Global Research

What a day! 

At 08:00 EST this morning, we surpassed our donation campaign goal and reached a total of $18,410 for our work to get states to sign and ratify the treaty. Wow!! 

A few moments later, Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations emphasised that this was a historic day and uttered those magic words,

“I declare the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons open for signature”.

50 states have already signed the Treaty on this first day. Our Treaty. And more are expected in the coming days.

Check the list of signatures and ratifications here.

This has been a really great day for the campaign and it’s all because of the hard work of committed people all around the world.

The funds raised will go towards organising meetings to convince governments to sign and ratify the treaty, producing campaign materials to be used around the world and doing outreach to parliamentarians and other decision-makers nationally. These are the kind of activities needed in order to make this treaty a success.

Today, we put nuclear weapons in the same category as other unacceptable weapons. You can read ICAN’s statement on this historic moment here.

It has been a really amazing day, and I just want to thank you all again for the outpouring of support from people.

Together, we are making this treaty work!

Beatrice

Beatrice Fihn
Executive director
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

The speech delivered Tuesday by Donald Trump to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York was without precedent either for the UN or the American presidency.

Speaking before a world body ostensibly created to spare humanity the “scourge of war” and founded on the principles elaborated at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, the American president openly embraced a policy of genocide, declaring that he was “ready, willing and able” to “totally destroy” North Korea and its 25 million people.

The fact that nobody in the assembly moved for Trump’s arrest as a war criminal, or even told the fascistic bully to sit down and shut up, is a measure of the bankruptcy of the UN itself.

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Trump told the meeting. “Rocket Man [Trump’s imbecilic nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un] is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able…”

As with his every public utterance, Trump’s megalomaniacal remarks began with the supposed revival of America’s fortunes since his election last November, which has found expression, he argued, in the Wall Street stock market bubble and the passage of a $700 billion military budget.

At the core of Trump’s speech was the promotion of his “America First” ideology. The US president presented the promotion of nationalism as the solution to all the problems of the planet.

“The nation-state remains the best vehicle for elevating the human condition,” he proclaimed in a speech in which the words “sovereign” or “sovereignty” were repeated 21 times.

While declaring his supposed support for the sovereignty of every nation, Trump made it clear that his administration is prepared to wage war against any nation that fails to bow to Washington’s diktat.

In addition to threatening to incinerate North Korea for testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, he threatened to abrogate the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, describing it as an “embarrassment.’’ He thereby placed the US on the path to war against Iran, whose government he described as a “corrupt dictatorship,” a “rogue state” and a “murderous regime.”

He also singled out Venezuela, declaring that its internal situation “is completely unacceptable, and we cannot stand by and watch.” He added:

“The United States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable. We are prepared to take further action if the government of Venezuela persists on its path to impose authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded in a tweet, saying that

“Trump’s ignorant hate speech belongs in medieval times—not the 21st century UN—unworthy of a reply.”

The foreign minister of Venezuela, Jorge Arreaza, charged Trump with seeking “regime change by force,” adding that he “wants to rule the world when he can’t even rule his own country.”

Trump made no attempt to explain the glaring contradiction between his invocation of universal national sovereignty and his assertion of US imperialism’s “right” to bomb, invade or carry out regime change against any nation it sees fit.

On the eve of the speech, a senior White House official told reporters that the American president had spent a great deal of time pondering the “deeply philosophical” character of his address.

What rubbish! The speech’s “philosophy,” such as it is, is drawn from the ideology of fascism. Indeed, no world leader has delivered the kind of threat uttered by Trump against the people of North Korea since Adolf Hitler took the podium at the Reichstag in 1939 and threatened the annihilation of Europe’s Jews.

The kind of nationalist doctrine put forward by Trump at the UN distinctly echoes the positions of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. As Leon Trotsky wrote in his 1934 article “Nationalism and Economic Life”:

“Italian fascism has proclaimed national ‘sacred egoism’ as the sole creative factor. After reducing the history of humanity to national history, German fascism proceeded to reduce nation to race and race to blood… The enduring value of the nation, discovered by Mussolini and Hitler, is now set off against the false values of the 19th century: democracy and socialism.”

The parallels are not accidental. The text of the speech bears the visible fingerprints of Trump’s fascistic senior policy advisor and speechwriter Stephen Miller, who seems to work best with a volume of Hitler’s Mein Kampf close at hand.

Just as this promotion of reactionary nationalism in the 1930s was the ideological expression of world capitalism’s descent into world war, so it is today.

The threats against North Korea and Iran are bound up with far wider geostrategic aims of US imperialism, as Trump indicated in his oblique denunciation of China and Russia for trading with Pyongyang and his reference to the South China Sea and Ukraine. Moreover, the attacks on Iran and threats to tear up the 2015 nuclear accord are aimed not only against the government in Tehran, but also at Washington’s erstwhile allies in Western Europe, which are already seeking new sources of profit based on trade and investment deals with Iran.

The absence from the UN’s opening session of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was significant. No doubt they had a sense of what was coming and feared the domestic political consequences of being seen as giving legitimacy through their presence in the auditorium to Trump’s diatribe.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke shortly after Trump, delivered a right-wing speech promoting the “war on terrorism,” but was forced to directly oppose the US position on North Korea, warning against military escalation and calling for dialogue. In relation to Iran, he opposed any abrogation of the nuclear treaty. The French media compared the split to the tensions that arose during the Bush administration’s drive to war against Iraq.

The threats today, however, are far greater. Trump’s speech has made it unmistakably clear to the world that the government he heads is comprised of criminals. Having drawn multiple lines in the sand, threatening war on virtually every continent, Trump’s own demagogy leads almost inexorably to escalation and military action.

The speech included a passage warning the world that the American military is no longer subordinate to civilian control.

“From now on,” Trump declared, “our security interests will dictate the length and scope of military operations, not arbitrary benchmarks and timetables set up by politicians.”

In other words, the military will decide, not elected officials—the fundamental characteristic of a military dictatorship. That this “principle” is accepted by the US Congress, which approved the $700 billion Pentagon budget while voting down an amendment calling on the legislative body to reclaim its constitutional power to declare war, is a measure of the putrefaction of American democracy.

The consolidation of such a government, with the repulsive figure of Donald Trump at its head, is the culmination of a quarter-century of economic and political degeneration, combined with unending wars and military interventions waged with the aim of reversing the erosion of American capitalism’s global hegemony.

Contradicting the vision presented in Trump’s speech of a Hitlerian springtime for nationalism, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres preceded the American president with an address to the General Assembly describing “a world in pieces.”

“People are hurting and angry,” he warned. “They see insecurity rising, inequality growing, conflict spreading and climate changing.” He added that “global anxieties about nuclear weapons are at the highest level since the end of the Cold War.”

This undeniable reality found indirect expression in Trump’s own address, with his attempt to exploit the crisis in Venezuela—a country where the dominance of finance capital is today greater than it was three decades ago—to denounce socialism.

“Wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure,” said Trump. “Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.”

A quarter-century after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the proclamation of the failure of Marxism and triumph of capitalism, the threat of socialism has become a central preoccupation of an American president delivering a reactionary and militarist diatribe before the United Nations.

Trump speaks for a US financial and corporate oligarchy that feels itself under siege. It fears growing popular anger. It has been shaken to the core by the revelation during the 2016 election that a broad social constituency within the working class and among the youth is intensely hostile to the profit system and sympathetic to socialism.

Ultimately, Trump’s belligerent threats of war and nuclear annihilation are the projection onto the world stage of the class policy pursued by the American ruling class at home, and the very advanced state of political and social tensions within the United States itself.

Featured image is from HuffPost.

The annual congress of the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) has passed a historic composite resolution on climate change that supports the energy sector being returned to public ownership and democratic control.

The resolution – carried unanimously – calls upon the 5.7-million-member national federation to work with the Labour Party to achieve this goal, as well as to: implement a mass program for energy conservation and efficiency; lobby for the establishment of a “just transition” strategy for affected workers; and, investigate the long-term risks to pension funds from investments in fossil fuels.

The Labour Party’s 2017 election manifesto, For the Many, Not the Few, pointed to the failures of electricity privatization, energy poverty, the need to honor the UK’s climate commitments, and to put the UK on course for 60% of its energy to be met by zero carbon or renewable sources by 2030.

The Manifesto also committed to “take energy back into public ownership to deliver renewable energy, affordability for consumers, and democratic control.” It calls for the creation of “publicly owned, locally accountable energy companies and co-operatives to rival existing private energy suppliers.”

Dangerous Climate Change

Moved by Sarah Woolley, Organising Regional Secretary for the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), the resolution refers to the “irrefutable evidence that dangerous climate change is driving unprecedented changes to our environment,” as well as the risks to meeting the climate challenge posed by Trump’s announced withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and by the chaotic approach to both Brexit and broader policy by the current Conservative government.

The resolution affirmed that combating climate change and moving toward a low-carbon economy cannot be left to markets, but requires a strong role for the public sector in driving the transition. In supporting the resolution, several speakers referred to the devastation unleashed across the Caribbean over the previous several days by Hurricane Irma – the most powerful Atlantic Ocean storm in recorded history – and across southern Texas only days before that by Hurricane Harvey.

