk has been the epidemic of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders. Conventionally, these are treated with pharmaceutical drugs with long litanies of potentially serious and even lethal adverse effects.An Isfahan University Medical School randomized, placebo controlled study of children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD treated with Ginkgo found a 93% improvement compared to the placebo.[17]
For Resveratrol
Wikipedia states,
“Although it is used as a dietary supplement, there is no good evidence that consuming resveratrol affects life expectancy or human health.”[18]
Screenshot from Wikipedia
The NIH’s PubMed database cites over 10,600 peer-reviewed studies on resveratrol.Most physicians acknowledge the cardiovascular benefits from drinking an occasional glass of red wine. This is because of the high resveratrol content in wine grapes. PubMed lists over 4,800 science papers referring to red wine.
Wikipedia’s citation of the study to negate resveratrol’s anticancer activity was limited solely to poorly designed pre-clinical trials. On the other hand the lead Columbia University’s authors state that resveratrol “is known to have potent anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effects and to inhibit platelet aggregation and the growth of a variety of cancer cells,” and that “its potential chemo-preventive and chemotherapeutic activities have been demonstrated in all three stages of carcinogenesis (initiation, promotion, and progression), in both chemically and UVB-induced skin carcinogenesis in mice, as well as in various murine models of human cancers.”[19]This is an example of a frequent, reoccurring problem with Skeptic edits on Wikipedia:distorting peer-reviewed medical research and twisting its content to serve their own biased dogma.
Wikipedia categorically denies resveratrol’s benefits for heart disease, cancer, human metabolism and its anti-aging properties. Among the more exciting laboratory investigations conducted on resveratrol’s anticancer activities is a pharmacodynamic study performed at the Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine in China. The study observed glioma tumor cell proliferation rates decreasing after resveratrol treatment.[20]
The accumulation of the science supporting resveratrol’s medicinal properties targeting breast and ovarian cancers, colorectal cancers, dementia and memory loss, cardiovascular protection from oxidation, safeguarding cells from ionizing radiation exposure that damages genomic integrity, etc. has resulted in an increase in interest and attention to study the phytochemical more thoroughly.In an effort to better understand resveratrol’s anti-atherosclerosis effects, the Chinese Research Center for Nutrition and Food Safety discovered that the phytochemical positively “remodeled” the gut’s microbiota thereby inhibiting pathogenic bacteria know to be responsible for manufacturing trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), which contributes to the development of atherosclerosis. [21]
We have only referred to three of the more common botanical plants and phytochemicals, which have been shown to possess possible vital and important medicinal benefits for the health epidemics associated with our modern toxic lifestyles.To date, among the thousands of botanical plants with long histories of medical use, the FDA only recognizes two herbs that it claims have the scientific evidence to support their value and use: Veregen derived from green tea for treating genital warts, and Fulyzaq for treating HIV-associated diarrhea and derived from the South American croton tree. On the other hand, as of 2017, the federal agency has approved 868 synthetic molecules based on medicinal plant phytochemicals.[22] Of course, these are now patented “drugs.”This statistic alone is indicative of the anti-botanical culture being promoted by the SBM Skeptics in order to protect the pharmaceutical industry’s proprietary domination over the medicines.
In an earlier article in this series, it was noted that the Cochrane Collaborative project is one of Evidence-based medicine’s more important achievements. However, Cochrane is not without serious flaws and biases in its subjective criteria for evaluating clinical and observational research.For example, the British Medical Journal has challenged Cochrane for its erroneous evaluation and conclusions of systemic analysis of sodium cromoglycate prescribed in the treatment of childhood asthma. A group of physicians and professors of asthma and allergy medicine from seven countries criticized Cochrane for scientific negligence in the manner it “discharges its responsibilities for the quality of reviews published.”[23]
The Skeptics’ Wikipedia entries rely heavily upon Cochrane reviews to discredit the health benefits of botanical herbs. They also ignore Cochrane reviews they don’t like. Another serious flaw in Cochrane’s evaluation strategy is to discount trials, even if they are double-blinded and placebo controlled, if the participant enrollment is under their subjective recommendations of scientific rigor. For example, dozens of controlled trials may confirm the efficacy of ginkgo or any other botanical; however, if the number of people participating in the study is too small, it is tossed out as inconclusive or a failure.
Skeptics and SBM followers also criticize Cochrane reviews whenever their conclusions are contrary to their ideological mission to stamp out alternative medicine.Our own experience has included a backlash from Mark Crislip on the SBM blog after the lead author of a Cochrane review confirming the influenza vaccine’s ineffectiveness, Dr. Thomas Jefferson, appeared on my broadcast.[24] The SBM community and Skeptics are staunchly pro-vaccine and categorically deny any research that puts a light on vaccinations’ dark side.
After sharing Crislip’s denouncement of Dr. Jefferson for appearing on my radio program, Jefferson wrote back about the Skeptics,
“My only comment is that they should read our reviews before writing their thoughts on paper. I have been subjected to this kind of thing before and in my experience it is not worth answering.”[25]
When a Cochrane analysis concluded the efficacy of acupuncture for treating migraine headaches, Skeptics went on the attack.[26] On the other hand, the Skeptics are correct in stating that the Cochrane Collaboration is “not an infallible guide and should be considered within the context of all the available evidence regarding treatment.”In another blog article, Mark Crislip remarks,
“Just because something is labelled as a systematic review does not mean it is any good….. Even a review with a Cochrane label does not make it true.”[27]
We concur wholeheartedly, especially concerning herbs for treating many health conditions and diseases. Cochrane has also come under criticism more recently for conflicts of interests in some of its reviews and kowtowing to the private interests of the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies.[28]
Fortunately, the Skeptics have yet to mangle and misrepresent all of Wikipedia’s botanical entries. In most cases, a plants medical properties are largely ignored or only mentioned as an afterthought. Regardless of the Skeptics’ attempts to silence plants’ medical value, research continues and at a higher pace than ever. Scientists at the USDA-funded Western Human Research Center in Davis California is collaborating with university medical research labs to identify promising phytochemicals in herbs and foods to fight cancer. The Center’s state of the art laboratory has already been able to identify half a dozen plant molecules to destroy cells in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. These include carnosol in rosemary, curcumin, resveratrol in grapes, and ellagic acid and kaempferol in strawberries.[29]And hundreds of other universities and laboratories throughout the world continue to explore the wonders and secrets of the plant kingdom that have yet to discovered. If we were to believe the Skeptics that these plants have no medicinal value, then they have a lot more convincing to do.
With healthcare costs increasingly rising beyond the reach of the average American, and with every indication this continue into the future, botanical plants remain a valuable line of defense in the prevention and treatment of disease. Finally, please do not take our word for anything out of blind faith. Instead visit reliable websites with databases of the peer-reviewed medical literature such as PubMed and HerbMed. Investigate the facts supporting botanical medicine. Then ask yourself, why is Jimmy Wales permitting the Skeptics to rule Wikipedia?
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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.
Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including Poverty Inc and Deadly Deception.
7Nelson, K. M. Dahlin, J. L. Bisson, J. Graham, J. Pauli, G. F. Walters, M. A. (2017). “The Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Curcumin: Miniperspective”. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. 60 (5): 1620–1637. doi:10.1021/acs.jmedchem.6b00975
9 Atkin SL, Katsiki N, Derosa G, Maffioli P, Sahebkar A.“Curcuminoids Lower Plasma Leptin Concentrations: A Meta-analysis.”Phytother Res. 2017 Dec;31(12):1836-1841.
10 Amin F, Islam N, Anila N, Gilani AH. “Clinical efficacy of the co-administration of Turmeric and Black seeds (Kalongi) in metabolic syndrome – a double blind randomized controlled trial”Complement Ther Med. 2015 Apr;23(2):165-74.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25847554
11Kuszewski JC, Wong RHX, Howe PRC. “Can Curcumin Counteract Cognitive Decline? Clinical Trial Evidence and Rationale for Combining ω-3 Fatty Acids with Curcumin.” Adv Nutr. 2018 Mar 1;9(2):105-113. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29659685
15 Beck SM, Ruge H, Schindler C, Burkart M, Miller R, Kirschbaum C, Goschke T.“Effects of Ginkgo biloba extract EGb 761 on cognitive control functions, mental activity of the prefrontal cortex and stress reactivity in elderly adults with subjective memory impairment – a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial.”Hum Psychopharmacol. 2016 May;31(3):227-42. doi: 10.1002/hup.2534.
16Zheng W, Xiang Y2, Ng CH, Ungvari GS, Chiu H5, Xiang YT.“Extract of Ginkgo biloba for Tardive Dyskinesia: Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.”Pharmacopsychiatry. 2016 May;49(3):107-11. doi: 10.1055/s-0042-102884. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26979525
17Shakibaei F, Radmanesh M, Salari E, Mahaki B. “Ginkgo biloba in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents. A randomized, placebo-controlled, trial.”Complement Ther Clin Pract. 2015 May;21(2):61-7.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25925875
19 Liu L, Zhang Y, Zhu K, Song L, Tao M, Huang P, Pan Y. “Resveratrol inhibits glioma cell growth via targeting LRIG1.” J BUON. 2018 Mar-Apr;23(2):403-409.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29745084\
20M Athar, JH Back, X Tang, KH Kim, L Kopelovich, DR Bickers, and AL Kim. “Resveratrol: A Review of Pre-clinical Studies for Human Cancer Prevention”Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 2007 Nov 1; 224(3): 274–283.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2083123/
29US Department of Agriculture.“Food Compounds that Kill Test-Tube Cancer Cells Analyzed.” Science Daily. March 10, 2008https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080307080638.htm
According to Xinhua, China’s Inner Mongolia region will be connected to the Islamic Republic by utilizing preexisting rail routes through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, a concept that was proven before with test runs but will now officially enter into service.
It would be a stretch to describe this as a “game-changing” connectivity corridor when it’s only going to be used for sunflower seed exports for the time being, but it’s nevertheless a constructive development for deepening Chinese-Iranian economic relations following the US’ withdrawal from the nuclear deal last week.
Source China Daily, 21, November 2015
More products can be traded between the two Great Powers along this route in the future in providing a “pressure valve” to forthcoming American efforts to “contain” Iran, but more will have to be done in this direction if that’s to sustainably remain the case.
The full potential of this Chinese-Iranian rail route isn’t being exploited because it depends on older infrastructure that avoids some of Central Asia’s most populous and economically productive cities by hugging the peripheral borders of its Kazkh and Turkmen transit states.
Instead, what’s needed is for China to make progress on its reported plans from 2015 for pioneering a Central Asian high-speed rail route to Iran that passes through the centrally positioned and most populous regional country of Uzbekistan, which while trailing in comparison to its much geographically larger northern neighbor’s energy-driven economic success, has the most attractive real-sector economic value by virtue of its younger and numerically greater population. No Chinese-Iranian rail corridor can therefore be strategically complete without including Uzbekistan, which is left out of the recently announced rail route.
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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Europe has decided to assert its independence: it will not revise its agreement with Iran and will not comply with US sanctions. When Washington tore up the Iran deal, that was the last straw for the European Union. In reality the EU had nowhere left to retreat — any further capitulation to the Atlanticists’ dictates would render the entire pan-European project meaningless. Will May 2018 prove to be the turning point, the moment when the West’s unity began to fracture?
On May 17, 2018, the leaders of the countries of Europe, together with senior officials from the European Union, gathered in Sofia, officially to discuss their relations with the Balkan countries that are candidates for EU membership. But how could there be any talk of expanding the EU if it is unable to manage its primary mission — protecting the interests of Europeans? Thus it is unlikely that the conversation at that informal dinner in the Bulgarian capital was about anything other than their relations with the US, because Europe is on the verge of not just a trade war, but a geopolitical conflict with its … Well … with its what, exactly?
Its senior partner? Ally? Suzerain? Competitor? In geopolitical terms, the US is without question the boss over the Old World — under the auspices of a unified West and NATO, it is the American Atlanticists who hold the higher rank. After WWII, the US used various means of control to seize the reins in Germany, Italy, France, and other countries in Western and later in Eastern Europe. Great Britain partnered with them to help keep Europe under control, and since then — despite any differences that may have arisen between the two shores of the Atlantic — Europe, even in the form of the European Union, has generally remained their vassal.
As the project to integrate Europe gained momentum, continental Europeans felt a growing desire to become more independent, but Washington and London always kept that situation well in hand.
Germany’s genuine autonomy and especially its rapprochement with Russia has clearly been at odds with the interests of the Atlanticists — and a few years ago, under the pretext of a “Russian threat,” Europe knuckled under to the anti-Russian sanctions.
The majority of Europe’s political class understood that it was beneficial for the EU to have close ties with Russia, and they have always been looking for a chance to end the confrontation with Moscow. In order to perpetuate the atmosphere of Russophobia, the Anglo-Saxons even resorted to staging the provocation with the Skripals, so as to somehow preserve the tension between Russia and Europe.
It seemed that Europe would remain under their thumb for the immediate future. Europe’s leaders will wait to see how the power struggle in the US ends and will try to simultaneously accommodate themselves to both Trump as well as to the Atlanticist elite that opposes him. However, recent actions by Washington seem to have prompted some major changes.
Trump needed the dissolution of the Iran deal largely for domestic political reasons, but he was prepared to lean particularly heavily on the Europeans. In accordance with his plans, the Europeans needed to agree with the US to compel Iran to draw up a new accord that could be presented as a major victory to the American public. Trump did not take into account the individual positions of Russia or China, which would in any case be against a revision of the deal. Apparently inspired by the imaginary success of his Korean offensive (in which Beijing and Pyongyang created the illusion of a breakthrough for him), the US president decided that everything would work out fine in this matter as well. To encourage the Europeans to be more amenable, they were threatened with sanctions. But the Old World balked outright and decided to preserve both the deal as well as its relationship with Iran.
And the aftermath of the US pressure on Europe over the Iran deal will now extend far beyond just a run-of-the-mill misunderstanding between allies.
“Looking at the latest decisions of President Trump, someone could even think: With friends like that, who needs enemies? But frankly speaking, Europe should be grateful to President Trump. Because thanks to him we have got rid of all illusions,” stated the chairman of the European Council, or in other words, the president of united Europe, Donald Tusk on May 17, 2018.
President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, US President Donald Trump and President of the European Council Donald Tusk
And the head of the government of this united Europe, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated a week earlier that the European Union needed to take on the role of global leader, because Trump’s decision to tear up the Iran deal meant that the US “no longer wants to cooperate” with other parts of the world and was turning away from friendly relations “with a ferocity that can only surprise us.” In addition, European countries should do more than simply salvage the agreement with Iran:
“We have to replace the United States, which as an international actor has lost vigor, and because of it, in the long term, influence.”
So as it turns out, Europe is not only ready to shoulder the responsibility for its own future — something which even Angela Merkel has been speaking about for the past year, which includes providing for its own security — but is also ready to replace the US as a world leader! Did we actually hear this correctly?
Yes, that’s right. In fact, they started talking about this in Europe immediately after Donald Trump won the election more than a year and a half ago. Even then, Trump was declaring that America should focus on itself and not on the construction of a unified Atlanticist world, and that for the sake of filling America’s coffers he would shake down all its partners, enemies, and allies. Europeans, who have grown used to wielding only limited sovereignty in matters of war and peace, were suddenly being told that they needed to pay for being protected by the US, because Trump’s America saw that umbrella as something expendable.
The West’s unity began to fracture. And although the Atlanticist elite on both sides of the ocean hope that Trump turns out to be nothing more than a bad dream and that everything will go back to normal in 2020, the reality is that there is no way the West can regain that indivisibility. America will rewrite its foreign policy with the goal of “making itself great again,” regardless of whether or not Trump is in power, because the hegemon has cracked and America’s more nationalistic elites are seizing power from the ones who have been playing at being the world’s policeman.
What is left for the Atlanticists? Should they make their peace with this or attempt to shift the Western world’s center of gravity toward Europe? But are there any political figures in Europe who are capable of taking the lead? They tried to audition Merkel, but she refused to bite. Tusk or Junker? Macron? They’re all wrong. There is no solution — and in this environment, relationships among the Western nations are evolving the way Trump wanted: into a battle between national states.
Trump sees the EU as a competitor and he wants to weaken it. When it comes to the Iran deal, what’s important isn’t even that it’s about Iran, around which Germany and France have constructed big economic plans, but rather that Europe is simply being ordered to abandon the idea of protecting its own interests. And also that this is being done under an utterly contrived pretext. Unlike the introduction of the anti-Russian sanctions, there are no reasons whatsoever for tearing up that deal, not even nominal ones.
“Now that such an unheard-of dictate from the US is upon us, will the Europeans be able to regain their independence? This is a test of truth for the political dimension of the EU. If the European Union caves to Trump, this will negate any reason for its existence.”
And the ones talking this way aren’t just those who have spent the last few years reminding Europe that it is harming itself by bowing to Washington’s pressure and keeping the anti-Russian sanctions intact. Now this is the argument being made even by the hardliners on Moscow — the reliable Atlanticists.
“This is nothing less than a massive assault on the sovereignty of European states and the European Union. They are deprived of their right to decide on their policies and actions by brutal dictates from a foreign — and allegedly friendly — country. This is utterly unacceptable from a European point of view, as well as a violation of the preaching of Trump himself. It relegates Europe to just abiding by and implementing policies with which it profoundly disagrees,” writes former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt in the Washington Post.
Europe cannot cave in to US pressure, but it cannot realistically break ties with Washington when rejecting it, much less lay a claim to the mantle of global leadership. Europe simply wants more independence, which is already asking a lot, given the current state of world affairs. To achieve this, Europe needs to develop a more favorable balance of forces and interests, and when seeking out the building blocks for this, it naturally turns its gaze toward Moscow.
It just so happens that within a week the heads of half of the world’s most powerful countries — Germany, France, Japan, and India — have visits to Russia. Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron were initially planning to talk to Vladimir Putin about a variety of topics: Syria, trade, Ukraine … But now everything will revolve around the word “Iran,” which signifies much more than just a country or a deal. It is rather the choice that Europe is making as we all watch.
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All images in this article are from Oriental Review.
Syria is defeating the terrorists! Why isn’t Canada celebrating? We all know the answer. THE “WAR ON TERROR” is a fraud. The West supports all of the terrorists, and moderates never existed.
The terrorists are sectarian, anti-Christian, misogynist, anti-humanitarian, anti-Life.
One might reasonably ask how on earth did the permanent state fabricate public support for them? The answer is known and documented. Information streams coming from the war are primarily from terrorist-embedded, partisan sources.
The White Helmets, known fraudulently to Western audiences as Syrian Civil Defence (SCD) are a primary source of supposedly “neutral” information for the West, and yet they are funded by the West, they are a creation of the West, and they only work in terrorist-infested areas, essentially as al Qaeda auxiliaries.
None of this is new, and all of this is ample proof that they are not a legitimate source of information for the war on Syria. What is new is that Western governmental “NGOs”, thought by some to be unimpeachable, humanitarian sources, are now blatantly shedding their false pretenses.
A UK government report titled “SYRIA RESILIENCE CSSF PROGRAMME SUMMARY” notes, without a hint of irony, that
“Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have stated that SCD [White Helmets] are their most routinely reliable source for reporting.”
Given the documented, partisan reality of Western information streams, independent investigative reporters and film-makers are filling the vacuum with real, first-hand, on-the-ground reporting. Carla Ortiz is one such person. The following video was filmed at about 200 meters from the recently liberated Yarmouk camp.
First hand testimonies demonstrate that Palestinians and Syrians were fighting together against ISIS/Daesh. This information alone contradicts MSM messaging.
The video also demonstrates what should be common knowledge. Syrians do not wish to live beneath the tyranny of Western-supported terrorists. They want their lives back.
Video: Testimony of Carla Ortiz
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
When you listen to Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s 12-Point wish list, what he calls Plan B to confront Iran – one can but wonder, has this man, or for that matter the entire Trump Administration, truly departed from the realm of common sense? – This is, of course, a question many of us have been asking for quite a while. But this latest affront of aggression towards Iran is so out of context, out of whack, so ludicrous, that the question is more like – is the empire reaching the end of the rope and uses Iran as one of a last-ditch propaganda effort to prove to the world its economic and military might, like in “we are the greatest and exceptional nation – don’t you dare messing with us”?
Trump’s reneging on the Nuclear Deal was the first step. It was, of course, pushed by Israel, but based on lie after lie and more lies, that Iran did not comply with the conditions and ‘spirit’ of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). And this despite the fact that the Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna has already at least 8 times since the signing of the deal in July 2015 confirmed that Iran is in absolute compliance.
What exactly is Washington and its Israeli handlers trying to achieve with Pompeo’s most clumsy approach? – “Regime Change”, perhaps? By activating and mobilizing the Fifth Column in Iran to create an internal revolt, with the objective of putting a new Shah-type puppet in place? – The desperation of creating a strong and oppressive “ally” in the Middle East – as Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf States are ‘failing’ US trustworthiness – is hidden only by a thin veil.
Abandoning US loyalty in the Middle east is becoming epidemic. Iraq has just elected a new Parliament, where Muqtada al-Sadr’s nationalistic, anti-American Shia Sairoon Alliance emerged as the winner with 54 seats in the 329-seat Iraqi Parliament. Though, it is said that al-Sadr’s coalition was largely elected because of his anti-corruption stance, his parliamentary victory also means a resurgence of an Iraqi nationalism with a strong position against foreign influence, meaning especially the US, but possibly also Iran. The latter remains to be seen when the new Government is in place. Within the coming 90 days, al-Sadr, the new ‘kingmaker’, will have to form a new governing body and choose a President. But already now it is clear that Iraq – if left alone by the west as a sovereign country – will turn away from Washington – and may eventually also move towards an eastern alliance.
However, what might possibly be a key reason behind Trump’s and Pompeo’s outrageously preposterous and utterly awkward anti-Iran tirade – other than submitting to Israel’s dictate – is the fact that the EU seems to want to stick to the deal, and to make things worse, is planning to switch from US dollars to euros in payments for oil supplies from Iran. This emerged from a recent meeting between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the Foreign Ministers of France, Germany, the UK, and the EU Foreign Policy Chief, Federica Mogherini, where ways were discussed on how to protect the JCPOA for the remaining signatories after Washington backed out of deal.
