At least 235 worshippers were killed Friday in an attack by Islamist militants on a Sufi mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Another 109 people were injured in what the Egyptian government has declared to be the deadliest terrorist attack in the country’s modern history.

The attack began when a possible suicide bomb was detonated inside the mosque just as afternoon Friday Prayers were finishing. As people fled the mosque they were fired on by masked men in pickup trucks. Vehicles had been set on fire to keep anyone from escaping. When ambulances arrived on the scene to tend to the dead and wounded, the gunmen opened fire on the paramedics, dramatically increasing the number of casualties.

In a televised address shortly after an emergency meeting with his cabinet ministers, Egyptian President Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi promised a swift response against those responsible for the attack. “The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force,” Sisi declared.

Several hours later, Egyptian jetfighters descended on the mountains surrounding Bir al-Abed purportedly killing an unspecified number of fighters and destroying the vehicles used the attack.

The government also announced that in response to the attack it would be delaying the opening of the Rafah border crossing between the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. The crossing would have been open Saturday through Monday to allow crucial supplies into what is effectively an open-air prison for Palestinians maintained by Israel in conjunction with the Egyptian dictatorship.

Source: The Times of Israel

While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, it is likely to have been carried out by Sunni militants loyal to the Islamic States of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) who view Sufi Muslims as apostates.

An Islamist insurgency has been underway in the Sinai since 2013 when Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi was ousted in the military coup that brought Sisi to power. Until recently attacks had been mostly limited to military targets, check points and troop convoys.

The Sinai, a largely desert area that has a limited military presence, was used as a transit point for Islamist militants and weapons being funneled from Libya and Tunisia into Syria as part of the US effort to overthrow the Russian- and Iranian-backed Assad government.

With the official defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, many of the foreign fighters are now returning to the Sinai and the wider region across North Africa.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a Sunni Islamist militia which has been waging an insurgency against the Egyptian military in the Sinai, pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2014. The group claimed responsibility for the 2015 bombing of a Russian passenger jet which was flying out of the resort town of Sharm El Sheikh, killing all 224 onboard.

A commander of the group declared in January that they would eradicate Sufis living in the Sinai in including in the area where Friday’s attack took place. An elderly Sufi cleric was executed by the ISIS affiliate in late 2016 and Sufi shires have been targeted for destruction.

Other Islamist militias active in the Sinai include Ansar al-Islam a group which has purported ties to Al-Qaeda.

The attack brought perfunctory condemnations and words of support for the military dictatorship in Cairo from leaders around the world.

While sending his condolences US President Donald Trump used the opportunity to push for an expansion of the imperialist wars already being waged by the US in the Middle East and across Africa under the threadbare pretext of the so-called war on terror.

“The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!” the president tweeted.

He followed up with a tweet which exploited the attack to push his reactionary anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim agenda.

“We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt.”

The Australian Foreign Policy White paper was touted as a main course for consumers of policy, a document that revealed the inner workings of those creatures working for the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs. Its temper is predictable, its prose wooden, the voice of a satrap trapped in the body of a sovereign. 

There were the traditional nods, the appreciating, ingratiating glance towards US power. There was the tiptoeing commentary about international hostilities and disagreements.

“No surprises,” claimed Remy Davison of Monash University: “the Foreign Policy White Paper from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is about trade, not guns.”

The emphasis, for all the clichéd control in language, was troubled. Looming over the text was a certain President Donald Trump, who has given Australian policy wonks much in the way of perplexing trouble.

“The politics in many countries,” observe the authors, “has also become fragmented and volatile. Nationalism has become a stronger political force and protectionist sentiment has increased.”

So much in the nature of Australian foreign policy has given way to the fears of abandonment, and the search for a powerful friend. It is a tendency that creeps up again, as much as Canberra wishes to be seen as maturely independent.

Much of it is also grand crystal-ball gazing, something policy analysts should never dabble in. Not, however, those at DFAT, where astrology, social science, and economics mix. The lingering interest in the document, even obsession, is one that fears agents of destabilisation. The stress, then, is on those long established “rules” of engagement between states, preferably the sort dictated by Washington.

According to the ministerial forward by foreign minister, Julie Bishop, and minister for trade, tourism and investment, Steven Ciobo, the paper “sets out a comprehensive framework to advance Australia’s security and prosperity in a contested and competitive world.”

That said, such might is being questioned. The US may well remain “the preeminent global power and most important influence on international affairs” but it “now shares the stage with a number of countries with large populations and economies.” Enter the influence and effect of non-state actors makes the authors draw a clear conclusion: “global governance is becoming more complex.”

The frowning here is palpable, and each observation is tempered by a modestly negative note. China is invaluable, even indispensably tied to Australia’s future, but is challenging US power, the very same power shaped by Washington’s “leadership”. “US leadership has supported global security, including through the network of US alliances and the US military presence in Asia and Europe.” The bland hope on the part of the White Paper’s authors is that disputes that arise between powers will be settled amicably, preferably through mediation and arbitration.

Such observations could only come from the script writing of a client state, one with close military ties to the United States. So much so, in fact, that the Australian defence forces are projected to become entirely inter-operable with their US counterparts in the not too distant future. 

Technological opportunities are tempered by technological nightmares. The wish for open cyberspace is squared by the interest in controlling dangers posed by agents who roam through it. “An increasing dependence on global ICT networks means that the potential costs of disruption are large and growing.”

The globalisation ideologues are being given a beating – a bad thing, in the view of the authors. The White Paper insists on the beneficial cornucopia of neo-liberal trade, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty in Asia. Along with this came benefits for consumers stemming from “access to goods and technologies from around the world at lower prices.” As ever, these are observations freed of nuance and social awareness.

Environment is not mentioned, though the paper, with some reproach, notes those doubts “about the effect of globalisation, mainly immigration, on cultural identity and social cohesion.” The object of disagreement within the document is clearly a sense that Australia has gotten it right, while other states have not. Yes, populism might well be on the rise, including suspicion of establishment politics, but no matter. The voters, and those leaders who capitalised on such sentiments, are in error, and Australia must find ways of setting the course.

Free trade agreements are one such source of self-deluding fancy – the continued, and now even comic pursuit of such agendas – remain status quo aspirations. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, ever weakened by a lack of US participation and Canadian scepticism, is to be kept afloat.

“Economic nationalism” is deemed a great problem, and there are “concerns about globalisation and levels of political alienation”. The world might well be “interconnected” but what “empowers individual citizens increase risk and volatility in the international system”. Reading such observations is much like going over the ponderings of a blind man: he keeps running into a wall, but refuses to accept its presence.

The ministerial forward seeks to flatter Australia in this “competitive and contested world”, a formulation that is repeated through the document with robotic consistency. “Our strong economy and institutions, innovative businesses, educated and skilled population and secure borders provide solid foundations for success.” 

The Indo-Pacific makes its appearance as a serious area of engagement, one made to sound like El Dorado, its streets paved with opportunities and gold. “Within the next 15 years, four of the world’s five biggest economies in purchasing power parity terms are likely to be in Asia: China, India, Japan and Indonesia.”

The hope here is the rising middle class of the region, one made to sound like low hanging fruit for Australian business and commercial opportunities. “Some forecasts suggest that by 2030, Asia could be home to a middle class of almost 3.5 billion”. These will be hungry for Australian minerals and energy (how fortunate that these are already there, in the ground, awaiting export), though “services and premium agricultural products” are also mentioned.

To that end, the White Paper reveals what is Australia’s self-imposed reality: that it cannot entirely escape from its role as Asian breadbasket, or supplier of commodities. Nor can it detach itself from its destiny as a US satellite. The best it can hope for is avoiding trouble altogether.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

The main take away of the trilateral, two hour-long Russia-Iran-Turkey summit in Sochi on the future of Syria was expressed by Russian President Vladimir Putin:

“The presidents of Iran and Turkey supported the initiative to convene an All-Syrian Congress for national dialogue in Syria. We agreed to hold this important event at the proper level and ensure the participation of representatives of different sectors of Syrian society.”

In practice, that means Russian, Iranian and Turkish foreign ministries and defense departments are tasked to “gather delegates from various political parties, internal and external opposition, ethnic and confessional groups at the negotiating table.”

Putin stressed that “in our common opinion, the success on the battlefield that brings closer the liberation of the whole of Syrian territory from the militants paves the way for a qualitatively new stage in the settlement of the crisis. I’m talking about the real prospects of achieving a long-term, comprehensive normalization in Syria, political adjustment in the post-conflict period.”

So many red lines

Diplomatic sources confirmed to Asia Times much of the discussions in Sochi involved Putin laying out to Iran President Hassan Rouhani and Turkey President Recep Erdogan how a new configuration may play out in a constantly evolving chessboard.

Behind diplomatic niceties, tensions fester. And that’s how the current Astana peace negotiations between Russia-Iran-Turkey interconnect with the recent APEC summit in Danang.

In Danang, Putin and Trump may not have held a crucial bilateral. But Sergey Lavrov and Rex Tillerson did issue a joint statement on Syria – without, crucially, mentioning Astana; instead, the emphasis was on the slow-moving UN Geneva process (a new round of talks is scheduled for next week).

An extremely divisive issue – not exactly admitted by both parties – is the presence of foreign forces in Syria. From Washington’s perspective, Russian, Iranian and Turkish forces must all leave.

But then there’s the Pentagon, which is in Syria without a UN resolution (Russia and Iran were invited by Damascus).

There’s no evidence the Pentagon plans to relinquish military bases set up in territory recaptured by the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), contiguous to Syrian oil and gas fields. Defense Secretary James Mattis insists US forces will remain in Syria to “prevent the appearance of ISIS 2.0.” For Damascus, that’s a red line.

Then there are Ankara’s red lines. For Erdogan, it’s all about the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG), who lead the SDF. Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin takes no prisoners;

“The question of the PYD-YPG remains a red line for Turkey.”

Unlike Ankara, Moscow does not consider the PYD/YPG as “terrorist organizations.” The PYD will certainly be invited to Sochi. And there’s not much Ankara – which is under tremendous economic pressure – can do about it.

On the Iranian front, what Tehran wants in Syria is not exactly what Moscow-Washington may be bargaining about.

Lavrov has strenuously denied there has been a US-Russia deal to expel Iranian-supported forces from southwestern Syria – stressing they were legally invited by Damascus. Since July the official position of the Iranian Foreign Ministry is that the current cease-fires should be extended to the whole nation, but “taking the realities on the ground into account.” No word on Iranian forces leaving Syria.

A well-timed affair

The Sochi summit was choreographed to the millimeter. Previously, Putin held detailed phone calls with both Trump and Saudi King Salman (not MBS); the emir of Qatar; Egypt’s Sisi; and Israel’s Netanyahu. Parallel to a meeting of Syria-Russia military top brass, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dropped in; a non-surprise surprise Sochi visit to tell Putin in person that without Russia’s military campaign Syria would not have survived as a sovereign state.

The facts on the ground are stark; the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) – fully expanded, retrained, re-equipped and re-motivated – recaptured Aleppo, Palmyra, Deir Ezzor and almost the whole southeast; borders with both Iraq and Lebanon are open and secured; cease-fires are in effect in over 2,500 towns; Turkey desisted from years of weaponizing and supporting “moderate rebels” and is now part of the solution; ISIS/Daesh is on the run, now no more than a minor rural/desert insurgency.

Daesh is almost dead – although there could always be a Return of the Walking Dead, with some obscure neo-al-Baghdadi posing as Caliph-in-exile. Iranian President Rouhani has declared the end of Daesh. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi was more realistic, saying Daesh has been defeated militarily but he will only declare final victory after jihadi goons are conclusively routed in the desert.

The final showdown will be the Battle of Idlib – where thousands of Jabhat al-Nusra remnants/cohorts are holed up. Turkey has troops in idlib. Putin and Erdogan have certainly negotiated Ankara’s stance. So it’s up to the Turkish Ministry of Defense to convince opposition outfits not allied with the Nusra nebulae to be sitting on the table in Sochi.

On an operational level, as I ascertained in Baghdad earlier this month, this is what’s happening; IRGC advisers; the Iraqi Army; Hashd al-Shaabi, known as the People Mobilization Units (PMUs); the SAA; and Hezbollah have been working in synch, as part of the “4+1” mechanism (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah). Their counter-terrorism HQ is located in Baghdad.

Pipelineistan all over again

Putin told Rouhani and Erdogan in Sochi about the “commitment of the Syrian leadership to the principles of peaceful settlement of the political crisis, its readiness to carry out constitutional reform and stage a free, UN-supervised election.”

This tall order will be open to vast scrutiny. And that brings us to the key opposing party; the House of Saud, and more  specifically MBS’s stance.

The so-called High Negotiations Committee (HNC) – which is essentially the Syrian opposition factions regimented by the House of Saud – is in disarray. Its leader, Royad Hijab, was recently fired in murky circumstances. These factions met again in Riyadh, parallel to Sochi, with the Saudis basically reduced to screaming “Assad must go.”

MBS’s war on Yemen is a disaster – not to mention creating a horrendous humanitarian crisis. The blockade of Qatar degenerated into farce. The blatant interference in Lebanon via the Hariri-as- hostage saga also degenerated into farce. Saudi Arabia lost in both Iraq and Syria. MBS’s next foreign policy moves are wildly unpredictable.

Capping it all up, a key dossier apparently was not discussed in Sochi; who’s going to finance the rebuilding of Syria’s economy/infrastructure.

Turkey and Iran can’t afford it. Russia might help only marginally. China has made it clear it wants Syria as a Levantine hub in the New Silk Roads, known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – but that’s not a priority compared to Pakistan or Iran. The EU is focused on its massive internal psychodrama. And the Gulf – essentially Saudi Arabia and the UAE – are fiercely anti-4+1.

With Sochi in mind, a further joker in the pack is how a Trump-Putin possible entente will be regarded by the Pentagon, the CIA and Capitol Hill – which will always refuse the notion of a Putin-led peace process and no “Assad must go” to boot.

Most of what lies ahead hinges on who will control Syria’s oil and gas fields. It’s Pipelineistan all over again; all wars are energy wars. Damascus simply won’t accept an energy bonanza for the US-supported SDF, actually led by the YPG.

And neither would Russia. Apart from Moscow holding on to a strategic eastern Mediterranean base, eventually Gazprom wants to be an investment partner/operator in a newly feasible Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, whose main customer will be the EU. Beyond Sochi, the real – Pipelineistan – war has only just begun.

The Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington can remain open to discuss peace with Israel and may be able to resume full operations soon, the State Department said Friday.

The comment came one week after US officials said the diplomatic mission would have to close because of a law stipulating that Palestinian leaders must not call for Israelis to face international prosecution.

The order provoked outrage among the Palestinian leadership, who threatened to cut all ties to President Donald Trump‘s administration if the ban went ahead, a move that would doom his hopes to revive the peace process.

But on Friday a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Palestinians had been advised to limit their activity at the office to the peace process until a waiver to the law is renewed.

“Given the lapse last week of a waiver of statutory restrictions on PLO activity in the United States, we have advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians,” the official said.

If after 90 days the president determines that the Palestinians are engaged in “direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel,” restrictions on the PLO and its Washington office may be lifted, the official added.

Both parties have so far been “cooperative, constructive, and prepared to engage in negotiations” as the administration pushes efforts to restart substantial Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the official said.

“We therefore are optimistic that at the end of this 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations.”

Under long-standing US law, permission for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to maintain its mission in Washington must be renewed every six months.

In September, Palestinian leaders lobbied at the United Nations for Israeli officials to be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court, which US officials said was a breach of the terms of the arrangement.

Some observer speculated that Trump’s administration had allowed the waiver to lapse in order to put pressure on the Palestinians before the expected announcement of a new plan to resolve the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But the official denied this.

“The lapse in the waiver was not intended to create ‘leverage’ with or impose pressure on the Palestinians, with whom we have been having constructive discussions about the path to a lasting, comprehensive peace,” she said.

235 people have been killed, according to a statement by the Egyptian Attorney General. The massacre was carried out at al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of Arish city. According to eye witnesses, there was a huge explosion, and then the terrorists opened fire on the worshipers as they prayed the Friday prayers on Nov. 24, 2017. Afterwards, the terrorists also set fire to cars, and shot at ambulances which rushed to the scene. The terrorists were dressed in military uniforms and drove a jeep, and fled with Egyptian security forces in pursuit.

On Nov. 23, 2017, the Egyptian state-run media announced they had arrested 29 suspects for 15 days, pending investigations into allegations that they engaged in espionage with Turkey, for the purpose of overthrowing the Egyptian government.

The Egyptian General Intelligence Agency stated the arrested spy network was financed by Turkey, but also supported by Qatar. The 29 member spy ring was directed by Turkish Intelligence officials, with direct Qatari coordination.

The Egyptian authorities uncovered the elaborate plot  to take over power in Egypt by attacking state institutions, and the Turkish Intelligence and their global terror partner, the Muslim Brotherhood, were responsible.

In addition to the 29 arrested, there are 5 suspects abroad, who are charged with terrorism, money laundering, and illegal currency trading.

The arrested men allegedly formed a network, with members of the Muslim Brotherhood abroad, in order to destabilize Egypt and thus overthrow the government of Pres. Sisi, who is hated by the Muslim Brotherhood because he banned the group and labeled them a global terrorist organization.

Pres. Erdogan of Turkey also faced an attempt to overthrow his government in July of 2016. He is convinced that the US was behind the failed attempt to remove him from power. Turkey is a member of NATO and had been a close ally of the US, with a large US military base hosted on Turkish soil. When the US attack on Syria began in March 2011, for the purpose overthrowing Syria’s Pres. Assad, Turkey and the US Pres. Obama were on the same team. However, the plan failed miserably, and left Turkey standing alone, as Pres. Erdogan continued his own Anti-Israeli political tirades, which infuriated Washington, DC as the Turkish-Israeli axis was crucial to American strategies in the Middle East.

Pres. Erdogan had supported the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Mursi, who was elected as President of Egypt, but now is in prison for murder. Ankara has kept up verbal attacks on the government of Pres. Sisi, while  Cairo has answered back with accusations of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood who is considered a banned terrorist organization.

Additionally, on Nov. 23, 2017 Egyptian police killed three alleged terrorists in a shootout and arrested nine belonging to the Lewaa al-Thawra group, which is an armed group of the Muslim Brotherhood which surfaced in Egypt after the 2013 ouster of Pres. Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate who had been elected in Egypt by a rigged election engineered in part by a Washington, DC based NGO. The official of the NGO, who is American, received a 5 year prison sentence in absentia for her role, by the Egyptian court.

The police raid in Beheira was on a homemade bomb making facility, and the suspects opened fire as police approached, which then turned into a shootout, which left three Muslim Brotherhood terrorists dead, according to the Egyptian officials. The massacre at the al-Rawdah mosque the next day also used bombs and involved shooting, mirroring the Muslim Brotherhood group.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood have found safe haven in Turkey, and TV stations which broadcast Muslim Brotherhood propaganda, including verbal attacks on the Pres. Sisi government, are sanctioned by the Turkish broadcast authorities.

Turkey and Qatar worked hand in hand supporting the Radical Islamic terrorists in Syria. Both countries were integral partners with the US-NATO attack on Syria. However, once Pres. Trump took office, the foreign policy changed, and Turkey and Qatar were left holding the bag, and being blamed for their support of terrorism. After the elaborate Trump-Saudi terrorism summit, things changed rapidly and Qatar was singled out as the whipping boy of the region. It was Turkey who stood up in defense of Qatar, and came to their aid in their time of need when faced with a blockade.

In a recent summit of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) General Assembly in the southern Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, Turkey, the Chairman of Qatar Red Crescent Society Mohammed Al-Maadheed has praised the cooperation with the Turkish Red Crescent. He stated,

“At the international level, we are always in a very good relationship with Turkey because we have the same vision.”

However, his colleague, the director of the Qatar Red Crescent’s International Relief and Development Department, Khalid Nazem Diab, was recently named by the US as a global terrorist, and he was formerly listed similarly by the UN. Diab, an American of Syrian descent, is a financier of the armed militias in Syria, and his terrorist activity has expanded to several other hot spots.

Over three months ago, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar and issued thirteen demands; the key was that Qatar stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups. Qatar has funded terrorist groups in the Middle East for the last ten years, and participated in the attempts to overthrow major Arab governments. After Egypt’s Mubarak was overthrown in 2011, it was Qatar who funded and gave refuge to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s theological and spiritual leader.

Qatar was uncovered recently with transporting ISIS terrorists from Syria and Iraq to Libya, from whence they travel to Egypt to attack and massacre.

General Khalifa Hafter of the Libyan National Army has revealed  to the Arab media that Qatar provides financial support to ISIS.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta also said recently that Qatar has a history of supporting terrorism. He said,

“Qatar, frankly, has had a mixed record. We know they’ve provided support, financial support, for the Muslim Brotherhood, for terrorism, for Hamas, for elements of al-Qaida, the Taliban.”

The terrorists are on a round-trip-ticket: they departed Libya in 2011, arrived in Syria, and now in 2017 are arriving again in Libya. This migration movement is facilitated by Qatar, and in coordination with their partner Turkey.

Dr. Abdelmonem Saeed said in his weekly column published in Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, that the origin of terrorist ideology in the Muslim world finds itself in the Muslim Brotherhood. Saeed concluded:

“The Brotherhood is the first incubator of terrorist groups and their major and global school.”

63 members of the US Congress have asked Sec. of State Rex Tillerson to consider the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2017, because the Brotherhood threatens the U.S’ national security interests and should be designated an outlawed terrorist group. The discussion on Capitol Hill concerning the Muslim Brotherhood has been bantered back and forth for years. During the Obama administration the Muslim Brotherhood had received support and protection. The top aide to Hillary Clinton was Huma Abedin, who was the daughter of Saleha Abedin, who under Pres. Obama  sat on the Presidency Staff Council of the International Islamic Council for Da’wa and Relief, a group that is chaired by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now  in exile in Qatar.

While the Muslim Brotherhood is an outlawed terrorist organization in many countries around the globe, it has remained protected and unhindered across America. With all eyes on Egypt and the recent massacre, it remains to be seen if the Muslim Brotherhood in USA may have worn out their welcome.

Nearly two weeks after the Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, approved legislation allowing authorities to designate US-backed media organizations as foreign agents, Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially signed the bill into law.

The law allows Moscow to label foreign media outlets as “foreign agents” in response to Washington’s decision to force Russia Today, a media organization funded by the Russian government that has been operating in the US since 2005, to register as a foreign agent.

As Reuters points out, the new law has been rushed through both Russian houses of parliament in the last two weeks. It will now allow Moscow to force foreign media to brand news they provide to Russians as the work of “foreign agents” and to disclose their funding sources.

The US intelligence community has accused the Kremlin of using Russian media organizations it finances to influence US voters, and Washington has since required Russian state broadcaster RT to register a U.S.-based affiliate company as a “foreign agent.”

Last week, the Russian judiciary published a list of nine US-funded media organizations that would be added to the list. The outlets are the US-government-sponsored Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE), otherwise known as Radio Liberty, radio channels, along with seven separate Russian or local-language news outlets run by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

One of the seven outlets provide news on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, one on Siberia, and one on the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region. Another covers provincial Russia, one is an online TV station, another covers the mostly Muslim region of Tatarstan, and the other is a news portal that fact-checks the statements of Russian officials.

According to a copy of the bill found in a Russian government database, the law takes effect immediately.

US officials said on Friday that the Pentagon is expected to concern confirm that there are “about 2,000” US ground troops in Syria, a major increase from the roughly 500 that they officially claim is the case.

The US has overtly lied about troop levels in Syria consistently throughout their deployment. Less than a month ago, Gen. James Jarrard told reporters the US had about 4,000 troops in the country, though the Pentagon at the time claimed he was wrong and the real number was only 503.

Adding to the confusion, the Defense Department had also offered figures to Congress on overseas deployments, and those figures said 1,723 troops were in Syria at the time..Despite this, the official troop figure has not changed.

President Trump has made a point of troop levels needing to be kept secret from “the enemy,” but consistent lies from the Pentagon about their deployments have made the figures less a closely guarded secret than a mockery of transparency. While 2,000 is almost certainly closer to the truth than 500, it’s not necessarily the actual figure.

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image is from the author.

The world we find ourselves in is complex and full of contradictions. It is easy to fall for rudimentary textbook propaganda based on simplistic dichotomies, such as ‘the good guys versus the bad guys’. If we are not aware of the complexities and nuances facing us, we can fall for this type of propaganda, whose sole aim is to keep us apart and destroy any type of unity that could strengthen our ability to defeat the enemy.

When examining and assessing the latest information fed to us by one of imperialism’s mouthpieces, CNN, there are important things for us, as revolutionary Pan-Africanists, to keep in mind. The first thing to note is the clear hypocrisy and insincerity which is nowhere more stark than CNN’s recent expose of “Libyan crimes against humanity” and French President, Emmanuel Macron’s call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to demand immediate action against this heinous “Libyan” crime.

I know this much for sure, as an African revolutionary I do not look to the devil for the truth. I know that the devil does not lie some of the time; he lies and deceives all of the time. In whatever form the devil manifests himself, I do not deal with him. He can come in the guise of the imperialists and White Supremacists themselves, or their mouthpieces such as CNN, BBC, Fox News or any of the mainstream corporate media outlets. We should never forget their role as cheerleaders and purveyors of the fake news that laid the groundwork for the invasion and destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya. Therefore, let us ask ourselves the burning question, why are they providing us with this information, and why now? Why are the imperialists suddenly feigning concern for the plight of Africans?

In my first article on the invasion of Libya, published March 2nd, 2011, titled, Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective, I said that

“the conflict in Libya is not a revolution, but a counter-revolution. The struggle is fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi’s vision of a united Africa, and reactionary, racist Libyan Arab forces who reject Qaddafi’s vision of Libya as part of a united Africa.”

Events have proved this analysis correct. Muammar Qaddafi and the Revolutionary Committees Movement of the Al Fateh Revolution had a monumental task on their hands: to conscientize and reposition the Libyan peoplefor a significant role in the revolutionary Pan-African project for a United States of Africa. This is a battle for all African revolutionaries. In Sub-Saharan African countries, where almost the entire population comprises Black Africans, we face the same battle. Here in the Caribbean, it is no different. So, when Qaddafi urged his people to look towards a United States of Africa and a revolutionary Pan-African perspective, he had to face Libyans who rejected this program in favor of Libya and the entire North African region joining the Barcelona Project, a Mediterranean-European alliance, whose aim is to take North Africa out of Africa.

Prejudice against dark-skinned Africans exists all over planet earth. Even in countries where the population is almost 100% Black African, we have to contend with ‘shadism’, a hangover from colonialism and plantation culture, where Africans with lighter skin shades are held in higher esteem than Africans with darker skin shades. However, to say that “Arab Libyans” are selling “Africans” is overly simplistic and deliberately misleading. There is a hidden agenda here – beware. The objective is to ignite hostilities between so-called Arab-Africans and so-called Sub-Saharan-Africans.  There is a debate amongst Africans about who is an African. On the one hand, there are those who limit the definition of African to Black Africans in the Sub-Saharan region of the continent. On the other hand, there are those of us who believe that Africa is one, and we will resist any attempt by the imperialists to redefine and further balkanize Africa. Rather than becoming part of the European Community, North Africans promoting the Barcelona Project would be better off seeking out their African roots. This is what Muammar Qaddafi told all Libyans.

Those who today call themselves “Arabs” have a historical, ancestral and moral duty to recognize their Africanity. Those “Arabs” who live in countries on the African continent and those who live in the region outside of the continent, need to explore and reexamine their history.  The region they inhabit, erroneously named “Middle-East”and “Levant” by the European colonizers cannot be divorced from Africa. I agree with Islamic theologian and historian, Dr. Wesley Muhammad, that the area known as “Middle-East” or “Levant” is more aptly named ‘Afrabia’.

Anyone interested in more information on this and the Aryanization of Christianity and Islam, should refer to the brilliant works of Dr. Wesley Muhammad, especially his book ‘Black Arabia and the African Origins of Islam’.

The North Atlantic Tribes Organization (NATO) deeply fear this type of awakening and the unity of purpose and action it could lead to in this oil rich and wealthiest region of the world.

Minister Farrakhan said many years ago, reflecting on periods of unity in our history, “we did it before and we can do it again”. Muammar Qaddafi persistent struggle to forge a United States of Africa was starting to pay off. He was on the verge of creating an African currency that would have shifted the global economic imbalance, preparing the way for Africa to take its rightful place in the world. Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Ivory Coast, was openly supporting Qaddafi with this radical move. Gbagbo believed that those who were serious should declare a United States of Africa and the others could follow. Fear of this emerging African unity, especially between countries in the north and south of the continent, prompted France to orchestrate Gbagbo’s removal from power at the same time as the NATO led invasion of Libya. Genuine African unity, resulting in anything more than talk, will always be opposed, no matter what the cost, by the forces of White Supremacy.

As we now know, even those Libyans who opposed Qaddafi’s drive for a United States of Africa, did not support the overthrow of the Jamahiriya. It is a well-substantiatedfact that the rag-tag and opportunistic conglomerate of reactionaries, including monarchists, Arab supremacists and al-Qaeda linked Islamists, such as those from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, constituted an insignificant minority. The Libyan Revolutionary Armed Forces could have easily contained these retrograde forces, if NATO had not bombed them into power. Without the backing of France, the US, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and their satellites, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, the so-called Libyan rebels amounted to nothing when confronted with the overwhelming support of the majority of Libyans for Muammar Qaddafi and the Al Fateh Revolution. This revolution brought dignity, stability, prosperity and liberation from foreign domination to all Libyans, from the fairest to the darkest in complexion. One thing you knew as soon as you stepped off the plane at Tripoli Airport was that the Libyans – all Libyans – were in control of their country!It was people power, seemingly chaotic and misunderstood by outsiders, but a truly participatory democracy to those who lived it and experienced it. The majority of Libyans were aware of this and supported Al Fateh.

Knowing who the so-called rebels truly are, it came as no surprise to me,thatin addition to the long list of crimes against humanity attributed to these scoundrels, they would auction Black Africans as slave labor.

Following the heroic battle of Sirte, back in December 2011, in an article titled, “Demons Unleashed in Libya: NATO’s Islamists Continue Program of Ethnic and Ideological Cleansing”, I wrote about the horror that was taking place. A horror that was instigated by the Anglo-Franco-American Imperialists, under the watchful eye of the UN – all of whom are now shedding crocodile tears over the sale of African migrants in Libya. In that article, I wrote about the“complete whiteout by the corporate media regarding all news from Libya”. I stated that,“Even the United Nations, an architect of the nation’s destruction, says 7,000 prisoners are held without trial or charge, most of them Black, many of them tortured. Any known Qaddafi loyalists who have not been able to get out of Libya have to stay underground. Death squads scour the land. Truckloads of bodies are being carted away, as the now feuding armed gangs, each with their own command structure, and none adhering to anything the Western installed NTC says, introduces the only policy they ever had – exterminate Qaddafi and all those loyal to him.”

These are NATO’s thugs.

I went on to note that,

“In addition to loyalty to the Leader, and defense of their country against foreign invaders, having black skin and asserting one’s Africanity has become a crime in the new Libya. Ethnic cleansing is continuing unabated. Every day Black Africans from Libya and other parts of Africa are hunted down. Thousands have been brutally tortured and executed. Rape of Black women is a favored weapon of NATO’s Islamists. Many of the female bodies found show signs of rape, beatings and torture. Large numbers of Black Africans make up the ranks of the Green Resistance.”

I quoted one Tripoli resident as saying:

“Everyone is terrified of the NTC and their armed gangs. We have seen with our own eyes what they are capable of – they are animals. All around us people are being rounded up and imprisoned. We have no way of knowing how many have been murdered. Anyone who is associated with Qaddafi or suspected of loyalty to him is at risk. Even people who have worked for people who are known supporters of the leader have been rounded up and tortured. I personally know of many persons who were just working for people associated with the leader who have been taken away and never seen again. If you are black you are an immediate suspect – these rebels call black Libyans “abd” means slave and they are rounding them up just because they are black – it is making me sick and ashamed.”

“…What these rebels have done to their own people is disgusting – some of the acts of torture I can’t even speak about. There has been a lot of rape. I wept when I learned of what these animals did to the leader’s female bodyguards – they are not human and that is why there is so much fear. Any known Qaddafi loyalists who have not been able to get out of Libya have to stay underground. Libyans are afraid to talk to other Libyans – anyone could be an informer. It feels like the last days are upon us – Libya has been turned into a living hell.”

The imperialist media, including CNN was completely silent regarding all of these crimes against humanity,despite the fact that genocide in the form of an ethnic and ideological cleansing pogrom was unfolding right before our eyes. There was no outcry from the UN or the North Atlantic Tribes. No time or motive for outcry – having shared the spoils, these callous warlords had already moved on to their next victim – Syria.

So why now?

Could it be that the Green Resistance is gaining ground? Could it be that although they killed Qaddafi and buried him in an unmarked grave (they know why), his dangerous (for them) ideas are better known now than before?  Could it be that Muammar Qaddafi’s vision for a United States of Africa could once again re-surface?