Cliff Holloway of the train drivers’ union ASLEF referred to the major role of transport in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. Rail union RMT representative Glenroy Watson emphasized the need for worker representation in developing solutions, and for greater support for the global South, which has not been adequately supported in its adaptation efforts. Speaking for UNISON, Nicky Ramanadi highlighted the issue of fuel poverty, while Ele Wade, speaking for the power sector union Prospect, noted that emissions reductions were trailing behind established targets. Iain Dalton of the retail union USDAW referred to the failures of the private sector, emphasizing that “public ownership of energy under democratic control is the crucial part of this composite resolution.”

Assistant General Secretary Chris Baugh of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) also spoke in favor of the resolution. A video segment of his comments is available on Youtube.

Also supporting the resolution was the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), whose Andy Noble urged UK unions to support Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, and to join with unions around the world in the global fight for democratic control of energy.

Notably, the text of the resolution also formally recognized the important work of TUED partner, The Transnational Institute (TNI), based in Amsterdam, whose recent report, “Reclaiming Public Service: how cities and citizens are turning back privatization,” highlighted the global trend toward re-municipalization of public services, including energy.

Following the vote, Martin Mayer, UNITE’s representative to the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, told TUED:

“Today British trade unions for the first time agreed a visionary strategy to combat climate change. That must mean taking back control of our privatised energy and a serious call for a just transition to protect jobs.”

Jenny Patient of Sheffield Climate Alliance – part of the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union group – added,

“We know there are good and valuable jobs in the transition to zero carbon and this resolution shows the way forward by making this integral to a cross-sector industrial strategy that can rebalance and rebuild industries and protect workers.”

Composite Resolution 4, on climate change and public ownership of energy, adopted unanimously by TUC, September 12th, 2017, Brighton, UK.

C04 Climate Change – Motion 10 and amendments

Congress notes the irrefutable evidence that dangerous climate change is driving unprecedented changes to our environment such as the devastating flooding witnessed in the UK in 2004.

Congress further notes the risk to meeting the challenge of climate change with the announcement of Donald Trump to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. Similarly, Brexit negotiations and incoherent UK government policy risk undermining measures to achieve the UK carbon reduction targets.

Congress welcomes the report by the Transnational Institute Reclaiming Public Service: how cities and citizens are turning back privatization, which details the global trend to remunicipalise public services, including energy, and supports efforts by unions internationally to raise issues such as public ownership and democratic control as part of solutions to climate change.

Congress notes that transport is responsible for a quarter of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions and believes that a reduction in carbon dioxide levels must be the basis of the UK’s future transport policy in addition to building public transport capacity and moving more freight from road to rail.

Congress believes that to effectively combat climate change and move towards a low carbon economy we cannot leave this to the markets and therefore need a strong role for the public sector in driving the measures needed to undertake this transition. Congress notes that pension schemes invest billions of pounds into fossil fuel corporations.

To this end, Congress calls on the TUC to:

1. work with the Labour Party and others that advocate for an end to the UK’s rigged energy system to bring it back into public ownership and democratic control
2. advocate for a mass programme of retrofit and insulation of Britain’s homes and public buildings
3. lobby to demand rights for workplace environmental reps iv. lobby for the establishment of a Just Transition strategy for those workers affected by the industrial changes necessary to develop a more environmentally sustainable future for all, and develop practical steps needed to achieve this as integral to industrial strategy
4. consult with all affiliates to seek input into the development of a cross sector industrial strategy that works towards delivering internationally agreed carbon emission reduction targets
5. investigate the long-term risks for pension funds investing in fossil fuels, promote divestment, and alternative reinvestment in the sustainable economy.

Mover: Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union
Seconder: Communication Workers Union
Supporters: Fire Brigades Union; ASLEF; TSSA

Featured image: President Trump speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 19, 2017. (Screenshot from Whitehouse.gov)

In discussing President Trump, there is always the soft prejudice of low expectations – people praise him for reading from a Teleprompter even if his words make little sense – but there is no getting around the reality that his maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly must rank as  one of the most embarrassing moments in America’s relations with the global community.

Trump offered a crude patchwork of propaganda and bluster, partly delivered as a campaign speech praising his own leadership – boasting about the relatively strong U.S. economy that he mostly inherited from President Obama – and partly reflecting his continued subservience to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

However, perhaps most importantly, Trump’s speech may have extinguished any flickering hope that his presidency might achieve some valuable course corrections in how the United States deals with the world, i.e., shifting away from the disastrous war/interventionist policies of his two predecessors.

Before the speech, there was at least some thinking that his visceral disdain for the neoconservatives, who mostly opposed his nomination and election, might lead him to a realization that their policies toward Iran, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere were at the core of America’s repeated and costly failures in recent decades.

Instead, apparently after a bracing lecture from Netanyahu on Monday, Trump bared himself in a kind of neocon Full Monte:

–He repeated the Israeli/neocon tripe about Iran destabilizing the Middle East when Shiite-ruled Iran actually has helped stabilize Iraq and Syria against Sunni terrorist groups and other militants supported by Saudi Arabia and – to a degree – Israel;

–He again denounced the Iranian nuclear agreement whose main flaw in the eyes of the Israelis and the neocons is that it disrupted their plans to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran, and he called for “regime change” in Iran, a long beloved dream of the Israelis and the neocons;

–He repeated the Israeli/neocon propaganda about Hezbollah as a terrorist organization when Hezbollah’s real crime was driving the Israeli military out of southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an Israeli occupation that began with Israel’s 1982 invasion;

–He praised his rush-to-judgment decision to bomb Syria last April, in line with Israeli/neocon propaganda against President Bashar al-Assad and partly out of a desire to please the same Washington establishment that is still scheming how to impeach him;

–He spoke with the crass hypocrisy that the neocons and many Israeli leaders have perfected, particularly his demand that “all nations … respect … the rights of every other sovereign nation” — when he made clear that he, like his White House predecessors, is ready to violate the sovereignty of other nations that get in Official Washington’s way.

A Litany of Wars

Just this century, the United States has invaded multiple nations without U.N. authorization, based on various “coalitions of the willing” and other subterfuges for wars of aggression, which the Nuremberg Tribunals deemed the “supreme international crime” and which the U.N. was specifically created to prevent.

Not only did President George W. Bush invade both Afghanistan and Iraq – while also sponsoring “anti-terror” operations in many other countries – but President Barack Obama acknowledged ordering military attacks in seven countries, including against the will of sovereign states, such as Libya and Syria. Obama also supported a violent coup against the elected government of Ukraine.

For his part, Trump already has shown disdain for international law by authorizing military strikes inside Yemen and Syria. In other words, if not for the fear of provoking American anger, many of the world’s diplomats might have responded with a barrage of catcalls toward Trump for his blatant hypocrisy. Without doubt, the United States is the preeminent violator of sovereignty and international law in the world today, yet Trump wagged his finger at others, including Russia (over Ukraine) and China (over the South China Sea).

He declared:

“We must reject threats to sovereignty, from the Ukraine to the South China Sea. We must uphold respect for law, respect for borders, and respect for culture, and the peaceful engagement these allow.”

Then, with a seeming blindness to how much of the world sees the United States as a law onto itself, Trump added:

“The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the United Nations is based.”

Of course, in the U.S. mainstream media’s commentary that followed, Trump’s hypocrisy went undetected. That’s because across the American political/media establishment, the U.S. right to act violently around the world is simply accepted as the way things are supposed to be. International law is for the other guy; not for the “indispensible nation,” not for the “sole remaining superpower.”

On Bibi’s Leash

Despite some of his “America First” rhetoric – tossed in as red meat to his “base” – Trump revealed a global outlook that differed from the Bush-Obama neoconservative/liberal-interventionist approach in words only. In substance, Trump appears to be just the latest American poodle on Bibi Netanyahu’s leash.

For instance, Trump bragged about attacking Syria over a dubious chemical-weapons claim while ignoring the role of the Saudi/Israeli tandem in assisting Al Qaeda and its Syrian affiliate; Trump threatened the international nuclear agreement with Iran while calling for regime change in Tehran, two of Netanyahu’s top priorities; and Trump warned that he would “totally destroy North Korea” over its nuclear and missile programs while making no mention of Israel’s rogue nuclear arsenal and sophisticated delivery capabilities.

Ignoring Saudi Arabia’s ties to terrorism, Trump touted his ludicrous summit in Riyadh in which he danced with swords and let King Salman and other corrupt Persian Gulf monarchs, who have long winked and nodded at ideological and logistical support going to Al Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups, pretend their governments were joining an anti-terror coalition.

Exploding the myth that he is at least a street-smart operator who can’t be easily conned, Trump added,

“In Saudi Arabia early last year, I was greatly honored to address the leaders of more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations. We agreed that all responsible nations must work together to confront terrorists and the Islamist extremism that inspires them.”

No wonder Netanyahu seemed so pleased with Trump’s speech. The Israeli prime minister could have written it himself while allowing Trump to add a few crude flourishes, like calling North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man … on a suicide mission”; referring to “the loser terrorists”; and declaring that many parts of the world are “going to hell.”

Trump also tossed in a plug for his “new strategy for victory” in Afghanistan and threw in some interventionist talk regarding the Western Hemisphere with more threats to Cuba and Venezuela about escalating sanctions and other activities to achieve more “regime change” solutions.

So, what Trump made clear in his U.N. address is that his “America First” and “pro-sovereignty” rhetoric is simply cover for a set of policies that are indistinguishable from those pushed by the neocons of the Bush administration or the liberal interventionists of the Obama administration. The rationalizations may change but the endless wars and “regime change” machinations continue.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Among ongoing outrageous actions and in defiance of international law, Israel’s HabayitHayehudi party has just approved a plan for annexing the remaining occupied Palestinian territory “while either facilitating the exit of Palestinian residents or allowing them to remain but without voting rights.”