Using the euro, rather than the traditional US dollar as an instrument for payment, would also protect the new trade agreements between Iran and Europe from US interference and sanctions. Unless, of course, the US would decide to ‘sanction’ the entire EU. But would they want to ‘punish’ their principal trading partner, who is already weary of Washington’s ever mounting unreasonable demands, thus, pushing them more and more to the east?
On the other hand, dropping the dollar as a means of payment for hydrocarbons would set a further precedent for future hydrocarbon trading elsewhere which would weaken the US dollar – ergo, the US economy – even more. Remember, Russia and China are not using the dollar for years to trade hydrocarbons. By putting Iran under the “strongest ever” sanction regime, the financial rulers behind Washington may hope to deter Europe from trading in euros instead of dollars. Should this not work, Trump may have other ammunition in store against Europe, like re-imposing the recently waived tariffs on steel and aluminum.
What becomes ever clearer is that the empire approaches the end of the rope. By such actions of tariffs and sanctions, the Trump Administration is just driving its main trading partner, Europe into the ‘eastern camp’, i.e. Russia, China and Iran. This is already happening. Recent talks between Germany’s Chancellor Merkel and President Putin, the contents of which were non-aggression and trade, are a clear indication that Europe is getting tired of being commandeered by Washington. This is, by the way, the opinion of more than 90% of the people in Europe.
By re-establishing closer and peaceful relations with Russia, European leaders would actually move closer to their ever so revered democratic principles. Though, this too, is a process hindered by many contradictory political activities within Europe. For example, the neoliberal / neonazi move towards militarization, with rising peoples’ oppression, is so far rather increasing than easing, especially in France, but also in Germany, where Bavaria has already or is about to pass a law prohibiting any normal citizen (other than MSM journalists) to take pictures of demonstrations in which authorities’ atrocities could be witnessed and recorded. At this point, the only major EU country that is about to form a euro-sceptic government, a return to sovereign democracy, and which is discussing the possibility of a parallel currency – is Italy.
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Back to Pompeo and especially Trump’s bombastic, “the strongest sanctions ever imposed on a country…”- Really? But, so what? – At this point and with a well-structured “Economy of Resistance”, Iran is almost immune to US sanctions. And as President Rouhani said a few days ago, we might hurt for a short while, but will soon recover and be much stronger than living under the scepter of a western economic dictatorship. In this sense, it doesn’t matter whether the EU will resist Washington’s pressure to bend to Washington’s “rule of law” – or whether they finally go their own way. Europe is politically still very much part of the West, even if they become more detached from Washington, they are still under NATO’s yoke. Depending on the power of European autonomy, dealing with Europe may yet expose Iran to the vulnerability of dollar-based US sanctions.
Economy of Resistance is essentially – food, health, education and industrial production self-sufficiency (local production for local markets with local money through public banking), and trading with neighboring and / or friendly and politically aligned countries. In the case of Iran, this is well under way. Iran is about to become a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, spearheaded by Russia and China, and is already enjoying special status within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), slated to become a full member either later this year or in 2019. The EEU and SCO, also headed by China and Russia, with members of the EEU and lately also India and Pakistan, comprise about half of the world’s population and control one third of the world’s GDP. They, and by association Iran, do not need the West for survival – at all.
Besides, Iran is a crucial link in President Xi’s New Silk Road initiative, also called the Belt and Road Initiative. The BRI is a gigantic multi-multi-trillion-dollar (equivalent, but NOT dollar-based) project, spanning at least the next hundred years or more and aiming at developing transport, rural and urban, agricultural and industrial infrastructure; and connecting people through research, education, culture – all envisioning linking Eastern China and Russia with the most Western European trading places, as well as the Middle East through Iran, Africa through Kenya, and even Latin America through the southern tip of South America.
There are at this point at least six “land corridors” and a maritime route foreseen. Building them involves economic development of the still backward areas in western China, eastern Russia, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Sub-Sahelian Africa, connecting them with infrastructure, knowledge, science and bringing about economic inclusion with the rest of the world. This is a huge scheme following egalitarian principles not known in the west. Iran is already part and parcel of this extraordinary development plan.
Regarding Washington’s ‘backstabbing’ of Iran’s Nuclear Deal, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, also warned North Korea in view of their forthcoming negotiations with Trump on nuclear disarmament. Mr. Qassemi cautioned, DPRK may think twice before believing in any deal made by the US.
Vigilance is also in order for Iran. As part of the empire’s last-ditch effort for survival, there may be multiple attempts to infiltrating destabilizing elements into Iran. Together with the well-established Iranian Fifth Column and unlimited foreign designed propaganda, they may attempt internal upheavals, terror acts, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the legitimate Iranian Government. Trump and Pompeo with their terror speeches – which will continue for sure – are preparing the terrain for the world to believe in Iran’s internal conflicts – they same way they have done it with Venezuela, and the same way they will do it with impunity anywhere they want to achieve regime change. At this stage, I don’t believe Washington and Israel would be bold enough to launch a direct or proxy military attack on Iran. They are well aware of Iran’s might and power of retaliation.
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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st 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.
On Monday, May 21, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a rant against Iran before the right-wing Heritage Foundation in Washington. It was a bullying speech to push the Iranian leadership to surrender unconditionally to US demands. If the Iranian people are unable to contrive “regime change” the US will do it by military means, perhaps together with Israel, which Pompeo didn’t say. But everybody knows that Israel is hell-bent to crush Iran.
All the other twelve orders he required from Iran to fulfill, are blatant violations of all norms of international law and the UN Charta. Pompeo made a revealing statement, either accidentally or out of lack of knowledge, that, if Iran surrenders to the US demands they can look forward to rejoining the “league of nations.” The League of Nations was the predecessor organization of the United Nations from 1920 to 1946.
The disregard and disrespect for the United Nations and the accords, which the US was party to, such as the Iran deal, convey an impression as if the US is planning to undermine, if not destroy the United Nations. Such an idea comes to mind by the appointment of John Bolton, the Stalin-like mustache Ziocon extremist, who said about the United Nations after 9/11: “The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”.
The following twelve strings demanded Pompeo from Iran:
Declare to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity.
Stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing, including closing its heavy water reactor.
Provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country.
End its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems.
Release all US citizens as well as citizens of US partners and allies.
End support to Middle East “terrorist” groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and permit the disarming, demobilization and reintegration of Shia militias.
End its military support for the Houthi rebels and work towards a peaceful, political settlement in Yemen.
Withdraw all forces under Iran’s command throughout the entirety of Syria.
End support for the Taliban and other “terrorists” in Afghanistan and the region and cease harboring senior al-Qaeda leaders.
End the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps-linked Quds Force’s support for “terrorists” and “militant” partners around the world.
End its threatening behavior against its neighbors, many of whom are US allies, including its threats to destroy Israel and its firing of missiles at Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and threats to international shipping and destructive cyber attacks.
Iran’s president Rouhani rejected off hand these impudent demands, saying “Who are you to decide for Iran and the world?” In contrast to the US, Iran complied to every jota of the nuclear deal, officially known under its awkward title “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA). Not Iran or the other signatories broke their words, but the US did. Neither can’t their word be trusted, nor their signature has any value. Kim Jong-un should be on the qui vive entering an agreement with the Trump administration. The “Libyan Model” is already hanging over Kim Jong-un like a sword of Damocles.
Shouldn’t Iran turn the tables and confront the US with the following questions and damask US hypocrisy concerning Israel’s substantial nuclear arsenal and biochemical arsenal?
Give the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) full access to your military nuclear program.
Stop the enrichment, the reprocessing of plutonium and the processing of radioactive material in conventional ammunition and using it in war zones such as Iraq or Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip.
Allow unrestricted IAEA inspections in your country.
Stop all arms exports, especially to regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Release all Iranian prisoners and prisoners of Iranian allies and partners.
End the support of terrorist groups around the world (for example, IS, al Qaeda, Taliban, various militias in Syria).
Respect the sovereignty of all countries of the world, and do not interfere in their internal affairs, especially in matters of national security and defense of a country.
Stop all military support for Saudi Arabia and stop the illegal and barbaric war against the innocent Yemeni people.
Withdraw all your occupation troops from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Germany, South Korea, Japan, etc.
Stop supporting terrorism worldwide and making attacks under the title “IS” or “Al-Qaida”.
Stop all foreign intelligence activities of your intelligence services, especially secret killer operations.
Stop playing World Police and threaten other countries. Instead, take care of the problems in your own country. You have more than enough of that.
Besides these mirror questions to Pompeo’s ridiculous demands, Iran has the right to put the Israeli secret and illegal atomic and biochemical weapons programs under the scrutiny of the IAEA. It’s known that Israel has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons and a second strike nuclear capability thanks to the submarines, which were given as a “gift” by Germany out of guilt. They gót two as a bargain price. As long as Israel’s nuclear arsenal remains unspecified, the US and the international community has no right to bully Iran to strip its country and its non-existent atomic arsenal.
The problem that the US has apparently with Iran neglects the central question about the elephant in the room, which is Israel and its obsessive Prime Minister. He has pushed President Trump in this confrontational position. Under Obama, Netanyahu tilted at windmills, but with Trump, he can play a cat-and-mouse game. In his administration ardent Zionists, Israel Firster and political pro-Israel extremists have a say. For rational diplomacy, the prospects are gloomy. Iran better prepares for war. One can only hope Russia will stick to its words and supply Iran not only with his SS-400 anti-missile system and its other sophisticated weapons that Iran can defend itself against an American-Zionist attack.
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Dr. Ludwig Watzal is a frequent contributor to 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
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” ― Plato
When factoring the impact that war can have on civilians in any given country, many times we focus on the immediate concerns such as nutrition, housing, clothing, infrastructure, medicine and emergency services, education etc. Mental health concerns are a secondary thought and usually do not get the attention they deserve. The western insurrection in Syria has been persistently destroying lives for over seven years.
The Syrian government has made every attempt to address issues regarding health and wellness in the country. In spite of the war, cultural, musical, and humanitarian events have continued to take place. These events are often times hosted by the government. This is one method to bolster civilian conviction that their beloved homeland is alive and will survive regardless of external effort is being exerted to extinguish it’s bright flame. Music is such an integral part of Levant culture and has been used as a mechanism to heal and raise the spirits of the most vulnerable.
Barouk Festival at Dar Al Assad for Culture and Arts April 28th, 2018 (Image source SANA)
In January of this year, a lecture titled “Music, Therapy and Culture” was delivered by Musician Juan Qara Joly at the Arab Cultural Center in Abu Rummaneh, Damascus, Syria. Mr. Joly reviewed the benefits of music therapy and the role it plays in improving cognitive ability, reducing stress and curing different types of diseases including neurological disorders.
“Music therapy is based on the improvisation of music by a therapist and patient, sometimes done in a one-on-one setting but other times conducted in groups. There are two main branches of MT: active and passive. Active MT involves interaction between therapist and the patient much more than passive MT, in which the patient is usually at rest but listening to the therapist.”
Music Therapy Is Effective in Treating Depression
Studies have shown that music therapy can be effective in treatingdepressionin children, adolescents and even adults, especially those who are combating emotional, developmental and behavioral issues. Ordinarily treatment for depression has included psychotherapy and/or medication.
Music therapy is an effective alternative proven to bring about positive results and long-term benefits for patients. Some areas that showed substantial improvements with the use of music therapy were self esteem, communication and interaction skills, and overall depressive symptoms.
The Multi-Faceted Benefits of Music Therapy
When looking into the healing power of music, and its role in improving cognitive abilities, it’s important to also keep in mind that durations and intervals need to be set for each particular patient. Musicians with interests in child care and development have reported, for children as young as three and upward to young adult stages, the importance of employing music to encourage learning and improve communication skills. Music therapy practices encourage a greater scope of effort than what most readers think the “therapy” part is — merely listening to music.
One resourceful Eastern European who was inspired by scholarly Arab precedents hundreds of years old found speech challenges are addressed more enjoyably through singing than simple rote exercises forming oral sounds. Critical too was finding that vision-challenged persons can benefit from combination of touch and sound far more when tools designed for habits (and expectations) of readers are set aside. Music therapy has also proven to be an alternative path of progress for individuals with developmental or emotional delays; melody, rhythm or percussion simply being preferable to patients.
Some of the many benefits of music therapy include lessening feelings of fatigue, depression, loneliness, reducing stress, pain, and helping to relax muscles and nerves. U.S. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported, in a 2004 release informed by hundreds of studies, healing results from pairing music with motor pathway stimulation such as exercise or dance. Music therapy has proven useful to counseling psychologists and nutritionists, inducing endocrine products like endorphin (the “happiness” hormone countering social anxiety, chronic illnesses and compulsive disorders) or those essential to digestion. Centuries of spiritual practice link vibratory sound to calming and concentration effects known to reduce bodily stress such as elevated blood pressure. Patients in hospitals routinely resort to classical instrumental or natural sound recordings (ocean surf, forest glade) prior to surgical procedures because they’re calming, and even 19th century discoveries like binaural beats have reportedly promoted relaxation among migraine headache sufferers.
The Relationship Between Culture and Therapy As It Relates To Music
Music is in daily culture and not merely “entertainment”. Mid-Easterners have known and employed music’s healing powers for centuries; music therapy is seeing a revival, and Syria is one of the nations which has preserved it. Music therapy amounts to both a necessary “resource” and practice engendering healthy necessary competition, and cultural persistence in Syria. Music therapy isn’t merely folded into Syrian psychological therapies; it’s another unseen energy channeled by the people for survival.
Syrians Show Defiance to Foreign Aggression through Music
Syrians defy oppression or injustice, flaunting their resilience in open-air concerts surrounded by opponents: they get to the music along with using music to treat their wounded and those suffering from depressionbrought on by this foreign imposed war. A culture doesn’t survive letting it’s music go; a culture survives finding as many reasons and means it can to practice– incrementally transmuting chaos and calamity to survival and even celebration. Music intentionally enjoyed supports and sustains human life.
Demonstrated and future benefits from the growing revival of music therapy range across nations and cultures from Eastern Europe, Great Britain, North America and the Middle East. Deep considerations of its effect and persistence are revelatory. Music therapy is nested in hospitals and homes (or the remnants of them, filling gapsin conventional school or clinical programs disrupted by war). What blossoms from roots deep, and exceeding borders or boundaries via international music competitions and public cultural performances, is perhaps most vested in nations like Syria: culture prevailing from love, through willpower; unseen energy preserved in music and channeled through therapies in defiance of hardship and injustice.
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Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. Focused on exposing the lies and propaganda in mainstream media news, as it relates to domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on the Middle East. Contributed to various radio shows, news publications and spoken at forums. For media inquiries please email [email protected].
It has fuelled enough speculation to fill libraries and populate databases at catchy speed. The disappearance of MH370 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, one of two Malaysian Airlines flights to perish that year, continues to torment relatives and tantalise the diviners of mystery.
Ocean Infinity, the Houston-based company retained by the Malaysian government to conduct the vain search for the missing flight, will conclude its contract on May 29. The incentives for Ocean Infinity were considerable, not least the $93 million promised in the event of a successful find over a 90-day search of the southern Indian Ocean. (The company had requested an extension till May 29.) To date, tormenting samples of the flight have washed up.
With little on the table, legal representatives for the families of victims could only scrounge for faint praise for the newly constituted Malaysian government.
“As a lawyer who acts for 76 relatives of passengers on board MH370,” reflected Ganesan Nethi, “I find this to be a very heartening approach and refreshing change of approach by the new Government.”
Inhabiting the grieving world of the living, relatives have been met with opaque processes and unfulfilled promises. MAS was always reluctant to part with compensation monies. The airforce and the Department of Civil Aviation ventured to strike out the claims by families due under law. Claims have been filed in Australia, the United States and China.
Interest in the plane has not diminished. Sporadic reports bubble with near feverish speculation. Last March, an Australian mechanical engineer, Peter McMahon, made the bold and boastful claim that he had found the plane. The mystery had been solved by a meticulous search of Google Earth. With precision, McMahon claimed that wreckage could be found 16km south of Round Island, some 22.5 km north of Mauritius.
This finding was complicated by a minor inconsistency noted by a spokesperson for the Joint Agency Coordination Centre: the prize image had been snapped on November 6, 2009, “more than four years before the flight disappeared.”
Central to McMahon’s contention is secrecy and subterfuge.
“They have made sure that all information received has been hidden from the public, even our government – but why?”
Happily for McMahon, an explanation offers itself: the area cannot be searched because it is being kept out of bounds by US officials. They “do not want it found as it’s full of bullet holes, finding it will only open another inquiry.”
Surviving relatives have offered their own explanations. Ghyslain Wattrelos, who lost his wife and two children, propounds the theory that the plane was shot down. Silence, notably on the part of Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand, is taken as admission.
Another particularly attractive version is doing the rounds: did the pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah land the plane somewhere in the Indian Ocean with malicious intent? Unlikely, suggests aviation expert Christine Negroni, dismissing the claim by Canadian air crash investigator, Larry Vance and fellow hangar gossipers.
Vance has been busying himself with the MH370 circuit, which has become something of a cottage industry and extensive meal ticket. Earlier this month, he suggested to Australia’s 60 Minutes that the pilot had taken off fully intent on accomplishing a suicide mission. He “was killing himself; unfortunately, he was killing everybody else on board, and he did it deliberately.”
Much of this amounted to recycling, given Vance’s debut on the MH370 circuit in 2016. Then, Australia’s 60 Minutes similarly pumped Vance for his views, courtesy of prodding by a fairly uncritical correspondent Ross Coulthart.
The suicide theory thereby made its blazing march to absurdity, despite the contrary assertions of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau suggesting that the aircraft “was in a rapid rate of descent” when it met its doom. So much for the guided-landing theory.
Simon Hardy is of similar mind to Vance but prefers to outdo him, even going for a sentimental, soap opera touch. As the pilot flew the plane over Penang, he tipped, according to the mind-reading Hardy, the aircraft wing as a “farewell gesture”.
Negroni will have none of that, withering in her criticism of the Vance-Hardy version as “far-fetched” and peppered with “hokum”. “Ladies and gents, thanks to 60 Minutes, pilots Vance and Hardy are in the cockpit. They’ve fuelled up with alternative facts and are taking us on a flight to the absurd.”
A battle of expertise and faith was bound to propel matters the longer the fruitless search for the plane continued. To Negroni’s own work The Crash Detectives can be added Florence de Changy’s Flight MH370 Did Not Disappear. These struggle in seemingly unsuccessful standoffs with spectacular theories, of which the Vance-Hardy version is one. For Negroni, evidence counts, and Vance, with deluded self-confidence, has ignored such points as a forensic examination which “showed the flaperon was very likely stowed, not deployed when the plane crashed.”
As with other events of the disappearing kind, such events are drearily eternal. Competitive inventiveness displaces the pursuit for empirical verification. Even as Ocean Infinity prepares to pack up its mission, the one thing that will continue humming will be the sort of speculation that, unfortunately, serves to line pockets and garner airtime rather than terminate fables.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
New revelations about Brazilian military violence offer an opportunity to reflect on Canadian support for that country’s 1964 coup and how Ottawa’s policy towards our South American neighbour is similar today.
A spate of international and Brazilian media have reported on a recently uncovered memo from CIA director William Colby to then US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, detailing a meeting between president Ernesto Geisel and three Brazilian generals. At the 1974 meeting the new Brazilian president is reported to have supported extending “summary executions” of enemies of the military dictatorship. An army officer, Geisel ordered National Information Service head João Baptista Figueiredo — who would replace him as president — to authorize the executions.
While it has long been accepted that the military dictatorship was responsible for hundreds of murders — a 2014 national truth commission blamed it for 191 killings and 210 disappearances — military backers have sought to put the blame on lower level officers. But the uncovered memo clearly reveals Geisel, who was considered more moderate than other top military leaders, was directly responsible for some deaths.
Ottawa passively supported the military coup against elected President João Goulart that instituted the 1964–85 military dictatorship.
“The Canadian reaction to the military coup of 1964 was careful, polite and allied with American rhetoric,” notes Brazil and Canada in the Americas.
Prime Minister Lester Pearson failed to publicly condemn the ouster of Goulart.
Washington played a pivotal role in the overthrow of Brazilian democracy. At one point President Lyndon Johnson urged ambassador Lincoln Gordon to take “every step that we can” to support Goulart’s removal. In a declassified cable between Gordon and Washington, the ambassador acknowledged US involvement in “covert support for pro-democracy street rallies … and encouragement [of] democratic and anti-communist sentiment in Congress, armed forces, friendly labor and student groups, church, and business.”
Washington, Ottawa and leading segments of Brazil’s business community opposed Goulart’s Reformas de Base (basic reforms). Goulart wanted to expand suffrage by giving illiterates and low ranking military officers the vote. He also wanted to put 15% of the national income into education and to implement land reform. To pay for this the government planned to introduce a proportional income tax and greater controls on the profit transfers of multinational corporations.
As important as following Washington’s lead, Pearson’s tacit support for the coup was driven by Canadian corporate interests. Among the biggest firms in Latin America at the time, Brascan was commonly known as the “the Canadian octopus” since its tentacles reached into so many areas of Brazil’s economy. A study of the Toronto-based company that began operating in Brazil in 1899 noted,
“[Brazilian Traction’s vice-president Antonio] Gallotti doesn’t hide his participation in the moves and operations that led to the coup d’état against Goulart in 1964.”
After the elected government was overthrown, Brazilian Traction president Grant Glassco stated,
“the new government of Brazil is … made up of men of proven competence and integrity. The President, Humberto Castello Branco, commands the respect of the entire nation.”
Overthrowing the Goulart government, which had made it more difficult for companies to export profits, was good business. After the 1964 coup the Financial Post noted
“the price of Brazilian Traction common shares almost doubled overnight with the change of government from an April 1 low of $1.95 to an April 3 high of $3.60.”
Between 1965 and 1974, Brascan drained Brazil of $342 million ($2 billion today). When Brascan’s Canadian president, Robert Winters, was asked why the company’s profits grew so rapidly in the late 1960s his response was simple: “The Revolution.”