Prior to the overthrow of the Jamahiriya, thousands of Africans traveled to Libya to work, and they prospered. Employment opportunities existed across a range of occupations, including teachers, librarians, nurses, hotel workers, chefs, mechanics, electricians, construction workers and unskilled laborers. They were able to send money home to their families. African businesses and companies also traded extensively in Libya. There was zero tolerance in the Jamahiriya for the mistreatment of Libyan or migrant workers or anyone for that matter. I know of many foreigners who received favorable judgments in employment disputes.

The destruction of this most prosperous and just African country was led by France, who now dares to call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the crimes committed against African migrants “by Libyans”. This is devil-speak. The same devil who, in the words of the Honorable Minister Farrakhan, “unleashed the demons” that are now committing these and other heinous crimes, is trying to sow more discord by talking about “Libyan crimes”. Where was CNN and the French government when these same gangs of demons were committing the atrocities described above?

We have known since the first day of NATO’s invasion that this was perhaps one of the most racist and atrocious crimes of the 21st century. The question that we must ask ourselves is why CNN, the French government and others who led the charge in 2011, are all of a sudden concerned about the plight of Africans in Libya. Minister Farrakhan calls it “deceptive intelligence”, and warns us that, “every time the serpent raises its head it should be decapitated”.

Let us resist this crude attempt to divide and ruin us yet again. Let us not be distracted and misled by imperialist propaganda. Let us make sure that our enemies do not set our agenda, causing us to react to their devious attempts to pit us against each other. Let us set our own agenda for our second liberation. Crimes against Black Africans and Qaddafi loyalists, of every complexion, began in Libya in 2011, and continue to this day, unabated. Thousands languish in detention centers, Libyans of every complexion and migrants from all over Africa. Those carrying out these crimes on the ground are the foot soldiers and thugs of the criminal masterminds of the hell that is now Libya. Arrest warrants should be issued immediately for Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Emir Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani to name but a few.

I end with a message to “All our Brothers and Sisters in Africa and the Diaspora” from long time Revolutionary Committee Movement member, Dr. Salem Zubeidy:

“This letter is addressed to our brothers, officials, and residents of the sub-Saharan African countries, who are characterized by dark features….

There have been many reactions and statements by African leaders, politicians, organizations and institutions following an investigation published by CNN that there are markets for the selling of Africans of dark skin in Libya …

No one stopped to question the validity of this report, and where is the market? When did this happen? Where do the (alleged) slaves go?

Then, no one asked how the channel got to the supposed market, and how was it able to video the “auction”? What is the purpose of the American channel to broadcast such a program that distorts an entire people, and accuses them of committing a heinous crime that is not accepted by a reasonable mind and not approved by any logic?

We can find explanations and justifications for a US channel harboring suspicious purposes in fueling separation and instigating seditions.

As an answer to the voices and forces that see in this an opportunity to falsify the facts, and play down the Libyan people’s accomplishments, side by side with their African brothers and sisters in the golden times of the al-Fateh Revolution, it behooves us to clarify some points:

1. Libya, which you know has been hijacked since the Fall of 2011, and its capabilities are being controlled by criminal gangs that had been enabled by means of the Western war machine of NATO, after destroying the foundations of the state.
2. Libya was the Bureau of the liberation movements, which trained, armed and equipped thousands of young people in the southern regions of Africa, Rhodesia, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola, and enabled them to return with their full military gear, with Libyan advisers, to fight the battles of liberation.
3. Libya offered total support to the struggle of Cabral in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde and dispatched Libyan officers as volunteers to fight alongside him, some of whom are still living witnesses amongst us.
4. Libya presented absolute support for revolutionary and progressive regimes in African countries seeking liberation from imperialism and neo-colonialism in the Congo, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Chad, and others.
5. Libya alone has resisted the Barcelona process, which had as an objective the separation of the light-skinned in the north of the continent linking them with the Mediterranean in the so-called “Mediterranean Organization” and established the CEN-SAD in response to the Barcelona process, to prove the unity of the continent.
6. Libya fought the battle for the unification of the continent and the affirmation of its freedom, identity, and dignity through pressing for the establishment of the African Union.
7. Libya embraced African political opposition movements, supporting their programs and bringing many of their leaders to power.
8. Libya represented the ongoing battle for peace, development, and construction. It convened dozens of meetings, organized dozens of mediation affairs and reconciliations. It also invested huge sums in important projects in most countries of the continent …

We can go on in more detail, but we just want to tell you and the world that your Libyan brothers and sisters cannot accept to disassociate themselves from their continent, no matter how the enemies of Africa try.”

A full statement from Libyan People’s National Movement (LPNM) can be found here.

Gerald A. Perreira is chairperson of the Guyanese organizations Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG) and Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP),International Secretary for ARM (African Revolutionary Movement) and executive member of the Caribbean Chapter of the Network for Defense of Humanity.He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fatah Revolution, and was an executive member of the World Mathaba based in Libya. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from the author.

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. That quote is worth bearing in mind when assessing the chances of the latest United Nations peace plan for Libya.

Every autumn, along with the falling leaves, comes a new UN plan for ending Libya’s civil war, now into its fourth year.

Like the plans before it, the current version of the United Nations Support Mission for Libya has superficial attractions.

It proposes a new slimmed-down version of the government the UN itself installed in Tripoli two years ago, cutting the number of its presidency from nine members to three, one chosen from each of the country’s three regions.

The elected parliament in Tobruk voted yes to it this week, and there were encouraging signs from its rival, unelected, parliament, the State Council in Tripoli. Cue optimistic words from the new UN envoy, Ghassan Salame, to the United Nations Security Council – his boss – earlier this month about how the peace process is advancing.

But the reality is, it ain’t going to work.

And it ain’t going to work for the same reason that all the previous UN peace plans didn’t work.

The most obvious reason why it will not work is right there in the UN plan: The three-strong presidency needs to be agreed by a grand council of all Libya’s factions, expected to be called by the UN in February, which will also decide a date for new elections. But if all Libya’s factions could agree a way forward, there would never have been a civil war in the first place.

That is reality behind the superficial optimism that greeted the yes-vote to the new presidency by Tobruk – Libya’s only governing group that was actually elected.

The UN’s powerlessness was exposed two weeks ago, when Tobruk refused to let a UN plane, bringing western Libyan MPs to the parliament, was refused permission to land. The UN greeted this with a meek protest, and nothing more. Outside powers have other things to think about, and there was no Big Power heft to push Tobruk to change its mind.

The reality is that the country remains in political turmoil.

In the east, supporters of Tobruk’s army commander, Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, have begun a petition for him to be declared Libyan President. This likely will not work and the Field Marshall himself knows it is not necessary. After his successful operations against Islamists, clearing them from Benghazi, Libya’s second city, he has a fair chance of walking it to victory if Libya held a Presidential election.

With Benghazi free, the city is shrugging off three years of battle. Flights and shipping are being transferred from Tobruk, at Libya’s eastern extremity, back to Benghazi. Oil is flowing from the Sirte Basin, where the country’s oil wealth is concentrated.

Tripoli, meanwhile, is undergoing more and more deportations: The militias who control the streets fight each other, kidnappings are endemic, and citizens are humiliated by having to line up for hours to withdraw paltry sums of money from state banks just to survive. All of which is an indictment on the Tripoli government which, despite UN backing, has failed to impose itself.

In other words, eastern Libya is humming, and will not bend its knee to any UN plan not to its liking.​​​ Outside powers are also disunited. France and Italy both had strategies, Italy backing the Tripoli rulers, France Tobruk. Russia has also signaled support for Tobruk, enjoying warm relations with Haftar, though formally all three states endorse the “UN process.”

The wild card is the United States. The Trump administration has kept its distance from Libya, with Trump himself declaring the US has “no interest” in the country.

That may be changing. This month Libya’s oil chief Mustafa Sanallah and, reportedly, a member of Haftar’s entourage, were both in Houston to meet Trump’s Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. The location of the meetings was important: Tillerson is an oil man, the former chief executive of Exxon, and Houston is also the HQ of American oil companies who have a presence in eastern Libya. The companies are keen to see production get going again, and Haftar’s advisors are keen to remind them that, since capturing the Sirte Basin from assorted militias a year back, the general has allowed the oil to flow unlike the militias who held it to ransom.​

In the end, Libya’s war is likely to be settled by old fashioned great-powers moves, not the illusionary plans of the disrespected UN.

Featured image is from the author.

On November 19, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of the US Strategic Command, declared he would refuse to follow an illegal presidential order to launch a nuclear attack. “If you execute an unlawful order, you will go to jail,” the general explained at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. “You could go to jail for the rest of your life.”

Gen. Hyten is correct. For those in the military, there is a legal duty to obey a lawful order, but also a legal duty to disobey an unlawful order. An order to use nuclear weapons — except possibly in an extreme circumstance of self-defense when the survival of the nation is at stake — would be an unlawful order.

There is cause for concern that Donald Trump may order a nuclear strike on North Korea. Trump has indicated his willingness to use nuclear weapons. In early 2016, he asked a senior foreign policy adviser about nuclear weapons three times during a briefing and then queried,

“If we have them why can’t we use them?”

During a GOP presidential debate, Trump declared,

“With nuclear, the power, the devastation is very important to me.”

As the heated rhetoric with North Korean president Kim Jong-un escalated, Trump tweeted that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was “wasting his time” by pursuing diplomacy with North Korea. Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. During his visit to South Korea earlier this month, Trump distinguished his administration from prior ones, who refrained from using nuclear weapons against North Korea.

“This is a very different administration than the United States has had in the past,” he said. “Do not underestimate us. And do not try us.”

In April, “multiple senior intelligence officials” told NBC News that the administration was “prepared to launch a preemptive strike” if they thought North Korea was about to conduct a nuclear test. Preemptive strikes violate the United Nations Charter, which forbids the use of military force except in self-defense or with permission from the UN Security Council.

A Duty to Obey Lawful and Disobey Unlawful Orders

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) requires that all military personnel obey lawful orders. Article 92 of the UCMJ provides,

“A general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution, the laws of the United States….”

Additionally, both the Nuremberg Principles and the Army Field Manual create a duty to disobey unlawful orders.

Article II of the Constitution states,

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

However, Article I specifies that only Congress has the power to declare war. Taken together, the articles convey that the president commands the armed forces once Congress authorizes war.

The president can only use military force in self-defense or to forestall an imminent attack. There must exist “a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” under the well-established Caroline Case. A president has no lawful authority to order a first-strike nuclear attack.

John E. Hyten (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In its advisory opinion, “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons,” the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined in 1996 that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.”

The ICJ continued,

“However … the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

That means that while the use of nuclear weapons might be lawful when used in self-defense if the survival of the nation were at stake, a first-strike use would not be.

Article 509 of Field Manual 27-10, codifying a Nuremberg Principle, specifies that “following superior orders” is not a defense to the commission of war crimes, unless the accused “did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful.”

“Every violation of the law of war is a war crime,” Section 499 of the Army Field Manual states. The law of war is largely contained in the Geneva Conventions.

Gen. Hyten, who said he had been trained in the law of war for many years, cited its four guiding principles: distinction, proportionality, necessity and unnecessary suffering.

The first is distinction.

“In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives,” Article 48 of the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol 1, says.

Article 85 describes making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack as a grave breach, which is considered a war crime. Nuclear weapons do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Another guiding principle is proportionality.

“Loss of life and damage to property incidental to attacks must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained,” according to the US Army Field Manual FM27-10: Law of Land Warfare.

The damage a US nuclear weapon would inflict — the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people — would vastly exceed the military object of destroying North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

Military necessity is also a well-established law of war. It allows “those measures not forbidden by international law which are indispensable for securing the complete submission of the enemy,” according to the Lieber Code. It is never necessary to use a nuclear weapon, except in certain hypothetical cases of self-defense if the survival of the US were at stake.

Finally, there is the principle of unnecessary suffering.

 “It is prohibited to employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering,” according to Article 35.2 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions.

A nuclear attack on North Korea would kill and maim untold numbers of people.

If the president ordered a nuclear strike, Gen. Hyten said he would offer legal and strategic advice, but he would not violate the laws of war simply on the president’s say-so.

Who’s in the Nuclear Chain of Command?

Last month, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) worried that Trump may be leading the United States “on the path to World War III.” On November 14, Corker convened the first congressional hearing on the president’s power to use nuclear weapons since 1976.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said,

“We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with US national security interests.”

Ret. Gen. Robert Kehler, former commander of the US Strategic Command, testified at the hearing that the military can refuse to follow what it views as an illegal order, including an order to launch a nuclear strike. To be lawful, an order must come from a source with legal authority and must be legal under the law of armed conflict, Gen. Kehler added.

Duke University Professor Peter Feaver testified that the president does not simply press a button to launch nuclear weapons. He can only give an order to others, who would then cause “missiles to fly.”

However, although he cannot “press a button,” the president has considerable power to manipulate circumstances in ways that would allow him to launch those missiles. Brian McKeon, senior policy adviser in the Pentagon in the Obama administration, testified that if a commander balked at carrying out a launch order, the president could tell the secretary of defense to order the reluctant commander to launch the missiles.

“And then, if the commander still resisted,” McKeon added, “you either get a new secretary of defense or get a new commander.”

One way or another, McKeon said, the president would get his way.

Moreover, Bruce Blair, former nuclear missile launch officer and co-founder of the anti-nuclear group Global Zero, told the Associated Press that a president can send a nuclear attack order directly to the Pentagon war room. From there, Blair said, that order “would go to the men and women who would turn the launch keys.”

William Perry, secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, concurs. Perry told Politico that defense secretary James Mattis could not necessarily stop a nuclear launch order.

“The order can go directly from the president to the Strategic Air Command,” Perry said. “So, in a five- or six- or seven-minute kind of decision, the secretary of defense probably never hears about it until it’s too late.”

Ranking Senate Foreign Relations Committee Member Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) advocated congressional reassertion of authority. He said they should not trust the generals or a set of protocols to act as a check on the president, or rely on individuals hired by the president to resist an illegal order.

“Donald Trump can launch nuclear war as easily as his Twitter account,” Cardin cautioned.

Reaffirm Congress’s Constitutional War Powers

On October 27, Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) introduced H.R. 4140, the No Unconstitutional Strike Against North Korea Act. The bipartisan bill, which currently has more than 60 co-sponsors, would prohibit the use of any federal funds to launch a military strike against North Korea or to introduce the US Armed Forces into hostilities with North Korea before Congress either declares war on, or enacts an authorization for the use of military force in, North Korea.

Contact your Congress member and insist that he or she sign on to H.R. 4140 as a co-sponsor.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and a member of the national advisory board of Veterans for Peace. She is co-author (with Kathleen Gilberd) of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent. The second, updated edition of her book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, was published in November. Visit her website: MarjorieCohn.com. Follow her on Twitter: @MarjorieCohn.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

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In May 2015, Vladimir Putin signed Russia’s Law on Undesirable Organizations.

It targets foreign organizations posing a “threat to the constitutional order and defense capability or the security of the Russian state” – subversive groups no governments should tolerate..

The law lets the Prosecutor General’s Office and Foreign Ministry declare activities of “undesirable foreign organizations” illegal – ones considered a threat to Russia’s security.

Non-compliance is punishable by administrative penalties. Repeated violations mandate imprisonment for up to six years. Russian citizens and organizations working with banned groups face fines only.

Russia’s 2012 Foreign Agents Law requires NGOs engaged in political activities to register as foreign agents or face stiff fines. They’re prohibited from supporting political parties – free to engage in other activities.

Many so-called NGOs are agents of foreign governments, notably America’s State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy – charged with subverting it in targeted countries.

Washington rejects democratic governance at home and abroad, falsely claiming it fosters what it opposes worldwide.

In response to the Trump administration requiring RT America to register as a foreign agent under the country’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Moscow promised tit-for-tat retaliation.

Earlier in November, Russian lower and upper house lawmakers passed legislation, designating media in the country receiving funding from abroad as foreign agents.

On November 25, Vladimir Putin signed it into law. Henceforth, media named foreign agents by Russia’s Justice Ministry will face the same requirements and restrictions as NGOs labeled foreign agents.

Russian upper house Federation Council constitutional legislation and state construction committee chairman Andrey Klishas said the new law isn’t about censorship.

It mandates certain obligations on media designated as foreign agents. Russian media aren’t targeted.

Designated foreign ones must publish a notice, indicating they’re functioning as foreign agents. They must report regularly on their activities, provide information on their financing and staff – requirements the same as imposed on RT America.

Russia’s Justice Ministry said it notified the Voice of America, Current Time (supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors – overseeing all US foreign propaganda operations), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other unnamed media about their possible designation as foreign agents.

If any media fail to register as required, they’ll fall under the 2012 Foreign Agents Law, required to report regularly on their finances, funding sources and activities. Annually they’re audited for compliance.

Inspections can occur any time in response to complaints. Administrative or criminal liability may follow failure to comply with requirements. Their broadcasting signals may be blocked and web sites shut down.

Putin explained Russian laws on undesirable organizations, NGOs and foreign agents are necessary to prevent or limit other nations from interfering in Russia’s internal affairs – America the lead offender.

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Washington has been supplying Kurdish fighters in northern Syria with heavy weapons and other material support for many months, ignoring Turkish criticism.

On Friday, President Erdogan said

“(w)e have clearly expressed our stance” on this issues. Russia shares Ankara’s concern, he added, “but there is no similar attitude on the part of the United States” and its “coalition” partners.

He believes arming Kurds to fight ISIS is a pretext for other US objectives. Weapons supplied can be used against Turkey.

Later on Friday, Trump and Erdogan spoke by phone. According to Turkish Foreign Minister Melvut Cavasoglu, the US president “instructed (the Pentagon) in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said that this absurdity should have ended much earlier.”

Ankara claimed Washington supplied Kurdish YPG fighters with around 4,000 truckloads of weapons. They continued coming long after fighting against ISIS in northern Syria ended.

It’s unknown to what extent CIA operatives are involved in aiding Kurdish fighters, along with arming ISIS and other terrorists in Syria, Iraq, elsewhere regionally and in other countries.

It’s also unknown what knowledge and input Trump has over combat activities in US war theaters. He delegated warmaking to administration and Pentagon generals.

They’re directing things, not him, one among other signs of weak leadership – compounded by Washington’s notorious history of saying one thing and doing another, including betraying allies.

Is Kurdish betrayal next? Or will the White House try having things both ways, pretending to halt arms shipments, covertly continuing them to maintain pressure on Damascus.

Neither the National Security Council or State Department confirmed Trump’s pledge to Erdogan. The White House provided no details on his conversation with Turkey’s president.

Halting military support will anger Kurdish fighters, proving America can’t be trusted, perhaps getting them to seek closer ties to Damascus.

Washington waged war on Syria for regime change and control over the country, wanting Iran isolated ahead of a similar strategy against its government.

Peace and stability defeat its agenda. Endless wars serve it. Resolving conflict in Syria remains a formidable task, impossible to achieve easily.

Washington and its rogue partners will continue trying to obstruct it, making unacceptable demands, refusing to relinquish northern and southern Syrian territory it illegally occupies.

Syria’s liberating struggle has miles to go, its outcome uncertain given America’s resolve to control the country.

Russia, Iran and Damascus oppose US imperial objectives, supporting the only acceptable alternative.

It’s covered in SC Res. 2254, calling for ceasefire and a diplomatic solution.

International law affirms Syrian sovereignty, territorial integrity and right of its people alone to decide who’ll lead them, free from foreign interference.

Getting Washington to observe it is another matter entirely.

What is global politics?

It is when a white man sends a black man 20.000 km. far away from home to kill a yellow man, while at home this white man is living on the land occupied from a red man.

From 1989 onward, as a consequence of the dissolution of the bipolar world in global politics, Security Studies as an academic discipline re-born again its political importance. From the very traditional point of view, it was only the national-state to be considered as the reference object of the security issue that was usually to be obtained by military power[1] and diplomatic activity by the responsible government. According to some definitions, ‘Security…implies both coercive means to check an aggressor and all manner of persuasion, bolstered by the prospect of mutually shared benefits, to transform hostility into cooperation“[2] and “National security may be defined as the ability to withstand aggression from abroad“.[3] Nevertheless, collective security in global politics depends fundamentally on the very type of IR between the key actors in politics – the national-states. A modern form of IR and collective security was established after the Thirty Years War in 1648 by the Peace Treaty of Westphalia.

It is a big question if present days world lives in secure times. Usually, the people trust their own governments and institutions for the reason they somehow believe that they keep them safe and even prosperous. However, the current moment of global politics is very characterized by a pervasive worldwide sense of insecurity. There are, unfortunately, many places in the world in which people live under the constant threat of war, expulsion, destruction, rape, killing, shooting, being raped, robbed, terrorized or kidnapped (Kosovo, Somalia, Syria, Nigeria, Afghanistan, the USA, the EU, etc.). Security policy, especially by the states, is supposed to minimize or suppress insecurity. From the points of global politics and international relations (IR), at the time of the Cold War (1949−1989), the responsible institutions to cope with all forms of insecurity were the nation-states, two global military-political blocs (the NATO and the Warsaw Pact) and the only supranational security institution – the UNO.

In many cases, security policies are founded on real military forces, which are prepared to act against the perpetrator of the international law and order. In principle, the state authority has to protect their own people against risk of different nature that is coming either from inside or from outside of the society. Nevertheless, the requirement that the state has to protect the citizens from the outside aggression is a cornerstone of security policy in general.[4] Security itself, is considered to be one of the crucial values in human life. Human security primarily means to be safe, or to feel yourself to be safe, from threats. It is, nevertheless, common attitude in the academic discipline of IR that the system of the relations between the nation-states is mostly responsible for the quality of preservation of global security what means that global security fundamentally depends on the type of IR which exists among the key actors in global politics – the (national- or other) states.

A modern system of IR, functioning from 1648 to 1945, has its historical roots in the Thirty Years War (1618−1648), that was concluded by the Peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. This war can be named as the First Pan-European War, taking its scope, results and consequences for the European history in general. For 300 years, the principles of IR established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia were respected as the fundamental framework of both world politics and global security.

The foundations of the Thirty Years War were dogmatic disputes between the rising movement and confessional philosophy of different types of Protestantism, at the time of Reformation, and on other hand Vatican. In essence, that was a clash of revolting European Protestants against the confessional authority of the Roman Catholic Church, that started in 1517 by Martin Luther’s (1483−1546) Ninety-Five Theses.

In the consequent years, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and other theologians of Protestantism, created the groundwork of  Reformation as a spiritual-philosophic challenge to Vatican’s domination over the West Europe. An additional fuel added to a popular dissatisfaction against Vatican became a widespread corruption by the Roman Catholic Church – a dissatisfaction which many European rulers and regional leaders exploited for the sake to realize their own personal ambitions. In some cases, the very personal reasons were the crucial motif to break with the pope as the king of England Henry VIII (1509−1547) did in 1534.[5]

The claims of unchallenged spiritual-political authority over the Roman Catholic Europe by Vatican and the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation) brought extra personal-state’s reasons to many European kings and other feudal rulers (in the German case, for instance) to decide to break with the pope and to accept some type of the Protestant doctrine instead of the Roman Catholic one. However, on the other hand, the Vatican and its Roman Catholic client-monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy became extremely worried that the confessional fragmentation followed by the growing political autonomy of the (North) European rulers is fundamentally undermining the pope’s both spiritual and political authority in Europe, and therefore decided to crush these challenges by all means including and direct military intervention. Such Vatican’s policy finally culminated in the Thirty Years War (1618−1648).

The Peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 marks the start of the modern system of IR based on the foreign affairs between the states. The system is usually named as the Westphalian System of International Relations (WSIR), which gradually became up today spread over the world and consolidated as the state’s system with its anarchical inner structure, balances of power and power concern. However, most world states are not able to extract sufficient resources in order to wage some major wars and therefore to play a role of GP in global politics. That became informal reason to legitimize exactly only GP as a „world policemen“ what indirectly means that the world system of IR and global security is in essence of a multipolar nature with some extraordinary exceptions as it was, for instance, the case from 1991 to 2008 when only one hyperpower state (the USA) was a sole global policeman.

The practical implementation of the principles of the 1648 Peace Treaty of Westphalia became, however, contradictory in its nature as they were, in essence, opposing each other to the level not to be finally compatible. The WSIR created after 1648 an anarchic world and power politics based on competition by GP for global hegemony. The established principle of state’s sovereignty in 1648 directly implied the practice of realpolitik, what meant that political actors (states) can freely struggle for realization of their own national interests without any restrictions as any kind of world government did not exist to control and restrain them.

As self-interest motivates states, it became very difficult to reach an agreement between them for the reason that often some interest of one state is not compatible with the interests of other(s). Therefore, usually, governments do not judge objectively in the case of conflict, which state is aggressor and which state is a victim, and rather side with those who can help them to accomplish their own policy goals.

For the same reason, states create and join the military-political alliances, which are of shifting nature. One of the fundamental results of the principles established by the 1648 Peace Treaty of Westphalia was that states were seeking for the balance of power in IR as a mechanism for global or regional security and, subsequently, the existence of the system of alliances became for many states precondition to keep the balance of power. Both, alliances and balancing of power in global politics made IR extremely complicated. These complex and contradictory forces governed IR and global politics from 1648, and contemporary international politics is not immune to the basic principles of world politics established by the Peace Treaty of Westphalia:

1. Sovereignty of the state.
2. Inviolability of the state borders.
3. Non-interference into the inner affairs of the other states.
4. Balancing of power.
5. Power politics.
6. Realpolitik.
7. Making alliances.
8. Keeping a collective security.

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic is a University Professor. Official Web Platform: www.global-politics.eu/sotirovic, Editor-In-Chief of The Global Politics http://www.global-politics.eu, Lecturer at the University of Applied Social Sciences, Vilnius, Lithuania http://www.smk.lt

This article was originally published by The Global Politics.

Notes

[1] Alan Collins (ed.), Contemporary Security Studies, Oxford−New York, Oxford University Press, 2007, 2.

[2] Edward A. Kolodziej, Security and International relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 25.

[3] Giacomo Luciani, „The Economic Content of Security“, Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 8, № 2, 1989, 151.

[4] Mary Kaldor, Iavor Rangelov (eds.), The Handbook of Global Security Policy, First edition, Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2014, 1−2.

[5] Др Иванка Ћуковић Ковачевић, Историја Енглеске. Кратак преглед, Шесто издање, Београд: Naučna knjiga, 1991, 98−100. The king required divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon by the pope as she was not able to gave birth to his male heir of the throne. As the pope rejected this requirement, the king broke with Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church by providing in 1534 a legislation according to which, Henry VIII became Supreme Head of the English Church. That was the beginning of the introduction of Protestantism in England, regardless to the fact that Henry VIII personally remained conservative in doctrine by still believing in the Roman Catholicism but without the pope. He retained „the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ granted him by the pope in 1521 for his treatise against Luther [Dr Alan Isaacs et al (eds.), A Dictionary of World History, Oxford−New York, Oxford University Press, 2001, 275].

Featured image is from the author.

Let us start with the fact that the Agreed Framework was not an official form of diplomatic treaty and it would be more appropriate to name it a Framework Arrangement (this is also suggested by the word Framework in it), since the word “agreement” by default would create the false impression that it was not a gentleman’s agreement but a ratified treaty.

Then, although the framework was perceived only as an obligation on the part of the DPRK to freeze its nuclear program, in fact Article 2 of the document stated that “the two sides will move towards full normalization of political and economic relations.” According to Article 3, the US had to “provide the DPRK with formal safeguards against the threat of US use of nuclear weapons.” As can be seen, we do not see any guarantees or promise of diplomatic relations.

As far as freezing is concerned, North Korea froze its nuclear facilities in exchange for fuel oil supplies and the promise to build two light-water reactors which could not serve as a source of weapons-grade plutonium. The commissioning of the first such reactor was scheduled for 2003, and prior to that, the Americans were to supply the DPRK with 500,000 tons of fuel annually for conventional power plants. To fulfill this task, an international (American-Japanese-South Korean) Organization for the Development of North Korean Energy (KEDO) was specifically created in March 1995.

The very idea of ​​the Agreed Framework seemed to be the best option for resolving the nuclear crisis: North Korea retained the right to peaceful nuclear energy and received the political guarantees necessary for it to integrate into the international community. However, the devil was in the details.

First, the Agreed Framework was never ratified by the US Senate, which was dominated by conservatives. If the DPRK considered the Framework to have been ratified, the United States could renege on the performance of its obligations under legal pretexts, since from a formal point of view, the Arrangement was perceived as a protocol of intentions or a gentlemen’s agreement.

Secondly, the wording of the English text of the Framework could be interpreted in two ways. A phrase like “We shall take all possible measures to …”, “We shall move to …”, “We shall provide guarantees.” did not contain any specific commitments, and because from a formal point of view it was reminiscent of the joke: “We shall search, but we don’t promise to find”. So, the construction of reactors would have been done not by the US, but by a consortium, and Washington would not be directly responsible for the success or failure. This in particular allowed representatives of the conservative right to dismiss accusations that the US had committed any violation of the agreement.

Thirdly, KEDO was organized on the basis of the principle “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Initially, the main responsibility and expenses were supposed to be rested on the shoulders of the RK, while the US and Japan from the very beginning did not intend to invest particularly in this rather expensive enterprise. However, the subsequent financial crisis of 1997 significantly undermined the possibility of South Korea participating, and this was not compensated for by other parties. At the same time, we note that the text of the Framework did not contain a mechanism for settling disputes, the event of the slow construction of reactors, or if they were not built at all. It was assumed that the DPRK would regularly receive fuel during this entire period.

Fourthly, the difficulties experienced by North Korea, in connection with the death of Kim Il Sung and the beginning of “the difficult journey”, led the United States and the Republic of Korea to have certain illusions regarding the impending collapse of the North Korean regime, which made it appear irrational to invest in a “lost cause”. As a result, a year before the reactors were planned to be brought on line, the foundations on the construction were barely completed.

Nevertheless, the DPRK still remained in the crosshairs of nuclear weapon. In June 1998, at the base in North Carolina, the US troops developed plans for the nuclear bombing of the North, including the dropping of nuclear explosion simulators. In October of the same year, one of the two-star American generals publicly admitted the existence of a plan to attack the North and the establishment of a South Korean regime of occupation. This plan was to be activated not only in response to an attack from the North, but also in the event of the “unconditional signs” of a possible attack. However, when the “White Paper” published by the Pentagon in 1998 indicated that victory over the DPRK would require 640 thousand American armed service men from all branches of the armed forces, the hawkish cries fell silent.

A surge of interest in the North’s nuclear program was associated with an interesting incident. At the end of August 1998, the press was flooded with a wave of “satellite intelligence data” suggesting that North Korea was building an unprecedented underground nuclear complex in the town of Kumchang-ni, protected from the attacks of American precision weapons. For a long time both sides had been stirring up passions, but in the spring of 1999, in exchange for a large batch of humanitarian assistance, the North unexpectedly allowed Americans access to this site, which (as the North had frequently claimed) turned out to be an empty cave. Actually, it was at this time that media owned by opponents of the North began to develop a thesis that the nuclear program, if not a bluff, was basically a way of demanding food aid.

On the back of the Pyongyang summit in 2000, the North Korean-American relations also began to improve. Of particular note was the visit to Washington by the second in command in the DPRK hierarchy, Jo Myong-rok, in October 2000, and soon after, between October 22-25, 2000, the US State Secretary Madeleine Albright first visited North Korea.

Negotiations with Kim Jong Il lasted more than five hours, and the result seemed to satisfy both sides. The Americans considered that they had succeeded in taming the Korean regime to a certain extent by achieving the freezing of its missile program, while Kim Jong Il was able to impress Americans as a man with whom they could conduct normal negotiations. They even talked about a DPRK-American Summit and when offering the idea, Albright emphasized that a visit to Pyongyang by the US President could radically change the situation, just as it did when Nixon visited China. However, the visit by the American president to the DPRK did not take place. It was not due to the president’s unwillingness, but changes to the foreign policy situation that required his presence in the Middle East. In addition, etiquette and respect for traditional American allies would require that after visiting Pyongyang the president would also visit Seoul and Tokyo, thus prolonging the entire programme.

The author would like to dwell on the events of the 2000s, since there is one particular factor which is of importance for an understanding of the current situation. Thus the results of Albright’s visit and the signing of the 1994 Agreed Framework suggest that when the US leadership has the political will and desire to solve problems connected to the Korean peninsula, it can resolve them.

Before the US presidential elections in 2000, the North Koreans even reduced the intensity of anti-American rhetoric, but when the Republicans came to power, the hope for dialogue was lost. The neo-conservatives who had come to power were concerned that the process of settlement between the two Koreas might go too quickly and they would lose control of it. Against this background, the supply of heavy fuel oil from the United States to the DPRK became irregular, and the construction of the reactors was effectively frozen. By this time it had become clear that if the reactors were to be built, it would not be in 2003 as originally planned.