This is by no means a surprising outcome, nor is it simply a reflection of so-called right-wing or extremist factions in this Israeli government. It is an explicit articulation of the unconscionable Zionist supremacy ideology on which the Jewish state is founded.

Israel now is in control of all historic Palestine. It is armed to the teeth, including with nuclear weapons, because the only way it can “exist” as a Jewish state is by continuing to dispossess, oppress and discriminate against Palestinians — those who are still managing to hold on to their property, pushing them into smaller and smaller enclaves or displacing them within Israel, while keeping six million refugees and exiles out and at the same time bringing in Jewish “settlers” to “colonize” Palestine.

Public debate on Israel today is finally opening issues that go to the heart of Israel’s legitimacy, its Zionist ideology and constitution as a Jewish state and, by extension, issues that are central to Palestine’s liberation.

Additionally, there is a whole body of international law meant to check and regulate State criminal activity such as that exhibited by Israel, whose violations of such laws make for a long list.

And yet, when it comes to the Jewish state, the U.S. and its allies continue to find it impossible to hold Israel accountable on the basis of the laws they themselves have enacted.

Not many people know that enforcing international humanitarian law is enshrined in section 3.6.3.1 of the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual. It is called the “golden rule” principle: Do unto others as you would have done to you. “It is not necessarily relevant who violates the law (friend or foe) or what specific provision is violated,” writes Tripp Zanetis. “Any violation undermines international adherence to the law and this directly impacts the safety and wellbeing of our military forces.”

The United Nations was formed after WWII as an inter-governmental organization to resolve international conflicts, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights,” “to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors,” “to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.”

But unfortunately, under the banner of peace, the UN has had a hand in creating injustice and conflict, because essentially it is run as a political organization. A case in point is Israel:

The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the US governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect.

In reality, while the UN General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council.

Second, the General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.

After WWII, when more and more countries were decolonized (the Jewish colonization of Palestine is the only active colonization remaining in the world today), 80 former colonies joined the UN (see The United Nations and Decolonization), reshaping it. However, the structure of power in the UN works against democratization. As permanent members of the Security Council, China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States use the veto power to maintain their foreign policy interests, either singly or collectively, and they control the international order.

Here is a brief outline of how the United States has used its veto power:

The United States did not exercise its first veto until 1970, on a resolution regarding Southern Rhodesia, which is present-day Zimbabwe.

Since then, it has used its veto 79 times, with more than 40 related to issues in the Middle East.

The majority have been resolutions that have criticised the Israeli government or failed to condemn armed Palestinian factions in the same language as that being used for Israel.

It used its last veto to block a resolution that would term Israeli settlement activity in Palestinian territory “illegal” and demand a halt to all such actions.

The five major powers were granted permanent membership in the UN Security Council after WWII because they were “major powers among victorious allies and predominant actors in international relations. They were active in the negotiations that led to the adoption of the UN Charter which established the organization.” See On what basis was Security Council permanent membership granted?). Since that time, it has been business as usual (i.e. the spoils go to the victors), despite the resounding words of the UN Charter.

These countries also significantly contribute financially to the UN system, with the US, as the only superpower, leading the way. To reform this system, you need nothing less than a revolution.

Or you can try to join it, as Japan aspires to do:

Unlike China, Japan is not a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and has long resented paying much more for the U.N.’s upkeep than China and Russia, despite the fact China and Russia enjoy far more sway as a result of their permanent member status and accompanying veto power. (Adding to the sting for Japan is the fact that Beijing has been the single biggest opponent of a permanent Security Council seat for its regional rival.)

In the meantime, China’s proposed 2017 four-point plan on Palestine/Israel with a focus on the economic is “undermining Palestinian efforts to change the status quo….It is not clear yet, though, whether this is “a major departure along a new track that challenges US hegemony and European passivity? Or is China simply pursuing its own economic interests in the guise of peacemaker?”

It is true that what the UN and its subsidiary agencies (UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNRWA and UNSCOP, to name a few) have “resolved” and published on Israel/Palestine since the UN General Assembly Resolution on the Partition of Palestine (1947) — the Conciliation, Status of Jerusalem and Right to Return (1948), the Permanent International Regime for Jerusalem (1949), the Security Council resolutions on principles of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East (1967, 1973), etc. — fills volumes.

But these are all currently worthless, as witness the fate of the report commissioned by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) that concludes Israel practices an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. The decision by the UN Secretary General to remove this report “points to the criminalization of the United Nations.”

It is more than high time for the UN to take a leaf from the global grassroots movement of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel and enforce these resolutions and reports through sanctions against Israel.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

“The United States of America has been among the greatest forces for good in the history of the world, and the greatest defenders of sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all.” – US president Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly, 19 September 2017

If you are the president of the United States of America, then, as a rule, all pretense toward modesty is dispensed with. Call it American exceptionalism.

After all, the US is variously self-proclaimed as the leader of the free world, the beacon on the hill, and the indispensable nation.

Yet critical thinking demands an analysis of Trump’s words that is not provided by a cursory reading of the speech transcript, TV video coverage, or corporate media reporting. It is a given of corporatism that the US is unquestioningly not only great and good but the best of the best. Donald Trump would beg to differ, but he claims that he is making America great again.

Trump begins by stating,

“As millions of our citizens continue to suffer the effects of the devastating hurricanes that have struck our country…”

Yet this rings phony since Trump is skeptical about a connection between anthropogenic climate change and the increased incidence of catastrophic weather events.

Trump asserts,

“The American people are strong and resilient, and they will emerge from these hardships more determined than ever before.”

The prevailing trend under neoliberalism is that the American masses will continue to fall further and further behind, and the wealthy elitists will continue to make out like bandits. Trump’s tax cuts augur an intensification of this gaping trend．

Trump boasts,

“Fortunately, the United States has done very well since Election Day last November 8th.”

That is debatable. Nonetheless, there is nothing quite like self-aggrandizement… patting oneself on back in public and claiming credit for myriad allegedly positive events (as if stock market rises benefited the masses of Americans).

Moreover, says Trump,

“And it has just been announced that we will be spending almost $700 billion on our military and defense.”

Is this something to boast about? How about boasting about building hospitals, low-cost housing projects to end homelessness, poverty reduction/elimination, and environmental remediation? Of course, if a non-allied nation were to dare and inordinately hike military spending, chances are the US would castigate such a nation.

Trump proceeded to “address some of the very serious threats before us today…” Sheesh. Get real Trump. The people of the world recognize well that the USA as the number one threat to world peace.

Trump warns,

“But each day also brings news of growing dangers that threaten everything we cherish and value. Terrorists and extremists have gathered strength and spread to every region of the planet.”

This calls into question how to characterize Trump? A moderate? Or an extremist? Is building a wall on the US-Mexican border moderate or extreme? Is thwarting people from Muslim majority countries from entering the US a moderate or extreme position? Is launching military strikes against Muslim majority countries like Syria and Yemen moderate? Can resorting to violence be anything but extreme? Is allying with a terrorist-sponsoring nation like Saudi Arabia or an overtly racist nation like Israel moderate?

During his speech, Trump railed against rogue regimes, international criminal networks that traffic drugs (Trump wouldn’t be talking about the CIA, a major player in the international drug trade, would he?¹), weapons (the US is a major exporter of weapons, illicit or otherwise), and the forced dislocation and mass migration of people (and what is the US but a nation state erected on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous nations of Turtle Island?).

Trump avers,

“We have it in our power, should we so choose, to lift millions from poverty, to help our citizens realize their dreams, and to ensure that new generations of children are raised free from violence, hatred, and fear…”

The key words, in italics: “should we choose.” Will the US ruling classes ever choose to share the wealth fairly and equitably? Or does it require a revolution to achieve dignity and fairness? The US might well learn from the Chinese how to accomplish ending poverty. The Chinese Communist Party has pledged to eliminate poverty by 2020.

Trump notes that the United Nations was founded following two world wars to help shape a better future. The preamble to the UN Charter states that the institution is determined “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…” But the UN’s inability to curtail the violence of the US renders this aim nugatory.

Trump says that 70 years ago, that the United States developed “the noble idea” of the Marshall Plan to help restore Europe. The Marshall Plan, while helping war-ravaged Europe to its feet, was designed to restore markets for US products from a US that was ascendant after World War II, having profited immensely from supplying all sides in the war and having escaped the carnage on its own soil.²

Trump:

“We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government. But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties: to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation.”

And who determines this? The people of sovereign nations? The UN or the US?

Trump:

“In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to watch.”

This is so risible. So the uninvited US military in Syria is not imposing on Syrians? President Assad made clear that the US troops are viewed as “invaders.” “Way of life” aside, is the US is not imposing in Yemen? Does the US not seek to impose on (or at least dictate to) Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea?

Trump spoke to the greatest words in the United States Constitution: “We the people.” Is this spoken tongue-in-cheek or from ignorance? The constitution, derived from the Six Nation Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace, was promulgated by rich, white men. “We the people,” however, was not meant to include the Indigenous people, Blacks, women, or the toiling classes in anything approximating a meaningful sense. And contemporary US society continues to adduce this marginalization. Any gains made were by people resistingthe system and making demands on the government.

Putting on his historian’s hat, Trump puffs out his American chest:

“It is an eternal credit to the American character that even after we and our allies emerged victorious from the bloodiest war in history, we did not seek territorial expansion, or attempt to oppose and impose our way of life on others.”