As opposition to the Brazilian military regime’s rights violations grew in Canada, Ottawa downplayed the gravity of the human rights situation. In a June 1972 memo to the Canadian embassy, the Director of the Latin American Division at Foreign Affairs stated:
“We have, however, done our best to avoid drawing attention to this problem [human rights violations] because we are anxious to build a vigorous and healthy relationship with Brazil. We hope that in the future these unfortunate events and publicity, which damages the Brazilian image in Canada, can be avoided.”
The military dictatorship’s assassination program has contemporary relevance. In 2016 Workers Party President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in a “soft coup” and the social democratic party’s candidate for the upcoming presidential election, Lula da Silva, was recently jailed. The night before the Supreme Court was set to determine Lula’s fate the general in charge of the army hinted at military intervention if the judges ruled in favour of the former president and election frontrunner.
While they’ve made dozens of statements criticizing Venezuela over the past two years, the Justin Trudeau government seems to have remained silent on Rousseff’s ouster, Lula’s imprisonment and persecution of the left. The only comment I found was a Global Affairs official telling Sputnik that Canada would maintain relations with Brazil after Rousseff was impeached. Since that time Canada has begun negotiating to join the Brazilian led MERCOSUR trade block (just after Venezuela was expelled).
As many Brazilians worry about their country returning to military rule, Canadians should demand their government doesn’t contribute to weakening the country’s fragile democracy.
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The “Contract for the Government of Change” – stipulated by Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini on behalf of the 5 Star Movement and the League – on the one hand “confirms Italy’s membership of the Atlantic Alliance, with the United States of America as a privileged ally”, and on the other, promises “an open-minded attiutude to Russia, which should be perceived not as a threat but as an economic and commercial partner (which would imply the withdrawal of sanctions), to be rehabilitated as a strategic interlocutor for the resolution of regional crises” and even as a “potential partner for NATO”.
Nicolas Maduro was re-elected president for the 2019-2025 period by more than two thirds of the voters. The Lima Group, Luis Almagro and the Canadian government immediately issued declarations of not recognizing the elections for being illegitimate, as if they had been prepared before May 20. However, is there any valid basis to those declarations?
Yulia, and perhaps Sergey ahead, are only allowed to publicly say what UK authorities permit – Britain scripting her remarks, letting her say only what her captors permit.
Accurate information on Haspel is hard to come by. Access to a top secret memo reportedly prepared by Committee Democrats concerning her possibly illegal activities has been restricted even among Senators. Nevertheless, as the first woman to become head of the Agency one might reasonably say that Haspel has certainly broken through several glass ceilings to obtain her new position.
In the interest of peace Putin has avoided responding to US and Israeli provocations in Syria. Putin went so far as to invite Netanyahu to Russia for the celebration of Russia’s victory over Germany in World War II. Netanyahu accepted, but showed Putin who is boss by ordering illegal Israeli military attacks on Syrian army positions just prior to his departure for Russia.
As the Leonard Cohen song goes, “everybody knows” the two-state solution is dead and gone. Zionism’s 120-year quest to Judaize Palestine – to transform Palestine into the Land of Israel – has been completed. Every Israeli government since 1967 has refused to seriously entertain the notion of a genuinely independent and viable Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. Any possibility of a viable Palestinian state in the OPT has long been buried under the massive “facts on the grounds.” Israel’s Matrix of Control has rendered its control over the entire country permanent.
The two-state solution nonetheless continues to be the solution-of-choice of governments. It provides a perfect vehicle for endless conflict management. Negotiations over negotiations or merely holding out slim prospects of negotiations lead nowhere but can be dragged on indefinitely, which is the point. Indeed, it is a trap in which the Palestinian Authority is caught, since disavowing the two-state solution casts it as the intransigentparty.
Needed: A New Political End-Game
As important as protests, activism, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and other campaigns and actions may be, there is no substitute for a political settlement that will finally end the oppression and violence. One cannot be in a political struggle without an end-game, and in our case it must address two key processes: achieve restorative justice through dismantling the structures and ideologies of domination on the one hand, while replacing them with structures of social, cultural, political, economic equality, accompanied by a process of reconciliation. For that dual political process to succeed – the first most urgent for Palestinians, the second most important to sell to, or impose upon, Jewish Israelis – we need a plan, a vision of the future, and an effective strategy for getting there. This is the challenge before us, and it is urgent and crucial. If we, the stakeholders, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis together, do not offer our own peoples a mutually acceptable way out, and if we do not offer you, individuals and organizations abroad dedicated to the cause of justice in Palestine/Israel, a political program for which to advocate, we will lose. Justice does not prevail by magic. Unless it is empowered politically, it remains a vague and far-off aspiration. Worse – and this seems to be happening – activists and supporters will simply drift off to other urgent causes if there is no movement or prospect of success. Mobilization over time requires movement, direction and strategy, and only a political end-game provides that.
The time is far overdue to begin formulating a genuinely just and workable political settlement, then follow it up with an effective strategy of advocacy within Israel/Palestine and abroad. Over the past year I have been engaged with a number of Israeli Jews and Palestinians over the formulation of a one-state program. We call ourselves the One Democratic State Campaign, (ODSC), and among are members are Awad Abdelfattah, a founder of the Balad Party and its long-time Secretary General; Ilan Pappe, the well-known Israeli historian; Diana Buttu, the well-known analyst and Palestinian activist; Daphan Baram, a lawyer, comedienne and the Director of ICAHD UK; As’ad Ghanem, a professor of Political Science at Haifa University; Siwar Aslih, a Ph.D. student in Social Psychology; Nadia Naser-Najjab, a doctoral student; Shir Hever, a political economist; Muhammad Younis, a high-tech engineer; Yoav Bar, ad Israeli activist; Mohamed Kabha, a student; Sami Ma’ari, a professor of economics; and others, including myself. We have identified, I believe, the key elements to a just peace and have formulated an approach that bridges them in ways that the “sides” can agree on, or at least live with.
The Vision: A Multi-Cultural Democracy
The ODSC promotes a one-state concept that is both democratic and just but that also acknowledges the multicultural character and the collective rights of the peoples living in the country, Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews. Within a constitutional democracy in which all citizens enjoy a common citizenship, one common parliament and thoroughly equal civil rights, constitutional protection would also be granted to national, ethnic or religious collectivities desiring to retain their various identities and cultural lives if they so choose. Such an approach, acceptable to most Palestinians, addresses a key concern of Jewish Israelis: protection of their collective rights in a future country in which they will be the minority. Parliament, under the Constitution, will have no power to pass laws discriminating against any community.
Return of the Refugees
Key to any solution is the return of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants, or compensation and resettlement for those who choose not to return. But return is only part of the story. Where would they return to? Their homes and communities were demolished years ago. Well, according to the Palestinian geographer Salman Abu-Sitta, 85 percent of the lands taken from the Palestinians in 1948 are still available for resettlement. Although more than 530 villages, towns and urban areas were systematically demolished following the 1948 Nakba, their agricultural lands still exist, incorporated now into Israeli kibbutzim and other rural ventures. Other lands lie under public parks and forests. So refugees could actually return, if not to their former homes, at least to the parts of the country where they originated.
This ties into yet another issue: how do we prevent the refugee population, traumatized, impoverished, severely under-educated and unskilled, from becoming an underclass in their own country? A project run partly by the Israeli-Palestinian organization Zochrot has young Palestinian planners and architects designing modern communities for the refugees in the areas they left – new communities with economic infrastructure and integrated with other segments of the society. That, together with lands redistribution, financial compensation, and equal access to education, training and the economy, bolstered by affirmative action, would enable the refugees, like other Palestinians, to achieve economic parity with Israelis within a fairly short time. We must keep in mind the resources Palestinian enjoy: the high numbers of Palestinians in Israel, the OPT and abroad that have completed higher education, together with the likely investment of their highly-educated and affluent Diaspora. Even in this most difficult of issues, practical, just and workable solutions exist.
The Question of Bi-Nationalism
As I mentioned earlier, our initiative proposes a constitutional democracy in which all citizens enjoy a common citizenship and equal rights. Having said that, we cannot ignore the fundamental reality that two national groups – Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews – inhabit the country. Nor can we ignore the fact that the majority will be Palestinians. The prospect that Jews will live as a minority community contradicts perhaps the fundamental principle of Zionism: that Jews as a national group control their own destiny.
Now the very fact that we must engage in a search for an alternative to the two-state solution arises from the incompatibility of this principle with Israeli policy of settling and annexing Palestinian territory and permanently ruling over a Palestinian (majority) population, even if we call our rule “autonomy.” The minute Israeli decision-makers decided to link the demand for a “Jewish state” with the policy of incorporating a Palestinian population and territory larger than its own, it created an impossible and unacceptable reality: Jewish apartheid. Jewish Israelis would certainly prefer a non-democratic Jewish state over a non-Jewish democratic state. Our program must wrestle with this dilemma. Providing constitutional recognition and protection of the collective rights of Jewish Israelis, enabling them to maintain their community within the framework of a democratic state, addresses their concerns about their security as a minority while dismantling structures of privilege and domination.
A bi-national state would be easier to sell to Jewish Israelis than a unitary one – though barely – as the various schemes of confederation or “one country/two peoples” demonstrate. But here we hit up against Palestinian resistance. While the vast majority of Palestinians recognize the permanent presence of Jewish Israelis, to be forced to acknowledge them as a national group places Palestinians in a position of having to legitimize settler colonialism in its Zionist form, which is a bridge too far. Offering to protect the “collective rights” of groups to maintain any type of community they wish within the framework of a multi-cultural democracy (which may include communities of ethnic Russians, African asylum-seekers, foreign workers who remain, anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox Jews and others) gives Jewish Israelis the collective security they seek as a minority while facilitating the forging of a common civil society.
The Challenge: Forging a Common New Civil Society
Having ensured the integrity of collective identities and associations, the thrust and primary energy of our vision of a single state is directed towards building a shared civil society. Indeed, it is the breaking of the “bi-“national model that allows people to move out of rigidly bounded ethno-national blocs into a more integrated, fluid and shared form of civil society. As the years pass and both citizens and communities of Palestine/Israel develop a sense of mutual trust, inter-connectivity and security, as younger generations emerge for whom life in a common civil society is normal, a common civil identity will invariably emerge and expand. Attracting primarily the younger generation and the more secular middle classes, an inclusive civil society would take root as a shared national life becomes routinized through common citizenship and political life, collective experiences arising out of daily life, civil marriage, integrated communities and schools (for those who choose them), shared languages, a common media, common holidays and symbols that arose from shared national existence, etc., etc. We aspire not merely to a new political entity but to a new society.
Source: author
Decolonization, Restoration and Reconciliation
While achieving a just political settlement is our most urgent task, establishing a just and working state and civil society requires three more difficult processes: decolonization, restoration and reconciliation. Decolonization does not end the moment one people ceases dominating the others. Indeed, that is the moment it begins. It then continues until all forms of domination – economic and cultural as well as political and legal – are rooted out. Decolonization requires a country to be completely reimagined and reinvented so as to be as egalitarian, inclusive and sustainable as possible. This means, of course, restoring to the expelled, excluded and oppressed their rights, properties (actual or through compensation), identities and social position. Only then can the third process, reconciliation, be pursued. We therefore “bracket” the still open wounds of the Nakba, the Occupation and the suffering they have caused so that we may reach an agreed-upon political settlement.
The Issue of Secularism
Virtually everyone involved in the ODSC project supports the idea of a secular state. Yet we recognize that the majority of both the Palestinian and Jewish Israeli populations are not secular: the vast majority of Palestinians can be defined as moderate to strict Muslims and Christians, while 58% of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious, ranging from ultra-orthodox to “traditional.” “Secular,” then, can be a red-flag term making it even more difficult to “sell” an already daunting program.
Still, we believe that most people will accept a liberal democracy if we make it palatable, if we build in progressive elements but not rub their faces in them. Our program thus avoids the term “secular state,” but presents such a state de facto in two senses. First, it specifies that the authority to govern and pass laws emanates from the electorate, the people; what is left unsaid is that religious law (halakhah, sharia, ecclesiastical law) may continue to pertain within its religious communities – no one will ban religious marriages, for example – but will accompany, not displace, civil law where people choose to observe it. And second, there will be no official state-sponsored religion or religious authority.
Implications for the Region
Finally, the new state will exist in an extremely conflicted, autocratic and under-developed Middle East, albeit a region with great progressive potential as demonstrated by the massive (yet failed and repressed) uprisings in favor of democracy. It cannot exist in a vacuum. Sovereignty and borders, refugees, water, security, trade and economic development, tourism and the environment – these are only a few of the issues that are regional in scope. We envision a country that will join forces with all progressive forces in the Arab world struggling for democracy, social justice and egalitarian societies free from tyranny and foreign domination. Although this may sound utopian at a time when the region is in a melt-down, the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict will eliminate a major source of polarization and militarization in the region, thus releasing positive forces of development and conflict resolution.
These are the main issues at stake, in our view, and I believe the approach we lay out here has great potential in bridging the deep differences and mistrust between our peoples. Our overall program, prefaced by a Preamble that sets out the historical context and being strategized by our members, is as follows:
THE ODSC PROGRAM FOR ONE DEMOCRATIC STATE BETWEEN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA AND THE JORDAN RIVER
Haifa
April, 2018 PREAMBLE
In recent years, the idea of a one democratic state as the best political solution for Palestine has re-emerged and gained support in the public domain. It is not a new idea. The Palestinian liberation movement promoted this vision in the PLO’s National Charter until it entered the peace negotiations in the late 1980s. In the wake of the Oslo accord and other historical developments, the PLO shifted its support to the two-state solution as the basis for a future peace, a vision endorsed by all the Palestinian parties represented in the Israeli Knesset as well.
But the two-state solution is dead, buried under Israeli settlements and other massive “facts on the ground,” the world’s governments unwilling to exert the pressures needed to create a viable Palestinian state. This history clearly indicates that the only way to bring peace and reconciliation to Palestinians and Israelis is through the decolonizing historical Palestine based on granting equal rights, upon the full implementation of the Palestinian right of return and on the creation of a mechanism for rectifying past injustices. This is the urgent need of the moment.
As a result, several organizations and individuals have reintroduced the one-state idea over the past decade with models varying from bi-nationalism to a liberal, secular democracy. They are all united, however, in the belief that a substantially just political settlement can today only be achieved through the creation of a single state – a democratic state to replace the single apartheid state Israel has already imposed on the entire country.
Image on the right: The One Democratic State Campaign logo
The basic principles of liberation offered by the PLO in its 1968 charter still form an important element in the vision of those now engaged in formulating and advancing the one-state solution. There is a strong consensus among us that only decolonization and the rectification of past sins, in particular the right of Palestinian refugees to return to a democratic country, can bring equality, self-determination, reconciliation, prosperity, peace and justice to the land.
The following program of the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC) provides a basis for consolidating a one-state solution. In it we seek to garner support from both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis for our joint struggle for this vision. This is the only way we will end the ongoing the ongoing colonization, racism and hatred that are destroying our lives, to prevent and reverse the takeover of Palestinian land and its burial under settlements. Only an inclusive democratic state, thoroughly decolonized, will provide for a future for all our children, a future of peace, justice and equality in all of historic Palestine.
THE ODSC PROGRAM
A Single Constitutional Democracy. One Democratic State shall be established between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River as one country belonging to all its citizens, who will enjoy equal rights, freedom and security. The State shall be a constitutional democracy, the authority to govern and make laws emanating from the consent of the governed, in which all of its citizens shall enjoy equal rights to vote, stand for office and contribute to the country’s governance.
Individual Rights. No State law, institution or practices may discriminate among its citizens on the basis of national or social origin, color, gender, language, religion or political opinion, property, sexual orientation or other status. A single citizenship confers on all the State’s residents the right to freedom of movement, the right to reside anywhere in the country, and equal rights in every domain. All mechanisms of governance, law enforcement and security shall be thoroughly integrated on the basis of individual merit, including the military and internal security and police forces. The IDF and other Israeli security and police forces will be replaced by newly constituted national forces.
Collective Rights. Within the framework of a single democratic state, the Constitution will also protect the collective rights of Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews to freedom of association – national, ethnic, religious, class or gender – within the framework of a common state and democracy. Constitutional guarantees will ensure that all languages, arts and culture can flourish and develop freely. All citizens shall have equal rights to use their own dress, languages and customs, to freely express their cultural heritage, and to maintain such cultural institutions as universities, museums, theatres, newspapers and all other forms of communication. No group or collectivity will have any privileges, nor will any group, party or collectivity have the ability to leverage any control or domination over others. Parliament will not have the authority to enact any laws that discriminate against any community under the Constitution.
Right of Return of Restoration and of Reintegration into Society. In accordance with UN Resolution 194, the State recognizes the right of Palestinian refugees – those who currently live in Palestine/Israel, all those who were expelled over the past century, their descendants and all others of the Exile/Diaspora – to return to their country and to the places from where they were expelled, to rebuild their personal life and to be fully reintegrated into the country’s society, economy and polity. To the most practicable degree, the private property of the refugees shall be restored and/or compensation arranged. Restoring the rights of the Palestinians will be done while respecting the rights and protections of all citizens under the law. Normal procedures of obtaining citizenship will be extended to others choosing to immigrate to the country.
Constructing a Shared Civil Society. The State shall nurture a vital civil society in which common educational institutions, civil institutions such as marriage, and both the Arabic and Hebrew languages will be official languages. The State will not establish or accord special privilege to any religion, but shall provide for the free practice of all religions.
Economy and Economic Justice. Our vision seeks to achieve justice, and this includes social and economic justice. Economic policy must address the decades of exploitation and discrimination which have sown deep socioeconomic gaps among the people living in the land. The income distribution in Israel/Palestine is more unequal than any country in the world. A State seeking justice must develop a creative and long-term redistributive economic policy to ensure that all citizens have equal opportunity to attain education, productive employment, economic security and a dignified standard of living.
Decolonization, Restoration and Reconciliation. The liberation of Palestinians and the creation of a genuinely equal and inclusive society entails more than just a political settlement or new governmental arrangements. It requires a process of thorough decolonization, a reimagining and reinventing of the country in a way that fundamentally alters relations of domination. This includes what Fanon and Ngugi call the “decolonization of the mind.” Only then will a process of national reconciliation be possible.
The Commitment to Human Rights, Justice and Peace. The State shall uphold international law and seek the peaceful resolution of conflicts through negotiation and collective security in accordance with the United Nations Charter. The State will sign and ratify all international treaties on human rights and its people shall reject racism and promote social, cultural and political rights as set out in relevant United Nations covenants.
Our Role in the Region. The ODS Campaign will join forces with all progressive forces in the Arab world struggling for democracy, social justice and egalitarian societies free from tyranny and foreign domination. In particular, the State shall seek democracy and freedom in a Middle East that respects its many communities, religions, traditions and ideologies, yet strives for equality, freedom of thought and innovation. Achieving a just political settlement in Palestine, followed by a thorough process of decolonization, will contribute measurably to these efforts.
Our Global Responsibility. On a global level, the ODS Campaign views itself as part of the progressive forces striving for an alternative global order that is just, egalitarian, inclusive, pluralistic and sustainable, one in which exploitation, racism, repression, wars, imperialism and colonialism give way to respect for human dignity, human rights, freedom, a just distribution of wealth, equal access to resources and a sustainable environment.
The Ayatollah’s listing of five counter-demands to the Europeans following Pompeo’s 12-point ultimatum to Iran plays right into Trump’s hands by making it seem like Tehran is “blackmailing” the US’ allies because it’s so desperate for Western investment, whereas the country should actually do away with those discredited “partners” and more openly embrace China, Pakistan, and the Central Asian Republics per a full-on Eastern Pivot to the Golden Ring.
Poor Perception Management
RT reported that one of the main demands that Iran just made of the Europeans in response to Pompeo’s 12-point ultimatum is that they continue to buy the country’s oil in order to guarantee that Tehran will continue to abide by the nuclear deal. Iran, like any sovereign and self-respecting country in the world, doesn’t have to accept any foreign ultimatum and has the right to issue its own to anyone else that it likes under any circumstances that it chooses. The problem in this case, however, is that it plays directly into Trump’s hands by making it seem like Iran is indeed “blackmailing the world” (or more accurately in this context, just the Europeans) like he said they were, which inadvertently gives a powerful boost to Trump’s narrative. Not only that, but this “confirmation” of his words comes right after the President said that the US will not deal with a country that chants “Death to America!” while he was announcing Washington’s withdrawal from the deal, after which Iranian lawmakers did just that inside their parliament.
As stated, all countries and their representatives have the right to express themselves however they so choose, but the knife cuts both ways and that means that there shouldn’t be any double standards in this regard when it comes to the Iranian government or the American one. Furthermore, both of them must accept that their actions have consequences, whether they intend for them to do or not, and that it is impossible in this day of hyper-infowar campaigns to fully control how each and every person in the world reacts to what one says or does. For as boorish as Trump comes off to the Europeans irrespective of his intentions and how he perceives of himself, so too are the Iranians being perceived by them as prone to “blackmail” and perhaps even a little bit desperate if they come to think about it. Increasingly, one of the most “inconvenient facts” of the nuclear deal is becoming ever the more obvious, and it’s that the promises of economic assistance to the Islamic Republic were very vague and never clearly defined.
The Sanctions Spoiler
Everything was built on the nebulous and fleeting concept of “goodwill”, with Iran trusting that each of the P5+1 countries would be racing to invest in its human and natural resources for the simple reason that the country had hitherto been one of the world’s most promising untapped markets due to decades of sanctions. Basic economic theory implied that it would never be a problem for any of those Great Powers to keep their economic end of the bargain, and that whichever of them might possibly pull out of the deal in the future (relevant only for the most part to the US) would just be missing out because their partners would quickly fill in the void and make it seem like they never left. The basis for believing this was conceptually sound but has nowadays been disproven in practice because the US is “hacking” economic theory through the reimplementation of a far-reaching sanctions regime that Pompeo threatened will be the toughest ever applied against a country in history.