In autumn 2001, in the presence of several Asian leaders, Bush referred to Kim Jong Il as a “pygmy.” A few days later, he publicly declared that “Kim Jong-il made him sick,” and “the sinking of the North Korean regime would be one of the priority areas of his policy.” In his annual address to the Congress on January 29, 2002, George Bush said openly: “…Our (…) goal is to hinder regimes which support terrorism, threaten America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes are much quieter after September 11. However, we know their true face. North Korea is a regime armed with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while its people are starving“

This political direction also led to a revision of fuel oil supplies. They were made dependent not on the country complying with the decisions of the Agreed Framework, but on improvements in the human rights situation in the DPRK. The response to the North Korean question when translated from diplomatic language meant “our policy has changed, and we are not responsible for any of the decisions taken when the Democrats were in power.

We should note that all this time the Americans did not accuse the DPRK of violating the Agreed Framework; all such invective was to emerge later, in the context of the second phase of the nuclear crisis. Prior to this time, it is sufficient to compare the text of the agreement with the real facts, in order to understand that it was NOT North Korea which failed to comply with the majority of the points of the Agreed Framework.

Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D. (Hist.), Leading researcher at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from the author.

On Dec. 17, 2014, the world witnessed the simultaneous surprise announcements by presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama to re-establish diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States after more than five decades. However, the fallacy was floated that this decision represented a step toward “normalization.” On that day, Obama claimed that the move was intended to “begin to normalize relations between our two countries.” Nevertheless, as historic as this decision was regarding the reopening of the respective embassies, it did not at all mean that the path was in fact toward normalization. It was nothing of the sort.

In fact, “normalization” contradicts the very logic behind the announcement (referred to as 17D by the Cubans). Obama indicated that the United States considered its Cuba policy a failure because it did not achieve U.S. goals, among others, of bringing “democracy” to Cuba or of nudging Cuba toward an “open economy” (market economy or capitalism). Nor did the policy succeed – indeed, it backfired – in its objective of isolating Cuba from the rest of Latin America. Consequently, the United States was forced to change its tactics to achieve the same historic goal of bringing the changes to Cuba and increasing its dwindling influence in what it considers to be “its backyard.”

Thus, despite Obama’s assertion, there was no basis at all for believing that a process of normalization was being undertaken. Furthermore, one can refer to a few examples that puncture holes in the star-spangled bubble. First is the ongoing U.S. blockade, which Obama only slightly amended (despite his wide-ranging executive powers, which would have availed him to do far more) while voluntarily imposing a record number of fines on international organizations, financial and otherwise, for trading with Cuba. This, of course, tightened the effect of the blockade.

Second, despite his executive powers to do so (and the Democratic Congressional majority in his first term), he did not close the prison in Guantanamo or return the territory to Cuba. Third, his administration practically outdid all his predecessors in the allotment of funds for CIA-backed subversive “democracy promotion” programs in Cuba. On this point, recently released documents indicate that a massive amount of U.S. CIA-backed funding took place in the years 2014–2016. This, it must be recalled, took place while the Obama administration was negotiating diplomatic ties with Cuba and even after the publicly announced new Cuba policy. Thus, many Cuban authorities and commentators were asking what kind of normalization this was.

Yet, flying in the face of reality, the illusion of “normalization” persisted. Moreover, in early 2016, as Obama was planning his trip to Cuba for March to crown his signature foreign policy legacy, this daydream was enhanced from staid black-and-white to color.

Moreover, during Obama’s actual visit to Havana, the Cuba-U.S. policy fostering the figment of the imagination of “normalization” went even further, turning itself into a high-definition Hollywood blockbuster. Hitting a fever pitch, it was stage-managed to the hilt through the Hollywood-type projection of U.S. imperialism’s new image in the form of Obama and his entourage. During those three days in March, nothing looked more “normal” in the international arena than Cuba-U.S. relations! For some, it consisted of a barely veiled euphoria.

Thus, “normalization” became even further entrenched by some as a fait accompli. By design, seduction replaced open aggression to achieve the five-decade-long elusive goal of breaking down Cuba’s will to bring the archipelago into the realm of U.S. interests. “Aggression” and “seduction” are closely related not only literally but also politically, as they are two sides of the same coin.

Barack Obama and Raul Castro

Nevertheless, given the high level of political consciousness among the vast majority of Cubans, they were not mesmerized by a pied piper in the form of Obama. Not everyone fell for this. Steeped in Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s ideas, Cuban revolutionaries in the government and the press immediately took up the sword in the form of the pen and the spoken word to deconstruct the Obama narrative. Cuba was abuzz. Nevertheless, it was Fidel himself who dealt a devastating blow to the U.S. daydream of seduction as the new tactic to replace open aggression.

Who can forget the Comandante’s now legendary ironic reflection titled, “Brother Obama,” wherein he ripped apart the Obama narrative? In essence, Obama wanted to win over Cubans (for the first time from the advantageous position of the U.S. operating from within Cuba) to the idea that their future is tied to U.S. benevolence. As Obama said on 17D, “Some of you have looked to us as a source of hope, and we will continue to shine a light of freedom.” This misconception of potential “common values” and interests facilitates the false notion that diplomatic relations combined with a few cosmetic measures lead to “normalization.”

Obama’s evangelical overture to Cubans encompassed the appeal to “leave the past behind. It is time for us to look forward to the future together” -,” as he said in Havana in March 2016, to build the myth of easy compatibility between the two systems. A slide toward mutual conformity could only mean that Cuba would give up its principles. Would the U.S. give up its political and economic system to identify with Cuba and thus facilitate “normalization?”

Fidel’s “Brother Obama” is but one example of many warnings of the U.S. goal to subvert the revolution by changing tactics. This Fidelista idea has been repeated in many forms since 1959. For example, several decades ago, he said, “Even if one day the relations between socialist Cuba and the empire would improve, that empire would not cease to crush the Cuban Revolution.”

To take just one more example, only a month after 17D, Fidel wrote a missive to university students: “I do not trust the policy of the United States, nor have I exchanged one word with them, though this does not in any way signify a rejection of a peaceful solution to conflicts or threats of war.”

Fidel’s thinking can be encapsulated into: yes to the diplomatic relations that Fidel pursued since 1959; but no to trusting the U.S. long-term goal hidden by the normalization mirage ad infinitum.

Fidel passed away a year ago on Nov. 25, 2016, only a few weeks after Trump’s unexpected victory in U.S. elections. The new U.S. administration ushered in a change from Obama’s seductive policy toward a hostile, aggressive narrative coupled with corresponding measures to tighten the blockade while maintaining diplomatic relations as the main feature of the Obama opening.

In the context of the Trump Cuba policy, the tenets of the “normalization” myth – emboldened by the virtual across-the-board majority opposition in the United States and abroad to the Trump Cuba policy – have doubled-down in promoting the myth of “normalization” under Obama. Taking advantage of the fact that Obama looks so immaculate compared with Trump on Cuba, who would dare to argue that Obama did not desire the “normalization” for which he took the first step? Who can shut their eyes to the Obama policy being short-circuited by Trump? Equating Obama with “normalization” is so “politically correct” in some academic circles to the extent that any dissenting commentator is supposed to be intimidated by this hoped-for hegemonic opinion on Cuba-U.S. relations.

Is Fidel’s resistance to the “normalization” narrative as a non-existent silver lining of the cloud no longer valid? Are his crystal-clear ideas on the empire’s opportunistic use of tactical changes to reach the same elusive goals of domination no longer applicable?

Cuba-U.S. relations will never be the same as they were before 17D irrespective of who occupies the White House. U.S. ideological and political incursions into Cuba’s socialist culture, while still relatively marginal, take on new dimensions with fresh devotees. For example, serious observers cannot help but notice among some youth and some self-employed private sector workers the existence of preconceived positive views about U.S. society, culture and even its political system. Consider this as a litmus as to the view that U.S. cultural inroads transcend presidential mandates: Has the proliferation in Havana streets of U.S. flags worn as clothing diminished since the election of Trump and his aggressive rhetoric? No. In fact, this trend’s steady increase shows no sign of let up even though Trump is head of the empire and its visible face along with the flag. The new president is riding on the coattails of the Obama legacy consisting of irruption into Cuban socialist culture.

As a final thought on these days as we acknowledge the validity of Fidel’s thinking: What will happen if the Democrats win back presidential power in 2020? If this trend that currently creates illusions about “normalization” (and its corollary of a political and economic system for Cuba that bears more of a stark resemblance to the U.S. than the Cuban Revolution) continues, what will happen in November 2020? Cuba’s socialist and political system will be the target of an unprecedented and coordinated ideological and political offensive based on the daydream-come-true of “normalization.”

Fidel’s thinking on Cuba-U.S. relations is not only valid today but represents a life-and-death struggle to conserve and expand the Cuban Revolution. Fidel’s ideas constitute the most important point of reference today – and tomorrow – on Cuba-U.S. relations for all of us who are committed to defending the Cuban Revolution.

Not only do his ideas frame the content as the solid and irreplaceable guide, but just as important is the form with which Fidel delivered his thoughts. He courageously stated and wrote what he thought – with precision timing in his delivery – to defend the Cuban Revolution. This was his only criterion.

Fidel’s ideas and his heroic attitude in declaring them are, one year after his passing, more valid than ever. His example stands out not only for Cubans but for revolutionaries around the globe.

Source

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/1-Year-Later-Fidels-Thinking-on-Cuba-US-Relations-Still-Principal-Guide-20171122-0015.html

Arnold August, a Canadian journalist and lecturer, is the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and the recently released  Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. Arnold can be followed on Twitter @Arnold_August and FaceBook

If the human species survives long enough, future historians might well marvel at what passed for ‘mainstream’ media and politics in the early 21st century.

They will see that a UK Defence Secretary had to resign because of serious allegations of sexual misconduct; or, as he put it euphemistically, because he had ‘fallen short’. But he did not have to resign because of the immense misery he had helped to inflict upon Yemen. Nor was he made to resign when he told MPs to stop criticising Saudi Arabia because that would be ‘unhelpful’ while the UK government was trying to sell the human rights-abusing extremist regime in Riyadh more fighter jets and weapons. After all, the amount sold in the first half of 2017 was a mere £1.1 billion. (See our recent media alert for more on this.) Right now, the UK is complicit in a Saudi blockade of Yemen’s ports and airspace, preventing the delivery of vital medicine and food aid. 7.3 million Yemenis are already on the brink of famine, and the World Food Programme has warned of the deaths of 150,000 malnourished children in the next few months.

Meanwhile, Robert Peston, ITV political editor, and Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News political editor, have seemingly never questioned the British Prime Minister Theresa May about the UK’s shameful role in arming and supporting Yemen’s cruel tormentor. Nor have they responded when challenged about their own silence.

Future historians will also note that British newspapers, notably The Times and the ‘left-leaning’ Guardian, published several sycophantic PR pieces for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, ‘a risk-taker with a zeal for reform’. ‘Is he taking on too much too fast?’, asked a swooning Patrick Wintour, the Guardian‘s diplomatic editor. Martin Chulov, the paper’s Middle East correspondent, waxed lyrical about the Crown Prince’s ‘bold move’ in arresting senior royals, a prominent Saudi billionaire and scores of former ministers as part of a ‘corruption purge’. The dramatic action was designed to ‘consolidate power’ while bin Salman ‘attempts to reform [the] kingdom’s economy and society’. As Adam Johnson noted in a media analysis piece for Fairness in Accuracy And Reporting, the Guardian’s coverage was akin to a ‘breathless press release.’ A follow-up article by Chulov, observed Johnson, ‘took flattering coverage to new extremes’. The ‘rush to reform’ was presented uncritically by the paper, painting the Crown Prince as a kind of populist hero; ‘a curious framing that reeks more of PR than journalism.’

Meanwhile, Richard Spencer, Middle East editor of The Times, wrote articles proclaiming, ‘Prince’s bold vision drives progress in Saudi Arabia’ and ‘It’s wrong to blame all terror on the Saudis’, featuring such propaganda bullet points as:

‘the Saudis are on our side, arresting militants and giving us vital intelligence’.

In October 2017, The Times even ran a four-part series promoting a Saudi conference to attract investment in the head-chopping kingdom with the lure of ‘sweeping social and economic reforms’. As for any awkward questions about the brutality Saudi Arabia was inflicting on Yemen, well, they were swept away.

Historians examining media archives from this time will also observe that Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tony Blair’s government, opined that the UK had been ‘misled’ about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction:

‘Top-secret US intelligence casting serious doubt over [Saddam Hussein’s] destructive capabilities was not shared with Britain.’

As a result, claimed Brown, Blair was ‘duped’ into invading Iraq. And thus ‘duped’ into shared responsibility for the deaths of around one million Iraqis.

‘Mainstream’ news journalists blandly reported Brown’s miserable excuses without demur. They failed to mention that former UN chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter had comprehensively dismissed the propaganda notion of Saddam as a threat well before the US-led invasion of March 2003. Ritter’s team had concluded that Iraq had been ‘fundamentally disarmed’, with anything that remained being simply ‘useless sludge’ because of the limited ‘shelf-lives’ of chemical and biological weapons. This crucial information was already available by October 2002, five months before the invasion, in a handy short book that somehow ‘escaped’ the attention of the British government, including Brown, and that of a compliant corporate media that broadcast endless Western propaganda.

Nevertheless, millions of people around the world marched against the Iraq war before it began, because they did not swallow the torrent of deceits emanating from Washington and London. Brown, however, had always backed Blair to the hilt, telling the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war in 2010 that Blair took ‘the right decision for the right reasons’ and insisting that ‘everything that Mr Blair did during this period, he did properly’.

Future historians will also study the media hysteria in 2017 over ‘Russiagate’ that focused obsessively on outraged claims of supposed pivotal Russian interference in Trump’s election as US President. But, as US investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald noted:

‘Inflammatory claims about Russia get mindlessly hyped by media outlets, almost always based on nothing more than evidence-free claims from government officials, only to collapse under the slightest scrutiny, because they are entirely lacking in evidence.’

Greenwald is not saying that there was definitely no Russian interference. But the ‘evidence’ for decisive intervention presented thus far is unconvincing, to say the least. The crucial point is that Western corporate media have only ever given minimal coverage to major longstanding US government efforts to intervene in other countries – from propaganda campaigns, meddling in foreign elections, and all the way up to assassinations, coups and full-blown invasions. A Time magazine cover story in 1996 even boasted that US interference helped Boris Yeltsin to be re-elected as president of Russia:

‘Exclusive: Yanks to the Rescue. The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win.’

The historical record will also reveal, in apparent blindness and deafness to this extensive record of US criminal behaviour, that BBC News journalists based there frequently end up gushing about the greatness of ‘America’. It is a rite of passage that demonstrates their bona fides as servants of power.

It will not surprise future historians that prestigious press and broadcasting awards were given to those who reported within the limits circumscribed by established power. Such rewards were few for those who dared to expose crimes by the West or ‘our’ allies.

One of these ‘allies’, arguably the most important in the Middle East, is Israel. Earlier this month, Priti Patel resigned as Britain’s minister for international aid after it had been revealed that she had had numerous secret meetings with Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while on a ‘family holiday’. She had also visited an Israeli military field hospital that treats Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters. Following her trip, Patel had actually wanted to send UK aid to the powerful Israeli army, even while cutting Palestinian aid to vital projects in Gaza. The episode briefly opened ‘a small, opaque window on the UK’s powerful Israel lobby’, observed Jonathan Cook. But the topic of the Israel lobby is seemingly taboo in polite British society. Laura Kuenssberg quickly deleted a tweet she had sent out quoting an unnamed senior Tory MP complaining about the ‘corrupt’ relationship that has enabled Israel to ‘buy access’ in Westminster.

Perhaps, then, it was no surprise that when the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories published a strongly-worded report in New York on October 26, 2017, the resulting media silence was deafening. Michael Lynk, a Canadian professor of law and a human rights expert, called on the world to hold Israel accountable for fundamental violations of international law during fifty years of occupation. This was especially timely with the 100-year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration that effectively stole Palestine from the Palestinians who were ‘ethnically cleansed’ from the land that became the state of Israel.

Lynk encouraged the international community to take ‘unified actions on an escalating basis’ to declare the occupation illegal and to demand Israel’s withdrawal. Gaza, he said, was ‘in misery’, and Israel’s continued illegal occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem was a ‘darkening stain’. Despite the seriousness of these charges, and their authoritative UN source, we could not find a single mention in the UK press or on the BBC News website. Scholars in the future will marvel at this stunning media obedience to Western power, obtained without visible coercion.

‘An Existential Threat To Our Civilisation’

Undoubtedly, what will appal future historians most is that the urgent calamitous risks of human-induced climate change were well known, but that nothing was done to stop the looming chaos. Worse than that: powerful private business, financial and economic elites, and the governments they had essentially co-opted, forged ahead with policies that accelerated the climate crisis.

The evidence has already been unequivocal for many years. In November 2017, a comprehensive review of climate science by thirteen US federal agencies concluded in a 477-page report that evidence of global warming was ‘stronger than ever’. They said that it was ‘extremely likely’ – meaning with 95 to 100% certainty – that global warming is human-induced, mostly from carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

One climate scientist said:

‘A lot of what we’ve been learning over the last four years suggests the possibility that things may have been more serious than we think.’

The language was couched in typical scientific caution. But the horror at what was unfolding was surely not far from the surface of academics’ minds.

And yet, in a further sign of the short-term insanity that drives state and corporate policy, governments continued to channel huge sums of public money into planet-killing industries. European states, including the UK government, gave more than €112bn (£99bn) every year in subsidies to support fossil fuel production and consumption.

In 2016, gas companies spent €104m in intensive lobbying campaigns to try to encourage European policymakers to accept the myth that natural gas is a ‘clean fuel’ in an attempt to ‘lock in’ fossil fuels for decades to come. Moreover, fossil fuel companies lobbied hard behind the scenes of the Paris climate talks, as well as follow-up negotiations, to manipulate outcomes in their private favour. After all, cynical corporate madness has no boundaries when profits are the overriding concern. Absurdly, the text of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change did not even include the words ‘fossil fuels’. Scientists warned that fossil fuel burning is set to hit a record high in 2017.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that 2017 is set to be one of the top three hottest years on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The WMO also noted that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have ‘surged at unprecedented speed’ to the highest level in 800,000 years. 

The signs of ecological breakdown are all around us. Last month, a new study revealed that the abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years. The results had ‘shocked scientists’. This matters hugely because flying insects are, of course, a vital component of a healthy ecosystem upon which we are crucially dependent for food, water and oxygen. Robert Hunziker observes succinctly that this ecosystem, ‘the quintessential essence of life on our planet’, is breaking down. Our life support system is being destroyed.

One of the many symptoms of this breakdown that is likely to overwhelm human society is mass migration as a result of climate change. Tens of millions of people will be forced to move because of climate disruption in the next decade alone. This flood of human refugees will make the numbers of those who fled the Syrian conflict into Europe look like a trickle.

Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, said:

‘What we are talking about here is an existential threat to our civilisation in the longer term. In the short term, it carries all sorts of risks as well and it requires a human response on a scale that has never been achieved before.’

However, if governments really were motivated to protect the public, as they always claim when amplifying the threat of terrorism, they would have already announced a halt to fossil fuels and a massive conversion to renewable energy. A landmark study recently showed that global pollution kills nine million people a year and threatens the ‘survival of human societies’. If terrorism was killing nine million people every year, and the very survival of human society was threatened, the corporate media and politicians would be reacting very differently. But because it’s global pollution, merely an economic ‘externality’, private power can continue on its quest for dominance and profits.

The situation now is truly desperate. We are literally talking about the survival of the human species. There will be those who declare, either with black humour or a morally-suspect flippancy, that ‘the planet would be better off without us’. But we surely cannot so casually dismiss the lives and prospects of literally billions of people alive today and their descendants too.

Government policies are driven primarily by short-term political gain and corporate power, so there needs to be a massive public demand for control of the economy towards sustainability. The alternative is no human future. But just at a time when public resistance and radical action are most needed, social media networks owned and controlled by huge corporations are suppressing dissent. A major part of the struggle for human survival, then, will be to overcome the unaccountable media corporations and tech giants that are attempting to define what is deemed ‘acceptable’ news and commentary.

Featured image is from Media Lens.

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Gone at age-90, his revolutionary spirit is eternal, the most redoubtable figure of the last century, successfully resisting yankee imperialism for 50 years, surviving hundreds of US attempts to kill him.

He outlasted 11 US administrations from Dwight Eisenhower to Obama – leading Cuba from January 1959 to his February 2008 retirement for health reasons, passing the baton to brother Raul while remaining intellectually active and influential to the end.

Washington dominated Cuba from the William McKinley era to the Eisenhower administration. Fidel liberated it, transformed it from a mafia-infested brothel to a populist state serving all its people, providing benefits most Americans can’t imagine.

He provided world-class healthcare and education to the highest levels for all Cubans. The country’s most important exports are peace, goodwill, doctors and teachers.

Even self-styled “capitalist tool” Forbes magazine called Cuban healthcare expertise an invaluable export, providing free medical care for needy people worldwide.

Its educators focus on teaching, learning, and skills to become productive citizens, not teaching to the test, learning by rote and knowing like in America.

In one of his “reflections,” Fidel said

“(w)e have a powerful…adversary, our closest neighbor: the United States…There is no greater price than capitulating to an enemy…(I)ts relegation to the dustbin of history will not be delayed.”

“Would it not be preferable to struggle to produce food and industrial products; build hospitals and schools for billions of human beings who desperately need them; promote art and culture; struggle against epidemics which lead to the death of half of the sick, health workers and technicians, as can be seen; or finally eliminate illnesses like cancer, Ebola, malaria, dengue, chikungunya, diabetes and others which affect the vital systems of human beings?”

“Just ideas will triumph, or disaster will triumph,” he stressed.

An earlier article said his intellect remained keen, his judgment sound and passion for keeping Cuba free from US dominance uncompromising to the end.

On November 25, 2016 at 10:29 PM Havana time, he drew his last breath. Now he belongs to the ages.

Months earlier at the VII Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, he delivered his last public address, highlighting his revolutionary ideology and spirit, saying:

“Cuban (ideas) will remain, as proof that on this planet, if we work with fervor and dignity, we can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we must fight without ceasing to obtain them.”

He said

“Marxism or scientific socialism is the revolutionary movement of the working class,” calling himself “a Marxist-Leninist…until the end of my life.”

He called capitalism “repugnant…filthy…gross…alienating…because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition” instead of peace, equity, justice and cooperation.

“Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear,” he believed.

Millions of Cubans mourned his passing for an official nine-day period, paying their respects, honoring El Comandante until laid to rest last December 4.

Frail and weakened by earlier illness nearly taking his life, his passing didn’t surprise. Yet in death, he remains larger than life.

He stood for what Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” a revolutionary hero for millions worldwide.

A longtime friend of Palestine’s liberating struggle, their flags were lowered to half-mast, honoring him after news of his death.

He supported anti-colonial struggles worldwide, considered Zionism a form of fascism and institutionalized racism – believing Palestinians “will prevail sooner or later in spite of the betrayal by Arab reactionaries, imperialist maneuvers and Israeli aggression.”

Against long odds, he accomplished what he set out to do, on January 7, 1959, triumphantly entering Havana, liberating the country from US-supported fascist rule.

Interviewed by Edward R. Murrow at the time, he said

“(m)y obligation (is) with the people. What I have to do now and in the future is…(for) what’s good for my country, and if for my country it is necessary that I renounce any position, I would gladly renounce (it) because sincerely, I don’t (have) ambition (for) power, money, nothing, only to serve my country.”

Indeed he did until drawing his last breath. America and other Western nations have no one his equal in stature.

After nine official days of mourning, Fidel was laid to rest in a private ceremony in Santiago’s Ifigenia cemetery beside “Apostle of Cuban Independence” Jose Marti.

He’s interred in a granite boulder, identified with the name “Fidel” in gold letters on a green marble plaque, the only official monument to his memory – in recognition of decades of service to his country and humanity.

I mourned his passing like millions of others worldwide. The flesh is gone. His redoubtable spirit remains.

Viva Fidel! Hasta Siempre, Comandante!

“Balkanization” is the weaponized perversion of anti-colonialism taken to its ultimate extreme, and it’s being wielded by the declining Unipolar World Order to divide and conquer the Eastern Hemisphere in order to prevent the natural emergence of multipolar civilizational blocs as the inevitable outcome of Silk Road Globalization.

The rising trend of separatist and autonomous movements in Western Europe, the cradle of the modern-day nation-state system, has prompted concern that the end of the nation-state era is drawing near. To be clear, a nation-state isn’t the same as an ethnic state, although there’s sometimes an overlap such as in the cases of Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Armenia, the Koreas, and Japan, for instance. For the most part, however, a nation-state is a relatively new phenomenon that owes its genesis to the Age of Romanticism that began after the French Revolution of the late 18^th century, from whence the European Great Powers were later inspired to promote a centralized identity in their own ethno-regionally diverse continental realms. The accompanying rise of state-based nationalism eventually gave way to a handful of new European countries after the end of World War I, while the decade and a half following the conclusion of the Second World War saw the explosive growth of dozens of new states all across the “Global South” (“Third World”).

These newly created political entities arrived on the geopolitical scene much later than their European counterparts, and many of their borders were arbitrarily decided by their former imperial masters. As a result, a multitude of highly diverse and sometimes even hostilely contradictory identities were forced together into the same administrative unit against their will, and the newly created nation-states that they suddenly became a part of had no experience in smoothing over identity differences and establishing an inclusive national narrative. Instead of being patient and giving the new authorities the time that they understandably needed to correct the imperial-era divisions that the Europeans exploited within their territories, some groups resorted to armed insurgencies in seeking to break free from the nation-states that they had been formally made a part of in order to create their own exclusive ethnic statelets. This represented the beginning of the “Balkanization” trend, which sought to capitalize on the anti-imperial one that had immediately preceded it.

“Balkanization” is simple enough to comprehend and is very closely related to Hybrid Wars, as it’s essentially nothing more than externally provoked identity conflict that exploits preexisting identity differences for geostrategic purposes.

The “organic” or “natural” pretext for “Balkanization” is that a purportedly marginalized minority group wants to create its own state, but the Machiavellian motivation that’s usually behind this is that an external power has an interest in dividing and ruling a given territory, which is why they oftentimes make the decision to back its “Balkanization”. What’s important to mention in this context is that the military tactics of “Balkanization” don’t really differ all that much from the ones associated with anti-colonialism, in that both sorts of conflicts were traditionally waged via insurgencies. The key difference, however, is that the anti-colonial insurgencies were fought to create inclusive identity-diverse political entities that could then have a chance to become nation-states in the period thereafter, while “Balkanization” insurgencies aim to carve out exclusive identity-centric statelets.

To expand a bit more on this tangent, it was generally the Soviet Union that supported anti-colonial insurgencies across the world because of the shared ideological overlap that these struggles usually shared with the communist cause, though the insurgent dynamic began to flip near the last decade of the Cold War due to Jimmy Carter’s proto-Reagan Doctrine in laying the basis for orchestrating anti-communist insurgencies in pro-Soviet “Global South” states such as Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Nicaragua. After the end of the Cold War, insurgencies generally became the domain of anti-nation-state actors fighting to break away from ethnically diverse states in order to establish their own exclusive ethnic fiefdoms. This was certainly the case in the former Yugoslavia with Slovenia, Croatia, and the historical Serbian Province of Kosovo, though the examples of Eritrea and the southern Nigerian region of “Biafra” are notable exceptions because they occurred during the middle of the Cold War and not afterwards.

As for the Kurds, who are commonly brought up in this context, their separatist “Kurdistan” project always functioned as a “second geopolitical ‘Israel’” no matter which party was backing it at any given time, though their cause has become ever more popular in recent years as the US promotes the “Balkanization” of the Mideast through “Blood Borders” and the revision of the Sykes-Picot Agreement that established the modern-day nation-states in the Mideast. Accepting that this and a few other exceptions (Eritrea, “Biafra”) exist to the articulated model, the prevailing trend is that anti-Western anti-colonial insurgencies during the Old Cold War have given way to pro-Western “Balkanization” Hybrid Wars in the New Cold War as the principle of “separateness” becomes perverted in a weaponized form by exploiting anti-imperialism sentiment.

The new narrative is that the post-colonial state authorities are “internal imperialists” who must be opposed by ethno-regional minority “anti-colonialists”, with the only “solution” being to separate from the “Global South” “imperial” state just as their predecessors did from their European counterpart decades ago. If the “international community” (West) won’t outright support their Woodrow Wilson-era “self-determination” desire for an independent state for whatever the contemporaneous geostrategic reasons may be, then the fallback plan is to internally partition the targeted state through “Identity Federalism” (“Bosnification”). The irony of it all is that these processes used to take place exclusively within the “Global South” and the former “Second World” communist countries of Yugoslavia and the USSR, but have now boomeranged back to the “First World” nation-state cradle of Western Europe with the cases of Cataloniaand Flanders.

Interestingly, like it was argued in the author’s two hyperlinked pieces above, the “Balkanization” of Europe from a bloc of nation-states to a “federation of regions” is also part of a larger geopolitical divide-and-control scheme, both by the EU’s “Cultural Marxist”-Globalist elite and the US’ unipolar strategists. The fragmentation of a broad collection of inclusive identity-diverse nation-states (e.g. Spain, France, Germany, etc.) into exclusive identity-centric statelets is designed to reverse the multipolar momentum driven by Russia and China in pioneering large identity-inclusive blocs (e.g. the Eurasian Economic Union, SCO) ambitiously integrated together through Beijing’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity. The emerging Multipolar World Order aims to overcome the US’ “Clash of Civilizations” blueprint for dividing and ruling the Eastern Hemisphere by promoting a “Convergence of Civilizations” that seeks to stabilize it.

The end result of Chinese-driven Silk Road Globalization and its US-backed Western counterpart is a Civilizational World Order, albeit with differing geostrategic arrangements and loyalties, as the Chinese one will be defined by fewer and more diverse actors, while the American one will have multiple actors that are more homogenous. Washington’s hijacking of the global populist zeitgeist is part of its plan to strategically exploit certain movements and use them to destroy the New Silk Roads that are required to undergird the future Chinese-led international system. Moreover, the “Balkanization” of China’s identity-diverse nation-state transit partners alongside it and Russia’s Eurasian peripheries will encourage centrifugal forces within their own borders as well, which altogether represents the weaponization of chaos theory by the declining Unipolar World Order in order to indefinitely delay its replacement by the multipolar one.

The unraveling of the nation-state will have profound consequences on the future of International Relations and in particular on the inclusive identity-diverse multipolar Great Powers driving the diversification of stakeholders in the Multipolar World Order. As geo-demographic “coincidence” would have it, however, the Western Hemisphere is largely insulated from similar Hybrid War vulnerabilities owing to its comparatively more identity-homogenous composition of Latin American “mestizos” who replaced the natives following the conquistadors’ genocide against the original inhabitants. Although the US is much more multicultural than its southern counterparts despite killing off most of its own native people as well, its ethno-regionally diverse population is transplanted from the “Old World” and doesn’t have as much of an “historical stake” in territorial separateness as the their Eastern Hemispheric counterparts, which is why it’s very unlikely that it will suffer any “Balkanization” blowback in the same form (key qualifier) as it’s inflicting on others halfway across the world.

Taken together, the Western Hemisphere’s relative structural resistance to Hybrid War “Balkanization” and externally supported divide-and-rule separatist conflicts positions its northern and southern landmasses to collectively function as the US’ “Fortress America” in the event that Washington needs to retreat to a geostrategic redoubt if its weaponization of chaos theory is successful in totally destabilizing the Eastern Hemisphere after dissolving its nation-states. The Americas have the resources and population to remain autarkic from Afro-Eurasia, though provided that a strong degree of “central planning” is implemented in order to most efficiently utilize its assets. In this dystopian scenario, the US’ “Operation Condor 2.0” series of regional regime changes in Latin America can be understood as prudently preparing the groundwork for Washington’s future dominance over these two continents in order to be in the best position possible for reestablishing “Pax Americana” after the death of the nation-state.

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.

On November 23, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Tiger Forces and their allies continued their operation against ISIS on the western bank of the Euphrates. Pro-government forces have established control over the villages of Mahkan, Quriyah, Subaykhan, Kashma and Tashreen.

On the same day, Tu-22M3 strategic bombers struck positions of ISIS in the province of Deir Ezzor after they had flown about 2,000 km from Russia. The strike hit ISIS’ manpower, vehicles and strong points near Al-Katia.

On November 24, the SAA and its allies advanced further in the direction of al-Bukamal.

In southwestern Aleppo, clashes are ongoing between the SAA and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) in the villages of al-Rashadiya and al-Hajara. Pro-government sources claim that the SAA has recently deployed reinforcements to the area. However, this has not helped the government forces yet.

In Western Ghouta, the SAA liberated the village of Beitima from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and engaged militants at Bardae Hill south of the militant-held town of Beit Jinn. If the SAA seizes this important hill, it will be able to establish a fire control over the key militant-held town in the area.

According to pro-HTS sources, 15 SAA soldiers were killed during the clashes near the hill.

Meanwhile, reports appeared in the mainstream media that Washington is not going to withdraw from Syria after the defeat of ISIS.

Previously, the US administration explained its invasion in the country with a need to defeat the terrorist group. Now, it is reportedly seeking to stay there in order to reduce the influence of Iran and Assad government in the post-ISIS period.