Historian Jacques Pauwels wrote of the “uncontested fact that after the war [the US and Britain] would install or support dictatorial regimes in many countries…,”³ Communism/socialism was to be prevented from growing or spreading.⁴ At the end of WWII, socialism was also to be prevented in Korea, and a dictatorship was installed in the south of Korea.

Despite promising not to get bogged down in foreign conflicts during his presidential campaign, Trump states:

“We must reject threats to sovereignty, from the Ukraine to the South China Sea.”

He calls for a joint fight against “those who threaten us with chaos, turmoil, and terror”: “a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the United Nations is based.” Who are the rogue regimes? And what are the principles they violate? One assumes that it is implied that the US never violates any of these said principles.

Trump does not mince words when it comes to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea:

“No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well-being of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea.”

Does the US provide tuition-free university education, no-fee medical services, and housing for all its citizens? The DPRK does.

Trump continues his harangue:

“It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans, and for the imprisonment, torture, killing, and oppression of countless more.”

First, there were many factors beyond the control of the DPRK government: from winding up with only 14 percent of the cultivatable land after division; with the collapse of the Soviet Union, loans were called back and fertilizer and fuel shortages arose; also no government anywhere can be held accountable for the vagaries of Mother Nature that resulted in severe crop devastation.⁵ Second, the DPRK government performed admirably in mitigating the effects of crop failure, as attested to by the UN Food and Agricultural programme.⁶ Third, former president Jimmy Carter criticized the US government, and its South Korean ally, for human rights abuses in withholding food aid to North Korea. One also wonders where Trump gets off criticizing any other country for torture and incarceration given the recent US history in Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, etc. As for killing? Who kills more than the US? And which countries exactly is it that DPRK is oppressing? Certainly not Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Libya, Iran, Venezuela, etc.

Trump:

“We were all witness to the regime’s deadly abuse when an innocent American college student, Otto Warmbier, was returned to America only to die a few days later. We saw it in the assassination of the dictator’s brother using banned nerve agents in an international airport. We know it kidnapped a sweet 13-year-old Japanese girl from a beach in her own country to enslave her as a language tutor for North Korea’s spies.”

Whatever alleged crimes previous or present DRPK administrations committed, what must first play out is a credible, impartial legal determination of guilt; it is then that the guilty party deserves condemnation and justice should be meted out. However, given the sovereign equality of nations as recognized by the UN, the crimes of the US must also be subject to international law. The crimes of the US are too numerous to list in this article.⁷

Trump:

“If this is not twisted enough, now North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of human life.”

This is inflammatory rhetoric. Every sane thinker realizes that DPRK will not initiate a nuclear strike. It has a no-first-use policy. The US does not have such a policy. So there is no threat from North Korea. It seeks a deterrence; especially given that the US is still at work with the DPRK and that the US is the only nation ever to have used nukes on civilian populations. But the US does not like being faced with a credible deterrent.

If the US is so opposed to nuclear weapons and ICBMs, there is nothing to stop the US from denuclearizing. It seems most likely that every nuclear power would abide to concurrently denuclearize (although US ally Israel might throw a wrench in such a plan).

Trump uses the UN headquarters as a bully pulpit:

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”

Ah Trump, not the slightest pretense at diplomacy, even while speaking to world’s assembled diplomats. Yet, there is no call for the US to defend itself against vis-à-vis a nation pledged to no-first use.

Trump:

“It is time for North Korea to realize that the denuclearization is its only acceptable future.”

Denuclearization is the only sane future for all nation states. And disarmament is the future for a world dedicated to ending the scourge of war.

The next bogeyman for Trump:

“The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy.”

Can it be that Trump considers the dictatorship of the Shah — imposed by the US, after the CIA engineered an overthrow of the elected government of Iran — was a genuine democracy?

Trump:

“Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice…. In Saudi Arabia early last year, I was greatly honored to address the leaders of more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations… to confront terrorists and the Islamist extremism…”

Ergo, Saudi Arabia is not an oppressive regime? Wahhabism is not Islamic extremism?

Trump moves on to his next target for opprobrium, Syria:

“The actions of the criminal regime of Bashar al-Assad, including the use of chemical weapons against his own citizens — even innocent children — shock the conscience of every decent person. No society can be safe if banned chemical weapons are allowed to spread. That is why the United States carried out a missile strike on the airbase that launched the attack.”

That the Syrian government forces would use chemical weapons is highly dubious and has minimal credibility. Regarding chemical weapons, as Stephen Zunes wrote,

“[The US] has no leg to stand on.”

Next up for Trump:

“The socialist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and suffering on the good people of that country.”

It does not matter that Venezuela has elections open to international monitors and whose outcome is not decided by an electoral college but by the number of votes cast by citizens. Trump can bloviate about dictatorships and twist facts to corrupted forms of propaganda and disinformation. Critical thinkers will assess the veracity of the source, and the verisimilitude of the information; they will also seek independent sources of information and analyses to help form conclusions. Perhaps best of all, where possible people will travel to a country to witness for themselves the situation and glean insight by conversing with the locals.⁸

Trump is ideological:

“The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.”

I would ask Trump to identify “true” capitalism (as in capitalism that does not rely on socialism to underpin it) anywhere. Education, health care, police, roads and bridge construction, militaries that are funded by public money are all examples of socialism. And just how much do the 13.5 percent of Americans who live below the poverty line care for the ideology of capitalism, or the half-million-plus Americans who find themselves homeless on any given night? I would ask Trump to provide one example of successful capitalism. Capitalism has been a failure everywhere.⁹

Trump asks,

“The true question for the United Nations today, for people all over the world who hope for better lives for themselves and their children, is a basic one: Are we still patriots?”

Did the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island not love where they lived? Did they love being dispossessed and swallowed by the European diaspora into the US? What about the Hawaiians? Did they not love living in their islands? Or the Puerto Ricans? Do they not love their country? Or the Chamorro people? Or how about the Chagossians who were forced from the Chagos archipelago and prevented from returning so the US could use it as a base of military operations.

Or does love of one’s country only apply to Americans?

Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen. 

Notes

1. See Douglas Valentine, “Chapter 2: One Thing Leads to Another: My Rare Access in Investigating the War on Drugs,” in The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World(Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2017). 

2. Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War (Toronto: Lorimer, 2015), wrote, “The famous plan did not amount to a free gift; it was not a generous present amounting to billions of dollars, but a complex system of credits and loans.” p. 261. 

3. Pauwels, p. 139-140. 

4. Pauwels, p. 270-273. 

5. See Nhial Esso, “North Korea’s famine was caused by outside forces,” in What You Don’t Know About North Korea Could Fill a Book (Intransitive Publishers International, 2013). 

6. Esso, “North Korea’s policies alleviate the effects of food shortages,” in What You Don’t Know About North Korea… 

7. See William Blum, Rogue State (Common Courage Press, 2000). 

8. See Joshua Frank, Kim Petersen, and Sunil K. Sharma, “Revolution of Hope,” Dissident Voice, 10 August 2006. 

9. “We are taught [capitalism] is a system that works; that it’s a system that has brought prosperity. We’ve heard that all our lives. Now I’m going to try and convince you otherwise, and I’m going to do it in two minutes. [laughter] It’s very simple. Almost the entire world is capitalist and almost the entire world is poor. Capitalist Indonesia is miserably poor and getting poorer; capitalist India is miserably poor and getting poorer; so with capitalist Thailand, and capitalist Nigeria, and capitalist El Salvador, and Haiti, and Mexico, and Brazil, and Argentina. And capitalist Russia, and Poland, and Bulgaria with all the privatization and deregulation and free markets coming in: poverty, poverty, increase in crime, increase in desperation, increase in misery, increase in homelessness, increase in suicides. It’s capitalism at work — moving in. Now not everyone suffers. The capitalists in these countries are doing quite well. These countries are getting poorer as the giant corporations move in and get richer. These [countries] are getting poorer as there is more and more deregulation, more and more so-called free market, which is really monopoly market. It’s a free market if you got money. It’s a market that works for those who have money.” — Michael Parenti, formerly available at workingtv.com. 

It is with trepidation that I read books published under the rubric of the social sciences or humanities finding most of them poorly written, often self-serving, and filled with the jargon of the associated field of study (i.e. political science, sociology, et al). However, the significance of the subject and a brief skim read of a random internal page encouraged the review of A Half Century of Occupation.  

As it turned out, this is a well written and important study of the subject of its title, the occupation by Israel of the Palestinian “territories”, being the land occupied by Israel during the 1967 six day war. Given its social science heredity, it is clear of jargon, well outlined, well argued with clear presentation of hypotheses and short clear summaries of each section – in essence the best of what I have read from this field and capable of scrutiny under the genres of international law and history.

The work discusses the occupation in relationship to many factors. Most importantly it deals with international law, human rights, military rule of the occupation, and the patterns and differences within the settlement patterns that started after the war. Starting with an examination of the various UN documents, the Geneva conventions, and customary international law, Shafir says.

Israel’s claim that the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza are not occupied, consequently, ignores the clear trend of international law to affirm the rights of peoples and individuals with growing vigor.