America is successful in wielding sanctions as a Hybrid War weapon against its own European partners because the US is one of the world’s largest markets with a robust purchasing capability, and the government can stop any country from accessing it and therefore deprive them of profits if they violate its new anti-Iranian economic restrictions. Accordingly, a “chain reaction” of sanctions can also be implemented in sanctioning, for example, a German company that doesn’t do business in the US but only in Iran and the EU, with Washington then threatening to expand its punitive measures to include all other companies anywhere in the world who continue to business with it. As a result, that said German company, in this instance, could quickly become “untouchable” because none of its partners would want to risk America’s economic wrath by doing business with them and losing access to the US’ market in response.
At the end of the day, for as “politically inconvenient” as it is for some to acknowledge, many companies need the American marketplace and specifically the American dollar to maintain a comfortable profit margin, satisfy investors, and keep people in work. The US is leveraging this state of economic affairs to its strategic advantage like never before, which is evidently seen by Trump’s willingness to engage in “trade wars” with China and the EU, to say nothing of the preexisting sanctions against Russia. The latter never truly “integrated” into the Washington Consensus so is relatively less affected by this although some sectors of its economy and elite interests are nevertheless hurting right now, but the first-mentioned two of the EU and China are much more vulnerable to the US’ geopolitical weaponization of sanctions, especially the Europeans. A sober reading of the strategic situation would have presciently revealed this even before the deal was signed, but the euphoria of the moment evidently blinded Iranian decision makers to this fact.
Why It’s Hard For Iran To Let Go Of The West
The Iranians are finding it very difficult to accept that their EU “partners” will probably passively go along with the US’ sanctions, and several reasons account for this. The first is that the euro is a strong currency in general and functions as an alternative to the dollar for reserve purposes, trade, and banking, and Tehran may have bet its future on it from 2015 onwards. Accordingly, dealing with the Europeans on what Iran had previously assumed would be its own terms brings a lot of prestige to its elite because it’s seen as a reversal from the shameful periods of history when the West dominated their country. The general population is also involved in this too, since they were given unrealistically high hopes that long-awaited sanctions relief was finally arriving and that they too could have a chance to “climb the ladder of success” in trading in or working for euros after the West “atones for its historical sins” by doing business with them on their leadership’s terms.
“The West”, in this case, isn’t just the cultural-civilizational one that was referred to up until this point, but also the geographic one of the “Mashriq”, or West Asia/Mideast, which also has a powerful hold over the Iranian government’s psyche. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran thought that this part of the world was the most fertile for exporting its governing model per the constitutional stipulation that it “strive with other Islamic and popular movements to prepare the way for the formation of a single world community”, a bold declaration that frightened its secular and monarchist neighbors just like Trotsky’s one of “world revolution” did the same after 1917. Although Iraq initiated the First Gulf War with Iran at the behest of its Western & Arab backers and with the implicit support of the Soviet Union, Iran continued the war for years after it had already reached a stalemate in order to militantly spread the revolution westward as vengeance for Saddam’s atrocities, similar in a sense to what the USSR sought to do against the Nazis during World War II.
Regrettably for Iran, the outcome was much different for it than for the Soviet Union, but the concept of exerting influence westward for interlinked ideological and security reasons was forever embedded in its leadership’s mentality. That’s why it’s so difficult for Iran to accept that Trump has more or less succeeded in finally creating a multinational US-led “containment” coalition against it along the country’s Western flank which flexibly incorporates military, economic, and strategic dimensions from each of its participants, whether willingly engaging in this effort like “Israel” and Saudi Arabia are or passively facilitating it like Russia does in allowing Tel Aviv to bomb the IRGC and Hezbollah at will inside of Syria. The predicted “rollback” of Iranian influence from the Mashriq is forcing Iran’s leadership to do away with the predominant ideological drivers of their strategy and reconceptualize their country’s role in Eurasia by embracing geostrategic pragmatism through a full-on Eastern Pivot towards Pakistan, China, and the Central Asian Republics.
Embracing The East
Iran’s civilizational footprint in Pakistan and Central Asia is millennia-long and in most geographic reaches even predates Islam, making it just as much, if not more, of a “natural” part of the world for Tehran to focus on as the Mashriq. Nevertheless, the Western flank had taken on a priority for Iran following the encroachment of the Russian and British Empires on the country’s former possessions in Central and South Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, after which the commencement of the Old Cold War made it impossible for Tehran to functionally engage with its civilizational cousins in what had by that point become the communist Soviet Union. Iran’s state secularism prior to the 1979 Revolution found it some common ground with other secular countries in the West, though it was dominated by the US & Europeans and in submission to “Israel”.
The Islamic Revolution was an economically and geopolitically liberating experience for most Iranians but it also made their new government the main enemy of its former Western “partners”, which it continued to spar with through various proxy wars up until the present day. The moment is fast approaching, however, where the US-led “containment” coalition will militantly put a stop to the expansion of Iranian influence in the Mideast, if it hasn’t done so already, thereby forcing the Islamic Republic to reconsider its geostrategic priorities and seriously contemplate an Eastern Pivot for relief from what might eventually become overwhelming pressure against it. As Trump succeeds in cutting off Iran’s economic connections with the West and bombing or strategically neutralizing its allied non-state partners in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, Tehran will basically have no choice and will be forced to do this sooner than later if the government wants to stay alive.
The sanctions regime that the US is in the process of implementing will carry with it an unparalleled economic cost to the Iranian people and aims to provoke identity-centric conflict that could then be manipulated into a nationwide regime change campaign, and the most prudent way of avoiding this “dark scenario” is for Iran to pivot eastward to China, Pakistan, and the Central Asian Republics through the Golden Ring partnership of multipolar Great Powers that also includes Turkey and Russia. Granted, Russia is presently “balancing” Iran in the Mashriq (particularly Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan), but for pragmatic reasons related to both parties’ self-interests, they’re nonetheless expected to continue enjoying excellent bilateral relations with one another that help undergird the geostrategic success of the Golden Ring. In a sense, Russia’s “balancing” moves are actually pushing Iran in the direction of its Eastern Pivot and “doing it a favor”.
Concluding Thoughts
Iran’s “blackmail” of Europe isn’t just a soft power folly for its international reputation in the eyes of its (former) Western “partners”, but also signals its leadership’s psychological desperation to chase the investment benefits that it was promised at all costs, no matter how impossible they may soon be to ever receive given the EU’s predicted willingness to bend to Trump’s sanctions demands. It’s been nearly four decades in the making, but Iran must finally accept that it will never regain its Shah-era relations with the West so long as it retains its governing model of Islamic Republicanism. Concurrent with this, Iranian influence is being “rolled back” all across the Mashriq, and its leadership must also come to terms with this as well. Nothing in this analysis is suggesting that the country “surrender”, but just that it engage in a “tactical retreat” that provides added impetus to its inevitable Eastern Pivot towards China, Pakistan, and the Central Asian Republics.
Iran already has millennia of direct civilizational relations with the latter two that could be put to excellent use in forming the basis for a new multilateral partnership with them built on pragmatic shared interests, unlike the ideological-political motivations for its Mashriq moves ever since 1979. Iran and its two direct Great Power neighbors of Pakistan and Turkey could even revive the Old Cold War-era “CENTO” integrational vehicle in a New Cold War multipolar configuration that lays the groundwork for a powerful “Muslim Belt” of Great Powers to form along the South Eurasian Rimland and constitute half of the Golden Ring that could be completed through a strategic convergence with Washington’s worst nightmare of the Russian-Chinese “double helix”. Truth be told, Iranians should be thankful for Trump because he’s giving them a reason to wholeheartedly embrace their country’s destined Silk Road future, just like President Putin’s military partnership with “Israel” in Syria is doing the same as well.
The US, however, is Iran’s geostrategic enemy and will remain its ideological one for as long as the country continues with its Islamic Republicanism form of governance, while Russia is better described as a partner with whom Iran has a long & complicated history and sometimes naturally enters into disagreements. Russia, though, is not Iran’s enemy despite their increasing competition with one another in Syria and parts of Iraq, and Moscow is actually more than eager to expand bilateral relations with Tehran and even multilateral ones with it through the Golden Ring concept. Iran might not appreciate that Russia is “nudging” it towards an inevitable Eastern Pivot for its own self-interested reasons in Syria (which Moscow believes to more or less be in everyone’s “win-win” interests following a series of unavoidable “compromises” there), but it might one day look back fondly at that moment and be thankful for Russia’s “tough love” if the Moscow-facilitated Eastern Pivot succeeds.
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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.
The Trump regime has sabotaged Putin’s peace efforts in Syria, Iran, Ukraine, and North Korea.
In the interest of peace Putin has avoided responding to US and Israeli provocations in Syria. Putin went so far as to invite Netanyahu to Russia for the celebration of Russia’s victory over Germany in World War II. Netanyahu accepted, but showed Putin who is boss by ordering illegal Israeli military attacks on Syrian army positions just prior to his departure for Russia.
Washington rewarded Putin’s peace efforts by occupying with US and French troops the part of Syria still held by Washington’s mercenaries sent to overthrow Assad and by re-supplying the Muslim extremists Washington is using against Assad’s secular government.
With US and French troops present, Putin has halted the offensive to clear all of Syria of the foreign invaders. If Americans or French are killed, Putin knows that the demonization of Russia will reach a new high pitch and Washington will use it to counteract Europe’s dissatisfaction with Washington. The box into which Putin has been put by the Russian government’s misjudgement of US and Israeli intentions allows continuing US-led attacks on Syrian military positions. See this.
Previously Putin blocked the planned US invasion of Syria by arranging for all of Syria’s chemical weapons to be turned over to the West for destruction. The official chemical weapons inspection agency certified that Syria is devoid of chemical weapons. Putin’s reward is that US government officials, the entirety of the US media, and Washington’s British and French vassals have consistently blamed false flag chemical attacks, and in the case of Douma a fake news chemical attack that has been certified not to have taken place, on Assad.
The Trump regime has also sabotaged Putin’s peace effort in Iran. Putin brought the fake “Iranian nuke” crisis orchestrated by Washington and its presstitute media to an end by working out a multi-nation agreement that Iran would not produce weapons grade nuclear material or enrich uranium beyond the low level used for nuclear energy.
Official agencies certify that Iran has kept the agreement, but despite the established facts, Washington and its presstitutle media continue to allege that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Trump at the insistance of Netanyahu has pulled the US out of the multi-nation agreement signed by Iran, the US, Russia, China, UK, France, and Germany. Trump is reimposing even harsher sanctions against Iran that heavily impact and harm European businesses. The rest of the signatories to the Iran agreement say that they intend to continue with the agreement, and Trump has threated UK, France, and Germany with sanctions if they stick with the agreement that they signed.
China and Russia worked to reconcile North and South Korea and secured North Korea’s agreement to stop nuclear weapons tests. Peace between the Koreas was taking shape, but Trump has sabotaged this peace effort as well.
The presstitute media, a.k.a., Washington’s Propaganda Ministry, has misrepresented the destruction of peace agreements as necessary actions to protect Americans and the world from rogue states, but Israel is the only other government that agrees with Washington.
Now that Washington and Israel have sabotaged Putin’s diplomacy, Putin’s hope is that the result will isolate Washington from Washington’s European and British vassal states rather than isolate Russia, Syria, Iran, and North Korea from the rest of the world. There is much evidence that European leaders have had their fill of being treated as Washington’s slaves. Possibly they will throw off Washington’s control. On the other hand, except for France under DeGaulle, no European country has had an independent foreign or economic policy in 75 years. Moreover, European leaders are accustomed to relying on Washington providing their comfortable retirements, like Tony Blair’s $50 million, and European business interests would be harmed if Trump cuts them off from US markets. How real an European revolt is remains to be seen.
There are great risks to Russia of relying on Europe’s revolt as Washington uses the time to regain what was lost in Syria to Putin’s initiative. In effect, Russia might be throwing away the victory in Syria. While the Russian government waits to see if the Anglo-Zionist Empire comes apart, Washington is organizing the jihadists Washington used against Gadaffi and Assad to prepare an offensive against Russia and China through former Soviet central Asian republics such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Here is a report by Andrey Afanasyev: see this.
I have checked out this story with Russian sources. What I learned is that Washington’s plan to use its jihadists to begin destabilizing Russia and China surfaced in Russia in the 7th Moscow International Conference on Security, which I believe was in April. Currently, Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Minister of Defence, is in Uzbekistan evaluating the situation with military and political leaders there.
The Russian government, the state TV channels, and establishment press are sitting on the information. Apparently, the Russian government doesn’t want this information out as it could undermine public support for the peace agenda that the government favors. However, reports have been published in Tzargrad, NewsFront, and Fergana.
Israel’s interest in the Middle East is expansion which is inconsistent with peace. Israel needs conflict and the destabilization of Syria and Iran, Hezabollah’s suppliers, so that Israel can seize southern Lebanon. The American neoconservatives who are firmly entrenched in the Trump regime are de facto Israeli agents. Moreover, they are committed to American hegemony, which requires the overthrow of independent governments.
Putin is betting that Washington’s pursuit of hegemony in the Middle East will cost Washington hegemony in Europe. If Putin does not win this bet, he had better be prepared for the war that Washington and Israel are aiming directly at Russia.
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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.
Gina Haspel has now been confirmed as the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by a Senate vote of 54 to 45. She had previously been approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee by 10 votes to 5, with six Democrats joining all but three of the committee’s Republicans. Haspel seems fully qualified in terms of her experience to do the job, though it is admittedly difficult to make that judgement because her full professional biography has not been revealed by CIA. Claims by supporters seeking to enhance her record that she was “under cover” for 32 years are meaningless as many officers who serve at Agency Headquarters in Langley have that status.
Accurate information on Haspel is hard to come by. Access to a top secret memo reportedly prepared by Committee Democrats concerning her possibly illegal activities has been restricted even among Senators. Nevertheless, as the first woman to become head of the Agency one might reasonably say that Haspel has certainly broken through several glass ceilings to obtain her new position.
During the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings Haspel vowed that, if approved, she would never again permit torture to be employed by the Agency. It was, of course, a necessary though empty gesture in that it appears quite clear that she did not demur at torture being used in the past. Intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden expressed his opinion with a tweet when news of the confirmation became public, writing that
“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.”
Haspel did indeed do all that and possibly more, but my objection to her is somewhat different. To be sure, torture should never have been employed by any federal government agency, but the confirmation of Haspel sends the clear message that there is no accountability for anyone who is at or near the top of the bureaucracy. Haspel’s willing participation in running a black site prison where torture was carried out was illegal then just as it is illegal now, no matter what some slimy government lawyer whose job depended on pleasing his boss the president might have said. Gina Haspel could have turned the assignment down if she was bothered by what was going, but ambition drove her to accept the position and all it entails, making her current disavowing of torture a bit hard to accept.
The approval of Haspel by the Senate suggests that there is no crime that a government official cannot get away with if it is justified under the aegis of the “war on terror.” On that basis alone, Haspel should have been rejected, but instead she has been rewarded by a government that generally prefers to look the other way. Gina’s success at avoiding any consequences for her action is reminiscent of the slap on the wrist received by former CIA Director David Petraeus, who revealed highly classified information to his lover/biographer Paula Broadwell.
All of which is not to suggest that government officials never get punished. Lower level officials are fair game when the criminal justice system is seeking to demonstrate that no one is above the law. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced to prison after he revealed that torture in secret Agency prisons was taking place. Another CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was imprisoned for allegedly revealing classified information to journalist James Risen. The government could not even prove that he had done so, but he was convicted anyway because “it had to be him.”
If it now a matter of public record that running a torture prison is a good career move, supported by both parties in Congress. And it is also interesting to note how fiercely the CIA fought to keep from having to reveal details of Haspel’s career or even the records of the torture prison. It is unlikely that reports relating to events that took place sixteen years ago could continue to be classified because they would reveal “intelligence sources and methods.” Rather, they remain top secret because they are potentially embarrassing to the participants, to those who directed and approved the activity and to the organizations involved. In that light, the Haspel confirmation’s acceptance of zero accountability is a perfect example of precisely what is wrong with the United States government.
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Philip Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Sergey and Yulia recovered enough from whatever harmed them to be released from hospitalization – clearly not a Novichok military-grade nerve agent as falsely claimed – able to cause death in minutes.
Their whereabouts is unknown. They’re denied contact with Russia’s embassy. Nor are they permitted free movement or contact with relatives back home.
They’re virtual UK hostages, Washington surely complicit in what’s been going on since the March 4 incident occurred – the Kremlin falsely blamed for what it had nothing to do with. No evidence suggests otherwise.
Tass reported the following:
“According to Reuters, Yulia Skripal spoke to journalists in Russian at an unidentified location and then submitted her handwritten translation in the English language declining to answer questions.”
Here’s what she said translated into English:
“I came to the UK on the 3rd of March to visit my father, something I have done regularly in the past. After 20 days in a coma, I woke to the news that we had both been poisoned.”
“We are so lucky to have both survived this attempted assassination. The fact that a nerve agent was used to do this is shocking.”
“I was discharged from hospital on the 9th of April and continue to progress with treatment but my life has been turned upside down as I try to come to terms with the devastating changes thrust upon me both physically and emotionally.”
“I still find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that both of us were attacked. We are so lucky to have both survived this attempted assassination.”
“Our recovery has been slow and extremely painful. The fact that a nerve agent was used to do this is shocking. I don’t want to describe the details but the clinical treatment was invasive, painful and depressing.”
“I take one day at a time and want to help care for my dad till his full recovery. In the longer term I hope to return home to my country.”
“I wish to address a couple of issues directly and have chosen to interrupt my rehabilitation to make this short statement.”
“I ask that everyone respects the privacy of me and my father. We need time to recover and come to terms with everything that has happened.”
She’s “grateful for the offers of assistance from the Russian Embassy but at the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services.”
Yulia, and perhaps Sergey ahead, are only allowed to publicly say what UK authorities permit – Britain scripting her remarks, letting her say only what her captors permit.
According to former UK ambassador, human rights activist Craig Murray, Yulia’s comment about “not wish(ing) to avail myself of (Russian embassy) services” mistranslated what she said.
Clearly she recited UK-scripted remarks, Reuters complicit in the deception. Yulia is a Russian national, visiting Britain only to see her father.
Except for a brief April 5 scripted-sounding phone conversation with her cousin Viktoria back home, on a temporary phone given her, not her own cell phone, she’s not permitted to have, she and her father Sergey have been held incommunicado – currently at an unknown location, denied phone and computer contact with their relatives in Russia.
In response to her scripted remarks, Russia’s embassy said
“(w)e are glad to have seen Yulia Skripal alive and well. However, the video shown only strengthens our concerns as to the conditions in which she is being held,” adding:
“The UK is obliged to give us the opportunity to speak to Yulia directly in order to make sure that she is not held against her own will and is not speaking under pressure. So far, we have every reason to suspect the opposite.”
“Judging by quite a few elements, the text was a translation from English and had been initially written by a native English-speaker (translated into Russia for Yulia to read). The handwritten letters signed by Yulia in Russian and English confirm this impression.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the following:
“We’d like Yulia Skripal to know that not a single day passed without the Foreign Ministry, Russia’s Embassy in London trying to reach her with the main purpose to make sure she was not held against her will, she was not impersonated by somebody else, to get the first-hand information about her and her father’s condition.”
Sergey and Yulia Skripal are unwitting pawns in a dirty US/UK geopolitical plot to demonize Russia.
They’re virtual UK hostages, Britain likely together with Washington responsible for their illness and captivity – harmed and held virtual prisoners, pawns in a US/UK propaganda war on Russia.
They only know what they were told. They’ll likely never be permitted to speak openly or travel outside Britain freely.
Nor will they be allowed to return to Russia if they wish. They’re virtual prisoners of a hostile power, fully responsible for what happened to them.
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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.
The “Contract for the Government of Change” – stipulated by Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini on behalf of the 5 Star Movement and the League – on the one hand “confirms Italy’s membership of the Atlantic Alliance, with the United States of America as a privileged ally”, and on the other, promises “an open-minded attiutude to Russia, which should be perceived not as a threat but as an economic and commercial partner (which would imply the withdrawal of sanctions), to be rehabilitated as a strategic interlocutor for the resolution of regional crises” and even as a “potential partner for NATO”.
The formula is not new. In June 2016, Prime Minister Renzi assured President Putin that “the Cold War is now history”, and that “Europe and Russia can be excellent neighbors”. A month later, at the Warsaw Summit, Renzi signed the EU-NATO strategic pact against Russia.
How can the new government cease “perceiving” Russia as a threat and act accordingly, while it remains a member of NATO, which, under the command of the “privileged ally”, is increasingly committed to combating “the Russian threat”?
The new government intends to “re-evaluate our participation in international missions in terms of their real importance for the national interest”. Does this mean that it intends to withdraw the Italian troops deployed in Latvia and the Italian fighter-bombers deployed in Estonia, close to Russian territory, on the pretext, invented by NATO, of facing “Russian aggression”?
Will it prevent US / NATO commands and bases in Italy, from Vicenza to Aviano, from Naples to Sigonella, from being used for military operations against Russia?
First of all, will the new government reject the new B61-12 nuclear bombs that the US is preparing to deploy in Italy against Russia, exposing our country to growing danger as a forward base of US nuclear strategy?
Will it refuse to provide the Pentagon with pilots and fighter-bombers ready for nuclear attack, within the framework of NATO?
Will the new government ask the US to remove all nuclear weapons from our territory, on the basis of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has so far been violated? Will it adhere to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (as Luigi Di Maio is committed to do by signing the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge)?
The decision not to adhere to the UN Treaty was taken before by the Italian Parliament, in the North Atlantic Council, where according to NATO rules “there is no vote or majority decision”, but “decisions are taken unanimously and by mutual agreement”, that is, in agreement with the United States of America, to which the leading role of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and other key commands are entitled by right.
Source: PandoraTV
With regard to the military industry, the Contract considers “its protection, with particular regard to the financing of research, for the design and construction of ships, aircraft and high-tech systems” to be essential.
What’s new in the program of the “Government of Change”, compared to the “White Book for Defense” institutionalized by the Gentiloni government, which defines the military industry as the “pillar of our national system”?
Will the new government stop or continue participating in the US F-35 fighter program, which commits Italy to buy 90 planes at a cost of 13-16 billion euros?