On November 23, the Iraqi Army and the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) launched a military operation to liberate the remaining ISIS-held border area in western Iraq. According to the PMU media wing, government troops liberated 56 villages, the bridges of al-Sukariat, al-Akarb and al-Bka and the Geneva Airport.

The army and the PMU destroyed 8 vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) of ISIS and captured 3 others. They also destroyed 3 vehicles and several mortar positions of ISIS.

According to the ISIS-linked news agency Amaq, two suicide bombers attacked a gathering of the PMU fighters north of Baiji. There are no confirmed reports about the number of casualties because of the attack.

After the liberation of the Iraqi part of the Euphrates Valley, thousands of ISIS fighters were forced to retreat to the desert area at the Syrian-Iraqi border. A part of them is now seeking to infiltrate the government-held cities and to establish criminal networks there. Another part has joined the migration flow, which is heading through Turkey to the European Union.

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Humanitarian conditions in the country are dire. International Rescue Committee in Yemen country director Paolo Cernuschi called world community “silence” on what’s going on “shocking.”

If blockade of ports continues, “we really are looking at a catastrophic deterioration of the situation and creating a humanitarian crisis of proportions that I think we’ve not seen in our lifetimes,” he stressed.

Essentials of life in amounts needed “are stuck,” unable to get in. A UN report said fuel importing companies in the country explained they’ll no longer be able to supply consumers, supplies running out in a week or less.

Millions of Yemenis face famine. Saudi Arabia reneged on its promise to open the port of Hodeida and permit humanitarian corridors – lifelines for starving Yemenis.

Aid agencies said Riyadh permission to deliver vital humanitarian supplies wasn’t received, vital essentials to life blocked from entering Yemeni ports.

According to a UN source, a request was submitted to “bring in aid…but there has been nothing,” no response.

“At this stage, we do not know the reason for the delay.” UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Yemen director Jamie McGoldrick issued a statement, saying:

“There is a system where we notify (Riyadh) and ask for space or time slots to bring our planes in, and we negotiate in terms of getting space on the port as well. We’ve actually gone through the normal procedures and we’re just waiting to find out how that goes.”

Care International said

“(n)ot only is the commercial import of food and medical supplies necessary for survival, without fuel Yemen’s water and sanitation networks will not function in a country already battling cholera.”

“Humanitarian assistance alone is not enough to supply the basic needs and protections critical for Yemen’s population.”

London-based African analyst Alex de Waal accused Washington and Britain of complicity in the horrific “famine crime” in Yemen, adding:

“Yemen is really the most shocking case of our generation of a famine crime because the lines of culpability are so clear and there’s no denying them.”

Along with Saudi terror-bombing, Trump is waging covert war on Yemen, escalating what Obama began, conducting scores of US of aerial attacks by warplanes and drones, defenseless civilians harmed most.

Naked aggression masquerades as counterterrorism operations, Britain complicit with Washington, both countries providing Riyadh with heavy weapons and munitions.

According to Reprieve deputy director Katie Taylor,

“(s)ince taking office, President Trump has unleashed a barrage of strikes on Yemen in a flagrant breach of international law, killing scores of civilians and making a fragile country even less stable.”

“It’s shameful that the UK provides operational support for this disastrous strike program.”

British Labor MP Clive Lewis blasted Trump for authorizing covert CIA drone strikes, escalating the conflict instead of taking steps to end it.

Trump expanded Obama’s drone war policy, including greater CIA authority to conduct strikes in war theaters and elsewhere, Britain complicit in what’s going on.

Its Defense Ministry refused to comment on “covert operations or intelligence matters.” Civilian deaths and injuries keep mounting.

A disgraceful White House statement expressed support for Saudi terror-bombing and blockade.

It lied accusing Iran of supplying Houthi fighters with “destabilizing missile systems to target Saudi Arabia.” Blockade prevents any weapons from getting into the country.

According to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Houthis produce their own missiles. They’re not foreign supplied, calling accusations otherwise “completely baseless.”

White House expressing support for ending “this devastating conflict…through political negotiations” flies in the face of escalated war Trump initiated – along with Saudi terror-bombing and joint US/Riyadh blockade.

Featured image: A Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor fighter takes flight at a Joint Services Open House airshow at Andrews Air Force Base. (Photo: Rob Shenk/Flickr/cc)

The U.S. and South Korea announced Friday they will conduct a massive air force exercise over the Korean Peninsula next month as a notable show of force targeting North Korea—despite warnings that the Trump administration’s decision earlier this week to add North Korea to the United States’ list of state sponsors of terrorism could further provoke the isolated country.

Six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters—which are among the world’s most advanced warplanes—will be sent to South Korea for the drill, a U.S. Air Force spokesman told AFP, which reports:

The massive five-day annual exercise comes as Washington pushes what President Donald Trump has called a “maximum pressure campaign” against Pyongyang over its nuclear program.

The exercise, named Vigilant Ace, starts on December 4 with 12,000 U.S. personnel and an unspecified number of South Korean airmen flying more than 230 aircraft at eight U.S. and South Korean military bases.

Reuters reports that U.S. Marine Corps and Navy troops will also participate in the exercise.

Although the drill is conducted annually, it comes as U.S. President Donald Trump continues to antagonize North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the world stage.

As Common Dreams reported this week, after Trump designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism on Monday, the North Korean Central News Agency called the decision a “serious provocation,” and warned that “our army and people are full of rage and anger toward the heinous gangsters” who made the decision.

Concerns about the escalating conflict, and the Trump administration’s vocal opposition to engaging in diplomatic discussions with North Korea, continue to rise in the U.S. as well as among North Korea’s neighbors, particularly South Korea. When Trump visited Asia earlier this month, South Koreans greeted him with massive protests—denouncing him as a “war-threatening, weapons salesman”—while Pyongyang claimed the president “begged for war” during his trip.

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According to a paper in the Annals of Medicine, Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine policy and evidence-based medicine: Are they at odds?: “At present there are no significant data showing that either Gardasil or Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline) can prevent any type of cervical cancer since the testing period employed was too short to evaluate long-term benefits of HPV vaccination.”

In the US, France, Spain and Denmark, more than 250 court cases are being mounted over HPV vaccinations. Damages have been won in the US and France.

However, the UK medicines watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Public Health England say that the HPV jab is the most effective way to protect against cervical cancer, which kills 900 UK women each year and the American government’s CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommends the Gardasil vaccine, made by Merck Pharmaceuticals, for all females between 9 and 26 years to protect against HPV.

This conflicts with safety statements made by the American government’s Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) recalled by theWashington News which reported adverse reactions:

”26 new deaths between September 1, 2010 and September 15, 2011 as well as incidents of seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short term memory loss and Guillain-Barré Syndrome”.

In 2014 6m dollars in compensation was paid and only half the cases had been heard.

The Japanese government withdrew its recommendation of the HPV vaccine in 2013, after highly publicised cases of alleged adverse events in girls who had been vaccinated. 63 women are separately suing the government over claims that the jab causes serious neurological conditions and vaccination rates in the country have collapsed from 70% to less than 1%. In December last year, the Financial Times reported that Shuichi Ikeda, dean of the school of medicine at Shinshu University, one of a group of doctors suggesting a link between the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine and neurological illness, is suing Dr Riko Muranaka, a lecturer at Kyoto University’s school of medicine, for libel as she claimed that he had fabricated research results.

In July this year, a British health professional, whose daughter had been ‘severely disabled by obvious adverse reaction to the HPV vaccine’ for six years, wrote in the BMJ:

“There is ZERO evidence that Cervarix and Gardasil will ever prevent a single case of cancer. The manufacturers, GSK and Merck, only ever state they are ‘intended to’ or ‘expected to’.

Though The Times reported in August that Simon Harris, the Irish health minister, has renewed his drive for girls to receive the vaccination, an online search on the words ‘death’ or ‘disability due to the HPV vaccine’ will bring up many cases reported in the mainstream press – and the precautionary principle may be invoked, according to the European Commission, when a phenomenon, product or process may have a dangerous effect, identified by a scientific and objective evaluation.

There remains such great uncertainty about the safety of this vaccine, surely further investigation is warranted before continuing to administer it.

In December 2015, Oriental Review published  the research paper of Prof. Ivan Katchanovski from Ottawa University at the Annual Meeting of American Political Science Association in San Francisco, September 3-6, 2015.

Professor Katchanovski’s analysis is now fully confirmed following the release of Italy’s Canale 5 documentary, which includes interviews with three of the EuroMaidan snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by renowned Italian journalist Gian Micalessin. 

A summary of Prof. Katchanovski’s analysis is presented below. The full text of the research paper is available for downloading here (PDF – 2,5 Mb).

Unanswered Question. Why are Katchanovski writings and Micalessin’s Canale 5 Interviews which reveal the “unspoken truth” regarding the February 2014 Kiev Euromaidan coup d’Etat not the object of mainstream news coverage?

Media Omission constitutes a tacit instrument of war propaganda. Our Thanks to Oriental Review for bringing this important issue to the attention of the Independent media.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, November 25, 2017

***

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.

The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.

The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protestors. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts in mass media and social media in different countries (some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.”

This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings.

You can read the full text here. The short version is that Pai’s order takes the Net Neutrality rules off the books and abandons the court-approved Title II legal framework that served as the basis for the successful 2015 Open Internet Order.

The FCC is scheduled to vote on this dangerous proposal at its meeting on Dec. 14.

Pai’s draft is a lot of things: thin on substance and reasoning, cruel, willfully naive — and it’s everything that ISPs like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon could have wanted (and more). But what it’s not is sensible or grounded in reality. It will take away every safeguard we need to protect the open internet we’ve always had, giving ISPs the power to kill off their competition, choke innovation, charge more for different kinds of content, suppress political dissent, and marginalize the voices of racial-justice advocates and others organizing for change.

We’ve had just a few hours to read this dud, launched by the FCC the day before Thanksgiving. Here are a few of the many lowlights in the draft order and a quick explanation of why they’re wrong.

While we’ll have more analysis in the days to come, this is our first take. And if no one puts a stop to Pai’s plans — with more than 200,000 rightly outraged internet users calling lawmakers and urging them to do just that on Tuesday alone — we’ll have even more to say on this when we take the FCC to court.

Breaking the Rules

Under the existing regulations the FCC passed in 2015, we have clear bright-line rules prohibiting harmful behavior by phone and cable companies. Those rules are coupled with the strong but flexible safeguards that the 2015 order built in for other schemes ISPs might use now or invent in the near future to interfere with internet traffic.

Pai’s order trashes all of those and leaves only scant transparency rules in place.

With the flimsiest of justifications, Pai plans to “eliminate the conduct rules adopted in the Title II Order — including the general conduct rule and the prohibitions on paid prioritization, blocking and throttling.” (See ¶ 235 of the draft order. We’ll quote passages in the draft like this throughout this post.)

The new order leaves internet users entirely without protections, relying on ISPs to behave and avoid exploiting their status as gatekeepers to the entire internet. Pai and his Republican colleagues at the FCC want to do nothing short of legalizing internet blocking and discrimination by cable and phone companies. They flip-flop back and forth in the order between predicting that this won’t happen; saying that maybe some other agency could put a stop to it if it does (¶ 259); and, in other instances, actually rooting for it by praising the supposed benefits of pay-for-play prioritization and internet slow lanes (¶ 252).

The new order makes it clear what kind of power is being handed over to ISPs by all but inviting them to offer “curated services” in the name of ISPs’ own freedom of speech rather than their broadband customers’ rights (¶ 262).

In other words, as we’ve known since details of this plan started to emerge last week, the Trump FCC wants to let the most-hated and worst-rated companies in America block and edit speech on the internet.

Pai makes the willfully naive argument that even in the absence of effective oversight and prohibitions against blocking and discrimination, “transparency substantially reduces the possibility that ISPs will engage in harmful practices, and it incentivizes quick corrective measures by providers if problematic conduct is identified” (¶ 205). He then leans on ISP statements that these companies have “publicly committed not to block or throttle the content that consumers choose” (¶ 260).

When it comes to letting ISPs divide the internet into fast lanes for the few that can pay the extra toll, and slow lanes for everyone else, the order actually celebrates the idea.

“We anticipate that lifting the ban on paid prioritization will increase network innovation [because] the ban on paid prioritization agreements has had … a chilling effect on network innovation” (¶ 250).

Only at this FCC and in the boardrooms of some big ISPs does anyone believe that slowing down websites and apps counts as “innovation.”

But this is the “trust the cable company” future that Pai envisions for the internet. The draft order puts a ridiculous amount of faith in ISP promises. Before firm rules on solid legal footing were put in place by the 2015 order Pai wants to abandon, ISPs blocked content, throttled websites and used their power to rig the market in their favor.

This new FCC order would return us to a world where ISPs have a green light to block, slow down and limit quality access to any websites or applications they want.

Breaking the Law

Free Press has written the book on the continued need for the laws that protect people’s communications rights on the internet. Those rights don’t change just because the technology has evolved — or at least they shouldn’t change.

The laws that protect these rights are in what’s called Title II of the Communications Act. And despite current Republican officials’ selective memory loss on this, these laws were updated on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis in both chambers of Congress in 1996 to establish the legal definitions and duties that still do and still must apply to broadband service.

Broadband internet access is what the law calls a “common-carrier transmission service.” That means it lets internet users transmit the information of their choosing, to and from the points of their choosing, and that it must do so without unreasonable discrimination by the carrier that transmits the content.

That’s how broadband customers perceive the service that ISPs offer and sell to them, and that’s the service we all need to have any chance of connecting and communicating with each other and accessing all the internet has to offer.

The draft order fails in its vain attempt to refute Free Press’ statutory analysis on these questions. A proper read of the legislative history, and of FCC steps and missteps past, explains Congress’ true intent and the meaning of the law. But the best the Pai team can muster are ahistorical references to Clinton-era interpretations of an internet ecosystem long since gone, along with a smattering of ISP talking points and legal arguments shot down in court just last year.

Talking about how the Commission treated AOL’s dial-up internet access service in 1998, and pretending that this same reasoning should apply to ISPs like Comcast and AT&T that control the physical networks we use to get online today, just won’t cut it (¶ 63). Nor will the absurd claim that just because ISPs transmit internet speech and information, the broadband access line itself must be an information service too (¶ 29).

These are simply attempts to ignore the reality of modern broadband internet services that people depend on today — and that still need rules guarding against the network owners’ incentive and ability to discriminate.

The Obama FCC followed the law and fulfilled its congressionally mandated duties by returning to Title II, and to the proper understanding of broadband internet access as a telecom service. That decision was upheld not once but twice by the federal appeals court that reviewed the agency’s reasoning.

But the Pai FCC wants to throw all of that out of the window, then throw up its hands and say we can’t have rules anymore.

Set aside for a moment that ditching Title II means the FCC is weakening or abandoning all sorts of other duties it has — from promoting broadband affordability and deployment (¶ 189) to protecting consumers from privacy invasions (¶ 178). The Pai FCC’s trust in an understaffed and overburdened Federal Trade Commission’s ability to police the privacy policies of internet companies is misplaced and dangerous.

By abandoning the Communications Act, and possibly punting oversight of ISPs’ Net Neutrality promises to the FTC (¶ 140), Pai is turning his back on the FCC’s sound legal framework for preventing discrimination online.

This FCC is abdicating its responsibilities and using the worst legal arguments it can find to justify its actions.

Breaking from Reality

One of the main arguments the Pai order offers for all of this upheaval is the supposed harm that a Title II legal framework has wreaked on broadband investment. This harm is a fiction Pai invented, backed only by a handful of ISP lobbyists and shills who’ve been willing to lie through their teeth or concoct the supposed evidence for this alleged economic downturn (¶¶ 90-91).

The fact of the matter, as we’ve shown dozens of times now, is that broadband investment doesn’t turn on regulation alone. It doesn’t plummet simply because the FCC restores the same kinds of protections against discrimination that have been kept in place continuously for a wide range of Title II voice and broadband services for the past several decades.

The numbers bear this out: Broadband investment on the aggregate has gone up in the two years following adoption of the 2015 Open Internet Order. Most individual publicly traded ISPs have spent more than they had in the two years prior to the 2015 order — with companies like Comcast investing about 26 percent more in that time.

This increase in investment has occurred even as ISPs saved money on buildout thanks to efficiency improvements from new fiber and wireless technologies.

Measuring aggregate investment alone, by a single industry sector alone, is the wrong metric anyway. Broadband speeds actually improved at a rapid clip after the 2015 order, and that’s what the FCC should be measuring here: the services that broadband customers get, not just the dollars that ISPs spend.

Investment also boomed for companies that use the internet to deliver their services, including but by no means limited to internet video sites and online pay-TV substitutes, all of which had the certainty under the 2015 Open Internet Order of knowing they had an open pathway to customers on the internet.

But all of this makes no difference to Pai and his cronies. They casually conclude that ditching the statutory framework Congress established for broadband will somehow increase investment in networks (¶ 98), despite mountains of economic evidence to the contrary and the fact that ISPs routinely told their own investors that Title II and Net Neutrality had no impact on their spending.

The order traffics in the same old falsehoods ISPs and Pai have trotted out before to justify overturning these safeguards. The order claims that broadband investment is down, while ignoring the reality that broadband investment tends to be cyclical and the fact that broadband speeds and raw dollars spent on broadband networks have both gone up markedly during the two years since the 2015 Open Internet Order passed.

Where We Go from Here

Pai’s order is heavy on destruction and light on sound reasoning. We know why: Title II simply works; courts have ratified it twice; Americans across the political spectrum and in both political parties are overwhelmingly in favor of those protections; and it’s crucial for allowing the voices of marginalized groups and activists to reach society at large.

The new order is the result of a broken process at the FCC used to reach a faulty and false conclusion on the facts and on the law. The FCC has lost in court every time it’s attempted to prop up open-internet protections on flimsy legal-authority claims. This time should prove no different, and we’re already preparing our legal challenge.

The FCC will vote on Pai’s internet-destroying plan at its Dec. 14 meeting. There’s still time to let the FCC know what you think. You can also urge your members of Congress to condemn Pai’s plan, as hundreds of thousands of you have already done in the past 24 hours.

If we turn up the pressure, there’s a small (but growing) chance we can put the brakes on Pai’s bad ideas before the FCC votes. So keep fighting and speaking out — and don’t fall for Ajit Pai’s lies.

Featured image is from Free Press.

Featured image: PNG Defence Force Base Lombrum is located in Papua New Guinea (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

It was another etching in a chronicle of extended violence. For days, resistance by refugees and asylum seekers against forced removal from the Lombrom Naval Base on Manus Island had taken very public form. Images of defiance and distress were receiving international attention. With no electricity, with water supplies destroyed, things were getting dire.

As the weekend dawned, PNG officials were claiming that the remaining 328 men from the base had been moved to new camps in Lorengau. To these can be added the 50 men or so forcibly removed a day prior. Journalists from the ABC noted the use of 12 buses taking men and goods to East Lorengau centre on Friday, though they were unsure how many people were on them.

According to refugee Behrouz Boochani, the journalistic spark in the abysmal dark,

“The refugees are saying they are leaving the prison camp because the police are using violence and very angry.”

The clearing operation was nearing its conclusion.

According to Thomas Albrecht, the UNCHR’s regional representative in Canberra,

“The situation still unfolding on Manus Island presents a grave risk of further deterioration, and of further damage to extremely vulnerable human beings.”[1]

In a world of parallel universes, where the views of the heavy handed come up against those of the persecuted, narratives differ vastly. PNG Police Commissioner Gari Baki tends to assume all matters of force as relative. Removing the men (the term “relocation” is preferred) took place “peacefully and without the use of force”.

The Australian Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, has also done his bit on several fronts of unreality. Efforts are being made to sabotage New Zealand’s offer to encourage the resettlement of 150 men in that country. Dutton’s point is petulant and savage: Australia won’t have them, but nor shall you. Besides, would you really want them, these opportunists, interlopers and deviants?

Dutton has also waged war on those activists whom he sees as giving unnecessary hope to those on Manus. Last week, he publicly castigated pro-refugee protesters who had defaced the office of Kelly O’Dwyer, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services.

“Another example,” seethed the former police officer, “of the moral vacuum of the left. Not only giving false hope to those on Manus – who will never come to Australia – but also diverting important police resources and wasting tax payer money to investigate and clean up vandalism.”[2]

An update from the Ministry of Immigration and Border Protection expressed a mood of contentment at the efforts of the PNG police.

“The Australian Government is aware that all men previously refusing to leave the former Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (RPC) have now departed the complex for alternative accommodation.”

The statement paints a picture of cold blooded efficiency. Accounts from refugees who have found their way to the alternative centres differ markedly.

“We have been forcibly removed from where we were,” claimed Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz Muhamat, “to places that are not even ready.”[3]

The statement also reads as a distancing document. Australians should be pleased to know that refugees had been informed since May that the RPC would close, and refugees moved to sites such as the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre.

“The alternative accommodation has been available to house all inhabitants of the former RPC since October 31.”

A bullet is duly reserved for the irritating bleeding hearts.

“Advocates in Australia are again today making inaccurate and exaggerated claims of violence and injuries on Manus, but fail to produce any evidence to prove these allegations.”[4]

Before and after Donald J. Trump, news, it would seem, is a relative matter, notably from Australia’s truth-averse Ministry of Immigration, an entity given to fiction and fantasy.

The ministerial statement is also intent to focus on the bad eggs and rotten apples, those nuisances who are never mentioned by name, but hover over the faux compassion of Australian immigration officials like moral pointers and accusers. “What is clear is that there has been an organised attempt to provoke trouble and disrupt the new facilities.”

The Australian government had been informed “that some equipment has been sabotaged at the alternative accommodation centres, including damage to backup generators.” There is “vandalism” to “water infrastructure”. These matters were “under investigation”. Who are these mysterious disrupters? What do they want?

The statement naturally makes little of motivation, the Refugee Convention or virtually anything that would give a human dimension to such protest and dismay. The limbo faced by those who failed to be classed as genuine refugees – about 200 men – is not discussed. Nor is anything mentioned about when the US will come good on the offer to resettle refugees in that country..

There is only, the statement chastises, “false hope” peddled by advocates “that [these men] will ever be brought to Australia.” Humanity is to be eviscerated, and brutality permitted. This is authoritarian speak, bureaucratic babble, the sort that Dutton adores.

Despite such brutal and brutalising tripe, the Turnbull government remains resolute. Australia’s reputation as a state happy to observe human rights has not been impaired – or so its politicians, such as foreign minister Julie Bishop, think. Cosily distant from shared borders, its governments can continue to construct a fortress of selectivity and selectiveness when it comes to refugees and those seeking Australian shores. It will outsource its obligations, and fund the necessary satraps. And to hell with international law on the way.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

Notes

The news that China will build a railway from the Red Sea city of Port Sudan to the Chadian capital of N’Djamena proves just how serious Beijing is about pioneering a transcontinental Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road to more easily connect Africa’s largest country of Nigeria to the Eurasian landmass, bringing with it plenty of multipolar opportunities for China’s Pakistani and Turkish partners and showcasing the indispensable position that Sudan is poised to play in making this grand vision possible.

The Sudan Tribute recently reported that its eponymous country signed a deal with China to explore the viability of constructing a railway from Port Sudan to N’Djamena, with an eye on completing a long-awaited connectivity project that had hitherto been held up due to various degrees of regional instability. According to the publication, the original plan was to link up the Chadian and even nearby Central African Republic capitals with the Red Sea in order to provide these resource-rich landlocked states with an outlet to the global marketplace, which is increasingly becoming Asia-centric ergo the Eastern vector of this initiative. In terms of the bigger picture, however, the successful completion of the Port Sudan-N’Djamena Railway would constitute a crucial component of China’s unstated intentions to construct what the author had previously referred to as the “Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road”, the relevant portion of which (the Chad-Sudan Corridor) is a slight improvisation of Trans-African Highway 6.

Per the hyperlinked analysis above, the following custom map illustrates the full cross-continental vision that China has in mind:

Red: CCS (Cameroon-Chad-Sudan) Silk Road
Gold: Trans-African Highway 5
Lavender: Ethiopia-Nigeria Silk Road (the most direct route through resource-rich territory)
Pink: West African Rail Loop
Blue: Lagos-Calabar Silk Road
Green: Lagos-Kano Silk Road
Yellow: Port Harcourt-Maiduguri Silk Road

Each of the aforementioned tracks are described in a bit more detail in the cited article about the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road and the author’s extensive Hybrid War study on Nigeria, but the two pertinent points to focus on in this piece are the CCS Silk Road (outlined in red on the map) and its larger purpose in possibly connecting Africa’s two largest countries and future Great Powers of Nigeria and Ethiopia. One of China’s grand strategic objectives in the emerging Multipolar World Order is to lay the infrastructural groundwork for facilitating the robust full-spectrum integration between these two giants, understanding that their Beijing-built bicoastal connectivity would bestow the People’s Republic with significant influence in the continent by streamlining an unprecedented corridor between them, thereby giving China the potential to more directly shape Africa’s overall development across the 21^st century.

It goes without saying that Sudan is poised to play an indispensable role in making this happen by virtue of its advantageous geography in allowing China to circumnavigate the “Failed State Belt” of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and increasingly, maybe even Cameroon, as well by charting an overland Silk Road connectivity corridor between Ethiopia and Nigeria via Sudan and Chad. Moreover, the potential linkage of the planned Ethiopia-Sudan railway to the prospective Port Sudan-N’Djamena railroad would enable Sudan to provide China with alternative access to these two landlocked states. Regional military leader and energy exporter Chad is already in physical touch with the outside world through Cameroon, just as the world’s fastest-growing economy and rising African hegemon Ethiopia utilizes the newly built Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway for this purpose, but the shrewd and far-sighted Chinese always feel more comfortable if they’re not dependent on a single route, hence the strategic importance of supplementary access to Chad and Ethiopia through Port Sudan.

While Sudan’s financial standing was left reeling ever since the American-backed separation of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011, Khartoum might fortuitously find itself wheeling and dealing along the New Silk Road if it’s successful in providing China with alternative market access to Chad and Ethiopia in the future, and especially if it can do the same with Nigeria in saving China the time in having to sail all the way around the Cape of Good Hope in order to trade with it. For as easy as all of this may sound, however, the premier challenge that China will have to confront is to ensure the security of this traditionally unstable transit space, specifically in the context of maintaining peace in the former hotspot of Darfur and dealing with the plethora of destabilization scenarios emanating from the Lake Chad region (Boko Haram, Nigeria’s possible fragmentation, etc.).

In view of this herculean task, China could be lent a helping hand by its Pakistani and Turkish partners who each have a self-interested desire to this end, with Islamabad slated to patrol CPEC’s Sea Lines Of Communication (SLOC) with East Africa while Ankara is already a heavy hitter in Africa because of its recent embassy and airline expansion in the continent. Moreover, both of these countries are leaders of the international Muslim community (“Ummah”) in their own way and accordingly have soft power advantages over China in the majority-Muslim states of sub-Saharan Africa through which Beijing’s grand Silk Road projects will traverse. Seeing as how Pakistan and Turkey are also on very close relations with China, the scenario arises whereby these Great Powers enter into a trilateral working group with one another for effectively promoting their African policies through joint investments, socio-cultural initiatives, and the collective strengthening of Nigeria, Chad, and Sudan’s military capacities in countering their respective Hybrid War threats.

This is especially relevant when considering that all three transit states aren’t exactly on positive footing with the US. Washington initially refused to provide anti-terrorist assistance to Abuja when it first requested such against Boko Haram in 2014, and the Trump Administration has inexplicably placed N’Djamena on its travel ban list. As for Khartoum, it’s been under US sanctions for over two decades now, even though the State Department partially lifted some of them last month as part of its “carrots-and-sticks diplomacy” towards the country. Therefore, the case can convincingly be argued that these three African countries would be receptive to Chinese, Pakistani, and Turkish military assistance because their prospective Eurasian security partners are perceived of as being much more reliable and trusted than the Americans or French who always attach some sort of strings to their support. The only expectation that those three extra-regional states would have is that their counterparts’ collective stability would be enduring enough to facilitate win-win trade for everyone.

There’s a certain logic to the comprehensive strategy behind this Hexagonal Afro-Eurasian Partnership between Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Turkey, Pakistan, and China. Nigeria, as the West African anchor state, could help expeditiously funnel the region’s overland trade to the Red Sea via the landlocked Chadian transit state and the maritime Sudanese one, thus making Khartoum the continental “gatekeeper” of West African-Chinese trade. Turkey’s hefty investments and newfound presence in Africa could help to “lubricate” this corridor by making it more efficient, with President Erdogan trumpeting his country’s version of a moderate “Muslim Democracy” at home in order to score significant soft power points with these three majority-Muslim African states and their elites. Pakistan would assist in this vision by providing security between Port Sudan and what might by that point be its twinned sister port of Gwadar in essentially enabling the flow of West Africa trade to China by means of CPEC.

Altogether, maritime threats are kept to a minimum because of the shortened SLOC between Sudan and Pakistan (as opposed to Nigeria and China) while the mainland ones are manageable due to the military-security dimensions of the proposed Hexagonal Afro-Eurasian Partnership, but it nevertheless shouldn’t be forgotten that Sudan and Pakistan are the crucial mainland-maritime interfaces for this transcontinental and pan-hemispheric Silk Road strategy which is expected to form the basis of China’s “South-South” integration in the emerging Multipolar World Order.

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.

Colonialism Reparation supports the request for reparations of the members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) for the genocide of the native people and the slavery and calls on the former colonizers (United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, etc.) to apologize and pay reparations for the colonial period.

On September 22, 2017 in New York during the General Debate of the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Belize Wilfred Elrington recalled that […] through the Caribbean Community, we are also leading the charge for reparation of the victims of slavery and their descendants […], while the Deputy Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Louis Straker said that […] a substantial part of the backdrop or context of the continuing socio-economic challenges of the nation-states of our Caribbean civilisation is the awful legacy of underdevelopment which European colonialism has bequeathed to us as a consequence of native genocide and African slavery. The international campaign for reparations from the former colonial powers to assist in repairing this malignant legacy is urgent and timely. It deserves the full support of this Assembly particularly within this decade, declared to be focused on the upliftment of persons of African descent […].

On October 10, 2017 in Mona, Jamaica, the University of the West Indies (UWI) officially launched the Centre for Reparation Research (CRR) to support the movement of the Caribbean Community, build awareness and conduct research to advance the claim for reparations. The first activity of the CRR, directed by Professor Verene Shepherd, was a symposium organized the next day during which the President of the “CARICOM Reparations Commission” Hilary Beckles has renewed the call for reparations estimating in at least 76 billion pounds the compensation from the former colonizers.

On October 12, 2017 always in Mona, Jamaica, the CARICOM Reparations Commission held its meeting making the point of the situation on reparations in the Caribbean.

On October 18, 2017 it is also restarted the series of Reparations relays and rallies in collaboration with the CARICOM members which have committed to being part of the reparations movement. It is now the turn of Jamaica with a series of events that will develop until the end of the year.

Colonialism Reparation supports the request of the members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) for reparations for the genocide of the native people and the slavery and calls on the former colonizers (United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark) to apologize and pay reparations for the colonial period without being forced to appear before a court.

Featured image is from Alpha History.

In August 2016, Peter Michael Ketcham, a former employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), began looking into the reports his agency had released years earlier on the collapse of the World Trade Center. What he found shook him to the core.

In this poignant half-hour interview, Peter Michael Ketcham tells his story of discovering that the organization where he had worked for 14 years had deliberately suppressed the truth about the most pivotal event of the 21st century.

Through his willingness to look openly at what he failed to see in front of him for 15 years, Mr. Ketcham inspires us to believe that we can all muster the courage to confront the truth — and, in so doing, finally heal the wounds of 9/11.

Turn on the news these days and all you can find are reports of how Vladimir Putin and the Russians were responsible for the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in the US election last November. Endless allegations but so far no hard evidence.

Yet we know thanks to Wikileaks that someone hacked in to the e-mails of the Democratic National Committee and a key Clinton associate, John Podesta. Was it the Russians? The Washington Deep State knows but no one is talking.

The Next Question, Please

As a former academic, the next question should be obvious. Has the USA ever interfered in a Russian election? Some might recall that in December 2015 Victoria Nuland, a well-known neocon, appointed by Hillary Clinton to be her Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, admitted in public that the U S government had spent $5 billion “promoting democracy” in the Ukraine since 1991.

It used to be that the CIA was charged with clandestine intervention in elections in foreign countries, often done via their front groups and foundations. Then Ramparts blew their cover, President Ronald Reagan responded in 1983 by creating the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED channels government funds through a stable of innocent sounding organizations, administered by the US Department of State. Other monies go through the US Agency for International Development and the US Information Agency.

The Old Cold War

The US government and its allies in NATO had as their primary goal the overthrow of the state socialist regimes based on the model of the Soviet Union, the end of all regimes which operated a planned economy, and the re-introduction of a capitalist system with a market economy.

While it is usually claimed that the US government wanted to create liberal, representative democracies in these one party states, this was never a high priority for administrations in Washington. One recalls the strong support given to the vicious military dictatorships in Latin America and the historic support for the feudal regimes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region with their commitment to Sunni Islamist politics. US governments also supported the fascist governments of Salazar in Portugal and Franco in Spain in spite of the fact that these two regimes had fought on the side of Nazi Germany in World War II.