Most importantly from the various readings I have made over the past decades is his summation of the ongoing violence, resistance, and offensive wars occurring within Israel/Palestine:

Under occupation, however, violence is more accurately described as occurring on a continuum that runs the gamut from coercive state action to suppression and war. The former almost invariably leads to resistance and thus is the precursor to and cause of the latter. The occupation therefore is best understood as ongoing, day-in and day-out coercion, and its injuries include material, psychological, social, and bodily harm. The coercive techniques of the institutions of occupation deployed to enforce submission produce the occasional eruptions of “military operations” and wars. Violence is omnipresent and found in all facets of the occupation; consequently, the most intense and bloody suppression of uprisings and wars cannot be considered in isolation from the occupation regime as an everyday occurrence.

I quote this at length due its overwhelming clarity and its accurate summation of the actions and effects of military occupation.

In the second essay of the book, Shafir asks why has the occupation lasted as long as it has. In general three trends are examined. First is occupation itself followed by looking at the early immigration as a settlement action working towards separation of peoples and land. This also includes the always ever present Israeli fear of the demographic balance not working in their favor. Included in this is the idea of colonial-settler patterns as based partly on the British colonial models elsewhere and in the Palestine Mandate. Continuing this trend, following the colonial settler patterns established after the 1967 war, is that of settlements being a religious calling wherein a “secular peace is not our goal.”

The third trend prolonging the occupation according to Shafir, accurately so, is the “special relationship” with the U.S., and the “security” demands of the state. Included within this topic is the idea of a “temporary occupation” which has its impact on Israeli military laws, the application of the Geneva Conventions and humanitarian laws, and the “temporariness” of the deeds provided to the settlement populations. Shafir argues that these frameworks are rooted in European origins (i.e. the nature of various intra-European ‘peace’ agreements that were constantly broken and reconfigured – temporary – without any consent of the local populations) and in the League of Nations mandatory law which allowed for ‘temporary’ actions that extended the European colonial system (Shafir does not present chronological arguments, but thematic ones that skip around in time).

Possible solutions to the occupation and its violence are presented in the third essay. The use of statistical evidence on population, land areas, and costs leads Shafir to believe that a two state solution is technically possible. However he provides contra indicators, essentially  political/religious factors, that perhaps would make a two state settlement improbable. The ideas of a bi-national and a unitary state are discussed following this, with many questions as to the actual nature of how each would be arranged, and how two people now well divided would react to a quick change to either of these states.

The final element introduced in the presentation is the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement which he sees as being successful in creating a much larger awareness globally to the plight of the Palestinian people. BDS is criticized as being “overambitious and undertheorized, as well as self contradictory” yet also, “A reformed, more focused BDS movement with Jewish allies appears the best option for the occupation, and improving the circumstances of both the Palestinian refugees and Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens.”

The occupation today receives minimal if any attention in the MSM, only the larger attacks by Israel, supposedly ‘retaliatory’ and for ‘security’ against ‘terrorists’, along with the few Palestinian attacks causing harm are ever presented. Israel/Palestine is not considered an important player on the MSM global scene, overshadowed by U.S. manipulations concerning Russia, North Korea, the ongoing global war on terror, and wherever else the U.S. cries out about. Yet, as Shafir reminds us,

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays out, as it has since the penetration of the great powers into the Middle East in the late Ottoman years as a global conflict.”

The Israel/Palestine conflict is the kernel of cancerous radiation, unseen, but causing not only the ethnic cleansing and apartheid arrangements of Israel’s actions, but also being the underlying source of all the neo-imperialist actions of the U.S., the EU, and related allies throughout the Middle East.

A Half Century of Occupation should be a part of any academics bookshelf. It is well grounded in international law, humanitarian law, and history. It is very well written, and while it is essentially an academic book, it should be accessible to those with some knowledge of the themes under discussion.

This article was originally published by Palestine Chronicle.

***

Title: A Half Century of Occupation: Isræl, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict

Author: Gershon Shafir

Publisher: University of California Press (April 25, 2017)

ISBN-10: 0520293509

ISBN-13: 978-0520293502

Click here to order.

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On Monday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed its version of the FY 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Only four undemocratic Dems and four Republicans voted against it. The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously approved it earlier, authorizing $700 billion for unprecedented militarism and aggressive wars against nations threatening no one.

In July, House members overwhelming passed their version, authorizing $631.5 billion. Reconciliation between both bills will finalize the FY 2018 budgeted amount, certain to be more than Trump requested.

With all related categories included, defense spending exceeds $1.5 trillion, likely much more than anyone but select insiders know, given open-checkbook black budgets, and special appropriations during virtually all fiscal years.

Key to understand is America’s rage for endless wars on humanity at a time when its only enemies are invented ones, its contempt for rule of law principles, along with its slow-motion war on social justice and fundamental freedoms, wanting them eliminated altogether.

America’s resources are earmarked for corporate handouts, banker bailouts, along with smashing one nation after another, the toll on human lives and welfare of no consequence – at home and abroad.

Fundamental freedoms interfere with bipartisan rage for unchallenged global dominance, warmaking the nation’s favored strategy, draining America’s resources, using them for raping and destroying nations at the expense of concern for the public welfare.

A modest annual defense budget alone is needed, not an annually approved monstrosity, the FY 2018 amount larger than ever.

Imagine what benefits could be achieved for all Americans by responsibly using hundreds of billions of dollars disgracefully wasted on militarism and warmaking.

Aging infrastructure could be rebuilt nationwide. Social justice could be prioritized like never before. College education to the highest levels could become tuition-free for every qualified student.

Universal healthcare could replace today’s dysfunctional system, based on the ability to pay. Homelessness and hunger would end.

A minimum income could be guaranteed for all American workers. The Constitution’s general welfare clause could become meaningful for the first time in US history.

Best of all, world peace and stability would replace endless imperial wars, responsible for millions of casualties post-9/11 alone.

Instead of being a hated pariah state, America would be a responsible model for others to emulate.

If money was eliminated from politics, and independent parties able compete on a level playing field, along with achieving the above objectives, America could become beautiful for everyone, not just its privileged few like today.

As long as the nation’s debauched system continues unaddressed, worsening over time, not improving, none of the above is attainable.

Nuclear war becomes increasingly likely, a war to end all wars, dooming us all if launched.

On September 19, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) repelled a huge attack of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) on Ma’an in northern Hama. A fighting was also reported in Tulaysiyah, Tel Al-Aswad, Al-Qahira, Al-Zughbi and Al-Raya. In total, about 40 militants were killed. On September 20, the fighting continued in Tulaysiyah and Alqhirah.

Pro-Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) media blamed Russian attack helicopters and warplanes as well as a lack of support from the moderate opposition for the failure. Government sources describe the HTS advance as an attempt to assist anti-government forces in Deir Ezzor province.

On September 19, the SAA entered Khusham village north of Deir Ezzor city. On September 20, the SAA continued clashing with ISIS aiming to secure this important settlement. When this is done, government forces will be able to expand  its control in the both eastern and western directions.

The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq has claimed killing of 3 Russian soldiers near Khusham. Amaq released graphic photos aiming to confirm the claims. However, photos allow to suggest that the killed fighters were likely private military contractors (PMCs) supporting the SAA advance. According to local sources, Russia-linked PMCs are actively participating in the operation in Deir Ezzor province.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have continued attempts to reach the Euphrates from the northern direction advancing on ISIS units in Husaniyah, Jiyan, Maishiyah, according to pro-Kurdish sources. Clashes are ongoing near the settlements.

On September 19, a press office of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units [a core of the SDF] released a video with a SDF commander north of Deir Ezzor. The commander blamed Russia and Syria for alleged airstrikes on the SDF and vowed to fight Russians and Syrians if it was needed.

Meanwhile, the SDF has moved a large number of US-supplied military equipment to Deir Ezzor frontlines.  Photos of at least one military column have appeared online.

Syrian analysts say the US-led coalition and the SDF will attempt to prevent the SAA advance on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

At the same day, spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said government forces have faced fierce ISIS counter-attacks from an area controlled by the US Special Operations Forces and the SDF.

“According to Syrian commanders’ reports from the front line, the Syrian Army encounters the most severe counterattacks and fire from the northern direction. That is, where SDF forces and US special operations units are located, who are allegedly administering medical aid to these militants instead of liberating Raqqa. You don’t have to possess profound military knowledge to see consistency in all these ‘coincidences’,” Konashenkov said.

Konashenkov added that water discharges from the Euphrates dams controlled by the US-backed forces hamper the government advance north of Deir Ezzor.

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1. Global Economy and BRICS

Peter Koenig: Let’s put the BRICS in perspective: The BRICS are of course Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Together they make up for almost 50% of the world population and close to one third of the world’s economic output, or GDP.

This alone would make them fully independent from the western economy, from the western, what I call, fraudulent dollar-based monetary system. And it will happen – it will happen sooner than the world believes. However, with the current political structure of the BRICS, the relative lack of political and economic coherence, safe for Russia and China, this for the moment is just theory.

Jim O’Neill (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

If you allow me, let’s backtrack a bit in history, to where the term BRIC came from, and who coined it. At the beginning, South Africa was not yet member of the association. In 2001, shortly after the 9/11, in 2001, the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, Jim O’Neill, invented the term BRIC – as he was forecasting that these emerging economies, spread throughout the world, Brazil, Russia, India and China – would overtake the so-called western economy by 2041. The forecast was later revised several times, all the way to 2032 – and now, there is, I believe no formal forecast, but it could easily happen by 2025, or earlier, especially with the new Oil-for-yuan and gold exchange market soon to be opened in Shanghai. Many predict this to be the end of the petro-dollar, and the end of the dollar hegemony.