With regard to military spending, will the new government refuse to increase it or will it fulfil the commitment agreed between previous governments, the US, and NATO, to raise it from the current 70 million Euros a day to around 100 million Euros a day?
This is unavoidable expenditure if one wants to maintain the United States of America as a “privileged ally”.
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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto.
Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Elections in Venezuela have come and gone. They happened in the most peaceful, fair and transparent way as promised by the Maduro government. Nicolas Maduro was re-elected president for the 2019-2025 period by more than two thirds of the voters. The Lima Group, Luis Almagro and the Canadian government immediately issued declarations of not recognizing the elections for being illegitimate, as if they had been prepared before May 20. However, is there any valid basis to those declarations?
The US, which seems to be more and more governed by way of presidential executive orders, was just as quick to react by forcing more sanctions against Venezuela directed at curtailing crucial financial interactions with the Venezuelan State with the intention of “making the economy scream”, as famously stated in the case of Chile in the 1970s. Those sanctions give a vivid impression of being extra-territorial measures, that is, they penalize businesses of other countries that have economic links with the US. [1]
Nicolas Maduro responded surprisingly and without delay by declaring persona non grata and expelling two US diplomats, Chargé d’Affaires Todd Robinson and head of political affairs Brian Naranjo. [2]
Sanctions are serious aggressive acts, disguised as administrative measures that hurt people and must always be questioned as inhumane. However, false accusations have a larger impact in the minds of those who only follow events marginally particularly outside Venezuela.
The accusations about the elections in Venezuela use words such as “illegitimate”, “farce”, and “fraud” because they do not meet “international democratic standards”. Both the Lima Group and the Canadian government use that same expression.
Most of the rebuttals to these accusations have focused righty on producing statistics of results and comparisons with other elections in the region showing that Maduro obtained irrefutably almost 68% of the valid votes, much higher than in other countries. Another statistic that can easily be put to rest, is the low turn out of 54%, as claimed by Luis Almagro, if one considers, on the one hand, the chronic abstentions that also affects the US and Canada, and on the other hand, the unfair call to Venezuelans to abstain from voting made by most of the Western countries.
A strong case can be made on the illegitimate interference in the Venezuelan electoral process. But is there any truth to the assertion of not following “international democratic standards” that might force such a drastic interference?
A seldom cited document titled “International Standards and Commitments On The Right To Democratic Elections: A Practical Guide To Democratic Elections Best Practice”, issued in 2002 by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), may shed some light on the question. [3]
The document is very informative on issues of human rights for democratic elections and necessary “component parts” of a system of democratic elections. This practical guide can help in showing that Venezuela does not infringe any of those standards. In order to do that it is important to highlight what the document refers to as best practices “that will ensure that the component parts of the election system comply with the international law and with the international human rights background for democratic elections”, and try to find where Venezuela fails, if at all.
The first component part mentioned in the document, the voting system choice, is necessary to quote in full:
“A country’s choice for its electoral system, provided it operates in a non-discriminatory manner and facilitates the expression of the will of the people through periodic and genuine elections conducted on the basis of universal and equal suffrage and secret ballot, should be respected.”
None of the points in the “provided” section of the paragraph has been broken in Venezuela. No one can claim that there was any discrimination, nor that equal suffrage or secret ballot requirements were infringed. Those who did not participate in the elections did so by their own free will. But the essential part in the paragraph is that the electoral system “should be respected”. That was not the case with the fierce criticism received by the international opposition.
Another component is the election administration,
“The administration of democratic elections requires that election commissions/bodies are independent and impartial.”
This is another controversial point by the international opposition, but by constitution (Article 296) and in practice the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE – National Electoral Council) of Venezuela is as independent and impartial as it can be.
In the elections of May 20, with the participation of opposition parties and the previous constant openness and invitation by the CNE to all opposition parties to register, nothing suggested that the election administration was taking sides or was being manipulated. It is unfair that the president of the CNE, Tibisay Lucena, who has had the position since April 2006, should be sanctioned in July 2017 by the US for following the constitutionally mandated order to administer the election of the National Constituent Assembly. Ironically, Canada also sanctioned Lucena for the “breaking the constitutional order.”
This year, Switzerland also sanctioned Lucena for“human rights violations and the deterioration of the rule of law and democratic institutions.” The relevant Article 21 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights ensures the five basic premises of electoral democracy: legality, periodicity, secret ballot, and universal and equal suffrage, none of which was broken at any time by Lucena or any of her subordinates. But it was Panama that a day after Switzerland sanctioned Lucena for the serious “money laundering, financing of terrorism and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” It is absurd, but we will only ask one question to the international community: was anybody in the world sanctioned for appearing in the infamous Panama Papers leaked in 2015 where public officials allegedly set up illegal offshore tax-haven schemes?
We could not identify any other component part for the best practice of a democratic election that was not fulfilled according to international standards, but it is also important to mention the one component where Venezuela excelled without any doubt. That is the election observation. Venezuela has been quite insistent publicly on its willingness to have international observers. In fact, with hundreds of international observers over several days, including about a dozen from Canada, and the official participation of the Consejo de Expertos Electorales de Latinoamérica (Ceela – Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America), the final report states that Venezuela followed all the international standards and personally congratulated Tibisay Lucena. [4]
The elections are over but the electoral process in Venezuela has not ended. Maduro has requested a full recount and verification of ballots to convince public opinion that the election was legitimate and transparent.
It is tempting to compare Venezuela with other countries on the best practice of elections, but that is not the point or requirement for transparency. Venezuela would not be more democratic if it could show that some percentage is higher or lower than in some other country. Venezuela is democratic because the majority of the people made it so by exercising their constitutional right to vote freely and independently, and, we may add, despite the international interference.
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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and author at Cuba Solidarity in Canada. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Maduro received three-times as many votes as his closest rival for the presidency, Henri Falcón. Photo: El Confidencial
While thousands of people gathered around Miraflores Presidential Palace to greet the re-election of President Nicolás Maduro, opposition sectors, the United States, the European Union and the Latin American right launched a predictable destabilization plan against the most recent democratic electoral process undertaken on Sunday, May 20, in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan people, victims of one of the most brutal economic wars of recent times, only comparable to the blockade imposed on Cuba for more than 50 years, re-elected Nicolás Maduro as their legitimate President with more than six million votes.
Meanwhile, the “protectors of democracy” in the region and the world reactivated their hostile agenda against the homeland of Bolívar, and ignored the clear message emitted at the polls.
The Venezuelan government, accustomed to this type of action since taking a different path to that dictated by Washington in 1998, once again faces a wave of interference in its internal affairs.
Granma outlines ten of the destabilizing actions made public in the last 48 hours against the legitimate government of Nicolás Maduro:
1- NEW SANCTIONS IMPOSED BY THE UNITED STATES
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced on Sunday new unilateral sanctions against Venezuela, violating the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and the norms of international law.
Through an executive order, Trump prohibited any U.S. citizen, institution or company from purchasing debt or accounts receivable from the Venezuelan executive, including those derived from state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA).
Venezuelan authorities condemned the illicit and illegitimate measures which seek to expand the economic and financial siege against the country, undermine the right to self-determination of the Venezuelan people, and attack their model of socioeconomic development.
2- REFUSING TO RECOGNIZE THE POPULAR WILL
According to a statement issued Monday, May 21, Canada and the thirteen Latin American governments that form the Lima Group, refused to recognize the election results.
Among the arguments to support this aggressive stance is a supposed abstention of Venezuelans in the elections on Sunday. However, the presidents of both Chile and Colombia, members of the Group, were elected with a lower turnout than that which saw Nicolás Maduro re-elected, and yet they have not been subject to any such accusations.
Likewise, the Lima Group includes nations such as Brazil, where a parliamentary coup removed the legitimately elected President Dilma Rousseff from power, and Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, the most popular candidate in the lead up to elections in the South American giant, has been unfairly imprisoned. Meanwhile, the President of Peru had to resign over accusations of corruption, and the 2017 elections in Honduras were marked by fraud and corruption scandals.
3- DIPLOMATIC ATTACKS
The governments of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Saint Lucia, members of the Lima Group, agreed to “reduce” their level of diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and recalled their ambassadors to Caracas for consultations.
The Group also announced that it will present a resolution during the 48th General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) on the situation in Venezuela.
4- OAS ATTACKS
In February, the OAS approved a resolution that demanded the Venezuelan government cancel the presidential elections. This organization has been at the forefront of the international attacks seeking to isolate those nations in the region undergoing progressive processes of change. Venezuela is the principal target of such attacks, due to its regional leadership in this regard. Thus, the OAS maintains an interventionist campaign against this nation while turning a blind eye to scandalous situations in other countries.
Image on the right: Luis Almagro and Nicolas Maduro
OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, ignored the democratic will expressed by the Venezuelan people on Sunday, and reiterated that the organization does not recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate President of Venezuela. In addition, he assured that they will continue “fighting for the end of the Venezuelan dictatorship” and again called for “a transitional government.”
5- EXPANSION OF THE ECONOMIC BLOCKADE
Following instructions from the United States, several Latin American countries also stated that they will coordinate actions with international financial organizations to “try not to grant loans to the Government of Venezuela,” which is facing a major economic crisis.
In addition, they noted that they will intensify and expand the exchange of financial information to perfect the sanctions against the South American nation, all with the objective of tightening the economic blockade against Caracas.
6- ENCOURAGING BORDER DISPUTES
One of the consequences of the economic war and crisis that Venezuela is suffering, promoted from abroad, is the increase in migration flows from that country to neighboring nations.
Although this is a common phenomenon in the history of Latin America, and in the past Venezuela itself received millions of Colombians and other migrants, there are attempts to manipulate the issue in order to justify a conflict.
Colombia and Brazil have both seen an increase in the presence of U.S. troops, while the U.S. government has said it hasn’t ruled out a “military option” in the case of Venezuela.
7- THE EUROPEAN UNION JOINS THE ATTACKS
Contrary to the attempts to maintain an independent foreign policy from the United States, the European Union has joined the attacks against the Venezuelan government.
The bloc announced that it is studying the adoption of measures following alleged irregularities in the Venezuelan elections.
According to the EU and specifically Spain, the elections in Venezuela revealed “fundamental democratic deficiencies” and “serious irregularities,” despite the fact that more than 150 international observers highlighted the validity and transparency of the results emanating from the polls.
8- OPPOSITION BOYCOTT
Before the official results were issued by the National Electoral Council (CNE), presidential candidate Henri Falcón had already stated that he wouldn’t recognize the results of the electoral process.
Falcón, who obtained 1,820,552 votes, representing 21.01%, thus followed a formula widely used by the Venezuelan right on refusing to accept the results at the polls when unfavorable to them.
Meanwhile, Javier Bertucci, the candidate for Esperanza para el Cambio (Hope for Change Party), who obtained only 10.82% of the vote, also joined the campaign to undermine the results, alleging “violations of the Venezuelan electoral law.” However, he later accepted the result, but continued to question the process.
9- THE PATH OF VIOLENCE
After being re-elected as Head of State, Maduro called for dialogue and reconciliation, proposals that were immediately rejected by the Democratic Unity Roundtable coalition (MUD) and other opposition forces.
The MUD, which didn’t propose a candidate for these presidential elections, sacrificed its own political space in the country several months ago and embraced calls for violence, while crying fraud long before the results were announced, just like those opposition candidates participating, and also ruling out any possibility of talks with the Maduro government.
Extremely discredited and divided, the MUD, which doesn’t propose its own government agenda, but rather a series of directives specified from abroad, is now trying to fabricate a scenario to delegitimize the elections in which it decided not to participate, aware of its likely defeat against Chavista forces.
10-MEDIA MANIPULATION
From the photos used in the international media, to the headlines chosen, the coverage of the elections in Venezuela was designed to try to undermine the participation of citizens and their majority support for the Bolivarian Revolution.
Likewise, most of the Western mass media continues to echo terms such as “political prisoners,” when the government has provided countless evidence that those who are being prosecuted have committed crimes or incited violence, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths.
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Donald Trump‘s use of the Twitter block button violated the First Amendment. The ruling has implications for any government official—federal, state, or local—who uses Twitter or other social media platforms to communicate with the public.
The block button is a key weapon in Twitter’s war against trolling and harassment, and Trump has used it since long before he was president. But last year, a group of Twitter users who had been blocked by Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account sued, arguing that the use of the feature by a public official violates the First Amendment.
The main effect of blocking someone is that that person’s tweets no longer show up in the blocker’s timeline. No one disputes that Trump has the right to do that if he wants. But blocking someone also works in the other direction: if Trump blocks another user, that user can’t see Trump’s tweets and (as a consequence) can’t reply to them. And that, ruled Naomi Buchwald, a New York Federal judge, raises a constitutional problem.
How a presidential tweet is like a public park
These Twitter users are participating in a constitutionally protected public forum, a federal judge has ruled.
The courts have long held that if the government creates a “public forum”—like a park, lecture hall, or street corner—that it must make the forum available to all speakers, regardless of their viewpoint. A city government can’t say that only Republicans, Christians, or vegetarians are allowed to hold rallies in the town square, and it can’t blacklist activists with a history of criticizing the mayor.
Last year, a federal judge applied this same reasoning to a Virginia politician’s Facebook page. The court held that the official’s Facebook page constituted a public forum and she had therefore violated the First Amendment when she blocked a critical constituent from commenting on it.
The Trump case is a little bit different because Twitter doesn’t give anyone the ability to post comments directly on Trump’s Twitter page. However, if you click on a Donald Trump tweet, you’ll see a long list of replies to that tweet listed underneath.
If Donald Trump blocks someone, that person loses the opportunity to reply to Trump tweets and have their tweet show up underneath them. They also lose the ability to retweet Trump tweets.
Buchwald’s ruling concludes that the “interactive space for replies and retweets” surrounding each Donald Trump tweet should be considered a public forum under First Amendment law. As a result, blocking these users from replying to and retweeting Trump tweets violated the First Amendment.
To qualify as a public forum, the government must “intend to make the property generally available to a class of speakers,” Buchwald writes. “The government does not create a public forum by inaction or by permitting limited discourse, but only by intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public discourse.”
In what seems to us like the weakest part of the decision, Buchwald concludes that the “interactive space” around Trump’s tweets qualifies under this standard. “Anyone with a Twitter account who has not been blocked may participate in the interactive space by replying or retweeting the president’s tweets,” she writes. The Trump administration has advertised Trump’s Twitter account as a way for Trump to communicate directly with the public, she notes.
One way to look at this is that Trump is deliberately creating a public forum each time he writes a new tweet. But it seems at least as likely that Trump has no particular desire to create a public forum—that he considers the public’s ability to post publicly visible replies to his tweets to be an incidental or even unwelcome part of how Twitter functions.
On the other hand, if Trump’s goal were merely to get annoying users to stop bothering him, he could accomplish that goal just as well using the mute button. This button prevents tweets from muted accounts from showing up in Trump’s timeline and notifications, but it doesn’t prevent muted users from replying to and retweeting Trump’s tweets. The fact that Trump chose to block users instead suggests that his goal was to prevent them from communicating with others. And that could be seen as a sign that Trump is trying to shape discourse in the public forum he previously created.
If Buchwald’s ruling is upheld on appeal, it’s likely to create a lot more work for the courts in the future. In last year’s ruling about Facebook blocking, the judge held that public officials could do a certain amount of content moderation, provided that it was done in a content-neutral manner. But in heated political debates, the line between legitimate moderation and illegitimate censorship isn’t always obvious. So expect more lawsuits to establish exactly when and how public officials are allowed to use moderation and anti-harassment tools.
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Timothy is a senior reporter covering tech policy, blockchain technologies and the future of transportation. He lives in Washington DC.
The Bee Informed Partnership recently conducted the twelfth annual survey of managed honey bee colony losses in the United States. This year, 4,794 beekeepers collectively managing 175,923 colonies in October 2017 provided validated survey responses. This represents 6.6% of the estimated 2.67 million managed honey-producing colonies in the nation (USDA, 2018).
During the 2017-2018 winter (1 October 2017 – 1 April 2018), an estimated 30.7% of managed colonies in the United States were lost (Fig. 1). This represents an increase of 9.5 percentage points over that of the previous year, and an increase of 2.8 percentage points over that of the 10-year average total winter colony loss rate of 27.9%.
Similar to previous years, backyard beekeepers lost more colonies in winter (46.3%) compared to those lost by sideline (38.0%) and commercial (26.4%) beekeepers. Backyard, sideline, and commercial beekeepers are defined as those managing 50 or fewer colonies, 51 – 500 colonies, and 501 or more colonies, respectively.
Interestingly, the self-reported ‘level of acceptable winter colony loss’ increased from 18.7% last year to 20.6% this year. Sixty-nine percent of responding beekeepers lost more of their colonies than deemed to be acceptable.
During the summer 2017 season (1 April 2017– 1 October 2017), an estimated 17.1% of managed colonies were lost in the U.S. This level is on par with summer colony loss estimates of 18.2% that were reported the previous year, and lower than the 20.9% average experienced by beekeepers since 2010-2011, when summer losses were first recorded by the Bee Informed Partnership.
For the entire survey period (1 April 2017 – 1 April 2018), beekeepers in the U.S. lost an estimated 40.1% of their managed honey bee colonies. This is 2.7 percentage points greater than the average annual rate of loss experienced by beekeepers since 2010-2011.
Fig 1. Total winter colony loss rate in the United States across years of the Bee Informed Partnership’s National Honey Bee Colony Loss Survey (yellow bars; 1 October – 1 April)1. Total annual loss estimates (orange bars) include total winter and summer (1 April – 1 October) losses; the latter has been estimated since 2010-2011 only. The acceptable winter loss rate (grey bars) is the average percentage of acceptable winter colony loss declared by the survey participants in each year of the survey.
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References
Kulhanek, K; Steinhauer, N; Rennich, K; Caron, DM; Sagili, RR; Pettis, JS; Ellis, JD; Wilson, ME; Wilkes, JT; Tarpy, DR; Rose, R; Lee, K; Rangel, J; vanEngelsdorp, D (2017) A national survey of managed honey bee 2015-2016 annual colony losses in the USA. Journal of Apicultural Research 56: 328-340.
Lee, KV; Steinhauer, N; Rennich, K; Wilson, ME; Tarpy, DR; Caron, DM; Rose, R; Delaplane, KS; Baylis, K; Lengerich, EJ; Pettis, J; Skinner, JA; Wilkes, JT; Sagili, R; vanEngelsdorp, D; for the Bee Informed Partnership (2015) A national survey of managed honey bee 2013–2014 annual colony losses in the USA. Apidologie 46: 292-305.
Seitz, N; Traynor, KS; Steinhauer, N; Rennich, K; Wilson, ME; Ellis, JD; Rose, R; Tarpy, DR; Sagili, RR; Caron, DM; Delaplane, KS; Rangel, J; Lee, K; Baylis, K; Wilkes, JT; Skinner, JA; Pettis, JS; vanEngelsdorp, D (2016) A national survey of managed honey bee 2014-2015 annual colony losses in the USA. Journal of Apicultural Research 54: 292-304.
Spleen, AM; Lengerich, EJ; Rennich, K; Caron, D; Rose, R; Pettis, JS; Henson, M; Wilkes, JT; Wilson, M; Stitzinger, J; Lee, K; Andree, M; Snyder, R; vanEngelsdorp, D (2013) A national survey of managed honey bee 2011-12 winter colony losses in the United States: results from the Bee Informed Partnership. Journal of Apicultural Research 52: 44-53.
Steinhauer, NA; Rennich, K; Wilson, ME; Caron, DM; Lengerich, EJ; Pettis, JS; Rose, R; Skinner, JA; Tarpy, DR; Wilkes, JT; vanEngelsdorp, D (2014) A national survey of managed honey bee 2012-2013 annual colony losses in the USA: results from the Bee Informed Partnership. Journal of Apicultural Research 53: 1- 18.
USDA (2018) National Agricultural Statistics Service – Honey Report.
van Engelsdorp, D; Caron, D; Hayes, J; Underwood, R; Henson, M; Rennich, K; Spleen, A; Andree, M; Snyder, R; Lee, K; Roccasecca, K; Wilson, M; Wilkes, J; Lengerich, E; Pettis, J (2012) A national survey of managed honey bee 2010-11 winter colony losses in the USA: results from the Bee Informed Partnership. Journal of Apicultural Research 51: 115-124.
vanEngelsdorp, D; Hayes, J; Underwood, RM; Caron, D; Pettis, J (2011) A survey of managed honey bee colony losses in the USA, fall 2009 to winter 2010. Journal of Apicultural Research 50: 1-10.
van Engelsdorp, D; Hayes, J; Underwood, RM; Pettis, J (2008) A Survey of Honey Bee Colony Losses in the U.S., Fall 2007 to Spring 2008. PLoS ONE 3: e4071.
van Engelsdorp, D; Hayes, J; Underwood, RM; Pettis, JS (2010) A survey of honey bee colony losses in the United States, fall 2008 to spring 2009. Journal of Apicultural Research 49: 7-14.
van Engelsdorp, D; Underwood, R; Caron, D; Hayes, J (2007) An estimate of managed colony losses in the winter of 2006-2007: A report commissioned by the apiary inspectors of America. American Bee Journal 147: 599-603.
Note
1 Previous survey results estimated total winter colony loss values of 21% in the winter of 2016-17, 27% in 2015-16, 22% in 2014-15, 24% in 2013-14, 30% in 2012-13, 22% in 2011-12, 30% in 2010-11, 32% in 2009-10, 29% in 2008-09, 36% in 2007-08, and 32% in 2006-07 (see reference list).
The Trump administration is trying to bring back some of the worst and most appalling hunting practices for wolves, grizzly bears and other wildlife on 20 million acres of federal public lands in Alaska. A rule proposed today by the Department of the Interior would roll back an Obama-era regulation that prohibits such controversial and scientifically unjustified methods of hunting as using artificial light to kill hibernating bears and their cubs, shooting wolf and coyote pups and mothers in their dens, using bait to attract brown and black bears, shooting vulnerable swimming caribou, and using dogs to hunt black bears.
This proposal is unlawful because it conflicts with clear statutory directives from Congress that the National Park Service must conserve and protect wildlife in national preserves.