In the USSR: Gorbachev v. Yeltsin

The liberal reform of the Soviet Union began in the 1980s. Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Politburo, undertook a policy to “expand democracy within the socialist system.” In 1988 he created the Congress of the Peoples Deputies, a new more representative legislative body. Its first election was held in March 1989. The disintegration of the Soviet bloc began on a serious level in 1988. In June 1990 the Russian branch of the Congress of Peoples Deputies declared national sovereignty.

At the same time radical reformers gathered behind Boris Yeltsin. They wanted an end to the socialist system and the introduction of a capitalist economy. In June 1991 Yeltsin ran for the office of President of the Russian Federation and won. Gorbachev dissolved the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and resigned as Secretary. The breakup of the Soviet union followed and the United Nations recognized the new independent states.

The US Government Backs Yeltsin

The US government rushed to support those elements which pushed for national independence and the end of the state socialist planned economy. Much of the financial assistance was channelled through organizations and corporations supported by the NED.

USAID provided around $300 million for the Russia project, run through the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). They institute promoted the “shock therapy” model identified with Jeffrey Sachs, who became head of HIID. Sachs had been chosen by the US government to lead a reform project in Poland after 1989.

Most of the “reforms” were imposed by President Yeltsin via decrees bypassing the legislature, which was opposed to the complete dismantling of the old socialist planned economy. They were often drafted by representatives from HIID. Yeltsin began by lifting price controls and ending state subsidies. The result was hyperinflation, a dramatic increase in unemployment, a serious rise of abject poverty and the disappearance of the medical and hospitalization system, which had been tied to places of employment under the planned economy.

The Constitutional Crisis of 1993

The conflict between Yeltsin and the parliament continued through 1993. In September Yeltsin abolished the federal Supreme Soviet and the Congress of Deputies by decree and called for a new constitution. There were major demonstrations in the streets against Yeltsin and his reform agenda. The police and military erected barricades of barbed wire around the “White House” – the Russian parliament building. Leaders in the Parliament called on demonstrators to seize the television station. Military from the Department of the Interior and Special Forces appeared in support of Yeltsin.

On October 4 the Army began to shoot at the White House. Soon after tanks began shelling the top floors of the White House. Then the armed forces stormed the building. As the members of the parliament and their supporters left the building they were arrested and jailed. The following day Yeltsin banned the opposition parties and all their publications. Yeltsin’s action was strongly supported by the US government and its NATO allies.

Yeltsin proclaimed a new constitution and held elections for the new legislature in December. But the parliament elected was still dominated by the Communist Party and Russian nationalist parties which were strongly opposed to the liberal path being pushed through by Yeltson and his team of US advisers.

The Elections of 1996

Yeltsin moved ahead strongly with his privatization program. Major state assets were sold, generally for about 10 cents on the dollar. This was the plan advocated by the US government. However, the creation of a new capitalist class also produced a stable of very wealthy oligarchs who soon lined up behind Vladimir Putin.

Much of this was implemented by the Russian Privatization Center, which was created in 1992 by the HIID with a grant of $45 million from USAID. Other grants came from the Ford Foundation.

In the election for the new parliament in December 1995, the Communist Party and the Russian nationalist parties won a majority of the seats on a program which opposed Yeltsin’s policies. Public opinion polls showed that Gennady Zaganov, the Communist Party candidate for president, was well ahead of Yeltsin.

Once again it was the USA to the rescue. The Clinton Administration put together $14 billion in loans, much of it from the International Monetary Fund. The German government kicked in $2.7 billion, and the French added $392 million.

Yeltsin had the advantage of total control of Russian television, a state monopoly. Throughout this conflict the parties in the parliament, who represented an alternative vision, were denied all access.

The Yeltsin campaign was run by three Americans, Richard Dresner, George Gordon and Joe Shumate. They were assisted by Steve Moore of Video International which had been trained by Ogilvy and Mather, the famous US PR firm. They flooded television with evidence of the horrors of the Stalin regime. It worked.

Manipulating Elections

Putin may have wanted Donald Trump to win the US election. Trump did pledge a new era of detente with Russia. But intervention? The NED directly operates in over 80 countries doing their best to influence elections. Where is the Russian equivalent?

This article was originally published by John W. Warnock.

All images in this article are from the author.

A major item on the agenda of the upcoming convention of Québec solidaire (QS), to be held in the Montréal suburb of Longueuil December 1-3, will be a proposal for fusion with another pro-independence party, Option nationale (ON). This will entail revisiting the relationship between the parties’ support for Quebec independence (basically the entire program of ON) and Québec solidaire’s attempt to link the national question with its social justice program.

The current struggle for national self-determination in Catalonia quite naturally suggests parallels with the issues posed in the Quebec pro-sovereignty movement. In recent weeks, two leaders of Québec solidaire – Manon Massé, a party spokesperson and member of Quebec’s National Assembly, and André Frappier, a member of the QS National Coordinating Committee – have visited Catalonia as invited guests of the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), a left pro-independence party that is now contesting the December 21 Catalan election.

In the following article, which I have translated from Presse-toi à gauche, André returns to a topic he has frequently addressed in recent months as a coordinator of a pan-Canadian network of left social movement activists that is now beginning to develop. An earlier article by him was published here on October 5.

André’s article is followed by a statement of the newly-formed Quebec coalition of solidarity with Catalonia, which includes major nationalist organizations, trade unions and political parties. Its first public meeting will be held on November 18, in Montréal. See its web site for particulars, at www.solidarite.cat.

— Richard Fidler

***

The political situation in Quebec and internationally, with the escalation of the Catalan national struggle, impels us to deepen our thinking on these issues. What role can Quebec’s national liberation struggle play in class terms, in the context of the fight for emancipation of the peoples in the Canadian state? The following is an attempt to address these questions.

For more than forty years the national question in Quebec has been dominated by the Parti québécois (PQ). But it was not the PQ that invented nationalism, that was the product of the domination that has existed since the British Conquest and which was structurally integrated at the time of the Canadian confederation.

Nationalism is not, by definition, necessarily progressive. That depends on the political situation and the role nationalism is summoned to play as a vehicle for transformation toward an egalitarian society. Historically, in Quebec, national oppression has always been a source of social mobilization against capitalist domination, which appears beneath the face of a foreign domination.

This domination has been introduced in various ways – in the cultural, media, educational systems as well as at the economic and social levels. For many years now, American and Canadian culture have inundated our television screens. Quite recently, the CBC produced a purportedly historical narrative of Canada’s history that in no way reflected the historical roots of Quebec or of the indigenous nations. And for many years, as Yvon Deschamps used to say, you worked in English or were unemployed in French – which is still the situation in many areas of activity today.

Rise and Fall of the PQ

It was this feeling of excess that the PQ built on in its origins. The nationalization of electricity resources previously controlled by various private interests, initiated by René Lévesque under Jean Lesage’s Liberal government, showed the way and prompted a major economic take-off, boosting national pride.

This “Quiet Revolution” completed by René Lévesque’s PQ soon came up against some antisocial economic choices with the rise of the recessionary period at the turn of the 1980s. The national liberation struggle was never able to develop its full potential, therefore. In the years that followed, the PQ built itself as a party of neoliberal state administration with the consequences that entailed in terms of disillusionment and the stifling of mobilizations if not direct confrontation as in 1983 during the public sector negotiations.

The sovereigntist perspective was dimmed both by the neoliberal policies implemented by the PQ when it was in office and by the identitarian nationalism that has come to replace the strategic impasse which the party had reached and which ultimately became the gravedigger of what it had once been. Herein lies the necessary distinction between the deviation of the PQ’s nationalism and the scope of the struggle for sovereignty in terms of social change, not only in Quebec but in the Canadian state.

Struggles in Catalonia

In Catalonia, where the political struggle is now much more intense than it is in Quebec, the fight for a popular reappropriation of society is crucial. The issue of fiscal independence emphasized by the middle classes arouses no sympathy among the popular classes in the rest of the Spanish state or in a significant part of Catalonia as well, in particular the popular sectors in the working-class neighborhoods of Barcelona.

The Catalan independentist movement, and more precisely the left, will have to take this into account, especially because Rajoy accuses Catalonia of benefiting from economic resources more ample than the Spanish average and claims that the Catalan population wants to keep its wealth for itself, depriving the rest of Spain. The Spanish working class is in this way pressed to support those who are applying the rules of austerity against it and to fight against its objective ally in Catalonia.

The struggle of the Catalan people must therefore find a way to link their fight for national liberation to a perspective of struggle against the austerity imposed on the entire Spanish state by the government in Madrid, as the movement of the indignados did a few years ago.

The dynamic of struggles is not linear. The fight for social change and the overthrow of the old state does not begin everywhere at the same time, and develops more intensely within nations oppressed by the central state. It is essential that the Spanish working class likewise find the way to supporting the struggle of the Catalan people against the oppressor state headed by Mariano Rajoy. This is in its own interests. A defeat of the Catalan struggle would be a major victory not only for the right-wing government in Madrid; it would also ensure some stability to the European Union in its domination of the working class throughout Europe, which could continue to enrich itself through increasingly drastic austerity measures as it did with the Greek population two years ago.

So also in Quebec. The fight for control of our national fate, our resources, our environment and our industry cannot be successful without challenging the control by the ruling classes. That inevitably means looking beyond Quebec’s borders and calling on the working people in the rest of Canada to support our fight for social justice against the equally inevitable intervention of the Canadian state and its financial institutions, which will apply the same medicine as the World Bank did to Greece or Madrid and the European Union is doing to Catalonia. Didn’t Trudeau say that there was only one united Spain?

Quebec Solidarity with Catalonia

In the wake of events in Catalonia, especially since the Declaration of Independence of the region by the Catalan Parliament, several major organizations of civil society and four political parties in Quebec have agreed to come together to form a broad coalition of citizen solidarity and cross-partisan support for Catalonia.

The Coalition supports the Catalan population and the Carles Puigdemont government, which was democratically elected in 2015. It calls on Spain to respect democracy and condemns the continuing wrongful proceedings against the Catalan leaders, as well as any recourse to violence. In addition, the Coalition intends to support the efforts of the Catalan government to have the new Catalan Republic recognized.

International Solidarity

When we see the inertia of the international community, the intransigence, use of force and violation of the civil and political rights practiced by the Spanish government with regard to Catalonia, it is imperative that Québécois who support the principle of democracy speak out in solidarity with the Catalan people and government who have fought peacefully and democratically for their right to self-determination.

The objective of the Coalition established today is to ensure that these rights are respected by the Spanish State and also recognized by the international community, starting with the governments of Quebec and Canada.

Broad public meeting on November 18th

As a first activity, the partners in the Coalition have agreed to organize a big public meeting on Saturday, November 18 to take stock of the situation in Catalonia, and to show Quebec’s support to the Catalan people. It is intended that a Declaration of Quebec Solidarity with Catalonia be announced, along with with artistic performances and an open discussion period. The details of this gathering will be announced soon.

Call for broadening of the Coalition

In order to broaden the reach of the message and make the action of the Coalition even more powerful and effective, an appeal is made to all groups, civil society organizations and political parties that respect the right of the Catalan people to choose their future to express their interest by email via the address [email protected].

Full details of the activities and actions undertaken by the Coalition will be available on the website www.solidarite.cat.

The following organizations have, to date, agreed to join the Coalition (in alphabetical order):

Progress toward defeating US-supported terrorists has been significant, most territory held by ISIS liberated.

Al-Nusra and other terrorist groups remain to be eliminated. Syrian and allied forces are up to the challenge.

A far greater one awaits once war ends – winning the peace Washington rejects and will likely try preventing, including by continued illegal occupation of northern and southern areas, along with making unacceptable demands, regime change neither Russia or Syrians will accept the main one.

Assad’s political and media advisor Bouthaina Shaaban said Damascus is ready for dialogue with everyone willing to resolve years of conflict diplomatically.

Commenting on the upcoming Syrian National Dialogue Congress to be held in Sochi, Russia, all parties committed to peaceful conflict resolution invited to attend, Shaaban said success depends on armed groups ending violence and engaging in a process “that will lead to a comprehensive settlement of all issues related to the current crisis.”

A statement following Putin’s meeting with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts said

“representatives of the Syrian Government and opposition which is committed to Syria’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity will participate in a constructive way in the National Dialogue Congress to be held soon in Sochi”

– dates not yet announced.

According to Russian Armed Forces Chief of General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, once military operations

“are completely fulfilled, the supreme commander-in-chief (Vladimir Putin) will take a decision to cut the task force.”

“(I)t will be a considerable reduction…depend(ing) on the situation” – Russia to maintain its reconciliation center, military bases, and “a number of structures needed to maintain the current state of things.”

Ending America’s illegal occupation of northern and southern parts of the country remains a formidable challenge, including its support for ISIS, al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot and other terrorist groups, its opposition to peace and stability, its rage for endless war, wanting all sovereign independent countries replaced for pro-Western ones everywhere.

Washington aims to control what happens in Syria going forward, regime change its objective. According to Russian upper house Federation Council International Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachyov, “(o)ne way or another, the Americans are not in the position to impose conditions, which is perfectly clear.”

Trump administration officials intend otherwise, planning a permanent US military presence in the country, on the phony pretext of stabilizing the region once ISIS is defeated, unwilling to accept defeat of its imperial project.

It’s a prescription for considerable trouble ahead, Defense Secretary Mattis saying days earlier “(w)e’re not just going to walk away…We’re going to make sure we set the conditions for a diplomatic solution.”

Moscow, Damascus and Tehran have leverage in Astana and Geneva peace talks, having liberated most Syrian territory from US-supported terrorists.

They’re not about to make concessions to Washington, harming their vital interests.

The Trump administration is unbending. Expect conflict to continue long after ISIS and other terrorist groups are defeated.

Endless wars and turbulence serve America’s hegemonic agenda. Peace and stability defeat it.

Syria’s liberating struggle has a long way to go after the US-supported terrorist threat is eliminated. Winning a durable peace is always a major challenge.

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

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

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

On the eve of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil’s (RSPO) annual meeting the Shipibo Konibo community of Santa Clara de Uchunya and its representative organisation FECONAU has condemned the failure of the organisation’s complaints mechanism to secure justice for their community. They have called on the RSPO to implement urgent reforms if it wishes to be a credible body for certifying sustainable palm oil and eliminating human rights and environmental abuses associated with the palm oil sector.

The community of Santa Clara de Uchunya whose ancestral lands and forests have been devastated by a former member of the RSPO (Plantaciones de Pucallpa), currently reconfigured as Ocho Sur PE SAC, have called on the complaints panel to ‘issue their final report about the violations of our rights as Shipibo-Conibo indigenous people as a result of oil palm operations’. In a statement issued during a community assembly on the 26th October 2017 they asked: ‘How is it possible that the company could leave the RSPO in the middle of an investigation and not be sanctioned?’ The community and FECONAU are now calling on the RSPO to close glaring loopholes in its existing complaints mechanism including the ability for members to withdraw from the RSPO during a formal complaint process and thereby escape being held to account.

To date approximately 6000 hectares of the community’s forests have been destroyed for conversion to palm oil plantations. Fences and security systems now prevent community members from accessing any remaining forests vital to their subsistence and the company continues to expand its operations despite suspension orders from the RSPO and Peruvian government and ongoing investigations by environmental prosecutors. All of the community representatives have been issued with death threats for their opposition.

Their statement (Sp/En) came in the wake of confirmation from the RSPO that no further action would be taken on the case.

“The Complaints Panel confirms that it will not be publishing the investigative report. This decision is made on the basis of the Complaints Panel’s procedures and legal advice which highlighted the potential exposure for libel in publishing said report given that Plantaciones de Pucallpa has resigned as a member and RSPO no longer has any jurisdiction on their alleged actions…”

In response Robert Guimaraes Vasquez, president of FECONAU said

“we were surprised when we heard that the RSPO is running scared of the company, it is the community not the RSPO who are fighting for their lives here, several community members have been served with false accusations by the company and have to attend legal processes to defend themselves. Worse still many of us are living in fear of our lives and have received numerous death threats. It is bad enough that the complaint mechanism is so weak that the RSPO’s preliminary order to suspend operations was simply ignored by the company and that the company can withdraw while a complaint is ongoing. However, all we have requested is that after two years of this case that the RSPO panel simply issue their full findings. They have done it for the deforestation analysis, why not for the other issues including violation of our land rights and rights to FPIC. Is that too much to ask?’

In a statement (Sp/En) FECONAU issued a series of clear recommendations to the Complaints panel if it is to be fit for purpose. These include measures to prevent withdrawal of companies from RSPO membership while complaints are ongoing and unresolved, measures to enforce their orders as well as the capacity to conduct in situ investigations where required.

Although the case was the first complaint brought against an RSPO member company based in Peru, it exposed structural failings of the RSPO complaint mechanism, which have been used elsewhere by member companies to avoid accountability. These include the sale of company assets to non RSPO members, the creation of new companies or the withdrawal from the membership.

Meanwhile the Complaints Panel (CP) does not appear to have the ability to enforce its decisions. Stop work orders are routinely ignored by member companies and not followed up by the CP as Marcus Colchester, senior policy advisor at the Forest Peoples Programme highlighted citing cases involving Golden Agri Resources (GAR) in Liberia and East Kalimantan and Wilmar in West Sumatra:

“In all these cases the complaints panel has found in favour of the communities in their initial decisions but has then failed to ensure compliance. Despite improvements in Panel’s initial determinations, the CP seems unable to then follow up and sanction companies for continued non-compliance. This is extremely frustrating for impacted communities who have to wait years and years to get justice.”

On the eve of the RSPO’s 15th annual event the Forest Peoples Progamme, FECONAU and other civil society groups are calling for urgent and effective reforms to the RSPO complaint mechanism. These include innovative measures to prohibit withdrawal from the membership while a complaint was ongoing and the creation of a ‘performance bond’ whereby member companies would deposit a fund which could be forfeited on behalf of affected communities if and when they failed to comply with CP rulings.

In October 2016, almost one year after the community of Santa Clara de Uchunya filed a formal complaint against RSPO member in Peru, Plantaciones de Pucallpa, the company withdrew from the membership prior to a final resolution from the complaints panel thereby avoiding any sanctions. Since then the community have made repeated requests to the RSPO for further action to be taken including at a minimum, the publication in full of the findings of the complaints panel.

In March 2017 the RSPO responded with a partial report which assessed community allegations of deforestation which had continually been denied by the company. It was based on satellite analysis commissioned by the RSPO and endorsed community complaints, concluding that ‘Plantaciones de Pucallpa (PdP) (Peru) to be in breach of RSPO Code and Conduct and RSPO Principles and Criteria (RSPO P & C) during its membership period from 14 October 2013 to 12 October 2016 but concluded that these findings and decision are of moral and persuasive value only, and cannot be enforced in light of Plantaciones de Pucallpa’s resignation as a RSPO member.”

Further background information about the struggle of Santa Clara de Uchunya can be found here.

Information about the complaint can be found on RSPO’s case tracker.

Robert Guimaraes Vasquez, president of FECONAU, an indigenous organisation that represents the community of Santa Clara de Uchunya will be discussing the issues raised by the complaint at the UN Forum on Business and Human rights (27-29th November, Geneva). Mr Vasquez will be addressing a side event on Monday 27th November and will be available for interview.

The 15th annual meeting of the RSPO takes place from the 27th-30th November 2017 in Bali.

Reports emerged yesterday in the British press that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian industry to be prepared to divert all its efforts into war production. After Germany’s formal re-militarization of its foreign policy in 2014 and Sweden’s reintroduction of the draft, this makes clear that, just over a century after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, countries across Europe and the world are again preparing for total war.

Putin reportedly made this remark at the Sochi summit, where he discussed the Syrian war with Turkish and Iranian officials. As he spoke, he was reviewing the Russian military’s annual Zapad military exercise, which took place in September, with Russian army staff.

Putin said,

“The ability of our economy to increase military production and services at a given time is one of the most important aspects of military security. To this end, all strategic and simply large-scale enterprise should be ready, regardless of ownership.”

His remarks made clear that this year’s Zapad exercise was designed to check whether Russia could sustain the all-out mobilization of its economic resources for large-scale nuclear war. The scenario of the exercise was for strategic nuclear forces to practice firing off their missiles—the country’s largest hydrogen bombs, designed to obliterate a country who attacked Russia—amid mock foreign ground invasions and large-scale missile strikes against Russia.

In such a war, the military would take over the economy, slash production for civilian needs, and re-direct whatever industrial capacity survived mass air and missile raids towards the war effort.

Putin said,

“First, we checked our mobilization readiness and ability to use local resources to meet the troops’ requirements. Reservists were called up for this exercise, and we also tested the ability of civilian companies to transfer their vehicles and equipment to the armed forces and provide technical protection to transport communications. … We also assessed the provision of transport and logistics services, as well as food and medicines to the army. We need to review once again the defense companies’ ability to quickly increase output.”

Putin’s remarks are an urgent warning to the international working class. Global capitalism is undergoing a historic political collapse. The danger of a Third World War, rooted in the conflict between the nation-state system and the global character of economic production, is imminent and growing. What Putin announced openly at the Sochi summit is what NATO governments are doing behind the backs of the people: preparing for all-out global war directly between the major nuclear powers and, if necessary, against their own population.

The chorus of attacks on Russia in the US and European media, denouncing its alleged aggression and interference in NATO countries’ politics, are saturated with imperialist hypocrisy. While Russia is carrying out military exercises on its own soil, the NATO powers are encircling Russia and marching their troops up to Russia’s very borders.

Two weeks ago, NATO held a summit in Brussels to discuss building naval and logistical bases to transport US and European troops across the Atlantic and the European continent to fight Russia. Reviewing the summit agenda, German news magazine Der Spiegel concluded, “In plain language: NATO is preparing for a possible war with Russia.”

As in Russia, NATO officials are readying for such a war with plans to subordinate all social and economic life to the diktat of the banks and the military. At the Brussels summit, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made clear that NATO is also closely coordinating its war planning with the intelligence agencies, police and the banks. This planning, he said, “requires a whole-of-government approach. So it’s important that our defense ministers make our interior, finance and transport ministers aware of military requirements.”

Viewed from Moscow, US imperialism’s threats of aggressive military action around the planet resemble a noose being drawn around Russia. Nor are the threats concentrated on Russia’s western border with Europe. Since August, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened North Korea, which borders both eastern Russia and China, with nuclear obliteration. After Trump went to Saudi Arabia in May and pressed Riyadh to take a harsh line against Iran and Syria, Russia’s main allies to the south in the Middle East, the region is on the verge of all-out war.

At the same time, Pentagon figures publicized earlier this week showed that US military and support personnel deployed to the Middle East suddenly surged 30 percent, to 54,325.

Humanity is being brought face to face with the disastrous political consequences of the dissolution of the USSR by the Stalinist bureaucracy over a quarter century ago, in 1991. The imperialist lies of the Cold War era, that the USSR was the source of military aggression in the world, were refuted by the imperialist onslaught that developed after its dissolution. Entire regions were devastated as the NATO powers attacked or occupied formerly Soviet-allied states—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria—or isolated and economically strangled them, as in the case of North Korea.

These wars have not only cost millions of lives, but forced over 60 million people to flee their homes, creating the greatest refugee crisis since World War II.

The crisis revealed by Putin’s call for Russia to be prepared for total war is the outcome of these decades of brutal wars waged by the NATO powers around the world. Attempts by US imperialism to use its military might to offset its economic decline and channel outward class tensions driven by rising unemployment and social deprivation, in which Washington was abetted by its European allies, have brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust.

This is now publicly discussed at the highest levels of the US state. Last week, in the US Senate, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey warned that plans could be in place, “right now in the White House, given to the president to launch a preemptive war against North Korea using American nuclear weapons without consulting with, informing Congress.” Another senator said the White House had become an “adult day care center” for an uncontrollable president, who could choose to launch a nuclear war virtually anytime.

The Kremlin’s policy, rooted in the bankrupt Russian nationalism of the post-Soviet capitalist oligarchy, is reactionary and incapable of opposing the imperialist war drive. Unwilling and unable to appeal to anti-war sentiment in the international working class, and financially dependent on the imperialist centers, the Kremlin oscillates between trying to cut deals with the NATO powers and risking an all-out military confrontation with them. Strategists clearly expect that such a conflict would likely escalate rapidly to large-scale nuclear war threatening the very survival of humanity.

There is no way to stop the drive to war outside a politically-conscious intervention by the working class, on an international scale, in revolutionary opposition to war and to capitalism. The greatest danger in this situation is that masses of workers are not fully aware of the depth of the political crisis and the rapidly rising danger of a catastrophic war.

It is under these conditions that, amid a campaign denouncing Russia in US and European media, governments are demanding stepped-up censorship of the Internet and social media, and Google is censoring anti-war and socialist web sites, first and foremost the World Socialist Web Site. This is why the WSWS calls for building an international anti-war movement in the working class and a socialist and anti-imperialist perspective, and asks for its readers’ support in spreading its materials against censorship and war.

US vilification of North Korea is intense, ominously ongoing since Trump took office, already involved in multiple wars of aggression.

Is attacking the DPRK next?

Is Trump willing to risk nuclear war on the peninsula? Given his rage for war, even the unthinkable is possible.

Count the ways – reminiscent of the run-up to earlier US wars. Tactics include:

-inventing enemies;

-falsely claiming they pose unacceptable threats;

-waging propaganda war;

-piling on illegal sanctions;

-declaring nations state sponsors of terrorism – what Pyongyang called a “hideous political provocation;”

-mobilizing military forces near their borders;

-at times staging false flags as pretexts for war – 9/11 the mother of them all; and

-holding provocative military exercises near their borders – rehearsals for war.

South Korea is most vulnerable if war erupts. Permitting US THAAD missiles on its territory is for offense, not defense, denounced by Russia and China for threatening their security.

On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his South Korean counterpart Kang Yyung-wha in Beijing.

Washington is pressuring Seoul to permit additional THAAD installations on its territory. South Korea earlier pledged not to.

Yi pressed Kang to uphold the pledge, and not participate in a proposed trilateral US/Japan/South Korea military alliance, aimed at China and North Korea.

In October, Beijing and Seoul agreed to improve bilateral relations. THAAD installations and provocative military exercises with Washington are obstacles.

In December, South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit Beijing. Key bilateral issues will be discussed, including THAADs, improving communications, and cooling tensions with Pyongyang.

It requires stepping back from US provocations, Moon holding firm against them. China and South Korea share a common interest in preventing conflict on the peninsula, along with securing regional stability.

From December 4 – 8, new joint US/South Korea military exercises are scheduled. US F-22 and F-35 stealth warplanes will participate, the large-scale provocative drills heightening tensions further.

US warplanes will engage in “enemy infiltration” and “precision strike drills” together with South Korean aircraft.

Trump favors provocations, hostile threats and belligerence over responsible diplomacy. Pyongyang has just cause for concern.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier this month, North Korea’s UN envoy Ja Song-nam said Washington

“is now running amok for war exercises by introducing nuclear war equipment in and around the Korean Peninsula, thereby proving that the US itself is the major offender of the escalation of tension and undermining of the peace.”

Does Trump intend attacking the DPRK? Will he recklessly risk nuclear war on the country? Humanity holds its breath to find out.

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

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

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

Since the beginning of the year, the US has rapidly expanded its forces and significantly ramped up its military offensive in Somalia, conducting at least 28 air strikes in 2017. By comparison, 13 such air strikes were carried out in 2016, and five during 2015.

On Tuesday, AFRICOM stated that a US air strike killed more than 100 at a training camp purportedly belonging to the Somali-based Al-Shabaab militia. The air strike impacted an area around 125 miles northwest of capital city Mogadishu. US officials claimed the strike was carried out at the request of the US-backed Federal Transitional Government (FTG).

Speaking on the US pretext for the attack, a spokesperson from AFRICOM told the media, “Al-Shabaab has publicly committed to planning and conducting attacks against the US and our partners in the region.”

The attack is part of the broader US campaign against Al-Shabaab, in which the US has carried out repeated drone strikes against militants in the several weeks since a truck bombing in central Mogadishu by Al-Shabaab killed over 350. Increased air strikes augment a ramped-up military offensive by the Trump administration in the Horn of Africa.

The expanded campaign comes with new rules of engagement enacted by the Trump administration in March, granting broad authority to US forces to conduct open-ended warfare. These loosened restrictions on rules that were ostensibly in place to protect the civilian population from US bombardment make it clear that Washington is preparing for a dramatically expanded military offensive in Somalia.

Al-Shabaab maintains a strong presence in the center and south of the country, but has steadily lost ground since 2011, when US-backed forces from the African Union routed the militia that had taken control over most of Mogadishu.

In deploying the largest contingent of US military troops in the country since 1993, AFRICOM has increased its troops in Somalia to more than 500 soldiers. In launching an all-out offensive in the country, the deployment includes special operations personnel, including Green Berets and Navy Seals, the elite commandos known for carrying out US imperialism’s gravest crimes.

For its part, the Pentagon sought to downplay the significance of the increased troop levels. Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Politico,

“I would not associate that with a buildup, as you’re calling it. I think it’s just the flow of forces in and out as different organizations come in that might be sized a little differently, and I certainly don’t think there’s a ramp-up of attacks.”

Despite this, the increased number of US troops taken together with more than twice the number of air strikes over the previous year constitutes a significant expansion of the American military campaign in the country.

Robyn Mack, spokesperson for AFRICOM, said, “[The larger] advise and assist mission [is now] the most significant element of our partnership [in Somalia].”

For the better part of a decade, the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militia has sought to topple the US-backed government in Mogadishu. The US, in carrying out its offensive against the militia, has been augmented by over 22,000 troops from the African Union, consisting of forces from several African countries, together with the Somali army. The African Union mission, called AMISOM, having officially lead the US-backed offensive since 2007, is set to withdraw its forces in December 2020.

Retired Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who headed AFRICOM until June, spoke of the expansion to Politico:

“We had to put more small teams on the ground to partner in a regional way with the Somali government. So we changed our strategy and we changed our operational approach. That’s why the footprint went up.”

AFRICOM’s expansion follows the template set in 2016 in the northern Somali region of Puntland, when AFRICOM deployed elite soldiers to assist the Somali army in routing ISIS militants who had taken control of the city of Qandala.

Outlining Washington’s strategy as a move toward a more proactive military offensive in the country, Bolduc said, “Puntland was the example we used. We said, ‘We can do this in the other areas.’ So we changed our strategy and we changed our operational approach.”

Being more specific, Bolduc said, “Do we get into contact with the enemy? Yes, we do—our partners do and we’re there to support it, and sometimes we come into contact by virtue of how the enemy attacked them.” Bolduc went on,

“Taking out high-value targets is necessary, but it’s not going to lead you to strategic success, and it’s not going to build capability and capacity in our partners to secure themselves. So we provided a plan that complemented the kinetic strikes.”

Since the end of the Mohamed Siad Barre dictatorship in 1991, the US has been engaged in an effort to secure a puppet regime in Mogadishu. The consequent decades of war and conflict stoked by US imperialism have left the country in complete disarray, with the population experiencing conditions of mass deprivation and misery.

According to UN figures, more than half the population does not have access to clean water sources, and 73 percent are completely impoverished. Due to the destruction of vital infrastructure, the Somali masses have been deprived of access to decent health care and education.

The US-backed FTG government has no popular support anywhere in the country, and is viewed with outright hostility by the majority of Somalis. The military offensive and drone strikes carried out by the US and its proxy forces have killed thousands of Somalis. The consequent destruction of Somali society has led to the emergence of Al-Shabaab.

The American military expansion in the Horn of Africa must be seen in the context of China’s far-reaching and expanding economic influence on the continent, together with Beijing’s recent opening of a navy base in Djibouti, which has provoked Washington’s ire. Washington is seeking to neutralize Beijing’s influence by military force.

In establishing its first overseas base, some five miles from the joint US/French military base Camp Lemonnier, Beijing agreed to pay the Djibouti government $100 million per year. Beijing claimed the base is merely a “logistics facility.”

Last week, China’s POLY-GCL Petroleum Group signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Djibouti to invest $4 billion in a natural gas project at Damerjog near the border with Somalia. In six months, the company will begin construction on the project, which includes a pipeline, a liquefaction plant, and an export terminal. The pipeline is projected to transport 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Ethiopia to Djibouti.

China Railway Group and China Civil Engineering Construction Corp (CCECC) have financed 70 percent of the construction for an electrified Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, the first such cross-border railway on the continent. The commercial rail line connects Ethiopia’s capital with the Rea Sea port in Djibouti, and carries 90 percent of the trade from Ethiopia’s goods.

The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) constitutes an agreement between the US and the Soviet Union pertaining to the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter- Range Missiles. 

By the summer of 1991, the Soviet Union and US had completely eliminated all the land-based ballistic and cruise missiles and their launchers that were subject to the 1987 INF Treaty, as verified by extensive on-site inspections.

This was confirmed by both official Russian sources as well as a series of State Department reports, Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments. Not one of those State Department reports contains any documented, fact-based examples of how the Russians have ever shirked their commitments under the provisions of the INF Treaty.