Then strangely and formidably the four BRIC countries realized their potential and took things in their own hands. That’s how dynamics work – often totally unpredictably. For sure, Goldman Sachs and their Chief economist had no clue that this would create the western monetary and economic system’s most daunting adversary. 

The first BRIC summit was held in Russia in June 2009. That was the formal conference to create the BRICS.  

By 2011, the five countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China – plus South Africa were the five fastest growing emerging markets, and in April 2013, South Africa was added to the BRIC group – to make it formally the BRICS.

This just as a little historic introduction – to show that the impetus for the BRIC(S) came actually form a most unlikely western source – Goldman Sachs.

In the meantime, the BRICS are struggling with another reality. For the BRICS to be an effective alternative to the western economy, or the western monetary system, they need a unified political vision, as well as a coherent and unified economic development approach, one that distances itself from the western dollar-euro based system. Unfortunately, today this is not so. But that doesn’t mean it will not happen. Personally, I believe it will. It may just take longer than the majority of the world may have liked.

Both Brazil and India are totally in the hands of Wall Street, the World Bank and the IMF. In the case of India, you will recall last fall’s deadly monetary fiasco, when PM Narendra Modi decided to cancel more than 80% of the countries circulating cash currency, and as an interim step to replace it with other bills and eventually digitalize the Indian economy.

It is not known how many poor Indians perished, those with no access to bank accounts, those who have no alternative means to pay for food. Uncountable small businesses failed – an important impact on the Indian economy. More, much more inhuman was the impact on the poor average Indians. But – Modi followed the dictate of the west, of Wall Street and the IMF –  with a program to test digitalization in a large emerging economy, implemented by USAID. – How much trust does India under Modi as a BRICS member deserve?

And Brazil under neoliberal Temer, who is under accusation of corruption; he has literally handed his country’s economy to the sharks of Wall Street, the IMF and the WB. So, when Temer and Modi stood there holding hands with the other three BRICS members in Xiamen, China on 4^th and 5^thSeptember – it looked to me like a club that was united only by name.

Yet, the theme of this 9^th BRICS Conference was “BRICS: Stronger Partnership for a Brighter Future”. – I truly hope this objective will be achieved. And it very well may – over time. It is important to approach such an event in a positive and forward-looking spirit.

Perhaps it was along the same philosophy, that ahead of the September summit in Xiamen, President Putin said something crucial, but highly political and highly diplomatic: “It is important that our group’s activities are based on the principles of equality, respect for one another’s opinions and consensus. Within BRICS, nothing is ever forced on anyone. When the approaches of its members do not coincide, we work patiently and carefully to coordinate them. This open and trust-based atmosphere is conducive to the successful implementation of our tasks.”

2. Understanding Industrialization / development and the Brics Bank

PK: Let’s start with the BRICS development bank, now called New Development Bank (NDB). It emerged as an idea from the Durban BRICS summit in March 2013 and was formally created in 2014, and signed as a Treaty in July 2015.

Source: ndt.int

Under the Agreement the BRICS Development Bank, as it was first called – now the NDB, they set up a “reserve currency pool” of US$ 100 billion. Each of the five-member countries was to allocate an equal share of the US$ 50 billion start-up capital, to be expanded later to the US$ 100 billion.

Contributions per country were, Brazil, $18 billion, Russia $18 billion, India $18 billion, China $41 billion and South Africa $5 billion. The problem is that the initial capital and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) of US$ 100 billion was set up in US dollars.

How can they break loose from the western dollar-based monetary system, if their contribution is dollar based?

Also, South Africa and Brazil are heavily indebted – in US dollars. South Africa’s current debt is today above 50% (US$ 153 billion) of GDP which stands just below 300 billion.

To comply with their contribution to the dollar-denominated CRA, Brazil and SA may have to borrow from where? – Wall Street, or the IMF, as the CRA is a dollar reserve fund. This puts these countries even more into a dollar bondage, in the hands of the FED and the Bretton Woods Organizations – instead of freeing them from this predicament. 

As a parenthesis, South Africa’s interest on foreign debt of $153 billion was about US$ 5 billion (2016). Foreign debt is almost 52% of SA’s GDP of close to US$ 300 billion. The US$ 5 billion debt payments are higher than the country’s spending on tertiary education (about R60 billion / US$ 4.6 billion equivalent). This is also a good reason to detach from a debt-based monetary system – and, as originally was planned by the BRICS – migrate towards a BRICS own monetary and international payment system – similar to the one already introduced to the world by China – the Chinese International Payment System (CIPS).

On Industrialization – the NDB will certainly help boost industrialization within each of the BRICS countries, but also among the BRICS countries – and even outside the BRICS nations, as trade will increase.

At present the NDB has approved seven investment projects in the BRICS countries, worth around $1.5 billion. This year, the NDB is to approve a second package of investment projects worth $2.5 to $3 billion in total.

Although it is not clear what precisely these projects entail, the original idea for the NDB was to support infrastructure and energy projects within the BRICS countries. There is a big need for infrastructure and independent energy production. Of course, infrastructure and energy development, means also industrialization and trade.

3. Economic diversification

PK: A solid BRICS cooperation, as well as an own development bank, will most likely attract – and through the NDB leverage – new investments. This was one of the goals discussed during the Xiamen summit. The amount of which is difficult to predict, but Indian PM Modi has talked about an expected 40% increase over the next few years. But even if India or any BRICS country receives foreign investments, it will be difficult to discern which investments are directly related to the new BRICS strength, as so fervently expressed in Xiamen.

More important is the diversification of investments, as well as the related trade. There are currently several countries on a – what shall I call it – “wait list” – to become members of the BRICS. For example, South Korea and Mexico (both are OECD members), Indonesia, Turkey, Argentina, have been mentioned.

Trade between emerging and developing markets has already been increasing more rapidly than “globalized average trade” for which WTO imposes the rules. I could imagine that trade – and, thus, diversification – between BRICS countries, or better even, an enlarged BRICS block, could really boom. It would be a sort of ‘globalization’ with most trade barriers removed, of a peace-oriented economy, one that strives for the well-being of the people, rather than an elite – and of course, an economy that does not work for the war industry, as does the western dollar-based economy.

For that reason, it will be important that the BRICS detach themselves from the western dollar-based economy and eventually have their own currency. At the Xiamen summit, this was discussed in some ways.

The five members have agreed to “promote and develop BRICS Local Currency Bond Markets and jointly establish a BRICS Local Currency Bond Fund, as a means of contribution to the capital sustainability of financing in BRICS countries, boosting the development of BRICS domestic and regional bond markets.”

This comes pretty close to what the Euro was before it became Fiat money, i.e. it was the European Currency Unit (ECU) that then converted into the virtual Euro, before in January 2002, the Euro became paper and dollar like Fiat money.

By now we know that the US drove this European currency effort – establishing the euro as the foster child of the US dollar – totally unsustainable as a unitary currency of a group of countries that have no common political interests and goals, that have no common Constitution. Their only common denominator is NATO, their permanent drive for war. It was clear from the beginning that such a project will be doomed to fail.

Hopefully – and I trust, the BRICS will learn a lesson from this failed exercise, and only with a strong bond that includes political, economic and defense long-term goals, a common currency can flourish.

In Xiamen, the BRICS also established the Strategy for “BRICS Economic Partnership and initiatives related to its priority areas such as trade and investment, manufacturing and minerals processing, infrastructure connectivity, financial integration, science, technology and innovation, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) cooperation, among others.” All this for sustainable, balanced and inclusive global growth.

Xi addresses Dialogue of Emerging Market and Developing Countries (Source: BRICS 2017)

This Strategy already is indicative for a different development and monetary approach than was the one that laid the cornerstone for the European Union.

4. Trade between BRICS and the dollar

PK: This will be interesting to see emerging. In the medium term, I see a full integration between the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS. Several countries are already today members of both associations; for example, Russia and China, recently also India joined the SCO. The SCO also comprises most of central Asia, the former Soviet Republics, and also new Iran and Pakistan. The SCO has already a common long-term objective, in economic development, political vision, as well as defense strategy.

During the recent Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, President Putin and President Xi announced cementing of the fusion between the Eurasian Economic Union (EUAU) and the new ‘Silk Road’, also called “One Belt One Road” (OBOR), or for short “OBI” – the One Belt Initiative.

Since OBI is largely driven by SCO, i.e. by China, this also means that the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union are part of SCO. Imagine, the economic power of the entire group SCO, EAEU and BRICS…. Western supremacy will be a thing of the past.

This means worldwide trading – but without the dollar hegemony, without an economic and monetary systems that allows Washington to impose “sanctions” – outrageous and illegal punishments on countries that refuse to follow their dictate. Its high time that this high crime stops. And that we reinstate international law – which today is completely ‘bought’ by Washington.

Today it is clear to most progressive and forward-looking economists that the future is the east; the west has practically committed suicide with its constant wars for greed and dominance and disrespect for the very peoples that foot the western empire’s war bills.

5. BRICS Development Bank and World Bank

PK: Yes, the original idea was – and I hope still is – that the BRICS New Development Bank will be able to compete with the WB and the IMF. In other words, by applying non-neoliberal economic policies and with loans that do not impose austerity – which, as we know, is devastating for economic development – but will promote peoples’ based development – aiming at a more just income and wealth distribution.

This is not yet the case.

As mentioned before, the problem is that the BRICS bank’s initial capital and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) of US$ 100 billion was set up in US dollars.

Also, as said before, South Africa and Brazil are heavily indebted – in US dollars, an existing bondage that is difficult to break. But not impossible!