For years, the National Park Service has pushed back against Alaska’s increased use of fringe hunting methods that prioritize trophy hunting over conservation. After being fed up with the state’s efforts to expand killing of predators on national preserves in order to have more ungulates such as caribou to hunt, the NPS, in 2014, began work on a rule that was finalized the following year. That rule made clear that certain methods of hunting that Alaska sanctions for predator control are inconsistent with the NPS’s conservation mandates, and are prohibited on national preserves in Alaska.
Last year, when the state of Alaska and Safari Club International sued NPS to invalidate this crucial rule, the Humane Society of the United States intervened in the lawsuit to defend the rule and similar rules issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Now, in a new ploy, the NPS is claiming that due to secretarial orders issued by Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to expand hunting opportunities on federal lands and improve coordination with states, the agency is required to rescind these protections. In reality, the agency and Zinke have no authority to override Congressional protections for these federal lands.
This proposed rule also goes against the wishes of Alaskans themselves, and can hurt the state’s economy. A March 2016 poll found that most Alaskans abhor and oppose these hunting practices, and support putting a stop to these methods on federal lands. Alaska’s predator control practices also do not make any economic sense. Wildlife watching in Alaska contributes far more to local economies than trophy hunting. Like Alaskans, most Americans value wildlife and relish the unique opportunity to see bears, wolves, river otters, wolverines and lynx in Alaska’s national parks and preserves. Wildlife watchers who visit Alaska’s national parks and preserves, such as Denali, contribute more than $2 billion each year toward these activities, with wolves and grizzly bears among the biggest lures for tourists. Wildlife watching contributes five times more than the amount generated in Alaska from all hunting activity (and these extreme methods account for only a tiny fraction of total hunting in the state).
We need your help to stop the federal government from handing over some of our most precious wildlife to trophy hunters. Please post your comments here to tell the Department of the Interior that you do not support these methods of hunting, and urge them to keep the prohibitions in place. Here’s a sample message you can use or adapt:
“I am opposed to the National Park Service’s plan to repeal the 2015 rule, which would be inconsistent with the agency’s statutory conservation mandate, prohibiting killing hibernating bears and their cubs using artificial light, shooting wolf and coyote pups and mothers in their dens, using bait to attract brown and black bears to shoot them point blank, shooting vulnerable swimming caribou, and using dogs to hunt black bears. Americans do not support these hunting methods and travel to Alaska to see these wild animals, providing billions of essential dollars to the local economy to do so. Please keep these prohibitions in place.”
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Kitty Block is acting President and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States and President of Humane Society International, the international affiliate of The HSUS.
On May 14, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchinsmiled for pictures in front of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Big day for Israel,“ Donald Trumptweeted. “Congratulations!“
Meanwhile, just miles away in Gaza, Yazan Ibraheem Mohammed Al-Tubassi lay dying after repeatedly being shot by Israeli troops during protests at the Gaza border fence. Elsewhere, relatives of Taher Ahmed Madi — another shooting victim — carried his body home from the hospital to prepare for his funeral.
No words can describe the anger and anguish I feel as a Palestinian in America watching this unfold.
The protests weren’t about the relocation of the U.S. embassy. They began several weeks ago to mark the anniversary of the Nakba, or “catastrophe” — the mass exodus and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since Israel’s founding in 1948.
Every year, while Israelis celebrate the establishment of their state, millions of Palestinians mourn the end to their existence as they knew it.
Source: Shutterstock
For the Trump administration to choose this day for the relocation of the embassy while Palestinians were being murdered just 60 miles away is horrendously cruel. The United States has proven that it isn’t only indifferent toward Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but has actively green lit the violence of the past few weeks.
In 1948, my grandparents, whose families had lived in Palestine for hundreds of years, were forced out of the only home they ever knew. Practically overnight, they were made into refugees and forced to make the almost 200-mile journey to Jordan on foot.
Leaving behind their belongings, family, and memories, they settled in Jordan, hoping the international community would help them one day return to their homes.
My grandparents, who never stopped talking about their life in Palestine, never saw it again. They passed away in Jordan, leaving the key to their house in Palestine with my family. We still have it today, serving as a reminder of our roots — and of the abuse my family and so many others have suffered under Israel.
Still, I’m reminded that my grandparents were fortunate enough to make it out alive. The millions who have been forced into Gaza cannot say the same. They aren’t free to come and go as they choose, but remain locked in the world’s largest open air prison — cut down if they so much as approach the “border fence“ with Israel.
Only 10 percent of Gazans have access to safe drinking water, almost half of the population is unemployed, and over 70 percent live in poverty. They get only a few hours of electricity a day. Not to mention the psychological effects of living under siege, and the daily fear of attacks by Israel.
It’s infuriating to see my own country actively condoning brutal violence against my people while other countries sit back and watch. How can Palestinians ever trust a “peace process“ led by an administration that degrades them this way?
I keep hearing people say that Gazans need to “protest peacefully“ as Israeli snipers gun them down methodically. They’re being given two options: Either suffer inhumane treatment or get killed protesting it. It’s not much of a choice.
No one would passively accept a life like this. Why should Gazans?
*
Razan Azzarkani is a Palestinian American living in Virginia and working at the Center for Global Policy. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki asked prosecutors at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday to launch a full investigation into accusations of Israeli human rights abuses on Palestinian territory, saying the evidence was “insurmountable”.
Maliki submitted a “referral” giving the prosecutor at the Hague-based court the legal basis to move beyond a preliminary inquiry started in January 2015.
He said the request would give prosecutors the authority to investigate alleged crimes starting in 2014 and beyond, including last week’s deaths during protests in Gaza.
“We believe there is ample and insurmountable evidence to that effect and we believe that proceeding with an investigation is the right and needed course of action,” he said.
The International Criminal Court has the authority to hear cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the 123 countries that have signed up to it. Israel has not joined the court, but because the Palestinians have, Israelis could be targeted for crimes committed on Palestinian lands.
The decision by the Palestinians to join the court was opposed by major powers, who feared it could damage chances for peace talks.
“Through judicial referral we want. ..the office of the prosecutor to open without delay an investigation into all crimes,” Maliki said after meeting with chief ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda.
“Further delaying justice for Palestinian victims is also tantamount to denial of justice.”
Israel criticises move
Israel rejected Tuesday’s move as “legally invalid”, saying the court lacks jurisdiction because the Palestinian Authority is not a state and Israel abides by international law.
“The Palestinians continue to exploit the court for political purposes, rather than work towards resuming the peace process with Israel,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“It is absurd that the Palestinian actions vis-a-vis the court come at a time when the Palestinians continue to incite to acts of terrorism,” it said.
The court’s prosecutors launched an initial investigation into allegations against Israel when the Palestinians first joined the court in 2015. Tuesday’s referral allows that investigation to proceed to the next stage of a full investigation, without waiting for a judge to give approval.
Harvard legal expert Alex Whiting, a former ICC prosecutor, said on Twitter that the referral “has a real effect … it is much harder for the office of the prosecutor to stay in the preliminary investigation phase for years”.
The ICC, which opened in July 2002, is a court of last resort, only stepping in when a state is unwilling or unable to investigate crimes on its territory.
A new report out Wednesday that’s based on government documents details the “pervasive abuse and neglect of immigrant children” in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) during the Obama administration—and experts are warning such behavior could be much worse under the Trump administration, infamous for its “dehumanizaing” and “cruel” immigration policies.
Fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, tens of thousands of children come to the United States each year and are detained by CBP, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The report (pdf) from the ACLU and University of Chicago Law School says detained children have faced “physical and psychological abuse, unsanitary and inhumane living conditions, isolation from family members, extended periods of detention, and denial of access to legal and medical services.”
In a series of tweets, the ACLU highlighted some of the particularly egregious cases revealed in the records, which were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and are dated from 2009 to 2014. The group also decried the lack of agency accountability, calling agents’ behavior “reprehensible and un-American,” and warning the practices could worsen under the Trump administration.
Officials at @CBP allegedly: • Kicked a child in the ribs • Ran over a 17yo with a patrol car • Sexually assaulted a 16yo girl in a search • Detained a 4lb premature baby and her mother in an overcrowded and dirty cell full of sick people
All human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their immigration status — and children, in particular, deserve special protection. The abuse that takes place by government officials is reprehensible and un-American.
The amount of children who have come forward about various forms of abuse suggests that such treatment by U.S. officials is commonplace. The report notes that:
a quarter of kids reported physical abuse, including sexual assault and beatings by CBP agents;
more than half reported verbal abuse such death threats, and denial of necessary medical care, including cases that led to children requiring hospitalization; and
80 percent reported inadequate food and water.
“Beyond the misconduct detailed,” the report points out that these “documents are shocking for the independent reason that they do not contain any evidence of disciplinary action or other meaningful accountability for abusive CBP officials,” in spite of the fact that DHS has multiple internal oversight agencies.
“The misconduct demonstrated in these records is breathtaking, as is the government’s complete failure to hold officials who abuse their power accountable,” said ACLU Border Litigation Project staff attorney Mitra Ebadolahi. “These documents provide a glimpse into a federal immigration enforcement system marked by brutality and lawlessness.”
The records were obtained by two regional affiliates of the ACLU as part of ongoing litigation, and developed into a report by students in the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago.
“The students reviewing these records were shocked by the abuse and neglect these children were subjected to at the hands of U.S. officials,” said clinic director Claudia Flores. “The fact that these children were already so vulnerable—most traveling alone in hopes of escaping violence and poverty in their home countries—made the unlawful and inhumane actions reflected in the documents even more distressing.”
Considering that the “documents show that abuse occurs at each stage of a child’s interaction with CBP, from apprehension to detention to deportation,” the report concludes that “urgent intervention is necessary to protect these vulnerable children from mistreatment, abuse, and violence, which is otherwise bound to recur.”
“Estamos voar com o F-35 em todo o Médio Oriente e já atacamos duas vezes em duas frentes distintas”: anunciou ontem, o General Amikam Norkin, Comandante da Força Aérea de Israel, na conferência sobre “superioridade aérea” em Herzliya, (um subúrbio de Tel Aviv) com a participação dos mais altos representantes da aeronáutica de 20 países, incluindo a Itália.
O General não especificou onde foram usados os F-35 e deixou perceber que um dos ataques foi realizado na Síria. Também mostrou imagens dos F-35s israelitas a voar sobre Beirute, no Líbano, mas é quase certo, que também já foram usados para missões de não-ataque no Irão.
Israel, um dos 12 “parceiros globais” do programa F-35, liderado pela empresa americana Lockheed Martin, foi o primeiro a comprar o novo caça da quinta geração, que ele tornou a baptizar de “Adir” (Poderoso). Até agora, recebeu nove dos 50 F-35 encomendados, todos do modelo A de decolagem e pouso convencionais e é provável, que adquira 75 aparelhos. Objectivo realizável, visto que Israel recebe dos Estados Unidos, uma ajuda militar de cerca de 4 biliões de dólares por ano.
Em Julho de 2016, na base Luke dos U.S. Air Force, no Arizona, iniciou-se o treino dos primeiros pilotos israelitas do F-35. Depois de terem participado num curso com mais de três meses de duração, nos EUA, para conseguir o ‘brevet’, eles têm de levar a cabo alguns meses de treino de “vôo real” em Israel. Até agora formaram-se cerca de 30 pilotos. Em 6 de Dezembro de 2017, a Força Aérea de Israel declarou operacional, a sua primeira equipa dos F-35.
Israel também participa no programa F-35 com sua própria indústria militar. A empresa Israel Aerospace Industries produz as asas dos caças; a Elbit Systems-Cyclone fabrica componentes da fuselagem; A Elbit Systems Ltd está a desenvolver um display para o capacete da terceira geração, com o qual serão equipados todos os pilotos dos F-35. O anúncio do General Norkin de que o F-35 está finalmente “combat proven” (provado em combate) tem, portanto, um efeito prático fundamental: o de impulsionar o programa F-35, que tem enfrentado inúmeros problemas técnicos e necessita de actualizações contínuas com custos adicionais, que aumentam ainda mais o custo desmesurado do programa. O complexo software do caça foi modificado mais de 30 vezes e requer mais melhorias. O anúncio do General Norkin foi particularmente apreciado pela Presidente Directora Executiva da Lockheed Martin, Marillyn Hewson, oradora da conferência sobre a “superioridade aérea”.
O anúncio de que Israel já usou o F-35 numa acção de guerra serve, ao mesmo tempo, de aviso ao Irão. Os F-35A, adquiridos por Israel, são projectados principalmente para o uso de armas nucleares, em particular para a nova bomba B61-12 com direcção de precisão, na fase final de fabrico, que os Estados Unidos além de a instalarem em Itália e noutros países europeus, certamente também irão fornecê-la a Israel, a única potência nuclear do Médio Oriente, possuidora de um arsenal estimado de 100 a 400 armas nucleares.
As forças nucleares israelitas estão integradas no sistema electrónico NATO, no âmbito do “Programa de Cooperação Individual” com Israel, país que, embora não seja membro da Aliança, tem uma missão permanente na sede da NATO, em Bruxelas. Nesse contexto, a Itália, a Alemanha, a França, a Grécia e a Polónia participaram com os EUA no Blue Flag 2017, o maior exercício de guerra aérea internacional da História de Israel, no qual também foram realizados testes de ataque nuclear.
«Stiamo volando con gli F-35 su tutto il Medio Oriente e abbiamo giàattaccato due volte su due differenti fronti»: lo ha annunciato ieri il generale Amikam Norkin, comandante della Forza aerea israeliana, alla conferenza sulla «superioritàaerea»in svolgimento a Herzliya (un sobborgo di Tel Aviv) con la partecipazione dei massimi rappresentanti delle aeronautiche di 20 paesi, Italia compresa.
Il generale non ha specificato dove sono stati impiegati gli F-35, ha lasciato peròintendere che uno degli attacchi èstato effettuato in Siria. Ha inoltre mostrato l’immagine di F-35 israeliani in volo su Beirut in Libano, ma quasi certamente sono giàstati usati per missioni non di attacco anche in Iran.
Israele, uno dei 12 «partner globali»del programma F-35 capeggiato dalla statunitense Lockheed Martin, èstato il primo ad acquistare il nuovo caccia di quinta generazione, che ha ribattezzato «Adir»(Potente). Ha ricevuto finora nove dei 50 F-35 ordinati, tutti del modello A a decollo e atterraggio convenzionali, ed èprobabile che ne acquisti 75. Obiettivo realizzabile, dato che Israele riceve dagli Stati uniti, ogni anno, un aiuto militare di circa 4 miliardi di dollari.
Nel luglio 2016 èiniziato, nella base Luke della U.S. Air Force in Arizona, l’addestramento dei primi piloti israeliani di F-35. Dopo aver seguito un corso di oltre tre mesi negli Usa, per conseguire il brevetto devono effettuare alcuni mesi di addestramento al «volo reale»in Israele. Finora ne sono stati formati circa 30. Il 6 dicembre 2017, la Forza aerea israeliana ha dichiarato operativa la sua prima squadra di F-35.
Israele partecipa al programma F-35 anche con la propria industria militare. Le Israel Aerospace Industriesproducono ali del caccia; la Elbit Systems-Cyclonefabbrica componenti della fusoliera; la Elbit Systems Ltd sta sviluppando un display per il casco di terza generazione, di cui saranno dotati tutti i piloti di F-35. L’annuncio del generale Norkin che l’F-35 èfinalmente«combat proven»(provato in combattimento) ha quindi un primo effetto pratico: quello di dare impulso al programma dell’F-35 che ha incontrato numerosi problemi tecnici e necessita continui ammodernamenti con costi aggiuntivi che fanno lievitare il costo giàenorme del programma. Il complesso software del caccia èstato finora modificato oltre 30 volte e richiede ulteriori aggiornamenti. L’annuncio del generale Norkin èstato quindi particolarmente apprezzato dall’amministratore delegato della Lockheed Martin, Marillyn Hewson, uno dei relatori alla conferenza sulla «superioritàaerea».
L’annuncio che Israele ha giàimpiegato gli F-35 in un’azione reale di guerra serve allo stesso tempo quale avvertimento all’Iran. Gli F-35A, quelli acquistati da Israele, sono progettati soprattutto per l’uso di armi nucleari, in particolare della nuova bomba B61-12 a guida di precisione in fase finale di realizzazione, che gli Stati uniti, oltre a schierare in Italia e altri paesi europei, forniranno quasi certamente anche a Israele, unica potenza nucleare in Medioriente, in possesso di un arsenale stimato in 100-400 armi nucleari.
Le forze nucleari israeliane sono integrate nel sistema elettronico Nato, nel quadro del«Programma di cooperazione individuale»con Israele, paese che, pur non essendo membro della Alleanza, ha una missione permanente al quartier generale della Nato a Bruxelles.In tale quadro Italia, Germania, Francia, Grecia e Polonia hanno partecipato con gli Usa alla Blue Flag 2017, la piùgrande esercitazione internazionale di guerra aerea nella storia di Israele, in cui sono state effettuate anche prove di attacco nucleare.
Il«Contratto per il governo del cambiamemto», stipulato da Luigi Di Maio e Matteo Salvini a nome del MoVimento 5 Stelle e della Lega, da un lato «conferma l’appartenenza all’Alleanza atlantica, con gli Stati Uniti d’America quale alleato privilegiato», dall’altro promette «una apertura alla Russia, da percepirsi non come una minaccia ma quale partner economico e commerciale (per cui è opportuno il ritiro delle sanzioni), da riabilitarsi come interlocutore strategico al fine della risoluzione delle crisi regionali»e addirittura quale «potenziale partner per la Nato».
More than ever, Global Research needs your support. Our task as an independent media is to “Battle the Lie”.
“Lying” in mainstream journalism has become the “new normal”: mainstream journalists are pressured to comply. Some journalists refuse.
Lies, distortions and omissions are part of a multibillion dollar propaganda operation which sustains the “war narrative”.
While “Truth” is a powerful instrument, “the Lie” is generously funded by the lobby groups and corporate charities. And that is why we need the support of our readers.
US President Donald Trump has blamed Chinese President Xi Jinping for a change in North Korea’s tone following Washington’s landmark overtures with Pyongyang.
Corbyn’s Phoenix-like rise signifies the last gasp of the old social democratic contract between capital and labour, when the organised working class took a little more of the wealth they created, back via the social contract, not necessarily as money but principally via the social wage; the NHS; public housing, social benefits, greater state regulation of capital, nationalisations, some progressive taxation and so on.
Last week’s massacre in Gaza would not have happened if organisations which the public rely upon to uphold international human rights standards had done what they are supposed to do and spoken out at an OECD Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains in Paris in April, just days after Israel had, at that stage, gunned down and killed over 30 innocent civilians in Gaza.
A recently-held African National Congress (ANC) Land Summit (May 19-20) convened in the Republic of South Africa just several months after the passage of a parliamentary resolution which would theoretically redistribute white-owned farms to the African majority.
Secretary of State Pompeo’s direct and fiery demand earlier this week that Iran withdraw from Syria overshadowed President Putin’s indirect and polite request during last week’s Sochi Summit for the same, thereby putting Syria on the spot in having to publicly deny that any such talks were ongoing in order to “save face”, though the American strategy of sabotaging Russia’s peace plan isn’t as clear-cut as it may seem.
History tells a tale. After Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi gave up Libya’s nuclear weapons program, he was eventually deposed by NATO bombing in support of rebels who brutally murdered Gaddafi in cold blood. Hillary Clintongleefully cackled about it afterwards on CBS News.
Here is a little known but extremely relevant fact: The first campaign to “Stop the Stigma of Mental Illness” was launched many years ago by the psycho-pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharma) that makes tens of billions of dollars annually by selling unaffordable, often highly addictive, brain-altering drugs that are then promoted by psychiatrists and family physicians as being necessary for the rest of the drug-taking patient’s lives.
Why doesn’t that surprise anybody? The norm for all capitalist enterprises is to make money by hook or by crook.
With a seemingly altruistic agenda of understanding and compassionately dealing with unfortunate people that are somehow different than the rest of us, the fact is that the campaign is all about marketing a product rather than ending the “stigma” of so-called “mental illnesses”.
The campaigns have been going on for decades under different guises and each one (see a partial list of some of them at the end of this column) has been started and funded by greedy, sociopathic multinational pharmaceutical corporations that primarily want to maximize their profits by getting more and more patients labeled as having mental illnesses (of unknown cause), which will ensure that many of them will be placed on potentially-dangerous, dependency-inducing psych drugs.
The primary propaganda targets of drug company advertising are prescribing doctors and nurse practitioners.The secondary targets however are the obedient, drug-swallowing folks who are sitting in front of the boob tube, most of whom naturally feel sad or nervous from time to time and who are somehow willing to swallow whatever drug is prescribed to them.
It is a simple three step process that begins with a prospective patient passively watching an attractive female actor on TV, to then wanting to get a diagnosis for whatever disorder the actor was supposed to have, and then finding a health caregiver to prescribe whatever drug the actor on TV was “cured” by taking.
The same TV drugs and TV “disorders” are also subtly and cunningly promoted in non-paid TV programming that avoids discussing any of the negative aspects of the Big Pharma drugs (or vaccines) from which the media outlets had accepted large amounts of advertising money that always keeps unwelcome truths from coming out, thus complying with the old rule that says that “whoever pays the piper calls the tune” (meaning that TV and radio broadcasters never report anything that might offend the program’s paymasters and advertisers and that interview hosts try not to invite courageous truth-tellers or whistle-blowers on to their shows).
Among the first Big Pharma front groups that promoted ”mental illness de-stigmatization campaigns” were the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD). Some of the deep-pocketed founding sponsors of NAMI, CHADD and some of the other so-called PAOs included Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Glaxo, Janssen, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, SmithKline Beecham, and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs.
So next time you see an advertisement or a commentary article in your local newspaper or television station from an obvious PAO or some psychiatrist group that is promoting another “stop the stigmatization of the ‘mentally ill’” campaign, understand that the group is very likely a front group for a multinational psycho-pharmaceutical company that actually only wants to sell more product.
Such blatant PAO promotions are no different than the “Just Get Your Damn Flu Shots” campaigns every fall and winter that are sponsored by some fake PAO. They also are just paid-for advertisements from some of the Big Vaccine corporations and their partners in the CDC that have vested interests in unloading their supply of seasonal vaccines to an unsuspecting public.