Feeble allusions to some kind of Russian “violations” of the 1987 treaty began to spread back in 2012, after two high-ranking representatives of the Obama administration met with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, chaired by John Kerry. In June 2012, Republican Senator Michael Turner wrote a letter to the US National Security Council and to the heads of the American intelligence community, asking why Moscow’s tests of its strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles shouldn’t be considered a violation of the 1987 treaty.

In the response offered by US Under Secretary of Defense James Miller on Aug. 3 of that year, the latter stated that the Russian 2012 ICBM tests “do not fall under any of the provisions or restrictions set forth in the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles.” This was quite a reasonable answer, because in accordance with the Soviet-American and Russian-American treaties on the limitation and reduction of strategic offensive nuclear weapons, the term “intercontinental ballistic missiles” applies to missiles with a minimum range of 5,500 km, and thus the Russian ICBMs would not meet the definition of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles as found in the INF Treaty.

In December 2013, at the instigation of a number of senators, several US news sites once again began clamoring about Russian “violations” of the 1987 treaty. In 2013, a group of ten Republican senators, who had previously tried to pressure President Barack Obama over Russian “violations” of provisions of the INF Treaty, drafted an amendment to the FY 2014 defense appropriations bill. This amendment would require the 44th president’s administration to submit a report to Congress that would include any intelligence data available to NATO member states pertaining to Russian compliance with the INF Treaty.

The Russian ICBM RS-26, also known as Rubezh, was singled out for unfair criticism as well. It was patently obvious that the US lawmakers were complaining about this promising missile system because of its improved ability to pierce the American “missile shield.”

In an attempt to use political accusations to get rid of the RS-26 ICBMs, which has included claims that it actually has a shorter flight range, equal to that of an intermediate-range missile, US lawmakers have tried to trot out provisions of the INF Treaty as a legal basis for their efforts to get it banned, although the treaty has nothing whatsoever to do with the this ICBM, either directly or indirectly, since this missile is intercontinental.

Therefore, it couldn’t have been simpler for the Russians to fend off this attack: they released a statement that the missiles cited by the Americans were not subject to this agreement at all because it only applies to ballistic and cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 km. With no hope of progress on their attempts to mix this ICBM into the INF Treaty, Washington pulled it from the agenda.

But in 2014, newly strident voices were heard in Washington alleging Russian “violations” of the 1987 treaty.

There were then charges that Russia’s operational R-500 cruise missile (NATO classification SSC-7) was in violation of the 1987 treaty. But that weapon was also completely exempt from the restrictions in the treaty’s provisions, as it has a flight range below the 500-kilometer cutoff.

In 2014, the well-known Dutch authority on nuclear weapons, Hans Kristensen, who is a director at the Federation of American Scientists, read through the relevant computations in the US State Department’s report on compliance with arms-control treaties, and he came up with two very reasonable questions: why did the Americans not name the type of missile that Russia had allegedly tested and why did it not cite the time of the test? Later, the American arms-control analyst Kingston Reif pointed to these two gray areas as well, and added that the report also lacked information about the number of tests and the location where they were carried out.

At the special consultations on this issue held at the Russian Foreign Ministry in September 2015 between the heads of the arms-control divisions of the Russian foreign ministry and US State Dept., the American delegation was never able to provide their Russian counterparts with any documented evidence of Russian “violations” of that treaty.

In June 2015, a partially declassified report written by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, claimed that Washington was considering deploying cruise missiles with nuclear warheads to Europe to offset Russian “violations” of the INF Treaty, although the goals set by that agreement had long been met.

The State Department’s Rose Gottemoeller, left, and the Defense Department’s Brian McKeon testify on December 1, 2015, at a hearing in the House of Representatives on Russia’s alleged violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

When the Trump administration took over at the White House in 2017 it once again began reiterating those unfounded accusations of Russian “non-compliance” with the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles.

By February of this year, the New York Times was citing sources in the US administration in its claims that the Russian military had allegedly deployed a fully operational division of ground-launched surface-to-surface cruise missiles, which, according to the US, violates the 1987 treaty.

A similar statement was made in March 2017 by General Paul Selva, Vice Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington in March 2017. He estimated that the system that has been developed puts most of the alliance’s sites in Europe at risk and that the Russians have deliberately deployed it in order to pose a threat to NATO and to facilities within the NATO area of responsibility. He added that he had raised this issue during discussions with the Russians, but he did not provide details of the accusations he had made.

The authors of the State Department’s April 2017 report on compliance with arms-control treaties pointed out that the US has been expressing concern about Russia’s conduct in regard to this issue, and during that time it has provided more than enough information to the Russians to enable them to identify the missile in question .

In the document mentioned above, the US State Department makes reference to Articles I, IV, VI, and VII of the INF Treaty, which prohibit the parties from any future possession of intermediate- or shorter-range ballistic or cruise missiles, launchers for such missiles, or any support equipment or structures associated with such missiles or launchers, and ban the production of any stages of such missiles. But simply citing these articles does not mean that the other party has violated some provisions of the 1987 treaty.

It has been reported that the Pentagon has come up with its own in-house designation for a “new Russian” mobile, ground-based cruise missile, calling it the SSC-8 (from an interview that the Russian newspaper Kommersant conducted with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov). But the simple fact that a foreign missile system has been assigned a certain classification doesn’t really tell us anything.

The State Dept. report included a very significant admission, disavowing two previous accusations by the Americans regarding alleged Russian “violations” of the INF Treaty, one of which concerned the operational R-500 missile and the other – the RS-26 ICBM (the State Department has withdrawn its complaints). This admission means that previously, when Washington was accusing Moscow of “violating” the treaty based on Russia’s deployment of these two types of missiles that were not actually subject to the treaty’s restrictions, the US was merely bluffing and attempting to block their deployment by simply circulating baseless accusations.

Like previous reports of this type, the US State Dept. briefing on the INF Treaty, which was released in April 2017, offers no compelling evidence of any Russian “violations.”

The American Congress has more than once urged the US to not only withdraw from the 1987 treaty, but also to arm American NATO allies that are not INF signatories with new ground-launched cruise missiles, in order to “retaliate” against Russia. There have also been calls to introduce specific new sanctions against Russia, due to Moscow’s alleged non-compliance with the terms of that treaty.

Another justification that has been offered for a US pullout from the INF Treaty is that China, which is not bound by that agreement, will supposedly be able to develop an arsenal of nuclear missiles that will eclipse that of the US.

The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which was introduced in Congress in June 2017, would authorize the development of a new, conventional, road-mobile, ground-launched cruise missile system with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers, i.e., precisely falling under the restrictions set by the 1987 treaty.

The bill that has been submitted accuses Russia of “violations” of the INF Treaty and allows the US to fully or partially suspend that agreement’s authority and to deploy additional missile-defense assets in Europe, in addition to the ground- and sea-based weaponry already stationed there. It would allow the Pentagon to refuse to comply with Article VI of the treaty, if it can be proven that Russia has violated that agreement. This article prohibits either party from producing or flight-testing intermediate-range or shorter-range missiles, or producing any stages or launchers of such missiles.

The bill directs a number of the country’s relevant departments and agencies to analyze the extent to which the Russian RS-26 ICBM is or is not in violation of the INF Treaty. If it turns out that this ICBM is not subject to the new START Treaty that is currently binding on Russia and the US, then this will mean that the RS-26 will be deemed to be in violation of the treaty.

The bill authorizes the allocation of $50 million to develop a new missile system “in response to noncompliance of the Russian Federation with its obligations under the INF Treaty,” of which $25 million will be invested in the research, development, and production of new American missiles “with a maximum range of 5,500 kilometers.”

Both the House and Senate versions of the bill, which were overwhelmingly approved in both chambers, have been submitted to a conference committee for reconciliation, after which the consensus version of the bill will be sent to Donald Trump to request his signature, which – if given – will make the bill a valid law. The consensus version of the bill has already established a budget for these goals of $58 million. The background materials offered by Congress state that in light of the Russian Federation’s “violation” of the INF Treaty, the United States is legally justified in suspending its implementation entirely or in refusing to abide by a number of its articles.

The Washington Post acknowledges that the law calls for “[t]he establishment of a new medium-range ground missile program.” That article also argues that the development of such a program “ … would open the door to the United States withdrawing from the treaty and building new medium-range missiles of its own.”

Some American analysts have begun to question the wisdom of a US withdrawal from this treaty, but their voices are still being drowned out by the declamations of those who favor resolving the problem of the treaty in this manner.

For example, a July 29, 2017 editorial in the New York Times pointed out that the creation of a new US intermediate-range missile capable of flying up to 5,500 km, in addition to the withdrawal of Washington from the 1987 treaty, would “give leaders [of the two countries] little time to react.” The newspaper also criticized the readiness of the country’s military and political leaders to spend more than one trillion dollars to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The NYT believes that the US decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty would destroy the very framework of arms control, eliminate support for other, similar treaties, and cast further doubt on Washington’s commitment to its responsibilities – and those pledges have already begun to look shaky now that Donald Trump has pulled out of the Paris Climate Protocol. The newspaper’s editorial board quite rightly noted that the 1987 treaty includes a mechanism for resolving disputes between its signatories, and the US, backed by its allies, should pursue a solution in that forum, by which the board is clearly referring to the two countries’ Special Verification Commission.

The newspaper warned that the new Nuclear Posture Review being drafted by the Trump administration – a document that traditionally spells out the place and role of nuclear weapons in US defense and foreign policy – could stymie the plans of former President Barack Obama to try to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons and to somewhat reduce their role in the country’s security strategy.

Speaking out against Washington’s renunciation of the INF Treaty, Thomas Graham, an American diplomat and member of the National Advisory Board at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, noted that by threatening to completely dismantle the INF Treaty, Congress risks making matters worse by opening the door to Russian deployment of intermediate- and shorter-range ballistic missiles in Europe. In his view, a US withdrawal from that treaty would remove all limits on Moscow’s intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear forces – limits that have strengthened the security of the United States and its allies for three decades.

Another American arms-control specialist, James Acton, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has noted that although the 1987 treaty was signed 30 years ago in a quite different geopolitical context, it still serves the security interests of the United States and its allies. And yet this analyst has suggested that American heavy bombers with air-launched cruise missiles be stationed in Europe, just in case the INF Treaty is terminated for some reason.

It is possible that the issue of Russian “violations” of the INF Treaty will be mentioned in the updated Nuclear Posture Review, which is being drafted in accordance with instructions received from Donald Trump last April.

Given this picture, the threat of a US withdrawal from the 1987 INF Treaty is looming as an increasingly real possibility.

Of course that would require a commensurate response from the Russian side, should this threat materialize during Donald Trump’s time in office. He would definitely go down in history as the leader whose abandonment of a treaty sparked a new round in the nuclear arms race, violating the nuclear nonproliferation regime, compromising the world’s strategic stability, and escalating the degree of mistrust between many states.

To be continued…

Vladimir Kozin, Ph.D., is an Expert Council member of the Russian Senate’ Foreign Relations Committee, Professor of the Academy of Military Science, former high-ranking diplomat, leading expert on disarmament and strategic stability issues.

All images in this article are from the author.

The TV documentary emanates from the mainstream media, Italy’s Canale 5, a private TV network owned by Gruppo Mediaset SA, a company founded in 1987 by former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.  

Canale 5 is the most watched TV channel in Italy. 

Why is this corporate media report which reveals the “unspoken truth” regarding the February 2014 Kiev Euromaidan coup d’Etat not the object of mainstream news coverage?

It emanates from the MSM yet it is tagged by the mainstream media as pernicious media disinformation. 

While the independent media (including Global Research) is ensuring its distribution outside Italy, the Western corporate media remains silent on the underlying political causes, perpetrators and consequences of the 2014 Kiev EuroMaidan coup d’Etat. 

Michel Chossudovsky, November 24, 2017

***

The interviews with three snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by the Italian journalist Gian Micalessin and aired as a breathtaking documentary on Milan-based Canale 5 (Matrix program) last week, still have not paved its way to the international mainstream media. That is hardly surprising taking into account the bombshell evidence against the real perpetrators and organizers of the 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev, generally known as the “revolution of dignity“.

The documentary features Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, Georgian military officers  who were recruited to carry out a “special mission” in Kiev by Mamuka Mamulashvili, a close aid of Mikhail Saakashvili’s former defense minister Bacho Akhalaia. They claim that on Jan 15, 2014 they landed in Kiev equipped with fake documents and were transferred to Maidan. Having received 1000 USD each one and being promised to  be paid 5000 USD after the “job is done”, they were tasked to prepare sniper positions inside the buildings of Hotel Ukraine and Conservatory, dominant over the Maidan Square.

Map of the Maidan square in Kiev and surrounding buildings

The facts they exposed afterwards, were shocking. Along with other snipers (some of them were Lithuanians) they were put under command of an American military operative Brian Christopher Boyenger (his Facebook page is here). The coordinating team also included Mamulashvili and infamous Segrey Pashinsky, who was detained by protesters on Feb 18, 2017 with a sniper rifle in the boot of his car and  later headed the first post-Maidan interim president administration of Ukraine. The weapons came on stage on February 18 and were distributed to the various Georgian and Lithuanian groups. “There were three or four weapons in each bag, there were Makarov guns, AKM guns, rifles, and a lot of cartridges.” – witnesses Nergadze.

The following day, Mamulashvili and Pashinsky explained to snipers that they should shoot at the square and sow chaos. “When Mamulashvili arrived, I also asked him. Things are getting complicated, we have to start shooting – he replied that we cannot go to presidential elections. “But who to shoot?“ I asked. He replied that who and where it did not matter, you had to shoot somewhere so much to sow chaos.”

“It did not matter if we fired at a tree, barricade, or those who tossed a Molotov, what counted was making panics.”

“I listened to the screams,” recalls Revazishvili. “There were many dead and injured downstairs. My first and only thought was to leave in a hurry before they caught up with me. Otherwise, they would tear me apart.”

Four years later, Revazishvili and his two companions report they have not yet received the promised 5000 USD bills as a payment and have decided to tell the truth about those who “used and abandoned” them.

The full documentary with English subtitles is available below (in two parts):

[Two days later a Macedonian news agency Infomax organized a 52-minutes long night talk with Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia (in Macedonian) in which they provided more details about their backgrounds and mission to Kiev.]

These three men are presenting themselves as repented military officers who were simply “obeying orders” and did not know that they “had to kill people“. A naive attempt for professional death squads operatives, to put it mildly. Meanwhile the fact and time of these confessions and revelations are absolutely synchronized with the ongoing agony of the incumbent regime in Kiev.

Since the very beginning the talking Georgians explicitly claim that the operation was initiated by the former president of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili. Mamulashvili’s chief Bacho Akhalaia was a very close associate and trusted person of the Georgian leader who lost parliamentary elections in October 2012 following  the prison abuse scandal (the Human Rights Watch dedicated a special report to the “Georgian Abu-Ghraib”, Gldani Prison, same month). At the time when the Georgian sniper trio was hired for dirty job in Kiev, Akhalaia was under criminal trial on charges of abusing the power while heading the penitentiary branch of the Ministry of Justice, illegal detention and tortures of inmates  (in October 2014 he was pleaded guilty by the Tbilisi City Court and sentenced to 7,5 years in prison). One month earlier, in November 2013, Mikhail Saakashvili, facing multiple criminal charges in Georgia,  left the country for the United States, and officially settled at the Tufts University. He and his stooges, having suffered a painful defeat at the homeland, would  hardly initiated a risky and adventurous project in a neighboring country if only they were not forced to do so by their masters to make up for failing to comply with their mission in Georgia.

Anyway, on the early days of the Ukrainian crisis the vast Soros-financed network in Georgia (Bacho Alakhaia, a bright offspring of the notorious Mengrel criminal clan, was got on Soros money at the Georgia Liberty Institute since his studentship in early 2000s) was activated to conduct special operations in Kiev.

Four years later the situation has drastically changed. A showcase democratic alliance of Poroshenko & Saakashvili was broken into shatters. Saakashvili again proved to a be a psychopath unable to build any stable political relationship (since September 2017 Ukraine is considering extradiction of Saakashvili to the Georgian authorities meeting their request). Meanwhile  on Nov 1 one of the closest aides of Bacho Alakhaia and Saakashvili, former chief of the military police at the Georgian defense ministry, Megis Kardava, wanted to face the same criminal charges in Georgia, was detained with false passport on the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian security service has already announced that he would be extradited to Tbilisi within 40 days. Several other Georgians from Saakashvili personal protection team were arrested in Ukraine and expelled to their homeland earlier in late October.

All these factors could make the Georgian sniper trio to preventively appear on the Italian TV as “voluntary whistle-blowers exposing the truth” about Euromaidan before they are captured and punished as the scape-goats.

Prudently enough they named a number of iconic personalities of the incumbent regime in Kiev – Andriy Parybiy (currently the Chairman of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), Segrey Pashinsky (member of parliament representing pro-government People’s Front) and Vladimir Parasyuk (another charismatic parliament member) – as organizers and coordinators of the massacre on the Maidan square on Feb 20, 2014.

Their claims are confirmed by other evidence. The most comprehensive collection of such facts so far was carried out by Professor of the University of Ottawa Ivan Katchanovsky (he also commented on the Italian documentary last week).

Whatever we feel towards the repented snipers, their public confessions does not exonerate them from responsibility for deliberately killing people. They were not soldiers at the battlefield during the declared war. They could not be ordered by their commanders. They were hired for money to do a dirty job and they were aware that what they were going to do was a dirty job. Their jabbering in attempt to prove the opposite is ridiculous. So this trio, Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, as well as those who hired and ordered them – Mamuka Mamulashvili (currently he is the commander of the Geogian Legion in Donbass), Brian Boyenger (he fought on the Ukrainian side in Donbass in 2015-2016) – and other snipers from Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine have to face trial in Ukraine or any other country whose citizens perished during the Euromaidan. Next should come the turn of the Ukrainian politicians, principal beneficiaries of that massacre – those named (Andriy Parybiy, Segrey Pashinsky and Vladimir Parasyuk) and still unknown to the public.

The “Heavenly Hundred”, perished on Maidan square in 2014

As a matter of fact, this still underreported story totally undermines the legitimacy of Poroshenko’s regime. The crocodile tears of the incumbent rulers of that long-suffering nation over the graves of the victims of “revolution of dignity” since now onwards will every time only emphasise and highlight the former’s role in mass killing of their own supporters. Having paid a puny 1000 USD to every foreign sniper, they came to power to abuse dreams and trust of the millions of citizens of Ukraine. That was the real price of the Ukrainian “dignity” for the masterminds of their national catastrophe.

All images in this article are from Oriental Review.

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The Objective of the US Is to Weaken and Destroy Syria: Prof. Tim Anderson

By Prof. Tim Anderson and Sputnik, November 24, 2017

In an interview with Radio Sputnik, Tim Anderson, an academic expert in economics and international politics from the University of Sydney, pondered on the US’ role in the standoff in Syria, saying that America misinterprets the Russian arms’ presence in the country.

BBC Backs Report that Omitted Killings of Palestinians During Gaza Truce

By Amena Saleem, November 23, 2017

The BBC’s obliviousness to the reality of Israeli aggression against Gaza has been staggeringly highlighted in a BBC Trust ruling issued at the beginning of October that endorses a report that completely ignored Israeli violence against Palestinians, including multiple killings of civilians.

Was Srebrenica a Hoax? Eye-Witness Account of a Former United Nations Military Observer in Bosnia

By Carlos Martins Branco, November 23, 2017

Ratko Mladić has recently been convicted to life imprisonment by the the ICTY on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity while he was Chief Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Origins of the Islamic State (ISIS): Who is Behind “Al Qaeda in Iraq”? Pentagon Acknowledges Fabricating a “Zarqawi Legend”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 23, 2017

Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was the alleged mastermind behind Al Qaeda in Iraq which was at the origin of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh). 

Until 2014, the Islamic State was referred to as Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was a creation of US intelligence.

The US-led Coalition’s Air War in Iraq: Undercounting the Civilian Dead

By Paul R. Pillar, November 22, 2017

During the “war on terror,” the U.S. government has understated the number of civilians killed (all the better to manage positive perceptions back home). But a new report underscores the truth, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

Does Hydraulic Fracking Trigger Earthquakes? Officials Caught Forcing Scientist to Alter Findings to Cover Up Earthquake Fracking Link

By John Vibes, November 22, 2017

A former state-sponsored scientist revealed that he was ordered to alter his findings on the links between fracking and earthquakes.

A Peace Train is rolling through Syria, but Canada and its terrorist-supporting allies are not on it.

If Canada wanted peace, it would be applauding the Axis of Resistance’s victories over terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

But Canada’s silence is loud and clear.

The growing “Peace Bloc”, as described by renowned investigative reporter Vanessa Beeley,[1]includes Syria, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and Iraq.  These are the forces that are defeating the Western-backed terrorists who are destroying Syria and murdering its peoples.

Although terrorists are still infesting some areas in Syria – and civilians are still being murdered on a regular basis — a complete victory over terrorism is in sight.  The SAA victory at Abu Kamal in east Syria— dubbed the “Mother of All Battles” — was especially significant.

A corollary for lasting peace is respect for international law, and those countries actually fighting terrorism are better positioned to advance the power and scope of international law.

Canada and its allies have shown themselves to be rogue aggressor nations and so not suited to lead the way towards respect for international law and peace.  Nor have they chosen to follow such a path.

For the sake of humanity, Canada and its criminal cohorts need to apologize for supporting the terrorists, leave Syria (including its air space), end the illegal sanctions, and stop stealing tax dollars that support illegal wars. Of course there should be trials at the Hague as well.

Corporate media, which has enabled the criminality, should also be prosecuted.

International criminal lawyer Christopher C. Black, who was a lead defence counsel in the Rwanda war crimes tribunal, and an advisor to Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY, argues that,

The journalists who write these propaganda pieces and the presenters who read them on television are among the worst of criminals as they sit there looking attractive, with their fake smiles and fake concern, while taking lots of money to lie to our faces every day. It takes a very low person to sit there and lie to their fellow citizens so easily. It takes someone who has no sense of morality whatsoever. One could say they are sociopaths. But criminals they are and they deserve to be in the dock with the leaders that hand them the scripts they read so willingly.[2]

***

Notes

[1] 21 Wire, “SYRIA: The Emerging ‘Peace’ Bloc Challenges the Weakened ‘War’ Bloc.” 22 November, 2017. (http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/11/22/syria-emerging-peace-bloc-challenges-weakened-war-bloc/) Accessed 23 November, 2017.

[2] Christopher Black, “NATO ‘s War Crimes: The Crime of Propaganda.” New Eastern Outlook. August 14, 2017.
(https://journal-neo.org/2017/08/14/nato-s-war-crimes-the-crime-of-propaganda/) Accessed 23 November, 2017.

All of the post-9/11 wars were sold to Western audiences through a sophisticated network of interlocking governing agencies that disseminate propaganda to both domestic and foreign audiences. But the dirty war on Syria is different. The degree of war propaganda levelled at Syria and contaminating humanity at this moment is likely unprecedented. I had studied and written about Syria for years, so I was not entirely surprised by what I saw.

(Excerpt from Preface, Mark Taliano’s book “Voices from Syria“, Global Research Montreal, 2017)

Order directly from Global Research (also available in PDF)

Voices from Syria

Mark Taliano

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It was just a local rumor in a remote Himalayan village. Now it’s a history lesson for children across Nepal.

I doubt if an entry in grade 10 English textbooks is what a normal anthropologist aspires to? I certainly never dreamed of it. But it happened. 

Am I thrilled? You bet.

My longtime colleague in Nepal, Sukanya Waiba, informed me yesterday that her nation’s standard grade 10 textbook added an exercise for students based on the history of a rebel lady. The extract is from “Heir to a Silent Song”, my 2001 book on the revolutionary activist Shakti Yogmaya who lived from about 1860 to 1941.

(Happily, the passage includes a selection of her fierce poems too.)

What more could a student of culture and history ask of her labor? This news means far, far more than reviews of my book in a prestigious literary or academic journal—there were none; it surpasses any academic honor.

Imagine: my unearthing of a controversial Nepali leader denounced, slandered, then purposely concealed from her nation’s history almost 80 years ago, is today offered to the nation’s schoolchildren. No matter that 36 years have transpired since I began my journey into this woman’s political career. (It’s always the time to review, correct and deepen our histories.)

I’ve constantly argued that anthropology, at its best, is a recording of history.

In 1981 when I began that work, Nepal was ruled by a dictator monarch; free political expression was prohibited just as during Yogmaya’s life. Years of review and reflection on my side were necessary. It took time for me to digest what I had learned in that remote hill settlement. I needed daring and astute Nepali colleagues to support my pursuit. My teachers – (scientists call them ‘informants’)–all now diseased, were Hindu ascetics, mostly elderly women, in 1981. But when their leader was alive, young and resolute they were members in her revolutionary movement.

Yogmaya’s political philosophy survived in a secretly published collection of her utterances– beautiful and poignant quatrains. These needed time to comprehend and translate. Combined with the oral testimonies, those poems made Yogmaya’s position in history irrefutable.

My personal political growth, a maturity essential to write about any revolutionary, would require much more time. So did my writing. (Standard anthropology templates proved unable to embrace this history.)

Since 2001, others in Nepal have enthusiastically taken up traces I gathered and they are fleshing out the story and moving Yogmaya into her rightful place in their history. Before these gratifying developments within Nepal, political acumen awakened in me and I began to grow in an altogether different direction. Pursuing Yogmaya was for me an epiphany. By 1989 I left Nepalis to struggle with their historical inheritances. I turned my attention to my own Arab heritage.

It was just a local rumor in a remote Himalayan village. Now it’s a history lesson for children across Nepal.

I doubt if an entry in grade 10 English textbooks is what a normal anthropologist aspires to? I certainly never dreamed of it. But it happened. 

Am I thrilled? You bet.

My longtime colleague in Nepal, Sukanya Waiba, informed me yesterday that her nation’s standard grade 10 textbook added an exercise for students based on the history of a rebel lady. The extract is from “Heir to a Silent Song”, my 2001 book on the revolutionary activist Shakti Yogmaya who lived from about 1860 to 1941.

(Happily, the passage includes a selection of her fierce poems too.)

What more could a student of culture and history ask of her labor? This news means far, far more than reviews of my book in a prestigious literary or academic journal—there were none; it surpasses any academic honor.

Imagine: my unearthing of a controversial Nepali leader denounced, slandered, then purposely concealed from her nation’s history almost 80 years ago, is today offered to the nation’s schoolchildren. No matter that 36 years have transpired since I began my journey into this woman’s political career. (It’s always the time to review, correct and deepen our histories.)

I’ve constantly argued that anthropology, at its best, is a recording of history.

In 1981 when I began that work, Nepal was ruled by a dictator monarch; free political expression was prohibited just as during Yogmaya’s life. Years of review and reflection on my side were necessary. It took time for me to digest what I had learned in that remote hill settlement. I needed daring and astute Nepali colleagues to support my pursuit. My teachers – (scientists call them ‘informants’)–all now diseased, were Hindu ascetics, mostly elderly women, in 1981. But when their leader was alive, young and resolute they were members in her revolutionary movement.

Yogmaya’s political philosophy survived in a secretly published collection of her utterances– beautiful and poignant quatrains. These needed time to comprehend and translate. Combined with the oral testimonies, those poems made Yogmaya’s position in history irrefutable.

My personal political growth, a maturity essential to write about any revolutionary, would require much more time. So did my writing. (Standard anthropology templates proved unable to embrace this history.)

Since 2001, others in Nepal have enthusiastically taken up traces I gathered and they are fleshing out the story and moving Yogmaya into her rightful place in their history. Before these gratifying developments within Nepal, political acumen awakened in me and I began to grow in an altogether different direction. Pursuing Yogmaya was for me an epiphany. By 1989 I left Nepalis to struggle with their historical inheritances. I turned my attention to my own Arab heritage.

Featured image: A map used in BBC’s Hairy Bikers series erases Palestinians completely.

The BBC has admitted to producing a misleading map of Israel in which Jerusalem is included, the occupied West Bank is annexed to Jordan and Gaza no longer exists.

The map was produced as a graphic for an episode of BBC Two’s Hairy Bikers cookery series entitled “Chicken and Egg,” broadcast at the end of last year.

In the episode, the motorcycling cooks visit Israel and Jerusalem – though the status of the eastern part of the city as occupied territory is not acknowledged – to learn about local chicken and egg dishes. These are all referred to as “Israeli,” even though they include platters which are clearly Arab and North African in origin, including shawarma, shakshuka and couscous.

The map was spotted and challenged by viewer Elizabeth Morley, who then spent the next three months trying to force the BBC into an admission.

In the map, used at the beginning of the episode to illustrate where the two bikers went, the West Bank is incorporated into Jordan, while Gaza has become part of Israel. The Israeli flag is stamped over where Gaza used to be, while an enlarged Jordan is colored in green.

After a few seconds, Jerusalem is added – as a unified city – into Israel. In this fantasy BBC map, the new Jerusalem is nowhere near its actual location, split along the armistice line between the West Bank and Israel. Instead, an illustration indicating the location of the city hovers over the the Dead Sea.

The BBC’s message to its viewers appears to be that Jerusalem, all of it, belongs to Israel, and there is no such thing as Palestine or Palestinian land.

Indifference

Morley told The Electronic Intifada that she lodged an official complaint with the BBC about the map because it was “false, showing not Israel but Israeli wishful thinking, whereby all traces of Palestinian existence had disappeared.”

She added:

“There was no West Bank, no East Jerusalem, no Gaza. And, for that matter, no Golan Heights” – Syrian territory occupied by Israel in 1967.

The BBC responded to Morley’s complaint with indifference in emails seen by The Electronic Intifada. Neil Salt, of the BBC’s Complaints Team, stated:

“… this series is about poultry … it’s not about the political aspects or conflicts of a country.”

He added:

“This was a simplified map aiming only to show the rough geographical locations (not the political aspects) of the sites the Hairy Bikers were visiting … We hope this clarifies any concerns you had.”

After Morley complained again, Brian Irvine, also of the Complaints Team, wrote back in a similarly dismissive fashion:

“… we didn’t feel that a detailed map of the Middle East was required for this program.”

Only after Morley escalated her complaint did she receive an acknowledgement – nearly four months after the program was first aired – that the BBC had breached its own editorial guidelines.

The map was “not accurate,” Fraser Steel, head of Editorial Complaints, wrote. The inaccuracy could not be defended “on the basis that the program was primarily about cookery … And I’m therefore proposing to uphold your complaint,” he added.

Something rotten at the BBC

Yet this is not the first time the BBC have used maps that were “not accurate,” maps that mirror Israel’s view of land ownership in the region.

In 2014, BBC Online created and frequently used a map in which it had moved Jerusalem away from the West Bank and placed it wholly inside Israel.

A deceptive map published on the BBC’s website. (BBC)

And, in 2010, a Top Gear Middle East special used maps of the region which had Israel marked on them, but not the West Bank or Gaza, despite that the program’s three presenters drove into Bethlehem, a city in the West Bank. On that occasion, the BBC Trust justified the map to complainants on the grounds that Top Gear is “an entertainment program,” not a political one.

Maps, however, are not innocuous. They are tools of power, used by states to assert territorial rights often over native peoples.

Israel knows that maps influence how people see and understand the world, and so its tourism ministry funds ads which depict all the land which was historically Palestine as being Israel. Gaza and the West Bank do not exist on these maps.

Is the BBC trying to manipulate its audiences in a similar manner? To persuade them to see Israel as Israel wants to be seen? To forget about the Palestinians?

These are questions the BBC needs to address if it does not want a reputation for pro-Israel bias.

The BBC’s finding will be published on its website at a later date.

This episode of Hairy Bikers is due to be repeated by the BBC on 22 February. If the same map is used, this will make a mockery of the broadcaster’s editorial guidelines and of the complaints process, which has determined the map to be in breach of those guidelines.

Castro (far left), Che Guevara (center), and other leading revolutionaries, marching through the streets in protest at the La Coubre explosion, March 5, 1960

On November 25, 2016, Cuban President Raúl Castro appeared on state television to announce the death of his brother and predecessor Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (August 13, 1926 – November 25, 2016) at the age of 90. The following day, Cuba declared nine days of mourning for the incomparable revolutionary and courageous leader, during which time his cremated remains travelled 900 kilometres along the island and retraced the same route travelled by the “Freedom Caravan” in January 1959, but in reverse. Thousands of Cubans from every part of the island payed tribute to their late leader, often chanting “Yo Soy Fidel” (I Am Fidel) and “Viva Fidel!” (Long Live Fidel). Subsequently, on December 4^th, Fidel Castro’s ashes were buried at the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, close to the remains of national hero José Julián Martí Pérez (1853-1895). A few weeks later, on December 27^th, the Cuban government passed a law forbidding the naming of “institutions, streets, parks or other public sites” after Castro, “or erecting busts, statues or other forms of tribute” in his image, which was in accordance with Castro’s wishes that he not be made into a cult of personality after his death[1].