The same is true for the Chinese Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), whose capital of currently also US$ 100 billion is also dollar denominated, and of which about US$ 18 billion is paid in.

It is very likely that the NDB and the AIIB will work together in the future – and jointly break the stranglehold of the WB and the IMF.

In order to do so, they both need to totally break loose from the dollar economy – which is about to happen, perhaps soon, with the enactment of the Chinese Petrol exchange in Shanghai, where trading will NOT be in US dollars but in gold-convertible Yuan.

A possible solution is an SCO-BRICS currency basket, similar to the IMFs Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket which currently consist of 5 currencies – the US-dollar, British Pound, Euro, Yen and since October 2016 also the Chinese Yuan. This may start out as a virtual currency for external trade, while each country preserves her own monetary system.

It looks like a brighter future is ahead.

*

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. 

Featured image: Paul Delaroche, Napoléon à Fontainebleau, 1840. With other global powers increasingly at odds with US foreign policy under Donald Trump, the nation’s hegemony on the world stage may soon face its own crisis point. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

This was no “deeply philosophical address”. And hardly a show of  “principled realism” – as spun by the White House. President Trump at the UN was “American carnage,” to borrow a phrase previously deployed by his nativist speechwriter Stephen Miller.

One should allow the enormity of what just happened to sink in, slowly. The president of the United States, facing the bloated bureaucracy that passes for the “international community,” threatened to “wipe off the map” the whole of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (25 million people). And may however many millions of South Koreans who perish as collateral damage be damned.

Multiple attempts have been made to connect Trump’s threats to the madman theory cooked up by “Tricky Dicky” Nixon in cahoots with Henry Kissinger, according to which the USSR must always be under the impression the then-US president was crazy enough to, literally, go nuclear. But the DPRK will not be much impressed with this madman remix.

That leaves, on the table, a way more terrifying upgrade of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Trump repeatedly invoked Truman in his speech). Frantic gaming will now be in effect in both Moscow and Beijing: Russia and China have their own stability / connectivity strategy under development to contain Pyongyang.

The Trump Doctrine has finally been enounced and a new axis of evil delineated. The winners are North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. Syria under Assad is a sort of mini-evil, and so is Cuba. Crucially, Ukraine and the South China Sea only got a fleeting mention from Trump, with no blunt accusations against Russia and China. That may reflect at least some degree of realpolitik; without “RC” – the Russia-China strategic partnership at the heart of the BRICS bloc and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – there’s no possible solution to the Korean Peninsula stand-off.

In this epic battle of the “righteous many” against the “wicked few,” with the US described as a “compassionate nation” that wants “harmony and friendship, not conflict and strife,” it’s a bit of a stretch to have Islamic State – portrayed as being not remotely as “evil” as North Korea or Iran – get only a few paragraphs.

The art of unraveling a deal

According to the Trump Doctrine, Iran is “an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos,” a “murderous regime” profiting from a nuclear deal that is “an embarrassment to the United States.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted:

 “Trump’s ignorant hate speech belongs in medieval times – not the 21st century UN – unworthy of a reply.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov once again stressed full support for the nuclear deal ahead of a P5+1 ministers’ meeting scheduled for Wednesday, when Zarif was due to be seated at the same table as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Under review: compliance with the deal. Tillerson is the only one who wants a renegotiation.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has, in fact, developed an unassailable argument on the nuclear negotiations. He says the deal – which the P5+1 and the IAEA all agree is working – could be used as a model elsewhere. German chancellor Angela Merkel concurs. But, Rouhani says, if the US suddenly decides to unilaterally pull out, how could the North Koreans possibly be convinced it’s worth their while to sit down to negotiate anything with the Americans ?

What the Trump Doctrine is aiming at is, in fact, a favourite old neo-con play, reverting back to the dynamics of the Dick Cheney-driven Washington-Tehran Cold War years.

This script runs as follows: Iran must be isolated (by the West, only now that won’t fly with the Europeans); Iran is “destabilizing” the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, the ideological foundry of all strands of Salafi-jihadism, gets a free pass); and Iran, because it’s developing ballistic that could – allegedly – carry nuclear warheads, is the new North Korea.

That lays the groundwork for Trump to decertify the deal on October 15. Such a dangerous geopolitical outcome would then pit Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi against Tehran, Moscow and Beijing, with European capitals non-aligned. That’s hardly compatible with a “compassionate nation” which wants “harmony and friendship, not conflict and strife.”

Afghanistan comes to South America

The Trump Doctrine, as enounced, privileges the absolute sovereignty of the nation-state. But then there are those pesky “rogue regimes” which must be, well, regime-changed. Enter Venezuela, now on “the brink of total collapse,” and run by a “dictator”; thus, America “cannot stand by and watch.”

No standing by, indeed. On Monday, Trump had dinner in New York with the presidents of Colombia, Peru and Brazil (the last indicted by the country’s Attorney General as the leader of a criminal organization and enjoying an inverted Kim dynasty rating of 95% unpopularity). On the menu: regime change in Venezuela.

Venezuelan “dictator” Maduro happens to be supported by Moscow and, most crucially, Beijing, which buys oil and has invested widely in infrastructure in the country with Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht crippled by the Car Wash investigation.

The stakes in Venezuela are extremely high. In early November, Brazilian and American forces will be deployed in a joint military exercise in the Amazon rainforest, at the Tri-Border between Peru, Brazil and Colombia. Call it a rehearsal for regime change in Venezuela. South America could well turn into the new Afghanistan, a consequence that flows from Trump’s assertion that “major portions of the world are in conflict and some, in fact, are going to hell.”

For all the lofty spin about “sovereignty”, the new axis of evil is all about, once again, regime change.

Russia-China aim to defuse the nuclear stand-off, then seduce North Korea into sharing in the interpenetration of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), via a new Trans-Korea Railway and investments in DPRK ports. The name of the game is Eurasian integration.

Iran is a key node of BRI. It’s also a future full member of the SCO, it’s connected – via the North-South Transport Corridor – with India and Russia, and is a possible future supplier of natural gas to Europe. The name of the game, once again, is Eurasian integration.

Venezuela, meanwhile, holds the largest unexplored oil reserves on the planet, and is targeted by Beijing as a sort of advanced BRI node in South America.

The Trump Doctrine introduces a new set of problems for Russia-China. Putin and Xi do dream of reenacting a balance of power similar to that of the Concert of Europe, which lasted from 1815 (after Napoleon’s defeat) until the brink of World War I in 1914. That’s when Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia decided that no European nation should be able to emulate the hegemony of France under Napoleon. In sitting as judge and executioner, Trump’s “compassionate” America certainly seems intent on echoing such hegemony.

Featured image: ussian Su-25 attack aircraft take off from the Khmeimim airbase in Syria (Source:Dmitriy Vinogradov / Sputnik)

Russian warplanes and Syrian forces have repelled an offensive by jihadists in a de-escalation zone in Idlib governorate in Syria. The forces killed some 850 militants and destroyed 11 tanks and other assets, Russia’s General Staff reported.

“I’ll never live to see 9/11 justice,” says Stephen Lendman. The 9/11 attacks have changed the course of humanity, even so for sixteen years have not been minimally clarified but turned the world in a place full of fear and hate as the United States spreads its military bases all over the world, having 737 and more than 2,500,000 U.S. personnel serving across the planet. 

Stephen Lendman, one of the world’s most respected analysts, speaks with Pravda Report on the consequences of those attacks, and President Trump’s denial of his promises during the presidential campaign to investigate the day that has killed more than one million people all over the world, and up to now bring innumerable contradictions and evident lies.

Edu Montesanti: Stephen Lendman, I’d like to thank you so very much for this interview. So what has been the consequences of the 9/11 attacks to the US and the world? 

Stephen Lendman: I call 9/11 the mother of all false flags. It was staged to let Washington wage endless wars of aggression against one sovereign independent state after another.

All nations America doesn’t control are vulnerable to wars or color revolutions for regime change. Dark forces in Washington want them all transformed into subservient puppet states, their resources looted, their people exploited.

EM: The current crisis of a nuclear war between Washington and Pyongyang is, in a large part, a consequence of 9/11 as the then-US President George Bush included North Korea in the Axis of Evil”, in his State of the Union address in 2002…

SL: The North Korea situation has been festering since the 1940’s, unconnected to 9/11 except for powers in Washington perhaps including the country among others it calls evil regimes.

America, NATO, Israel and their rogue allies are the only pure evil ones I know.

9/11 let America launch phony war on terror, waging war OF terror on humanity, supporting ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorists groups, using them as imperial foot soldiers.

I’ve written a great deal on North Korea. I deplore wars, nuclear and other powerful weapons, but recognize the DPRK’s right to self-defense.

Throughout its history, it never attacked another country. It genuinely fears possible US aggression, why it’s pursued powerful deterrents to save the nation and its leadership from destruction.

EM: Campainger Donald Trump said that, once elected, he would investigate 9/11, what he has not been doing as president: Why do you think he has given up?

SL: All politicians lie, Trump like all the rest. Further, he’s been co-opted by dark forces in America. He’s an impotent front man for their agenda. The same is true for congressional leadership and most congressional members, along with the courts.

Democracy in America is pure fantasy. None exists. Powerful monied interests run things. People have no say. Elections are farcical when held. Dirty business as usual wins every time.