The target audiences for seasonal influenza shots will not be informed how high are the Numbers Needed to Vaccinate (NNV), which is the number of people that have to be vaccinated in order for just one vaccinee to benefit.
And the target audiences will also not be informed how low are the Absolute Vaccine Effectiveness (AVE) ratios for any given vaccine. (The AVE compares the number of vaccinated patients that didn’t get the viral infection with the number of patients that also didn’t get the infection but didn’t get vaccinated.)
And the target audiences also won’t be informed that the 3 flu viruses that have to be prematurely chosen for the coming year’s influenza season are highly likely to be just another one of the many vaccine mis-matches that have occurred over the years – and therefore ineffective in preventing the flu.
Below are some of the facts about how Big Pharma corporations have created and paid for the “de-stigmatization campaign PAOs for the so-called ‘mentally ill’”. A U.S. Senate investigation revealed that in just two years (2006-2008) Big Pharma companies funded NAMI to the tune of $23 million, representing three-quarters of its donations.And one of the major Big Pharma corporations actually “lent” one of its high-ranking officials to NAMI during its formative years in order the “harmonize” its strategies with the company.
Creating The Perfect Marketing/Lobbying Machine: Big Pharma’s Funding of “Patient Advocacy Organizations”
Mental health-type PAOs are groups operating under the guise of advocacy for the so-called “mentally ill”. In reality they are just Big Pharma front groups whose major functions are to influence public opinion by offering “expert opinions” on mental health issues, to keep mental health and so-called mental illnesses at the forefront of media coverage, to “support” patients who are already mired in the mental health system and to lobby legislators to pass legislation at both the state and federal levels. Big Pharma’s deceptive PAO campaigns affect large segments of the population, from normally inattentive and active kids to normally sullen and over-indulged teen-agers, to America’s stressed-out and traumatized military, to tired pregnant women and stressed-out nursing mothers and their babies, to the sad and neglected elderly in nursing homes, etc, etc, etc.
The job of the PAOs is to convince target audiences that normal variations in mood, emotions and behaviors are actually abnormal mental health conditions that need psychiatric evaluation and prescription drugs forever.
Is the new NAMI-Spawned “Make it OK” Campaign Serving the Interests of Big Pharma?
Most potential psychiatric patients (all of us) are unfamiliar with the pro-drug mental health PAOs that include NAMI, CHADD, NAMI’s recent spin-off “Make It OK”, and the myriad of bipolar, anxiety, depression or ADHD “support groups” that are all over the internet, but these groups need to be exposed for the deceptive front groups that they actually are.
Presenting themselves as innocuous PAOs is disingenuous, but the concept is quite seductive to the propaganda targets and altruistic helping volunteers, many of whom have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member who might have emotional or mood problems or are already struggling with the toxic or addictive effects of their cocktails of psych drugs.
Source: Hudson Hospital
PAOs are also very successful influencers of legislators, the media and the American public and have been very successful in getting laws passed that benefit the sociopathic drug industries that fund them, under the guise of helping the patients they claim to represent and from whom they reap enormous profits.
One would expect that any organization claiming to be advocates for the rights of patients would have as primary goals the full disclosure of all drug risks, the right to refuse treatment, and the right to know that psychiatric labels are not medical conditions that can be confirmed by any known lab or radiological test. But they are not advocates for the rights of patients at all.
One would expect that such altruistic-sounding PAOs would also provide patients with factual information about alternatives to Big Pharma’s unaffordable, poorly-tested, non-curative and sometimes lethal drugs (alternatives such as the many effective and potentially curative non-drug treatments that are affordable, non-addictive, non-harmful. But they don’t provide that information.
One would expect that an honest patients’ rights group would never endorse something as absurd and obviously dangerous as giving electroshock to pregnant women, nor would they condone schools requiring children to take a psychiatric drug as a condition of attending school. But they do.
One would think that an honest PAO would never be opposed to the FDA issuing warnings that antidepressants are known to cause some patients to become manic, more depressed, sleep deprived or have new thoughts of committing suicide and homicide. But they have opposed such warnings.
One would think that an ethical PAO would never object to the FDA issuing warnings that so-called “ADHD” drugs are essentially amphetamine-based drugs and therefore highly addictive andeven deadly. But they have objected to such warnings.
The following information is excerpted from one of the most effective Big Psychiatry and Big Pharma whistleblowing organizations in the world, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (www.cchrint.org). CCHR’s website is full of unimpeachable information exposing the members of the multinational psychiatry and pharmaceutical industry for their many illicit activities. Check out some of their powerful videos here.
The Unholy Alliance Between PAOs And Big Pharma
In the late 1970s and 1980s, prominent American Psychiatric Association (APA) psychiatrists, directors and researchers with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) were in need of more government funding, so they devised a plan to create a “growth of consumer and advocacy organizations” with the intention of getting these groups to help lobby Congress for increased funding for psychiatric research. Several groups emerged first on the scene during that period, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI’s first name), CHADD, Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA), National Depression & Manic Depressive Association (NDMDA), now called Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), and National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD).
In an incestuous relationship, many of these groups were formed by the directors or researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the very organization that needed mental health advocacy groups to make demands on Congress for increased funding. All of them had board or advisory board members with financial ties to Big Pharma. The majority of them were heavily funded by Big Pharma. So this turned out to be a brilliant marketing/lobbying strategy: set up patient’s rights groups to lobby for the funding needed for Big Psychiatry and Big Pharma while claiming to be “advocates” for the mentally ill.
Perhaps this explains why these groups – claiming to be patients’ “rights” groups – would so vehemently oppose such important mental health reforms as:
Black box warnings to highlight how antidepressants can cause suicide in children and young adults.
ADHD drug warnings that the psychostimulants being given to millions of children should carry warnings that the drugs could cause heart attacks and strokes.
A federal law prohibiting school personnel from forcing parents to give their children mind-altering psychiatric drugs as a requirement for their inherent right to education.
Better informed consent rights.
Banning the use of ECT on pregnant women, and instead endorse its use.
Rather, these groups—while raking in millions of Big Pharma dollars each year—frenetically lobby Congress and state governments to channel billions more taxpayer’s dollars into mental health programs that benefit the industry that funds them — not the patients they claim to represent. Among the issues these groups have supported include forced drugging of patients, endorsement and promotion of psychiatric drugs documented to be dangerous and lethal, mental health screening of all school children, drugging and electroshock treatment for pregnant women. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. These groups have also done all they can to suppress and/or minimize any workable alternative non-drug method (e.g. Soteria House, a proven and workable non-drug treatment for those diagnosed “schizophrenic”/psychotic) that threatens their multi-billion dollar psycho-pharmaceutical empire.
Source: Springer Studios
It is for this reason, and the disingenuous nature of many of these groups, that we are exposing their conflicts of interests because a patients’ rights group should be dedicated to patients—not the vested interests of the psycho/pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma admits that it gets more bang for its buck from funding these front groups than it does from spending money on Direct-To-Consumer marketing (DTC).
Josh Weinstein, “a veteran pharma marketer” writing for the trade magazine Pharmaceutical Executive, in an article titled, “Public Relations: Why Advocacy Beats Direct-To-Consumer marketingsaid: “I have witnessed that the most direct and efficient tool for driving long-term support for [drug] brands has been, and continues to be, a well-designed, advocacy-based public education program….”
“Unlike DTC, advocacy-based promotion brings with it a cadre of allies…This factor grows in importance as the pharma industry becomes more of a political target,” Weinstein says. In such a situation, advocacy groups “can be counted on to speak out for [the company]” and “the media will view them as more objective sources than industry spokespeople.”
The pharmaceutical industry magazine Pharmaceutical Executivepublished a report by PR expert Teri Cox called “Forging Alliances, Advocacy Partners.” According to Cox, partnering with advocacy groups helps drug companies to “diffuse industry critics by delivering positive messages about the healthcare contributions of pharma companies to legislators, the media, and other key stakeholders.” And they help influence the decisions of policy-makers and regulators.
Jeffrey Winton, vice-president of global public relations for Pharmacia is even clearer about the role of these groups. “Gone are the days when companies just handed out big checks to groups with no discussion afterward,” says Winton. “Now, we seek opportunities with groups that not only help them achieve their goals and objectives, but also help us move our business along.”
According to Dr. Peter Breggin, psychiatrist and founder of The International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), the psychiatric-pharmaceutical company “advocacy” groups hold national meetings that bring together drug advocates to talk directly to consumers. They also put out newsletters and other information that praise medications. Sometimes they actively suppress viewpoints that are critical of drugs—for example, by discouraging the media from airing opposing viewpoints.”
The psychiatric-pharma cartel is able to conceal its covert advertising and uses these groups to bolster its poor reputation.
Sharon Batt of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, studied the behavior and funding of advocacy groups after years working herself in advocacy, where she noticed a general pattern. Organizations that accept pharmaceutical funding, she says, “tend to advocate for fast-track review and availability of drugs, greater insurance coverage, and they somehow see ‘direct-to-consumer’ advertising as a benefit to patients.” On the other hand, groups that maintain financial independence, she says, “emphasize safety over speed and are critical of direct-to-consumer advertising.”
Weinstein adds: “working with advocacy groups is one of the most accomplished means of raising disease awareness and enhancing the industry’s image as deliverer of new and tangible value to patients.”
Government agencies such as NIMH, CDC, FDA and NIH should not have its officers or employee researchers sitting on the Boards or acting as advisers to any of these groups. All of these groups can and must disclose their pharmaceutical funding (of their own accord, not due to the fact that they are under Senate investigation as many of them currently are) they should also require complete disclosure of any vested interests of their board members and advisory committees. When you read each of their histories as we have provided, you will understand why.
And while several of these groups are now under Senate investigation for huge amounts of their previously undisclosed pharmaceutical funding, CCHR wants to provide the general public with more information about these psycho/pharma front groups, including some of the key players who formed them, advise them or sit on their boards.
*
Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, prosperity, democracy, civility and the health and longevity of the planet and the populace. Many of his columns are archived at
Measurement of mortality and injury in conflict situations presents many challenges compared with stable situations. However, providing information is important to assess the impact of conflict on populations and to estimate humanitarian needs, both in the immediate and longer term. Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was overrun by fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on June 4, 2014.
In this study, we conducted household surveys to measure reported deaths, injuries, and kidnappings in Mosul, Iraq, both during the occupation of the city by fighters of ISIS and the months of Iraqi military action known as the liberation.
Methods and findings
Mosul was overrun by ISIS forces on June 4, 2014, and was under exclusive ISIS control for 29 months. The military offensive by Iraqi forces, supported by [US led] coalition artillery and airstrikes, began on October 17, 2016, in east Mosul and concluded in west Mosul with the defeat of ISIS on June 29, 2017. We conducted a 40-cluster population-based survey as soon as the security forces permitted access for the survey team.
The objective of the survey was to measure reported deaths, injuries, and kidnappings in Mosul households during 29 months of ISIS-exclusive control (June 2014–October 2016) and the nine months of Iraqi military action known as the liberation (October 2016–June 2017). In east Mosul, the survey was conducted from March 23 to March 31, 2017, and in west Mosul from July 18 to July 31, 2017. Sampling was based on pre-ISIS population distribution, with revisions made following the extensive destruction in west Mosul. The 1,202 sampled households included 7,559 persons: 4,867 in east Mosul and 2,692 in west Mosul. No households declined to participate. During the time from June 4, 2014, to the time of the survey, there were 628 deaths reported from the sampled households, of which 505 were due to intentional violence, a mortality rate of 2.09 deaths per 1,000 person-months. Over the entire time period, the group with the highest mortality rates from intentional violence was adults aged 20 to 39: 1.69 deaths per 1,000 person-months among women and 3.55 among men.
In the 29 months of ISIS-exclusive control, mortality rates among all males were 0.71 reported deaths per 1,000 person-months and for all females were 0.50 deaths per 1,000 person-months. During the nine months of the military liberation, the mortality rates jumped to 13.36 deaths per 1,000 person-months for males and 8.33 for females. The increase was particularly dramatic in west Mosul. The leading cause of reported deaths from intentional violence was airstrikes—accounting for 201 civilian deaths—followed by 172 deaths from explosions. Reported deaths from airstrikes were most common in west Mosul, while reported deaths from explosions were similar on both sides of Mosul. Gunshots accounted for 86 cases, predominantly in west Mosul where ISIS snipers were particularly active. There were 35 persons who were reported to have been kidnapped, almost entirely prior to the military offensive. By the time of the survey, 20 had been released, 8 were dead, and 7 still missing, according to household reports. Almost all of the 223 injuries reported were due to intentional violence. Limitations to population-based surveys include a probable large survivor bias, the reliance on preconflict population distribution figures for sampling, and potential recall bias among respondents.
Conclusions
Death and injuries during the military offensive to liberate Mosul considerably exceeded those during ISIS occupation. Airstrikes were the major reported cause of deaths, with the majority occurring in west Mosul. The extensive use of airstrikes and heavy artillery risks an extensive loss of life in densely populated urban areas. The high probability of survivor bias in this survey suggests that the actual number of injuries, kidnappings, and deaths in the neighborhoods sampled is likely to be higher than we report here.
Author summary
Why was this study done?
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) controlled Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, from June 2014 until it was militarily defeated in June 2017.
No information was available about population events among those living under the control of ISIS or during the military campaign to destroy ISIS.
This study was undertaken to measure the injuries, deaths, and kidnappings that occurred during the 29 months ISIS controlled Mosul and the impact on households during the nine months of military actions to regain Mosul.
What did the researchers do and find?
The study sampled 1,202 households in 40 neighborhoods, 25 in east Mosul and 15 in west Mosul, as soon as Iraqi security forces permitted entry of the survey team.
The mortality rates during the 29 months of exclusive ISIS control were 0.71 and 0.50 reported deaths per 1,000 person-months for males and females, respectively. During the military campaign against ISIS, these mortality rates jumped to 13.36 and 8.33 reported deaths per 1,000 person-months. The increase was particularly dramatic in west Mosul and high among males.
The leading cause of reported deaths among the 505 who died from intentional violence was airstrikes—accounting for 201 civilian deaths in survey households—followed by 172 deaths from explosions.
What do these findings mean?
Mortality rates were much higher during the nine months of the military liberation of Mosul than during the 29 months of exclusive ISIS control. The rates for reported deaths were much higher in west Mosul, where house-to-house fighting and aerial and artillery attacks were more intense and population density greater. High mortality rates resulted despite the use of modern precision-targeted ordnance.
Despite many limitations, these data depict a city heavily damaged. Although the media accounts report extensive brutality and wanton killing by ISIS, we found that the [US sponsored] military ground and airstrikes resulted in a death toll exceeding that reported during the ISIS occupation. The description of airstrikes that were stated to be “one of the most precise air campaigns in military history” seems not to be supported by our data, which found large numbers of civilian deaths attributed to airstrikes [19].
The military offensive brought an increase in injury and death that affected the young, the robust, and the elderly of Mosul to varying degrees. Some persons were able to escape the city or escape the destruction around them, but many were not, and their number we cannot completely measure.
Acknowledgments
This study is the work of the dedicated interviewers who worked hard to collect data carefully and precisely in difficult circumstances, and to the people of Mosul who without exception welcomed the interview teams and freely shared their experiences. The work of Valeria Cetorelli with the design and the mapping is gratefully appreciated.
Why should it be that in a climate that’s shifted so far to the right, that out of the morass that is contemporary Britain, there should emerge a politician who was shaped by and effectively still lives, in a world that no longer exists? It’s bizarre to say the least but how to explain it?
Perhaps it’s because, as Alain Badiou says, under neoliberalism, there is no politics. Hence, water can flow uphill and people can vote for Jeremy Corbyn. He exists outside politics, as an idea, as a nostalgic nod to another age. As a dream deferred. The date 1945 comes to mind. Note his slogan, ‘For the many, not the few’. It could mean anything really. It’s unfocused. It’s totally apolitical and it fits our depoliticised times.
When there is only a single politics, it means that there is fact, no politics, because politics is always the conflict between several politics. So in opposing this political void with the unity of the mass movement, one remains trapped within that political void: that is to say, within a void of thinking, and ultimately a failed action.
You will reply, ‘Well, not really – today within parliamentary democracy, there are several different politics, for there is a Left and a Right.’ In truth, within the current parliamentary system, the existence of multiple different politics is a fiction. There is in reality just one politics. And this has manifestly been the case ever since the 1980s.
Having ostensibly shaken off the communist political hypothesis, capitalism quite naturally gets back to its own doctrine, which is indeed, liberalism. The communist parties everywhere have disappeared, and the socialist parties – which often identify with what they call liberal socialism – have themselves rallied to the consensus over globalised capitalism. For this reason, across the West, there is no longer anything other than a single politics; which means no politics.
Many people have now more or less clearly understood that since capitalo-parliamentarism is a single politics, it is not a politics at all. – Alain Badiou[1] (my emph. WB)
Other quotes by Corbyn, reveal his own sentimental vision of a country he imagines existed at one time or another. A land of fair play and understatement:
Heads and hearts are connected.
Let’s defend the principle of a society that cares for everyone and everyone cares for everyone else.
Corbyn’s Phoenix-like rise signifies the last gasp of the old social democratic contract between capital and labour, when the organised working class took a little more of the wealth they created, back via the social contract, not necessarily as money but principally via the social wage; the NHS; public housing, social benefits, greater state regulation of capital, nationalisations, some progressive taxation and so on. This was the reformist mission of the Labour Party, to which Corbyn is trying to return but as a shadow of its former self. And we should not forget that whether Labour or Tory governments, the ‘social wage’ was actually paid for in part with the UK’s colonial possessions, its people and their resources! It was a kind of state socialism at home but most definitely imperialism abroad (my own view on this is that our former Empire has poisoned us, made us complicit in the vast crimes committed in our collective name over the centuries, it explains why so-called socialists can side with Empire).
Nevertheless, that social wage was and is, critical to millions of people. It’s the difference between living and surviving for perhaps 20 million people including several million children. Corbyn represents those of us who have been right royally shafted by neoliberal (read Victorian) capitalism; the former industrial workers, zero hours contracts, poor immigrants/refugees, old folks and the young. No wonder half-a-million people joined the Labour Party in the space of a couple of years. But although it’s many millions of people, it’s still a minority, with, as Badiou puts it, ‘a middle class reserve army of the rich’ in lockstep with the elites. Let’s face it, two-thirds of the population are quite alright thank you very much and it seems are quite comfortable with their government butchering people in far-off lands or treating our disabled like criminals.
But could the Corbyn Effect have happened without the central role of what’s inaccurately called ‘social media’ and the key role of Momentum and other outreach networks? Does it help explain the meteoric rise of Corbyn?
The UK is a very small country. The vast majority live in a tiny handful of cities, with the bulk of the population residing in the Southeast, with London at its centre. We live in a wired and increasingly wireless, culture. Television and now the Web mediates public life. The electronic and print media reflect the way the ruling elite sees itself and how it wants us to see them and their reality (they’re obviously not interested in how we see our reality). In this context, it’s really quite easy to reach almost the entire population and the mass media are monopolised by less than a handful of corporations – until the Web came along. Now, in theory anyway, a single individual can reach just about everyone! It’s a potential game changer as they say.
The paradox is that the twenty million (or so) I mentioned earlier, may be poor (relatively) but they’re all connected and most have smartphones which has made the Web portable. We are all connected and it’s this connection, plus desperation, that made the rise of Jeremy Corbyn possible in such a short space of time.
There are at least two precedents that I think inform the situation, one going back to the 17th century, the ‘Broadsheet’, made possible by another revolution, the printing press and the other, much closer to home, the Blackberry phone and all for pretty much the same reasons.
Rebellion
In 2011 a handful of the dispossessed rebelled here in London and elsewhere, triggered by yet another murder of a black man by the police. The state’s reaction was to blame Gangs and the Blackberry phone with its encrypted messaging, BBM, that according to the state, enabled them to coordinate their ‘lootin’ anna burnin’. Remind you of anything?
“Irresponsibility. Selfishness. Behaving as if your choices have no consequences. Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort. Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control. Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged – sometimes even incentivised – by a state and its agencies that in parts have become literally de-moralised.” — David Cameron in the Guardian, 15 August 2011
My reaction at the time was, in part, this:
Two thousand people arrested and all just to make a point. Courts working around the clock to make an example of anybody who dares challenge the status quo, no matter how chaotic and self-destructive such cries of rage are. History is littered with such spontaneous rebellions, all of which are symptoms of a much deeper malaise but clearly it’s a malaise that the political class do not want to confront, dare not confront, else they would be forced to deal with the conditions that they themselves have created.
/../
‘Gang culture’. Code word for Black. And the BBC follows up its list of ’causes’ with yet another parade of ‘experts’, this time pontificating on the alleged role of Gangs in the disturbances, with an even more outrageous list of ‘reasons’. One ‘expert’ even suggests, I kid you not, that the Gangs waited until the riots had caught hold, before moving in for the loot. And all of it coordinated via Blackberry Messenger (BBM)! – ‘The state unleashes the Dogs of Media’ By William Bowles, 17 August 2011.
Seven years later, for millions, conditions have gone from bad to worse. This time round it’s not the Blackberry but ‘social media’ that’s taking the blame for pretty much everything that ails us, from stalking celebrities to ‘fake news’. The World Wide Web is more of a Pandora’s Box than a trap.
Momentum
The people behind Momentum, the online political organiser, the force behind the Corbyn Effect are sussed, media-wise. They’re ‘media savvy’ as they say. Advertising, public relations, professional political workers, are the roots of this new kid on the block (though not new to US politics, where such tools have been in use, by the Right since the 1990s). They’re also well schooled in the inner life of the Labour Party, without which you don’t stand a chance!
Screenshot from Momentum website
What Momentum has shown is the power of the new interactive media to motivate and organise those previously without a voice. The technology has the potential to connect everyone to everyone else!
It’s a dilemma for the ruling elite, they can’t very well ban the Internet, or smartphones and tablets, or for that matter video cameras. So enter ‘fake news’ and corporate censorship via Facebook, Google, Twitter et al. They try to undermine the new, independent media by slandering it, blocking it, censoring it and undermining it. Enter the corporate, security state.