Fidel Castro’s legacy will undoubtedly continue to serve as a powerful source of inspiration for contemporary supporters of movements against capitalism, imperialism, racism and other forms of exploitation. In Cuba, Fidel will always be remembered as one of the five heroes of the Cuban Revolution along with Camilo Cienfuegos (1932-1959), Raúl Castro (1931), Ernesto Ché Guevara (1928-1967), and Juan Almeida Bosque (1927-2009) who, like Antonio Maceo Grajales (1845-1896) and José Julián Martí Pérez before them, are revered for fighting for the independence of the country.

Prior to the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959, Castro and approximately 150 compatriots made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the corrupt and oppressive government of General Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973) on July 26, 1953; Batista enjoyed the full backing of the United States since coming to power on March 10, 1952 via a coup d’état. The failed attack against the Moncada military barracks near Santiago de Cuba earned Castro a 15-year prison sentence, of which he served only two years due to a strong amnesty campaign that was organized by relatives and colleagues of the prisoners, as well as opponents of the Batista dictatorship.After his release, Castro relocated to Mexico because of threats made against his life by the Batista government;there he organized, trained and armed a new group of revolutionaries that came to be known as ‘the 26th of July Movement’, commemorating the date of his first attempt to overthrow the Batista regime.

By the time the 26^th of July Movement was ready to attempt its overthrow of the Batista regime, it counted a total of 82 revolutionaries within its ranks, including Fidel, as the main organizer, Cienfuegos, Raúl Castro, Ché Guevara, and Bosque.“In November 1956, all 82 of these revolutionaries embarked on a 10-day journey to return from Mexico to Cuba on the now-famous yacht called Granma, which actually had the capacity to transport only 12 people. Once in Cuba, the revolutionaries decided to advance to the Sierra Maestra mountain range in order to meet up with other supporters of the revolutionary movement against Batista’s dictatorship. However, only 12 of them managed to survive the journey and reach Sierra Maestra, as they came under multiple attacks by the Cuban Army”[2].The survivors of the voyage and supporters of the revolutionary movement on the island continued the guerrilla war by organizing resistance groups in towns and cities across Cuba. The Batista government responded by arresting and torturing civilians en masse in an effort to weaken and eventually defeat the revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the guerrilla war prevailed in 1959, overthrowing one of the most brutal and repressive dictators in Latin American history, who managed to murder more than 20,000 Cubans and transform the country into a police state during his seven years in power, all with the backing of his supporters in the United States.

Revolutionary leaders Che Guevara (left) and Fidel Castro (right) in 1961 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In a more historical context, overthrowing the Batista dictatorship meant the Cuban Revolution essentially ended “467 years of serfdom and exploitation by a foreign power”[3], beginning with the Spaniards in 1510[4] and followed by the Americans in 1898.In the 19^th century, Cub ans struggled for 30 years to gain their independence from Spain, which included fighting in the Ten Years’ War (1868–1878), the Little War (1879–1880) and the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). Unfortunately, the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898 did not bring independence to Cuba, as the island was subsequently transformed into a US neo-colony. This was likely the intention of the US when it initially entered the war against Spain, as it has been well-documented that, in 1848, the Spanish Empire rejected a $100 million offer from the US to buy Cuba for the purpose of transforming the island into a new slave territory. The Americans did not respond to this rejection by doing anything rash or rushing into conflict, instead electing to bide their time on the belief that “Cuba was a fruit, a ripe apple on the Spanish tree ready to fall into the hands of the United States” (Fidel Castro, 1960).

America’s opportunity to wrest Cuba away from Spain finally materialized half-a-century later in the form of the unexplained sinking of the USS Maine, a cruiser sent to Havana Harbour to protect US interests during the Cuban War of Independence against Spain.Although the precise cause of the explosion that sank the USS Maine was never conclusively determined, US newspapers immediately blamed Spain, causing the event to become one of the main pretexts precipitating the Spanish-American War in 1898. After Spain was roundly defeated that same year, the US Congress enacted a number of measures whereby “the US intervened militarily and exercised imperial power over Cuba, exploiting its natural and human resources, and dictating Cuba’s domestic and foreign policies. During that period, the US government used its authority to profit the interests of American companies, which controlled all the economic sectors in the island”[5]. American companies also came to own the best agriculture land, mines and natural resources on the island. As a result, “The Cuban economy became highly dependent on the U.S., as “74% of Cuba’s exports were destined for the US, while 73% of its imports came from the US…the all-important Cuban US sugar export market and price were controlled in Washington” (Ritter, 2010, p. 3). In fact, “[b]y the 1950s, the U.S. controlled 80 percent of Cuban utilities, 90 percent of Cuban mines, close to 100 percent of the country’s oil refineries, 90 percent of its cattle ranches, and 40 percent of the sugar industry”’[6].

During the period of US dominance prior to the Revolution,almost half of Cuba’s adults and 37.5% of the total population were illiterate, as there were no schools and as much as 70% of all children did not have access to a teacher. Furthermore, most Cubans could not obtain housing or access decent healthcare services, and electricity and water infrastructure were very limited. These conditions, exacerbated by American domination in all segments of the economy, led to most Cubans experiencing exploitation, racism, police brutality, starvation and humiliation. Women were particularly vulnerable to exploitation, as many girls from urban areas elected to serve as prostitutes for American tourists and businessmen. It did not take very long for the American mafia operating on the island to realize that they could profit from this situation, which eventually led them to operate almost 300 brothels in Havana to supplement the money they earned from selling illegal drugs. As such, Cuba essentially became a playground for Americans, with Batista serving as their puppet. He collaborated with organized crime and allowed the American mafia to control all of the casinos on the island in return for millions of dollars being deposited into his Swiss bank account.

After the revolution, Fidel Castro governed Cuba, first as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976, then as President from 1976 to 2008[7]. From the outset, his government always defended and promoted anti-imperialism and instituted measures aimed at ending the island’s colonization, humiliation and exploitation at the hands of the United States, which included shutting down all casinos and brothels on the island, marginalizing the mafia, and curtailing international tourism to Cuba. The Castro government also nationalized foreign enterprises and utilities, and instituted a number of land and agrarian reforms, including an agrarian reform limiting land ownership and forbidding foreigners from purchasing or possessing land in the country. The Cuban government also nationalized banks,and telephone companies, all of which belonged to American companies. Additionally, refineries that were controlled by American corporations such as Shell and Esso were nationalized and Cuba signed a trade agreement to purchase oil from the Soviet Union. To improve Cuban living standards, education and health care were nationalized and became universally accessible to all citizens without exception. The Castro socialist regime also made large investments in housing construction and infrastructure improvements, which included building 600 miles of roads in six months. Through such actions, Cuba earned the reputation of being “the first territory free from imperialist domination in Latin America and the Caribbean” (Fidel Castro, May 2003).

Castro (far left), Che Guevara (center), and other leading revolutionaries, marching through the streets in protest at the La Coubre explosion, March 5, 1960 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

President Dwight Eisenhower became furious with Castro’s nationalization process and anti-imperialist policies and,as a result, broke off diplomatic relations with the island on January 3, 1961. Eisenhower also retaliated by collaborating with the mafia and approving efforts on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to overthrow Cuba’s government, which came to be known as the “Program of Covert Action Against Castro”. These efforts culminated in the invasion at the Bay of Pigson April 17, 1961, where approximately 1,400 Cuban exiles that were trained, armed and funded by the CIA attacked Cuba in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s socialist regime. Although this failed invasion was executed when John F. Kennedy was President, its planning by the CIA commenced in March 1959, when the Eisenhower administration was still in power.

The following year, in 1962, the Kennedy administration imposed a full commercial, economic and financial blockade, which suspended all trade between the two countries and prevented U.S. citizens from travelling to Cuba. This was done because“the U.S. administration regarded the trade embargo as the best mechanism to achieve its objectives, which were aptly summarized by Lester D. Mallory, former deputy assistant Secretary of State, on April 6, 1960”[8]:

The majority of the Cuban people support Castro. There is no effective political opposition… The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection and hardship… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba… a line of action which… makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government[9].

The Americans also employed a wide variety of tactics in an effort to destabilise and destroy the Cuba’s socialist regime, which included funding Cuban exiles to organize terrorist attacks and sabotage the island’s economy, and supporting CIA efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro. It has been estimated that the CIA made a total of 638 assassination attempts[10] against Castro during his lifetime. Following the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, one the better-known American attempts to overthrow the Cuban Revolutionary government, Fidel Castro stated:

Cuba is very different from the United States. The United States exploits other nations, has appropriated a large part of the world’s natural resources and is making tens of millions of workers all over the world labour in the service of its caste of millionaires. Cuba doesn’t exploit other nations; Cuba hasn’t appropriated. And is not struggling to appropriate, the natural resources of other nations, Cuba isn’t trying to make the workers in other nations labour in its service…With our revolution, we are eradicating not only the exploitation of one nation by another but also the exploitation of one human being by another.[11]

Against the backdrop of these attacks and attempts to reverse the revolution, Fidel Castro expressed his willingness to enter into negotiations to establish peaceful relations; however, he made it very clear that while economic problems could be discussed, communism was not on the table. Specifically, he stated that

“Cuban people are capable of establishing their own government. We have never considered the possibility of discussing this. We will discuss only matters that do not affect our sovereignty” (Fidel Castro, 1961).

He further added:

The US government says that a socialist regime here threatens US security. But what threatens the security of the US people is the aggressive policy of the warmongers of the US. What threatens the security of the North American family and the US people is the violent, aggressive policy that ignores the sovereignty and the rights of other peoples…We do not endanger the life or security of a single US family. We are making cooperatives, agrarian reform, people’s farms, houses, schools, literacy campaigns, and sending thousands and thousands of teachers to the interior of Cuba, building hospitals, sending doctors, giving scholarships, building factories, converting fortresses into schools…[12]

After enduring significant hardships from repeated American attempts to destroy Fidel Castro’s socialist regime, Cubans were hit particularly hard by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which produced what came to be known as the “special period” from 1989 to 1995. “The collapse of the Soviet Union meant Cuba lost its most important trading partner, which accounted for approximately 80% of the island’s exports and imports at that time; Cuba also had to do without the generous subsidies it received from the socialist block.”[13] As a result, “the Cuban economy essentially collapsed and its inhabitants experienced severe shortages in basic supplies, including food and medicine, resulting in malnutrition and associated health problems”[14] during the special period. The extent of the situation is demonstrated by the fact that the Cuban economy contracted by more than 40% in 1992 alone. Of course, the US could never pass up such a grandiose opportunity to tighten the screws further by enacting measures to strengthen its embargo against Cuba with the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act in 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act in 1996.

In response to hardships of the special period, Fidel Castro’s government initiated a number of quasi-free market economic reforms and sought foreign investment to reinvigorate the economy, which included allowing small-scale private enterprises, reopening the island to foreign tourism in 1993-94, and investing in biotechnology. In fact, reforms implemented during the special period are the reason why many of the hotels and resort chains currently operating on the island are actually joint ventures between the Cuban government and foreign companies, primarily from Spain and Canada. That means recent efforts aimed at revitalizing the Cuban economy do not represent a new phenomenon, as Fidel Castro’s government had been trying to rejuvenate its socialist system since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Despite the disastrous economic consequences of the special period and the strengthening of the American embargo that accompanied it, Cuban socialism continued to produce many impressive achievements, including the attainment of full employment, providing universal access to free education and health care services, and improving social justice. As a result, the island was able to attain higher literacy, “higher life expectancy, lower child mortality, lower child malnutrition, and lower poverty rates compared to any other Latin American country”[15]. In addition to the issues of social justice, healthcare, and education, Castro’s government was also well-known for its commitment to the environment, including the sustainable use of natural resources and combating over-consumption and global warming. Since 2006, Cuba was the only country in the world that managed to attain sustainable development, as defined by the United Nations Development Programme, with a low ecological footprint of less than 1.8 hectares per capita.

The Cuban revolutionary movement was not limited to freeing Cubans from subservience to American domination,it was also viewed as a model for national liberation movements opposing imperialism and colonialism in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. In 1960, Fidel Castro addressed the United Nations General Assembly and spoke in favour of liberation movements against imperialism and colonialism:

The case of Cuba is not an isolated one. It would be an error to think of it only as the case of Cuba. The case of Cuba is that of all underdeveloped nations. It is the case of the Congo, it is the case of Egypt, it is the case of Algeria, it is the case of Iran, and finally, it is the case of Panama, which wants its canal back. It is the case of Puerto Rico, whose national spirit they are destroying. It is the case of Honduras, as portion of whose territory has been seized. In short, without specifically referring to other countries, the case of Cuba is the case of all underdeveloped and colonized countries…The problem of Latin America are like the problems of the rest of the underdeveloped world, in Africa and Asia. The world is divided up among the monopolies, and those same monopolies that we find in Latin America are also found in the Middle East. Oil in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and in every corner of the earth is in the hands of monopolistic companies that are controlled by the financial interests of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France…The monopolistic interests are not concerned with the development of the peoples. What they want is to exploit the natural resources of our countries and exploit the peoples.[16]

Fidel Castro’s open support for liberation movements and struggles for justice and universal causes made his regime very popular with people opposed to exploitation and imperialism in all forms all over the world.

Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro (EFE Archives)

In Latin America, Fidel supported Che Guevara’s “Andean project”, which sought to dislodge Western domination in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina, and permitted revolutionaries from around the world to train in Cuba. He also formed a close friendship with Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chávez, who sought to use his country’s immense oil revenues to improve the living standards of the poorest segments of the population when he was first elected in 1999, in what came to be known as the Bolivarian Revolution[17]. The two of them entered into a number of mutually beneficial economic agreements and exchanges, including an arrangement for Cuba to send 20,000 doctors to Venezuela in exchange for 53,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates in 2000; this agreement was subsequently modified in 2004 by increasing the total number of Cuban doctors to 40,000 and the quantity of oil to 90,000 barrels per day. Also in 2004, Cuba and Venezuela were the founding members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which aims to redistribute wealth equally between member countries.

In 1963, Fidel Castro’s government organized the “Committee in Solidarity with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia” to provide assistanceto these countries during the Vietnam War by sending Cuban medical professionals, engineers and technological advice. Castro’s government was also an enduring supporter of Palestinian liberation, as evidenced by Cuba becoming the first country to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. In addition to consistently expressing solidarity for the Palestinian cause, Castro permitted numerous Palestinian students to study in Cuba, sent 4,000 Cuban soldiers to defend Syrian territory from invasion by the Israelis during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and condemned Israel’s sealing off of the Gaza strip in 2012 as a “Palestinian Holocaust”. Fidel Castro also condemned the disastrous NATO-led military intervention of Libya that commenced in March 2011. Such actions and strong positions have made Fidel Castro highly-respected throughout the Arab world since the early years of the Cuban Revolution.

Cuba also played a prominent role in liberation movements on the African continent. For example, the Cuban government sent military and medical aid to Ahmed Ben Bella’s socialist regime in Algeria during the Sand War with Morocco in October 1963; Cuba also consistently “supported the Algerian patriots in their struggle against French colonialism, at the cost of damaging political and economic relations” with France (Fidel Castro, May 2003). Cuba also sent material and military assistance to support the Marxist Movement for the Liberation of Angola from Portugal in 1975. Also of note, Cuba is credited with supporting the fight against apartheid in South Africa. This became all the more apparent when Nelson Mandela visited Cuba after his 1991 release from prison and made a speech explicitly expressing his gratitude for the support received from Cubans during the anti-apartheid movement. Mandela was quoted as saying:

We have come here today recognizing our great debt to the Cuban people. What other country has such a history of selfless behavior as Cuba has shown for the people of Africa? How many countries benefit from Cuban health care professionals and educators? How many of these volunteers are now in Africa? What country has ever needed help from Cuba and has not received it? How many countries threatened by imperialism or fighting for their freedom have been able to count on the support of Cuba?[18]

Fidel Castro’s funeral procession passing through Sancti Spíritus Province, Cuba (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

However, Cuba might be best-known for being “active in providing practical foreign aid in the form of sending highly-trained specialists, such as teachers, doctors, and engineers, to developing countries where they are needed. Since 1959, Cuba has been sending doctors to countries in Latin American and Africa that are unable to meet the health care needs of their citizens on their own; this is a practice for which the island is particularly well-regarded. Currently, “around 50,000 Cuban health professionals work in 66 countries worldwide”. Recent examples of such assistance include sending Cuban doctors to West African countries during the recent Ebola outbreak and to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010 where they were largely credited with ending a cholera outbreak. Additionally, Cuba also helps combat doctor shortages by providing free medical school to students from various developing countries. Havana’s Latin American Medical School is “the largest medical school in the world”; since 2005, this institution has produced approximately 23,000 doctors and another 10,000 graduates are expected in the near future”[19]

The Cuban people have been struggling against the “most formidable imperial power ever known to humankind” for 58 years (Fidel Castro, May 2003). It could be said that “never has the world witnessed such an unequal fight” when considering the relative sizes, populations, and military strengths of each country (Fidel Castro, May 2003). However, despite these disparities in favour of the US, “Cuba crushed the Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion organized by a US administration, thereby preventing a direct military intervention…In 1962, Cuba confronted with honor, and without a single concession, the risk of being attacked with dozens of nuclear weapons…It stoically endured thousands acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks organized by the US government. It thwarted hundreds of assassination plots against the leaders of the revolution” (Fidel Castro, May 2003). According to Fidel Castro (2003, 2007), Cuba was able to achieve these victories because “there is something more powerful than weapons, [no matter how sophisticated and powerful those weapons may be[20]]: ideas, reason and the morality of cause”. They are not “born of human beings” nor do “they perish with an individual” (Fidel Castro, June 2007). “Ideas have come into being throughout the history of the human species. They will exist as long as our species does.” (Fidel Castro, June 2007).

“Patria o muerte! [Homeland or death!]

Socialismo o muerte! [Socialism or death!]

Venceremos! [We will win!]” Fidel Castro

Notes

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-castro/cuba-passes-law-that-bans-naming-sites-after-fidel-castro-idUSKBN14G1N9

[2] https://www.globalresearch.ca/cubas-national-hero-camilo-cienfuegos/5484970

[3] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797

[4] ‘Unfortunately, the victory over Spain [at the end of the Spanish-American War of 1898] did not bring Cubans the liberation and independence that they had hoped for. Instead, one oppressor was merely substituted for another’ (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797)

[5] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797

[6] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797

[7] Fidel Castro officially stepped down from Cuba’s Communist Party on April 19, 2011, while his brother Raúl was elected as the new leader of the party.

[8] https://www.globalresearch.ca/cubas-national-hero-camilo-cienfuegos/5484970

[9] http://rt.com/op-edge/us-cuba-economic-benefits-089/

[10] In discussing the many attempts at ending his life, Fidel Castro said that: “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal”.

[11] Fidel Castro (2007)

[12] Fidel Castro (2007)

[13] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797

[14] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797

[15] https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797

[16] Fidel Castro (2007)

[17] The Bolivarian Revolution was the term applied to the socialist revolution that transpired in Venezuela following the election of Hugo Chávez in 1999. It was named after Simón Bolívar, the 19^th century Latin American revolutionary leader who fought against Spanish rule and is viewed as a national icon in much of modern South America.Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution opposed neo-liberalism and its destructive social and economic consequences by promoting participatory democracy, the nationalization of key industries, and the creation of social welfare programs for the purpose of achieving economic self-sufficiency and national sovereignty.The ideals of the Bolivarian Revolution’s were also adopted by Bolivia and Ecuador in recent years.

[18] https://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Mandela-and-Castro-Friends-Comrades-and-Allies-20141205-0028.html

[19]https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cuban-revolution-the-u-s-imposed-economic-blockade-and-us-cuba-relations/5433797

[20] Fidel Castro, May 2003

Syrian government forces have liberated a large area from ISIS on the western bank of the Euphrates. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces have captured the villages of Ajrama, al-Safsafah, Ksu Umm Saba, al-Jahlah, al-Dwair, Wadi Abu Jasim, Surat al-Kshma, Subaykhan, Gharbiyah, Suwaydan Shamiyah, Dabyan, Musallakhah and the nearby points, according to pro-government sources.

Now, the Tiger Forces are developing momentum in order to link up with their counterparts advancing from the direction of al-Bukamal.

The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq claimed that at least 7 SAA soldiers, a battle tank and a bulldozer were destroyed during ISIS counter-attacks in the area. However, the terrorist group was not able to stop the SAA advance.

In southwestern Aleppo, an intense fighting was reported between the SAA and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) in the villages of Rajm Sawan, Hajara and al-Rashadiyah. Pro-government sources speculated that this was a start of the widely expected the SAA operation to establish control over the Abu al-Duhur Airbase. No official confirmation of these claims are available yet. It’s unlikely that the SAA and its allies launch any significant military operation in southwestern Aleppo before the full liberation of the western bank of the Euphrates from ISIS.

In northern Hama, ISIS cells expanded their control in the so-called opposition-held area and captured the villages of al-Judaydah, Madabah, Abu Khanadiq and the nearby points.

The Syrian Military Intelligence has seized a large shipment of weapons en route to the militant-held part of the Eastern Ghouta region, near Damascus. The shipment included 15 Soviet Malyutka and its Iranian copy, Raad, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) as well as 3 Soviet-made Konkurs ATGMs, 2 Russian-made Metis-M ATGMs and a French-made MILAN ATGM. 3 disassembled Soviet-made R-60 air-to-air missiles, dozens of US-made M72 LAW, Soviet-made RPG-22, RPG-26, and Czechoslovakian-made RPG-75 anti-tank rockets were also captured.

Additionally, the seized shipment included explosive belts, mines, explosive materials and a huge amount of drugs like marijuana and Captagon tablets.

On November 22, the presidents of Russia, Iran and Turkey met in the Russian city of Sochi to discuss the situation in Syria. According to the joint declaration, “the three presidents expressed support to the intra-Syrian dialog with the participation of representatives from all segments of the country’s society” and “urged representatives of the Syrian government and opposition speaking in favor of sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian state to take constructive part in the Syrian National Dialog Congress in Sochi in the near future.” The sides also discussed the de-escalation zones and other important issues of the conflict.

The meeting has clearly shown the new reality appearing in the Middle East, which the US-Israeli-Saudi block will have to accept.

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The Russian Orthodox Church is as resurgent today in Russia as Russia is, itself, on an international level.  Ever since the collapse of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church, in accordance with an unofficial alliance with the Kremlin, which began during the tenure of Boris Yeltsin and has continued under Vladimir Putin’s time in office, has propelled itself to filling the ideological void in Russia. 

Under the incumbent Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’, Kirill, more than five thousand new churches have been built in Russia, while there are plans to construct 200 new churches in Moscow, alone.  In tandem with the building of new churches has been the rapid increase in the number of clergymen; over the past eight years, the number has grown by 10,000.

Whilst the Russian Orthodox Church has, today, regained the land that it lost following the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks confiscated this from it, the church is also gaining additional lands, making it one of the largest and wealthiest landowners in modern-day Russia.

Priests have replaced political commissars in the Russian Armed Forces and the Russian Orthodox Church is penetrating the education system in Russia, which are two immensely significant feats.

Where the Russian Orthodox Church has not been able to penetrate is policymaking; or, rather, the Kremlin will not allow this, having set the scope and limits for the role of the church in Russian society.  That can be contrasted with the considerable influence that the Russian Orthodox Church exerted on policy in Tsarist times, when it was the spiritual defender of an absolute monarchy.

Nonetheless, today in Russia the Russian Orthodox Church is taking full advantage of the powers which have been resurrected for it by the Kremlin. And the leadership of the church has certainly taken a leaf out of the book of the defunct Communist Party of the Soviet Union concerning symbolism, by constructing vast numbers of churches, monasteries and theology schools, demonstrating to the Russian people the power of the church, like how the communists signified Bolshevik power to the Soviet people when they erected thousands of statues and busts of Vladimir Lenin.

But is the power that the Russian Orthodox Church wields justified? And how does the ordinary Russian feel about the clericalisation of Russian society?

In historical and present-day terms, the Orthodox faith is the crucial part of the Russian DNA. To be a Russian is to be an adherent to the Orthodox faith. For Russians, being Orthodox means, more than anything else, recognition that Russia is distinct from the West and not subservient to the West. Russians can point to the fact that it was the Russian church that broke away first, long before the Reformation, from the Catholic tradition thereby ensuring, amongst other things, that foreign forces would not be permitted to have influence within Russia. The East-West Schism, of 1054, constitutes a proud period of history for Russians, symbolising their resistance to foreign diktats.

As someone who was baptised in both the Church of England and the Greek Orthodox Church, I believe that churches, irrespective of denomination, have an important role to play in all Christian countries, especially today with the curse of corporate capitalism and neo-liberal economics that are so prevalent in the world. And in the case of Russia, I believe that the Russian Orthodox Church has a historic mission to help maintain unity in Russian society, defend Russian culture from foreign, especially Western, influences, encourage Russian patriotism, and preserve the independence and sovereignty of the Russian state.

But the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church has become too extensive in modern-day Russia. The church is acting in a similar way to how the Communist Party of the Soviet Union acted, though, of course, it does not have anything near to the power that the communists held and exercised in Soviet times.  However, it is a moot point as to whether the leadership of the Russian church would like the power that the Bolsheviks – whom they were persecuted by but also collaborated with, benefiting in numerous ways in doing so – once enjoyed.

According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the country is a secular one and there is to be no national ideology for Russia.  Whilst I fervently agree, for more than one reason alone, that Russia should be secular, the clericalisation of the country by the Russian Orthodox Church is undermining this.  And whilst I disagree that Russia should not have a national ideology, believing this to be one of Russia’s biggest weaknesses today, the Russian Orthodox Church is attempting to project itself as the country’s ideology, which is not to the liking of much of the Russian population, with many Russians feeling unsettled by this.

Despite being far more resilient than what the West had thought when it placed its sanctions on Russia as a result of the crisis in Ukraine (which, incidentally, the United States and the European Union precipitated by undermining Ukrainian democracy), the Russian economy is still fragile. Because Russia has not diversified its economy, relying overwhelmingly, instead, on the revenue which it accumulates from energy supplies and defence exports. As a result of that, together with the effects of Western sanctions and the justified increase by the Kremlin of the defence budget, to counter the very real and increasing threat from NATO, many Russians, especially outside of Moscow and St Petersburg, are falling into poverty. Economic disparities across the Russian Federation are increasing, while the gap between rich and poor is widening. And that sad development is being accentuated by how elements of the rampant capitalism that so destabilised Russian society in the 1990s has begun to return to Russia.

But why is the economic state of Russia relevant in the context of the powers of the Russian Orthodox Church? Well, because the Russian people need more jobs, better salaries, better housing and better pensions, instead of thousands of more churches being built in their name. Russians value security and stability, both in their personal lives and on a national level, more than anything, and they are becoming dispirited in seeing significant amounts of Government money going to the church, while they are, at the same time, struggling with the cost of living. The Russian Orthodox Church, like the communists in Soviet times, is guilty of self-indulgence. And it is now common for Russians to lament at and mock priests today for driving about in Mercedes cars.

I understand and support the Kremlin’s unofficial policy of allowing the Russian Orthodox Church to play a major role in Russian society, especially as a way of maintaining social cohesion at a time when the threat from the West against Russia, in military, political, economic and cultural terms, is becoming ever more dangerous. But, because the church has accumulated too much power and too much wealth, and is misusing these, the Kremlin’s position could backfire if Russians start to turn not, of course, on the Orthodox faith but on the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. We should remember that, in 1917, the Russian Orthodox Church was, rightly so, a source of immense anger for the Russian people because of how its leadership was living a life of privilege when Russians were living in abject poverty.

I must add that there is a practical reason for not building more churches in Russia: namely, that most Russians, whilst identifying as Orthodox, do not attend church services, even at Christmas and at Easter. It is believed that between four to ten per cent of Russians attend church regularly. So why build thousands of more churches? And who is really benefiting from the building of those churches? Contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ, and like all other churches in the world, the Russian Orthodox Church is being run as a business, with the people at the very top accruing the benefits. That says something not about the Russian Orthodox Church per se but human beings in general and their lust for money and materialism. In practice, the leaders of Christianity, Communism and Capitalism, across the world, have all been guilty of self-indulgence.

The Russian Orthodox Church is also guilty of propagating misleading information. By having canonised the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, the church is projecting him in a completely unacceptable way. He was a weak and incompetent leader who presided over a system of government which was responsible for terrible crimes against its own people, such as Bloody Sunday, in 1905. Nicholas II was anything but a saint (in fact, saints do not exist). Further to that, the Russian Orthodox Church calls him a “victim”, in reference to his murder at the hands of the Bolsheviks, which was a heinous act – he and has family should actually have been sent into exile abroad. But what about the victims of Nicholas II? What about the approximately two million Russian soldiers who perished on the Eastern Front, in World War One, in what was a totally needless war for the Russian Empire and one that Nicholas II took Russia into and oversaw?

Naturally, the Russian Orthodox Church regards the Bolshevik revolution with scorn, because its land, wealth and privileges were taken away from them by Lenin, which was, largely speaking, a justified act by the communist leader. Today, the Russian Orthodox Church talks about how the revolution resulted in the territory of the Russian Empire being lost. But, is that really an accurate appraisal? The answer is: No. Lands were, indeed, lost, and these were: Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. But the vast majority of the lands of the Russian Empire were preserved by Lenin and his Bolsheviks and these soon would form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (incidentally, it would not be long until the Baltic States, eastern Poland, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina would once again be governed by Moscow, during the years of Joseph Stalin).

Finally, the Russian Orthodox Church lauds the White Armies and its generals in the catastrophic Russian Civil War, calling them “Russian patriots”. But there is a fundamental problem with that claim because the White Armies, during the civil-war, fought side by side with armies from the US, UK, France, Czechoslovakia and Japan that had invaded Russia. One can justifiably call the White Armies and its generals traitors for having fought with armies which had invaded the Motherland. It should be noted that a factor in accounting for the victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil-war was the presence of foreign armies fighting with the White Armies, which resulted in huge numbers of Russians joining the ranks of the Red Army in order to defend Mother Russia from the clutches of foreign invaders.

The Orthodox faith is what makes being Russian Russian. And the Russian Orthodox Church has an important role to play in Russian society today. However, unorthodox acts by the Russian Orthodox Church are damaging the church in the eyes of the Russian people – and this is dangerous for Russia. The church should be working on patriotism and cohesion and not on accumulating more and more wealth and land for itself. For now, Russia does not have a national ideology, and I sincerely hope that this will change one day soon because there are serious questions about what Russia stands for. In short, Russia has an identity crisis at home and abroad. So, for now, the Russian Orthodox Church is all that Russia has to fill that void. But the church must behave in a measured way and in a responsible way, staying true to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Because if, one day, the Russian people turn their backs on the Russian Orthodox Church (note: not on the Orthodox faith), then where will that leave Russia in what has become an exceedingly dangerous world for her? That is a question that should reverberate along the Russian corridors of power.

Dr Marcus Papadopoulos is a specialist on Russia.

A United Nations tribunal has convicted General Ratko Mladic on 10 out of 11 counts of crimes he was accused of committing during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Critics of the prosecution of crimes during the violent collapse of Yugoslavia question its fairness.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) handed down its verdict on November 22. The justices found Mladic guilty on most of the allegations dating back to the 1992-1995 war, including the massacre of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. Mladic pleaded not guilty on all charges.

Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said the court found that Mladic’s actions during the war were “among the most heinous known to humankind” and amounted to genocide. The court sentenced the Serb to life in prison.

Mladic heard the verdict from a separate room, having been ousted by bailiffs after an outburst of criticism against the judges. The former general said in the courtroom that everything the judges said was a lie, the general’s son, Darko, told TASS. According to Darko, his father said:

 “This is all lies, this is a NATO court!”

The tirade came in response to the court’s rejection of a request by Mladic’s lawyer to postpone the hearings due to the defendant’s high blood pressure. Darko added that he was not surprised by the ruling, saying:

“The court was totally biased from the start.”

The conviction is likely to fuel resentment in Serbia that the international prosecution of crimes committed during the Balkan Wars was one-sided and failed to bring justice to victims of Albanians and Croats. Of the 161 individuals indicted by the ICTY, the body created specifically to prosecute wartime crimes, 94 are ethnic Serbs, compared to 29 Croats, nine Albanians and nine Bosniaks.

Only a handful of Serbs, including politician Milan Milutinovic, General Momcilo Perisic and Yugoslav army captain Miroslav Radic were acquitted by the tribunal, compared to well over a dozen defendants of other nationalities. The tribunal insists the statistics reflect the actual crimes committed during the hostilities.

The case of Mladic, 74, was the last for the ICTY to pass a verdict on. Among the crimes he was found guilty of were the killings of an estimated 8,000 Muslim males in the UN-designated safe zone in Srebrenica and the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during which over 11,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed. Mladic’s defense team said it would appeal the verdict, with his case joining some two dozen others pending new rulings.

Belgrade and Moscow have on various occasions criticized the tribunal for a perceived anti-Serb bias. In 2015, Russia used its UN veto right to block a resolution on the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica tragedy, saying that the draft document depicted the Serbian people as the sole guilty party in the complex armed conflict in Yugoslavia.