In the early days of the Web, the elite ridiculed it, they treated it like a joke. But when they realised just how powerful a medium it is, they tried to co-opt it. Hey presto! ‘citizen journalism’ was borne. Wonky videos without attribution, time or place started cropping up on BBC ‘News’, allegedly from the aforementioned ‘citizens’. And notice, that today, no more ‘citizen’ videos on the BBC News, now we have the White Helmets, funded by the UK Foreign Office and USAID, producing their little dramas for the public to swallow. Because that’s what they are, fiction. Propaganda, disinformation is now professionally made to look like citizen journalism, so no need any longer for the ‘citizen journalists’ themselves. It’s literally the White Helmets Theatrical Troupe in performance.[2]
The Corbyn Effect is the fortuitous product of a confluence of events. Firstly the maturation and now ubiquity of online and interactive technologies that made it possible to give a voice to the disenfranchised millions. It gave those who had been effectively abandoned by the state a voice to propel Corbyn into the leadership of his Party, but a party that hates his guts and tried twice to get rid of him.
As they say, ‘one swallow does not a summer make’. It’s going to take more than the mobilised millions, firstly to elect a Labour Party headed by Corbyn, he is also going to need a transformed Parliamentary Labour Party, never mind what the undying hatred of the corporate, security state will do should he be successful. This is why Corbyn remains an ‘aberration’ (as do all those who came before him, e.g. Wedgewood-Benn, Neil Kinnock et al).
Underlying all this, is Corbyn’s complete absence of politics and his total allegiance to the Labour Party, which means that ultimately he can’t be trusted, the Party always comes first. That’s why there are no extra-Parliamentary actions except the odd demo, when logic dictates that thousands on the streets trumps 257 neoliberals in Parliament. Sorry, 256. It’s also why Momentum, at first free of central control by the Labour Party hierarchy, is now wholly ‘owned’ by the Party. It’s been absorbed. Now it serves new masters (perhaps it did all along, we just didn’t know it).
The main man behind Momentum is professional politician, John Lansman, a long time Labour Party worker for Corbyn and also a friend of his. Lansman along with other socialists in the Labour Party hope to transform the Party into one that fights for socialism, at least I assume its socialism. At the very least they want to ameliorate Austerity, restore the NHS to working order and so on. How they intend to do this is not to clear to me. People like Lansman and others, have been trying for a hundred years to ‘transform’ the Labour Party’ (the words of William Morris are ringing in my ears, again!).
“If we ally ourselves to any of the presen[t] parties they will only use us as a cat’s-paw; and on the other hand, if by any chance a Socialist slips through into Parliament, he will do so at the expense of leaving his principles behind him; he will certainly not be returned as a Socialist, but as something else; what else is hard to say. As I have written before in these columns, Parliament is going just the way we would have it go. Our masters are feeling very uncomfortable under the awkward burden of GOVERNMENT, and do not know what to do, since their sole aim is to govern from above. Do not let us help them by taking part in their game. Whatever concessions may be necessary to the progress of the Revolution can be wrung out of them at least as easily by extra-Parliamentary pressure, which can be exercised without losing one particle of those principles which are the treasure and hope of Revolutionary Socialists.” — William Morris, the Commonweal, Volume 1, Number 10, November 1885, p. 93.[1] (My emph. WB)
The problem is that it’s always been a problem without a resolution. The Labour Party came about when the trade union leaders of the ‘labour aristocracy’ were coopted by the state and on the state’s terms, something they were quite happy to do, and it’s been this way ever since. You might as well try and transform the Tory Party to fight for socialism. The Labour Party is an intrinsic component of the ruling elite, the political class, is it realistic to contemplate its transformation into a party of revolution, or even meaningful reform?
This has always been the problem confronting revolutionaries. The reformists offer the working-class solutions short of revolution. Capitalism is presented as an economic system which can be reformed in the interest of workers. Parliament is presented as being capable of passing laws that could improve the lives of workers. All that is required is to gain a majority at the polls, so the emphasis remains on electioneering and canvassing. What the reformists refuse to acknowledge or say aloud, though the leadership is aware of it, are the political undercurrents in society that will frustrate their grand plans, namely that state and economic power lies with the capitalist class. – ‘The Perennial Question: to Work In or Outside the Labour Party?‘ (PDF) By Brian Green, May 2018
A Blackberry Moment(um)?
The irony (and paradox) of Corbyn’s success, is that the millions Momentum mobilised to pull it off are where the real power to transform society resides, and who knows, perhaps even the Labour Party but I think the millions have been used and dumped. Used to launch (probably a reluctant) Jeremy Corbyn, near the end of his professional life, so he had absolutely nothing to lose. And dumped because they’ve done their job. The local election results prove it. Where is the great Labour transformation at local level? Momentum branches? It’s simply not in the interests of the Parliamentary Party to have a rival at the Constituency level and history bears this out. And the trade unions behave in the same way, unfortunately. I saw an identical process at work in South Africa in 1993-94 when I was working in the ANC election campaign.
Worse still, Constituency Labour Parties have become, once more I might add, battlegrounds between various sorts of ‘lefts’ and the entrenched neoliberals who run the bureaucracy and have the PLP backing them and most importantly, access to resources of all kinds, including the media. The kicker is the Rules. They wrote ‘em, they know how to use ‘em. The left are the ‘interlopers’, who try to keep up with the entrenched bureaucrats. Mostly it’s a losing battle for the lefts. Enormous energy gets expended but the left still gets bulldozed and eventually expelled for one reason or another.[3]
But nevertheless, in spite of my total disbelief in the Labour Party as a vehicle for radical change, Momentum was an important development for the left, for it shows what can be done and the potential of this new medium of communication. Perhaps what the Left needs now is its very own ‘Blackberry Moment’.
But first the left is going to have to get serious about socialism instead of squabbling all the time about who is the ‘real revolutionary’ and trying to run everybody’s else’s ‘revolution’, and take a long, hard look at itself. Right now, I don’t see a single organisation on the left that really has a clue what to do. I think they all run on automatic, saying the same things, in the same way that they always have. I’m trying not to be cynical here, I’m a third gen lefty myself, but I’ve had to change my thinking throughout my life. Never to stand still, always to question.
The problem is that the various lefts are all led by their own professional lefties, or adhere to one or the other lefties who have made a career out of being one, mostly in academia and in journalism/publishing (the ‘Gatekeepers’). As long as their outmoded theories hold sway, we’re stuck with their interpretations of the world, interpretations that haven’t changed in decades because they haven’t changed in decades.
1945 gave us a small taste of what is really possible, a really small taste and it lasted about 30 years and degenerated over time. Given the nature of transnational capitalism, revolution here, by itself, is simply not possible. Therefore, we need to look toward a time when we can take action internationally. This requires an entirely new way of organising but we have the tools and Momentum was just the beginning.
1. ‘Greece and the Re-invention of Politics’ by Alain Badiou, pps.75-76. Verso Books, 2018
2. This is not the place to go into the history of the role of propaganda and disinformation in the preservation of capitalism but suffice to say that the modern incarnations can be traced back to the post-WWII period and the creation of ‘foundations’ and ‘think tanks’ as part of the Cold War being waged on the Soviet Union. Universities played a pivotal role in their creation and running, as did the media/PR industry of course.
3. I’m not a fan of Ken Livingstone, or his opportunism but the hatchet job done on Livingstone by the rightwing Zionists, is sinister and fascistic (and the despicable role the BBC played in it). I don’t think Livingstone went far enough in exposing the links between Fascism and Zionism in the 1930s. And have we forgotten about the links between Israel and Apartheid South Africa, let alone Apartheid South Africa’s links to the German Nazis? Apparently so. See Jonathan Cook’s excellent essayon the subject.
Ditto the job they tried to do on Corbyn’s alleged anti-semitism and no doubt it contributed to the less than spectacular performance of Labour in the local elections. If you want to know where on the political spectrum these particular Zionists stand, look to Donald Trump. The Zionists have managed to conflate Zionism with being Jewish, this is why if you attack Zionism, you are called an anti-semite. It’s a sleight-of-hand. I’m Jewish, by birth (my mother was Jewish) but that’s where it ends. I’m don’t support the existence of a theocratic state called Israel, in fact, it’s a settler state that needs to be dismantled and rebuilt with both Jews and Palestinians in the land of Palestine. Corbyn’s ‘crime’ by the way, was to attend a leftie Jewish, anti-zionist meeting of some kind. For this he was forced to apologise!
May 23rd, 2018 by MST - Landless Workers Movement of Brazil
Featured image: Free Lula Vigil in Curitiba. (Source: author)
Brazil is experiencing a deep economic, political, social and environmental crisis as a result of the international crisis of capitalism and the inability of this system to solve the contradictions it generates. In this context, authoritarian solutions, such as coup d’états and attacks on democracy, have been the formula adopted to guarantee the implementation of a violent neoliberal offensive that removes the rights of the workers while at the same time hijacks and subordinates the State to the interests of large business groups.
In order to confront them, it is necessary to have clarity and to identify who is responsible for this crisis and the political instability in which we live: international financial capital; the media, especially Rede Globo, which fed and inflated the coup-mongers and fascist movements; and the Judiciary, which, on the one hand, places its own interests and privileges above the Constitution, and, on the other hand, rewards with impunity all repression and violence against the poor.
Build a Popular Project for Brazil
This moment demands the unity of the progressive forces in the action and effort to build a Popular Project for Brazil that is able to face the structural problems of our country, struggling against misery and unemployment; resuming development; facing housing and urban mobility issues in the cities; guaranteeing free access to quality healthcare and education; carrying out agrarian reform in the countryside; protecting natural resources as a common good and preventing their privatization; and regaining national sovereignty.
That is why we call on the Brazilian society as a whole to build and participate in the Congress of the Brazilian People, organized by the Brazil Popular Front, to be the space for discussion and organization on the country’s problems and the structural measures necessary to overcome them.
We also reaffirm our conviction of the innocence of President Lula, defend his right to run for presidential elections and, in the face of this political imprisonment resulting from an illegal and illegitimate process, demand his freedom!
For all these reasons, the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement is publicly declaring its support for Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s candidacy, since we understand that it represents the struggle against the coup and the aspirations of the Brazilian people for change in this scenario of crisis that plagues us all.
We will not forget or condone impunity and therefore we demand the solution and justice for the murder of our comrade Marielle, as well as for so many young poor victims of the repression. May your example in life continue to inspire young people, women and workers in these times of repression and authoritarianism. In her memory, not one moment of silence, but the commitment and struggle of the workers and landless rural workers against the coup, against the withdrawal of rights and freedom, for a more just, equitable and sovereign country!
Last week’s massacre in Gaza would not have happened if organisations which the public rely upon to uphold international human rights standards had done what they are supposed to do and spoken out at an OECD Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains in Paris in April, just days after Israel had, at that stage, gunned down and killed over 30 innocent civilians in Gaza.
Although the Israeli economy is heavily reliant on diamond exports – 30% of manufacturing exports worth $22 billion gross ($11 billion net) in 2014 – none of the representatives from organisations campaigning for responsible minerals supply chains, Global Witness, Amnesty International,Impact Transform or the EU representative and Chair of the Kimberley Process (KP) diamond regulatory body, Hilde Hardeman, mentioned the fact that an OECD member and major player in the diamond supply chain had cold-bloodily assassinated unarmed civilians in Gaza.
Had they done so, the threat of sanctions and public awareness would be so damaging for the diamond industry and overall economy that Israel would not have given soldiers free rein to kill sixty innocent Palestinian men, women and children and maim and injure thousands more weeks later.
The diamond industry in Israel has been described as “a cornerstone of the economy” and is a major source of the foreign currency needed to sustain the belligerent Zionist project in Palestine.
Diamonds processed in Israel account for one-fifth of the global market share in value terms.Jewellers claim these diamonds are conflict free but anyone familiar with the horrific scenes in Gaza over the past six weeks will know that is untrue.
But when I asked Hilde Hardeman (image on the right) if she had raised the killing by Israel of Palestinians civilians in Gaza at the OECD Forum on responsible mineral supply chains this was the reply I received one day after the latest Israeli massacre.
“Representatives of the European Commission participated in the OECD Forum on responsible mineral supply chains in Paris in April 2018.
However, the question you raise does not fall within the mandate of the Kimberley Process, which deals exclusively with rough diamonds and addresses issues or situations where rough diamonds are “used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments” as defined by the relevant United Nations Security Council resolution.”
Although I hadn’t asked her about the discredited Kimberley Process she hides behind it to avoid explaining why she didn’t raise this issue of Israeli human rights violations at the OECD Forum.
The remit of the KP is restricted to the mining sector and gives a free pass to diamonds that fund human rights violations downstream of mining. According to the Israeli political economist, Shir Hever, diamonds processed in Israel generate $1 billion annually in revenue used to fund the Israeli military.
Our political leaders have never shown any inclination to rein in let alone sanction the rogue regime in Israel that has perpetrated numerous massacres causing immense suffering and grief for the thousands of victims and their families in besieged Gaza and rest of Palestine.
Words of condemnation are not enough. Palestinians need actions that will penalise Israel for its litany of impunity-fuelled crimes against humanity.
Civil society must act.Amnesty International, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch and Impact Transform should call for the immediate suspension of Israel from the KP just as they called for Zimbabwe’s suspension when government forces there were accused of human rights violations.
Between A2012 and 2016 diamond exports added $49.7 billion net to the Israel economy. Revenue from the diamond industry is a significant source of funding for an apartheid regime that has developed a stockpile of unregulated nuclear weapons and is guilty of grievous human right violations. Despite this, jewellers claim diamonds from Israel are conflict free. (Source: author)
Organisations such as The National Association of Jewellers, The London Diamond Bourse, together with The Association of Fine Jewellers in Ireland should end the trade in diamonds from Israel and call on the Kimberley Process to immediately suspend Israel until such time as it respects Palestinian rights and abides by international law.
The EU, represented by Hilde Hardeman, must use its influence in Kimberley Process to uphold the standards by which we are constantly told the EU is guided and call for Israel’s suspension from the KP when it meets in intercessional in Antwerp June 18-21.
The EU should also suspend the Euromed Agreement that gives Israel preferential trading conditions with the EU despite being in violation of the human rights standards which are an integral part of that Agreement.
Featured image: African National Congress NEC member Ronald Lamola briefs press on Land Summit, May 22, 2018
A recently-held African National Congress (ANC) Land Summit (May 19-20) convened in the Republic of South Africa just several months after the passage of a parliamentary resolution which would theoretically redistribute white-owned farms to the African majority.
Land transferal has been the key element in the historic National Democratic Revolution in South Africa and throughout the continent.
Yet with the coming to power of the ruling ANC in 1994, a comprehensive land reform program has remained elusive. Africans are still disproportionately impoverished and landless while the economic prospects for redressing the inherited settler-colonial construct is largely dependent upon the role of South Africa within the broader world capitalist system.
The lack of a sweeping land redistribution program results from the trepidation surrounding the economic and political impact of such revolutionary policies. Agricultural production for export and internal consumption is clearly one aspect of the problem.
Moreover, the ownership and relations of production within the mining and manufacturing industries are also important in understanding the reluctance of the ruling ANC and even its allies within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), both of which were involved in the Land Summit, to embark upon bold and innovative transformation. Even after twenty four years of governance resulting in many advances for the South African people, there is much more to be done to re-correct the mass poverty, dispossession and exploitation which were the foundation of the racist apartheid state.
Of course if a radical land redistribution program was enacted the ANC government would face the wrath of international finance capital. As was done in the Republic of Zimbabwe where under the leadership of former President Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), a concerted campaign to sanction, blockade, destabilize and overthrow the government went on for nearly two decades.
During the post-Mugabe era since November 2017, the imperialist states such as the United States and Britain are continuing to set the terms for any semblance of a normalization of diplomatic, trade and investment relations. The ZANU-PF leadership under President Emmerson Mnangagwa has announced that western observers of the upcoming July elections will be invited into the country so that they can be satisfied that bourgeois democracy is operating in Zimbabwe.
In a statement summing up the Land Summit, the ANC says:
“The recommendations identify the need for a South African agrarian revolution as a key component of land redistribution, promoting small holder farmers, and working together with emerging and existing farmers.
The plight of farmworkers and labor tenants was also a particular issue of concern, as millions of them continue to face insecurity in the land of their birth. The NEC will be asked to take decisions that will ensure that particular measures are taken to protect farm workers and dwellers, and that their continued precarious position in our society is addressed.”
However, these concerns cannot be addressed absent of a full-scale assault on the national and class character of the society. The capitalist mode of production does not provide for such a policy of redistribution without the capacity of the revolutionary party and its allies to withstand the inevitable pressure from the imperialist states.
Nevertheless, South Africa, despite it being the most industrialized state on the continent, would require other regional nations to adopt similar policies in order to establish a bloc of resistance forces to stave off the efforts by the West to remove the ANC from power. The land question cannot be answered in its ultimate revelation apart from the broader revolutionary process to liberate and unite Africa as a whole.
Meanwhile, the ANC in its press briefing on May 22 in regard to the Land Summit which took place at the party headquarters, Luthuli House, engages in a sober assessment of its role in government since 1994. ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) member Ronald Lamola reported that:
“The [Motlanthe] high-level panel [on assessment of key legislation and acceleration of fundamental change] said the reasons for our failures particularly on land reform are misguided policies, insufficient budget, failure to align the laws with the constitution, corruption, inefficient government systems, failure to fully exploit constitutional space especially in the area of expropriation without compensation, incorrect interpretation of the constitution.” (Citizen, May 22)
The Peasant’s Revolt: A Reassessment
One of the groundbreaking theoretical contributions to the ideological development of the ANC and the SACP was the work of Govan Mbeki in his book entitled “The Peasant’s Revolt” (image on the right) published in 1964 while he was in detention as a political prisoner stemming from the Rivonia Trial. Mbeki chronicles some of the largest outbreaks of unrest among people in the rural areas in the years following the conclusion of World War II marked by the institutionalization of apartheid under National Party regime.
Mbeki emphasizes that:
“South African peasants have a long history of resistance to oppression. They know what it is to be crushed by the armed forces of the whites, to be imprisoned without trial, banished to desolate parts of the country, and banned from normal social contact. Since the enforcement of the Nationalist Party’s policies by harsh and frequently violent means, peasant resistance has been widespread and organized.”
This same excerpt from the book goes on to say:
“Africans have resisted forcible removal from their homes to new territory. They have opposed the imposition of Bantu Authorities, the extension of passes to women, and schemes for the rehabilitation and reallocation of land. Between 1946 and 1962 risings have been provoked in Witzieshoek, on the border of Basutoland; in Marico, just south of Bechuanaland; in Sekhukhuneland, in the north-west Transvaal; in Zululand, on the South Coast; and throughout the Transkei, especially in Pondoland. They have been suppressed with brutal force.” (Chapter 9, Resistance and Rebellion)
Although the political conditions are different in 2018, the imperialists are still committed to crushing any genuine land redistribution project in South Africa with economic measures and even military intervention if it is deemed necessary. The ANC and allied revolutionary forces in the labor and left organizations have no alternative than to take this history into account when they deliberate on a way forward.
The Freedom Charter: Looking Back to Move Forward
Programmatically the Congress of the People held on June 25- 26, 1955 in Kliptown adopted the Freedom Charter which guided the dominate tendency within the national liberation movement for the following four decades. After May 1994 when President Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as head-of-state, many aspects of the Freedom Charter could not be implemented particularly clauses calling for the nationalization of industry, land and banking.
The global political and economic situation in 1994 required compromises from within the ANC and its allies. These tactical maneuvers were designed not to last for as long as they have.
A set of social dynamics involving the factional disputes within the ruling party, the ongoing dominance of western imperialism based upon the dependency on the former colonial powers for trade, credit and material inputs for agriculture, mining and manufacturing, has effectively hampered genuine and sustainable development leading towards a socialist society. A pattern of disinvestment by capital along with its resultant downsizing and outsourcing of jobs guaranteed the perpetual decline in living standards for the urban working class, farmers and the rural proletariat.
From an ideal standpoint the Freedom Charter conveys emphatically under the section entitled “The People Shall Share in the Country`s Wealth!”, that:
“The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people; All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.”
South African Freedom Charter graphic
With specific reference to the land question, the Freedom Charter demands:
“The Land Shall be Shared Among Those Who Work It! Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger; The state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers; Freedom of movement shall be guaranteed to all who work on the land; All shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose; People shall not be robbed of their cattle, and forced labor and farm prisons shall be abolished.”
Socialism and the Land Question
Obviously these demands of the National Democratic Revolution cannot be fully achieved without a socialist orientation for government related to the economic restructuring of class society deriving from colonialism and settler colonialism. Socialism in one country, a philosophical misnomer within orthodox Marxist theory, can be realized as in Cuba, the People’s Republic of China, the former Soviet Union as well as the non-capitalist paths to development enacted by various African states in the immediate post-independence processes of the 1960s through the 1980s, although the threat of counter-revolution remains a looming threat or reality.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of the ANC will stand for election in 2019. The economic crisis due to the declining value of the rand, the astronomically high rate of unemployment, persistent strikes and community unrest over low salaries, poor working conditions, service delivery problems and corruption will inevitably be a central feature of the consciousness of the electorate. In order to maintain its uncontested hold on state power, Ramaphosa and the ANC parliamentary candidates must convince the voters that they can effectively tackle these monumental difficulties.
As Dr. Kwame Nkrumah said in his pioneering work on Neo-Colonialism in this period, until Africa is united under a Socialist Union government, imperialism will continue to stifle the forward progress of the masses of people. Consequently, the struggle for revolutionary land redistribution in South Africa and Zimbabwe is an integral part of the Pan-African movement for the reconstruction of the entire continent.
The ANC and ZANU-PF are tackling one of the most profound challenges of the modern period of the 21st century. As the western industrialized states decline in their economic prowess a more equitable and inclusive system of trade and finance must be brought into being. This can be done based upon the material conditions of the African continent with its vast mineral, energy, agricultural and human resources. Therefore it is the people organized into their political parties and mass organizations that can ensure a future of stability and prosperity for the majority of the workers, farmers and youth.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