The following article was written before the recent referendum in Venice and Lombardy. It remains relevant as far as, everything happening in Europe those days is becoming, more a more, a manifestation of extreme social “egotism”, of generalized destruction of any form of solidarity and adherence to more general projects. This is especially true after the strategic defeat and capitulation of the European Left on the Greek question. “Everybody for himself” seems to dominate the continent. It is the historic triumph of the neoliberal Europe, but it reminds somehow the triumphs of the cancer on living organisms. Europe will hardly survive it.
DK.

On Sunday the 22th of October two Italian regions, Lombardy and Veneto, will vote to ‘express an opinion’ about their ‘autonomy’ from the central government.

This has nothing to do with the conflict between Catalonia and the central Spanish government in Madrid, because the two Italian referendums are compatible with the constitutional precepts, while Catalan independence clashes with the current Spanish Constitution. However, it is clear that – at least in terms of collective psychology – a “contagion effect” is growing, and probably the turnout in the two Italian regions will be higher than it would have been normally.

We will see the results when the polling stations will be closed on next Sunday evening (they will be open from 7 am to 11 pm). There are no political tensions because, as it has been said, everything is done according to the law. Obviously, there are different opinions about it, but the public debate seen in the press and on the local TV channels has remained within a civil exchange of ideas.

The Venetian Regional Law requires the poll will be valid if it is attended by the 50% plus one of those entitled. Yet in Lombardy, a valid quorum is not required. Nevertheless, in both cases, much importance will be given to the turnout. This will be the best criterion – among all the others – to show how much people living in those two regions are interested in an enlargement of autonomy.

It is quite sure that in both regions the people will choose “yes” for the autonomy, because the large majority of those who will go to vote represent those who really want it, while the dissenters – or those who are indifferent to the subject – will not waste their time going to the voting stations. This means, again, that the number of voters will determine the political outcome. This political outcome will be the starting point around which the next Italian government will have to negotiate with the two regions about the terms of the autonomy. And then, probably, we might have some tensions. We will see. The promoters of each election are those coming from the Northern League or emerging from the new separatist movement that is now over twenty years old. Veneto’s governor, Luca Zaia, has left behind the Northern League he came from and now he’s representing only himself and his followers. Yet, he is the real driving force behind this referendum and his undoubted popularity comes also from this political choice. He personally said that he expected “at least 80% of votes in favour”.

That means he wants a real plebiscite. If it goes this way, Rome will have much more problems to sort out in the coming years, then. Quite different is the case of Lombardy, where the main engine is Roberto Maroni, the governor in charge. He is still a member of the Northern League party, now more than ever. Yet Italy will vote for the new parliament next spring and the Northern League is supposed to be in a coalition with Berlusconi and several other right winged groups.  In case of victory, they will all become part of the next government. Such a government will surely give much more attention to the needs of the whole country, so Lombard autonomy will be inevitably placed in the background. This, at the very least, will create rifts between the separatist and autonomist party members and the national party top officials.

The main reason for the two elections doesn’t really regard solidarity. It is rather one of the many expressions of public dissatisfaction towards the central government, perceived as a source of corruption and unfair distribution of national wealth. Many people in the north think that the wealth created locally must remain local rather than be “squandered” and shared with the regions that “contribute less”. They are mainly referring to the southern regions, but they are also referring to the slogan “Roma ladrona” (“Rome is a big thief”), which was popular when the Northern League movement started its way and that has been recently refreshed by the events of “Mafia Capitale”:  a huge investigation that revealed a vast criminal network of corruptions and political-administrative misconduct.

It could be said that Northern Italy feels the same way as Northern Europe towards the Mediterranean Europe: a tendency that indicates a more or less marked lack of solidarity between all the European states, that are continuously facing the more and more frequent problems generated by the continent’s economic and political crisis. The European national egoisms are perfectly mirroring the regional ones.

There is an element of truth behind these ‘egoisms’, something that was vehemently emphasized during the election campaign. If you look, for example, at the central government spending on the infrastructures, you will see that from 2016 to 2020, ANAS will spend approximately 647 million euros for northern Italy out of the 23.4 billion euros of the national budget. In percentage, this is 3%, against 56% (13 billion) destined for the south. But if you look only at these percentages you will only open or reopen old polemics, never settled, between north, south, and center. It is well known that northern infrastructures are far better than those in the south and so rebalancing measures are really needed. These measures are also an integral part of the national solidarity politics of any state.

At the same time, there are ‘border issues’ coming from the privileges that historically have been granted to the Trentino-Alto Adige and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, two special administrative areas. Their status and their tax exemptions have made the conditions of neighbouring municipalities very different. These differences have not been sorted out by the state funds given to the municipalities adjacent to the special administrative regions. It should be remembered, for example, that just ten years ago all the Venetian provinces asked to be annexed to South Tyrol. Yet ten years ago, the general situation was much better than today. But all these polemics about wealth distribution are nothing more than a symptom of a widespread discontent and will be sorted only through the concept of a ‘country’ based on solidarity,  opposed to the current concept based on competition.

Giulietto Chiesa is one of the best known Italian journalists. He was Moscow correspondent for twenty years for “L’Unità” and “La Stampa”. He worked with all major Italian television channels, from the TG1 to TG3 and TG5 and is currently political analyst for major Russian television channels. He is the only Italian journalist to be repeatedly mentioned in the autobiography of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he has repeatedly interviewed. He writes a blog for “Il Fatto Quotidiano”. His own blog is http://www.megachip.info/ .

The Dirty War on Syria has relied on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory. In seeking ‘regime change’ the big powers sought to hide their hand, using proxy armies of ‘Islamists’, demonising the Syrian Government and constantly accusing it of atrocities. In this way Syrian President Bashar al Assad, a mild-mannered eye doctor, became the new evil in the world.

(Excerpt from Preface, Tim Anderson’s book “The Dirty War on Syria“, Global Research Montreal, 2016)

Order directly from Global Research (also available in PDF)

The Dirty War on Syria

Tim Anderson
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The following report appeared in the Daily Mail, November 22nd, 2017

To Read to Complete Daily Mail article, click here 

” Saudi princes and billionaire businessmen arrested in a power grab earlier this month are being strung up by their feet and beaten by American private security contractors, a source in the country tells DailyMail.com.

To Read to Complete Daily Mail article, click here 

The BBC’s obliviousness to the reality of Israeli aggression against Gaza has been staggeringly highlighted in a BBC Trust ruling issued at the beginning of October that endorses a report that completely ignored Israeli violence against Palestinians, including multiple killings of civilians.

The ruling relates to a BBC Online article published on 22 November 2013. The date marked a year and a day since the signing of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which ended an eight-day Israeli assault on Gaza.

On the anniversary of this agreement, BBC Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell wrote an article headlined “Tensions high between Israel and Gaza a year after truce.”

The article begins:

“One year on from a ceasefire that ended eight days of violence between Israel and Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip, the truce often looks shaky.”

“There are frequent breaches of the agreement,” the article continues, before going on to give Israeli army figures for the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel during the twelve months under examination.

Knell also notes the fears of Israeli civilians as they are “forced to run for cover whenever the ‘red alert’ siren sounds,” and she quotes Israeli army officers who claim that “Hamas is digging tunnels, putting IEDs [improvised explosive devices] near the fence, trying to get over to harm civilians here in Israel.”

She also notes their concerns that “militant groups in Gaza have managed to rearm since last year’s conflict.”

No mention of Israeli attacks

What Knell failed to do in the original article was to give even one mention of Israel’s own frequent breaches of the agreement, despite the fact that two days after signing the truce Israeli forces killed a young Palestinian in Khan Younis.

Between 22 November 2012 and 7 July this year, the date Israel’s latest assault on Gaza began, Israel violated the ceasefire far more frequently than Palestinians and with far more lethal effect.

Out of Israel’s 191 violations, ten percent resulted in death and 42 percent in injuries or detentions; while out of the 75 Palestinian violations, just four percent resulted in injuries and none in death.

During the first three months of the ceasefire alone, four Palestinians were killed and 91 were injured in Israeli attacks in Gaza. During the same period, not one rocket was fired from Gaza.

Hiding Palestinian fatalities

When challenged on this by Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), BBC Online added this single line to the nine-hundred-word article:

“Palestinians point to air strikes and other military action by Israel since the truce was signed as evidence that it has breached it multiple times.”

There is no more on the Israeli violations of the ceasefire and even that one line is inserted nearly five hundred words into the report and comes across as a Palestinian claim rather than hard, verifiable fact.

And yet, during the first twelve months of the so-called truce, Israel’s numerous breaches had included the killing of ten Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That is, ten clear violations of the truce during the twelve months under the BBC spotlight.

And while concealing this information, Knell included this self-congratulatory quote from Israeli army spokesperson Peter Lerner:

“This year has seen a great improvement as far as the security and safety of the Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip.”

PSC has spent the last ten months contesting with the BBC over this travesty of an article which presents itself as looking at why tensions are high a year on from the signing of a truce, but only gives readers one side of the story.

And, as usual, the side of the story given is the Israeli one. The Palestinians are positioned as aggressors, the Israelis as defending their civilians. The killing of Palestinian civilians doesn’t warrant a mention and Knell even downgrades Israel’s land blockade of Gaza to mere “border restrictions.”

Staggering lack of impartiality

Some of the most astonishing replies from BBC executives over the course of 2014 related to PSC’s argument that omitting Israel’s killing of Palestinians during the truce while detailing Palestinian rocket fire gave a false and inaccurate picture of the twelve months being reviewed.

On 27 February, Richard Hutt, the BBC’s director of complaints, sent PSC an email to say:

“Reviewing the matters which you have said should have been included, I am afraid I do not feel able to conclude that in their absence the piece was materially misleading.”

Hutt’s belief that a BBC article about “frequent breaches of the agreement” which fails to mention ten fatal breaches by Israel, or any Israeli breaches at all, while highlighting Palestinian breaches, is not “materially misleading” was backed up in May by the BBC’s senior editorial strategy advisor Leanne Buckle.

In an email to PSC on 28 May, Buckle “concluded the article gave due weight to the scale of the breaches on each side and the number of Palestinians killed in the 12 months would not in itself be a material fact which required to be included.”

So, despite the fact that the scale of Israeli violations over twelve months was incomparably greater than Palestinian violations, Buckle feels that “due weight” has been achieved by adding a single sentence about Israel’s breaches in an article which devotes paragraphs to what is presented as Palestinian aggression.

The lack of impartiality is staggering, but perhaps not surprising. It is Buckle after all who has previously told PSC that Israel’s de facto control over Jerusalem entitles BBC journalists to refer to it as an Israeli city, notwithstanding international law.

BBC vindicates journalistic failings

Buckle’s apparent deep internalization of the Israeli government’s narrative also comes across in her email of 28 May. Responding to PSC’s argument that Knell’s article should have made clear that Gaza is under Israeli occupation and siege — as opposed to “border restrictions” — Buckle claims that “given the long-standing nature of the conflict, there would be likely to be a pre-existing knowledge by the audience of some key facts.”

One of these key facts, she says, is that

“Hamas and other militant groups fire rockets into Israel and … Israel has retaliated with considerable force on an ad hoc basis and occasionally with sustained campaigns.”

But this is not a “key fact.” It is Israel’s version of events that Palestinians fire rockets first and that Israel merely retaliates. For a senior BBC executive to cite this Israeli propaganda as fact is highly disturbing.

In September 2014, following a final appeal by PSC, the Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust upheld Hutt and Buckle’s findings, and published the ruling three weeks ago.

Knell’s journalistic failure to paint the whole picture of the twelve months she was writing about and her inability to reflect the true state of the ceasefire were vindicated at the highest level of the BBC.

And, tellingly, the one question the BBC failed to answer during ten months of correspondence with PSC was this: if ten Israelis had been killed in Palestinian attacks during the twelve months in question, would Knell have left that fact out of her article?

The answer is fairly obvious – Palestinian fatalities can be ignored with impunity by BBC journalists; Israeli fatalities never are. That, unfortunately, is what the BBC must mean by balance.

Half a dozen British parliamentarians have launched a parliamentary Early Day Motion (EDM) condemning the military detention of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli authorities.

The primary sponsor of the EDM, officially tabled on Monday, is Labour MP Richard Burden, joined by five co-sponsors: Labour’s Lisa Nandy, Andy Slaughter, and Grahame Morris, along with the Liberal Democrats’ Alistair Carmichael, and SNP MP Tommy Sheppard.

The EDM begins by noting “with concern that hundreds of Palestinian children continue to be arrested, detained and tried in Israeli military courts, despite the practice involving widespread and systematic violations of international law and being widely condemned.”

The motion also notes “allegations of ill-treatment at the hands of Israeli authorities include blindfolding, physical violence and arrest at night”, and “the disparity between the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian children by Israeli authorities”.

The MPs urge Israeli authorities “to treat Palestinian children in a way that is not inferior to the way they would any Israeli child”, noting that “as the occupying power in the West Bank, Israel has a responsibility under international human rights conventions for the safety, welfare and human rights protection of Palestinian children living under occupation”.

The parliamentarians’ EDM also “notes with concern that the recommendations of UNICEF’s 2013 Children in Israeli Military Detention Report remain largely unmet”, and “urges the Government to urgently engage with the Government of Israel to end the widespread and systemic human rights violations suffered by Palestinian children in Israeli military custody.”

Half a dozen British parliamentarians have launched a parliamentary Early Day Motion (EDM) condemning the military detention of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli authorities.

The primary sponsor of the EDM, officially tabled on Monday, is Labour MP Richard Burden, joined by five co-sponsors: Labour’s Lisa Nandy, Andy Slaughter, and Grahame Morris, along with the Liberal Democrats’ Alistair Carmichael, and SNP MP Tommy Sheppard.

The EDM begins by noting “with concern that hundreds of Palestinian children continue to be arrested, detained and tried in Israeli military courts, despite the practice involving widespread and systematic violations of international law and being widely condemned.”

The motion also notes “allegations of ill-treatment at the hands of Israeli authorities include blindfolding, physical violence and arrest at night”, and “the disparity between the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian children by Israeli authorities”.

Read: 300 Palestinian children held in Israel jails

The MPs urge Israeli authorities “to treat Palestinian children in a way that is not inferior to the way they would any Israeli child”, noting that “as the occupying power in the West Bank, Israel has a responsibility under international human rights conventions for the safety, welfare and human rights protection of Palestinian children living under occupation”.

The parliamentarians’ EDM also “notes with concern that the recommendations of UNICEF’s 2013 Children in Israeli Military Detention Report remain largely unmet”, and “urges the Government to urgently engage with the Government of Israel to end the widespread and systemic human rights violations suffered by Palestinian children in Israeli military custody.”

Half a dozen British parliamentarians have launched a parliamentary Early Day Motion (EDM) condemning the military detention of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli authorities.

The primary sponsor of the EDM, officially tabled on Monday, is Labour MP Richard Burden, joined by five co-sponsors: Labour’s Lisa Nandy, Andy Slaughter, and Grahame Morris, along with the Liberal Democrats’ Alistair Carmichael, and SNP MP Tommy Sheppard.

The EDM begins by noting “with concern that hundreds of Palestinian children continue to be arrested, detained and tried in Israeli military courts, despite the practice involving widespread and systematic violations of international law and being widely condemned.”

The motion also notes “allegations of ill-treatment at the hands of Israeli authorities include blindfolding, physical violence and arrest at night”, and “the disparity between the treatment of Israeli and Palestinian children by Israeli authorities”.

Read: 300 Palestinian children held in Israel jails

The MPs urge Israeli authorities “to treat Palestinian children in a way that is not inferior to the way they would any Israeli child”, noting that “as the occupying power in the West Bank, Israel has a responsibility under international human rights conventions for the safety, welfare and human rights protection of Palestinian children living under occupation”.

The parliamentarians’ EDM also “notes with concern that the recommendations of UNICEF’s 2013 Children in Israeli Military Detention Report remain largely unmet”, and “urges the Government to urgently engage with the Government of Israel to end the widespread and systemic human rights violations suffered by Palestinian children in Israeli military custody.”

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(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

The Western-controlled International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was charged with delivering victor’s justice, polar opposite the real thing.

In March 2016, it wrongfully convicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on multiple counts of genocide in Srebrenica, war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 40 years in prison.

At age-71, it was a virtual life sentence. He served as Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska president from 1992 – 1996, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Alleged genocide at Srebrenica was more myth than massacre. Deaths were hugely inflated, the ICTY established to blame Serbs for war crimes committed by both sides.

Srebrenica was a combined Muslim military base and refugee “safe area.” Serbian President/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia leader Slobodan Milosevic, wanted Serbs restrained from overrunning it.

Before the alleged July 1995 massacre, falsely claiming 8,000 Muslim Bosniak deaths, Srebrenica-based Muslim forces carried out numerous attacks on nearby Serb villages.

Muslim Sarajevo officials withdrew their Srebrenica commanders, leaving thousands of soldiers leaderless.

When Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, civilians wanted to leave because of chaotic conditions.

Women and children were separated from men to locate perpetrators of raids on Serb villages and take revenge.

A small number alone were detained. Alleged Srebrenica victims reflected lies and half-truths based on what’s known – omitted in official and major media accounts.

The 8,000 number included the Red Cross estimate of 3,000 “witnesses” allegedly detained by Bosnian Serbs, along with another 5,000 the Red Cross said “fled Srebrenica,” many to Central Bosnia.

They fled for safety and weren’t killed. Years later, forensic teams discovered 2,361 bodies where heavy fighting occurred – including combatants on both sides, not massacred civilians.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Karadzic and Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic were declared guilty by accusation.

Milosevic perished from medical neglect at the Hague.. Karadzic was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, Mladic unjustly treated the same way.

Presiding Judge Alphons Orie unjustifiably said his actions were “among the most heinous known to humankind” – an outrageous perversion of truth.

According to his son Datco, his father said

“(t)his is all lies. This is a NATO (hanging) court” – dispensing injustice, not the other way around.

“The court was totally biased from the start,” Datco stressed, its ruling certain before proceedings began.

Mladic was falsely charged with two counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, and four counts of violations of the laws or customs of war, including for the fantasy Srebrenica massacre.

The so-called victim count was invented. Thousands of alleged victims weren’t massacred. They fled. Yet they were included in the mythical death toll to inflate it.

Mladic intends appealing his unjust sentence. Western injustice makes overturning it virtually unattainable.

In 2015, Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution on the 20th anniversary of the fantasy Srebrenica massacre, saying it solely blamed Serbs for the rape of Yugoslavia.

Washington during the Clinton co-presidency warrants full responsibility, wanting Yugoslavia raped and balkanized for easier Western control.

Slobodan Milosevic was falsely charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and violations of the laws or customs of war.

In the March 2016 ICTY wrongful conviction of Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic was posthumously exonerated – unannounced and practically unnoticed, buried well into Karadzic’s 2,590-page conviction.

Will he and Mladic be absolved one day when they’ve passed, each no longer able to say I told you so.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

One day there may be reason to give thanks. How can there be now with endless US wars raging, force-fed austerity on ordinary Americans, poverty the nation’s leading growth industry, real unemployment at Depression-era levels, police state laws destroying fundamental freedoms, and governance of, by and for the privileged few exclusively.

Super-rich Americans never had things better, benefiting from the greatest ever wealth transfer scheme from ordinary people to them.

Trump’s tax cut scheme will hand them trillions more dollars if enacted into law – coming out of the pockets of low and middle-income households.

America is a plutocracy, not a democracy, run by sinister dark forces, presidents and key congressional leaders serving their interests.

The law of the land is consistently ignored when conflicting with the agenda of its ruling class.

Societies are judged by their freedom from poverty, racism, sexism, exploitation, imperialism, environmental devastation, commitment to social justice, and respect for the sovereign rights of all nations. America fails dismally on all counts.

Most US workers struggle to get by on part-time or temp jobs paying poverty wages – one missed paycheck from homelessness, hunger and deprivation, an uncaring nation doing nothing to help, pretending prosperity exists.

The nation was thirdworldized to benefit its privileged class. It’s the most inequitable of all developed ones.

A year ago at Thanksgiving, I wrote an open letter to Trump – post-election, pre-inauguration. You’ll have the power of your incumbency for good or ill, I said.

I hoped for improvement over dismal governance under the Clinton co-presidency, Bush/Cheney and Obama.

Instead, things are worse than ever. Trump’s latest outrages include destroying digital democracy by ending Net Neutrality, along with deporting 59,000 Haitians, given temporary protection after their country’s devastating 2010 earthquake – unwanted by the administration because they’re Black, not white Anglos.

A year ago, I asked if Trump’s promises were real or empty. Will history remember him as another dirty business as usual leader or a force for positive change?

Would he renounce perverse notions of American exceptionalism; the indispensable nation; US moral, ethical and cultural superiority; and its self-proclaimed right for dominion over planet earth, its resources and populations?

Would he drain the swamp instead of filling it to overflowing, restore honor to Washington, give working people a voice for the first time, improve their lives and welfare, serve all Americans equitably, not just its privileged few.

Would he end US imperial wars against nations threatening no one, beginning a new era of world peace and stability?

Would he normalize relations with Russia as promised, end illegal sanctions, work cooperatively with Putin, along with treating other independent world leaders respectfully?

Would he be a peacemaker, not warrior president? Would he favor disarmament instead of a continuing arms race? Would he save humanity from unthinkable nuclear war?

Would his tenure deliver historic change or hugely dangerous continuity?

History will judge him accordingly, I said. After 10 disastrous months in office, the verdict is in.

He failed on all counts, governing more deplorably than my worst fears – short of nuclear war perhaps yet to come.

On Thanksgiving day, privileged Americans have much to be thankful for, millions of ordinary ones paying the price for their bountiful blessings.

A growing number are urging Government to move support from the Trident project and arms export industry to other sectors that meet real needs and use highly skilled workers for constructive purposes, designing emission-free rail, road and waterway vehicles, advancing renewable energy, particularly wave and tidal energy, engineering low emission new-build housing and retrofitting much of the housing stock.

• On the Lucas Plan website, following its 40^th anniversary, we read that one of Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s excellent reports, released during his 2015 election campaign, has put arms conversion firmly back on the political agenda.
• Following this, Steve Schofield, who is arguably the country’s leading authority on arms conversion, wrote “Defence Diversification or Arms Conversion? Why Labour needs a programme for nuclear and conventional disarmament“.
• The Campaign Against Arms Trade’s 2015 case study “Arms industry in the Clyde and renewable energy options” examined an arms dependent area in depth.
• The Unite trade union, withits dual commitment to world peace and disarmament and to the protection of its members’ jobs published “Defence Diversification Revisited” in March 2016. This looks at the history of “defence diversification” in the UK and elsewhere. At its July policy conference Unite committed itself to campaigning for a serious government approach to “defence diversification”, condemning the failure of successive governments to grapple with the issue after the Cold War.
• In 2016, MEP Molly Scott Cato commissioned a report “Devonport: Trident alternatives”, an overview of green employment potential.

In October this year, Andrew Smith cited a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute which put the cost to tax payers of government support for the arms trade at more than £100m a year, adding,

“This is to say nothing of the huge levels of political and logistical support that the arms companies are offered”.

Widely accepted figures from the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) are that arms exports only count for 0.2% of UK jobs and around 1% of exports. According to the MoD, 65,000 British jobs depend on arms exports and as the total number of jobs in the UK is just over 30 million the arms trade accounts for a tiny fraction of total employment.

And this manufacturing sector is not flourishing – the ‘defence’ industry now represents only 10% of all manufacturing.

A range of housing has been built on the Royal Ordnance site in Euxton, where the land is so contaminated that vegetable growing is forbidden. Last month, BAE, major employers in the area, announced that it will be cutting up to 750 jobs Warton and Samlesbury plants in Lancashire and up to 400 people will be made redundant in Brough, East Yorkshire.

The Trades Union Congress, passed a motion in October calling for the Labour Party to set up a shadow defence diversification agency to engage with plant representatives, trades unions representing arms industry workers, and local authorities. The agency would listen to their ideas, so that practical plans can be drawn up for arms conversion while protecting skilled employment and pay levels.

Some opportunities are listed in the Green New Deal Report (2008) and the Green Homes Guide– just as relevant today or more so, as concerns about air pollution and climate instability escalate.

GND:

“At the high skilled end (engineering and electronic) design; though to medium and unskilled work making every building energy tight, and fitting more efficient energy systems in homes, offices and factories . . . putting in place a new regional grid system, ranging from large-scale wind, wave and tidal electricity to decentralised energy systems that increase domestic and local energy production”.

We add to their recommendations the designing of emission-free rail, road and waterway vehicles and of advances in tidal and wave power, which have enormous potential but are currently lagging far behind solar, wind and hydropower technologies.

As Matthew Lynn wrote in The Spectator:

“There might be a case for maintaining a modest, specialised arms industry to support our own army. But anyone who thinks an export-driven defence industry is important to the economy should stop kidding themselves”.

The US media this week broadcast videos provided by the Pentagon purporting to show American airstrikes against Taliban-run “drug labs” in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Parroting claims by the top US military commander Gen. John Nicholson, television news broadcasters reported that Washington is attempting to stop the Islamist insurgency from “profiting from narcotics trade and other criminal activities.”

The bombing raids in Helmand announced on Monday are merely part of a sharp escalation in the US air war in Afghanistan that is claiming increasing numbers of civilian casualties. Statistics released Tuesday by the US Air Force Central Command establish that the Pentagon is on track to drop more than triple the number of bombs and missiles on the impoverished country this year, compared to 2016.

According to the US military’s own figures, it has dropped 3,554 weapons on Afghanistan during the first 10 months of this year and, at the current rate, is expected to top 4,000 before year’s end. Last month, it recorded 653 bombs and missiles used against Afghan targets, the highest number since November 2010 at the height of the Obama administration’s “surge”, when over 100,000 US troops were deployed in Afghanistan.

The latest raids included strikes by advanced F-22 stealth fighters, which the Pentagon claimed were employed in order to carry out “precision” bombing designed to avoid civilian casualties. This assertion was undercut by the fact that B-52 strategic bombers dropping 2,000-pound bombs were used in the same operation.

Under the new rules of engagement unveiled by the Trump administration in August, the military brass has been given a free hand to escalate the conflict as it sees fit. A total of 16,000 American troops are slated to be on the ground in Afghanistan by the beginning of next year, while the air war is expected to continue escalating

The claims by the Pentagon and the US media that the latest attacks were designed to combat drug trafficking are a patent fabrication aimed at evoking public sympathy for the more than 16 year-old war–America’s longest–that has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Afghans, while turning millions into homeless refugees.

The reality is that poppy cultivation and drug trafficking from Afghanistan–which were banned by the Taliban regime–have grown exponentially since the US invaded the country in 2001. In the 16 years of US war and occupation, there has been a 20-fold increase in the territory under poppy cultivation, and the amount of opium produced in the country is 25 times that of 2001.

According to conservative UN estimates, opium production accounts for some 16 per cent of Afghanistan GDP and more than two-thirds of the entire agricultural sector of the country. Not just the Taliban, but government officials, from the top of the US-backed regime of President Ashraf Ghani to local police, are heavily involved in the trafficking of drugs, as are the collection of warlords cultivated by US imperialism as a counterweight to the Taliban.

Local leaders in Helmand province condemned the US raids, saying that they targeted rudimentary sheds in rural areas and did nothing to stop the production and trafficking of opium.

Moreover, among the victims of the airstrikes, unseen in the video-game style footage broadcast on US television news, were Afghan civilians, men, women and children. The entire family of a Helmand resident identified by local authorities as Habibullah was wiped out when a bomb struck their home on the western outskirts of the Musa Kala district center. A total of 12 were killed, including the man, his wife and their children.

The number of civilian casualties is today higher than at any time since the 2001 invasion, with the sharpest increase in deaths caused by air strikes and artillery barrages carried out by US and Afghan puppet forces.

The buildup of troops and airstrikes in Afghanistan is part of a broader US military escalation that is being carried out from the south Asian country, through the Middle East and into ever growing territory on the African continent.

Figures released by the Pentagon indicate that the number of US troops and contractors deployed in the Middle East has risen by 33 percent in the last four months alone, going from 40,517 to 54,180. This is undoubtedly a significant undercount, as the US military often fails to include forces that are rotated in and out of the region on a supposedly temporary basis.

This troop buildup has been carried out without any public announcement, much less debate, and is being decided by the cabal of current and former US generals who largely control US foreign policy. Sharp increases in the number of American troops deployed in a number of Persian Gulf countries are indications of Washington’s preparations for a war against Iran.

According to the latest quarterly reports from the Pentagon, between June and September, the US military deployment increased in the area’s two active war zones; in Iraq, from 8,173 to 9,122 and in Syria, from 1,251 to 1,723.

Far larger increases have been registered in neighboring countries. In Turkey, the number went from 1,405 to 2,265; in Qatar from 3,164 to 6,671; in Bahrain from 6,541 to 9,335; in the United Arab Emirates from 1,531 to 4,240 and in Kuwait, from 14,790 to 16,592. Further increases have been registered across the region, including in Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and Oman.

Featured image: Ratko Mladić (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

While Zimbabwe was changing under various inexorable forces of power, the more sterile surrounds of The Hague and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia offered the scene for a conviction.

The “Serb Warlord” or the “Butcher of Bosnia”, as he has been termed in various circles, had finally received a verdict few were doubting. One of the doubters was, naturally, the man himself, Ratko Mladić, who accused the judicial officers of incurable mendacity.

Of the 11 charges levelled at Ratko Mladić, he was acquitted of one – genocide in Bosnian municipalities outside Srebrenica. Others covered genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity which took place while he was Chief Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Judicial deliberations are rarely the stuff of fine history. Verdicts are, by their very nature, judgmental, giving false finality and coherence to muddy narratives. In the Balkans, muddy narratives have met and parted; others have been forged in the blood of memories constructed and confected.

Bodies have been heaped over these generational accounts – the wars, the murders, the ecstatic patriotism and genocidal enthusiasm, and in time, the descendants pursue the task, less of living for the future than inhabiting the unchanging past.

The politicians have been attempting to make do with the verdict. The Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, is mindful that anything less than solemn acceptance of the ruling is bound to be met with stares of disbelief throughout Europe. This is hardly the view within the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska.

“I would like to call on everyone [in the region] to start looking into the future and not to drown in the tears of the past… we need to look to the future… so we finally have a stable country.”

Stability, that cherished dream, an ambition long frustrated in the region, and ever precarious.

Bosnia itself is a divided creature barely on political life support. Rather than promoting reconciliation, one of the proclaimed aims of the ICTY’s judgments, the opposite is true. Ed Vuilliamy, who spent much time covering instances of camp brutality and atrocity during the Yugoslav wars insists that Mladić may have lost his case, but won, at least in a part of Bosnia.

His consternation is the customary one that insists that Serbia and Serbian policies should have been brought to the fore as culprit and villain, rather than atomised through individual verdicts. Again, such are the limits of law and its false didactic worth.

Accordingly,

“for all the back-slapping by human rights organisations and lawyers, there is a dark cloud under which the majority of those who survived Mladić’s hurricane of violence etch out their lives, and that shrouds the memory of those killed, or are still ‘missing’.”[1]

Niđara Ahmetašević enlarges that black cloud, accusing Europeans, notably in the west, for hypocrisy and willful blindness.

“By not reacting on time to stop mass crimes being committed, Western leaders sent a message to everybody in the world that it is OK to kill other people, and to promote dangerous, ultranationalist ideas.”[2]

With little surprise, survivors of the conflict find little in terms of satisfactory proportion. Sead Numanović of the Sarajevo daily, Dnevni Avaz, felt “some kind of emptiness.” Ajša Umirović went so far as to see such a verdict as futile.

“Even if he lives 1,000 times and is sentenced 1,000 times to life in prison, justice would still not be served.”[3] That’s what losing 42 relatives to massacre does.

As with all matters to do with trauma, memory lingers as poisoned, selective and singular. It banishes other accounts and plights, becoming self-referential, a sort of infirmary consciousness. These sufferings and tendencies are not confined to the Bosnian Muslims.

When Yugoslavia fractured in the spirit of hypernationalism, it split the groups making up the entity. Jungle retributions, territorial seizures, expulsions, took place as a matter of historical account keeping. Elephantine memories were triggered and enacted upon.

Mladić insisted on purging the old remnants of the Ottoman Empire, a historic mission he dedicated himself to with conspicuous enthusiasm. He was fortunate to be quick off the mark in the aftermath of the independence referendum held by Muslims and Croats. Others, given the same opportunity, would have exploited it, given the men and material put at his disposal.

That the main fighting, slaughter and ethnic cleansing took place in Bosnia on, it is important to note, all sides, is a point judgments of law can only imperfectly consider. What rendered the killings in Srebrenica so fundamental was the scale and avid dedication of the butchers – some 8,000 Muslim men and boys dispatched – and the question of abandonment by the international community.

Mladić himself furnished a sense of how the law remains, in some instances, the least capable of resolving what are, essentially, social and political problems that linger with vicious obstinacy. “I am here,” he told a pre-trial hearing in 2011, “defending my country and people, not Ratko Mladić.” He is far from the only one to persist holding this view, nor will he be the last.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge and lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

Notes