EM: We see people not willing to face the truth, especially Americans. 9/11 has become a taboo among people. Mike Berger has said me, “I have heard many times: ‘If it is true [an inside job], I just don’t want to know’.” Every 9/11 truther I have interviewed or talked to, mention the mainstream media brainwashing, and psychological barriers as the roots of it. What can you say about it?

SL: Democracy in America is pure fantasy. None exists. Powerful monied interests run things. People have no say. Elections are farcical when held. Dirty business as usual wins every time.

The major media in America are abominable, especially the New York Times, CIA-connected Washington Post, and farcical television news.

EM: Do you still believe in justice for 9/11?

PSL: I’ll never live to see 9/11 justice.

Stephen Lendman was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. In 1956, he received a BA from Harvard University. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a marketing research analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient. His newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” stephenlendman.org Contact at [email protected]

Edu Montesanti is an independent analyst, researcher and journalist whose work has been published by Truth Out, Pravda, Global Research, Telesur, 9/11 Truth.org, Brazilian magazine Caros Amigos, and numerous other publications across the globe. www.edumontesanti.skyrock.com Contact [email protected]

This article was originally published by PravdaReport where the featured image was sourced.

Recently, the Syrian Arab Army has achieved quite a lot in fighting against ISIS in Deir Ezzor – vast territories near the city are liberated, the Euphrates crossed, a lot of terrorists and vehicles eliminated and destroyed.

Meanwhile, an offensive towards Deir Ezzor is carried out by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces aided by the International Coalition. The Kurds have captured a number of villages to the northeast of the city and are approaching the Euphrates.

In fact, for this purpose the SDF de facto stalled the siege of Raqqa and moved the troops to the south.

On September 15, in its article Bloomberg compared the current situation in Syria to the one at the end of WWII when the Soviet army and Allied forces were pushing to Berlin to control as many territories as possible for the post-war division of Germany.

Indeed, despite the difference of the scales, Syria witnesses similar processes, despite the official statements that the US-led coalition only aims at fighting terrorism. The Raqqa offensive, however, proves another thing: Washington seeks clearing as much areas as possible from ISIS before it’s done by the government troops.

After the Islamic State is defeated and the war ends, the areas of influence shall become one of the main factors at the negotiations on post-war Syria. Besides, a key part belongs to the media, as the first one to clear the country of ISIS will have a possibility to increase their popularity. Thus, making use of propaganda in the U.S. media, Donald Trump may declare himself “a modern crusader” and improve his extremely low rating.

The Syria war long ago transformed from an ordinary local conflict to a crisis influencing the political agenda all over the world. Europe is overcrowded with Syrian refugees, Israel fears Syria’s ally Iran and shells the SAR territory, and Turkey is up to deter the formation of an autonomous Kurdish region by the Syrian-Turkish border and is building up its presence there. All these parties are attempting to affect the Syrian conflict.

But now, the main rivalry is between Syria’s legal government and Washington, which invaded the country seeking its own interests. Damascus is in the lead and the only thing the White House can do is to chase it redeploying the Kurds from one location to another.

This article was originally published by Inside Syria Media Center.

Global Research announces the forthcoming release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes one additional chapter. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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Trump’s UN speech makes it clear that Trump’s presidency, in terms of his campaign promise to remove Washington from the “policeman of the world” role, exit the Middle East, and repair the damaged relations with Russia, is over. The CIA and the military/security complex are in full control of the US government. Trump has accepted his captivity and his assigned role as the enforcer of Washington’s hegemony over every other country. Washington uber alles is the only foreign policy that Washington pursues.

At the UN Trump actually threatened to wipe North Korea off of the face of the earth. He added to this threats against Venezuela and Iran. He demonized these countries as “rogue states,” but it is Washington that is playing that role. Washington has destroyed in whole or part eight countries in the young 21st century and has 3 to 5 more in its crosshairs.

One question is: why did not the UN audience shout Trump down, a man standing before them telling obvious lies? The answer, of course, is money. The US taxpayers pay roughly one-quarter of the UN’s annual budget, leaving the other 130+ countries a light load. Washington is succeeding in driving the world to Armageddon, because the world’s leaders prefer money to truth, to justice, to survival. The UN diplomats see in their cooperation with Washington the opportunity to make money by sharing in the West’s exploitation of their own countries.

Washington, absorbed in its effort to destroy Syria, left it to its Saudi Arabian puppet to destroy Yemen. The Saudi autocracy, a major sponsor with the US of terrorism, has done a good job, thanks to US supplying the weapons and to the US refueling the Saudi attack airplanes. This totally gratuitous war has helped to maximize the profits of the American military/security complex, a collection of evil never before present on the face of the earth. UNICEF reports that one million Yemeni children will be the victims of “American compassion” of which Trump bragged in the CIA’s UN speech.

One wonders if the Russians and Chinese are so absorbed in getting rich like America’s One Percent that they are unaware that they are on the list of countries to be eliminated for not accepting Washington’s hegemony. Really, where was the Russian government when Washington overthrew the Ukranian government? It was at a sports event. And I call Americans insouciant. Where was the Russian government? How could it have not known?

To be frank. The point is this. Unless Russia and China can take out the US, the US will take out Russia and China. The only question is who strikes first. The only way to avoid this is for Russia and China to surrender and accept Washington’s hegemony. This is the firm undeviating path on which the neoconservatives, the CIA, and the military/security complex have set the United States. The entire point of North Korea is US nuclear missiles on China’s border. The entire point of Iran is US nuclear missiles on Russia’s border.

As far as I can ascertain, hardly anyone is aware that Armageddon is just around the corner. There is no protest from the Western presstitutes, a collection of whores. In the US the only protests are against ancient “civil war” statues, which the ignorant rabble say are symbols of black slavery. There is no peace movement and no peace marches. In London the transgendered and the radical feminists are protesting one another, engaging in fist fights in Hyde Park. No one seems to have any awareness.

In US online propaganda websites such as Americans for Limited Government—funded by who? serving who?—endorse Trump’s destabilizing UN speech as a non-threat to world peace:

“President Trump has provided a cogent and inspiring defense of America and the American constitutional system of governance to the world not as imposition but an example to be followed, while at the same time respecting the sovereignty of other nations. However, the President also made it clear to those nations that threaten humanity with nuclear destruction [which Washington has done to N. Korea and Iran] that the United States will not be held hostage, and continuing down their current paths guarantees their annihilation. While many will focus on Trump’s threat to North Korea and Iran, the real focus of his speech is that it is a call to all nations to embrace their own sovereignty without threatening world peace.”

I have never in my long life read such a misrepresentation of a speech. The United States has become the complete propaganda state. No truth ever emerges.

It is only the US government, which is not a government of the people, that has ever threatened another country with total destruction as Trump did to North Korea in the CIA’s UN speech.

This is a first. It trumps Adolf Hitler. The US has become the 4th Reich. It is doubtful that the world will survive the foreign policy of the United States of America.

Libertarian U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) declared from the Senate floor last week in anticipation of the vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2018:

“I rise today to oppose unauthorized, undeclared and unconstitutional war…What we have today is basically unlimited war, anywhere, anytime, any place upon the globe.”

With these words, Paul became one of the few voices to oppose the obscenity that is known as U.S. war policy. But only two other senators joined him: Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). But there is a wrinkle here: Paul is not concerned with the size of the military budget. He’s pointing his finger at the continuation of the Authorization to Use Military Force Act (AUMF) of 2001, which was the “legal” basis for the U.S. global “war on terror.” He wants Congress to re-assess this legislation that has prompted endless wars abroad.

After Paul’s amendment to the NDAA was defeated, the Senate went on to approve it with a vote of 89-9 Monday in what the New York Times correctly identified as a bi-partisan effort, to authorize a military budget of $696 billion—an increase in the military budget of almost $75 billion and well over the $54 billion that Pres. Donald Trump had originally proposed.

The very next day, Trump appeared before the United Nations and threatened to destroy North Korea, subvert Venezuela, and undermine the nuclear agreement with Iran, which could lead to military conflict with that nation.

Obscuring the Bi-Partisan Defense of Empire

Nothing rehabilitates an unpopular president in capitalist “America” like war. In fact, the only sustained negative press that Barack Obama received was when he seemed reluctant to fully immerse the United States in direct efforts to cause regime change in Syria by attacking that nation and committing to significant “boots on the ground.” For the Neo-cons and liberal interventionists driving U.S. policy, allowing U.S. vassal states to take the lead in waging war in that country was an unnecessary and inefficient burden on those states.

Similarly on the war issue, the only let-up in the constant barrage of negative press that Trump experienced was when he launched an attack on Syria, demonstrating once again that a consensus exists among the oligarchy on what instrument will be used to ensure their continued global dominance.

With the escalating decline in U.S. influence from the Bush administration through Obama and now to Trump, U.S. global dominance increasingly depends on its ability to project military power. Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the veritable rampage by the United States through West Asia and North Africa since 2003, the expansion of AFRICOM to offset Chinese influence in Africa, the commitment to a permanent military occupation of Afghanistan to facilitate blocking China’s New Silk Road and to exploit Afghan mineral wealth all attest to the importance of continued popular support for the permanent war agenda.

Therefore, the state is vulnerable because it has to generate public support for its war agenda and that provides the domestic anti-war and anti-imperialist opposition with a strategic opportunity.

The abysmal levels of popular support for Congress reflect a serious crisis of legitimacy. That erosion of confidence in Congress must be extended to a critical stance on congressional expenditures related to the Pentagon budget and the rationalization for military/security spending. An ideological opening exists for reframing military spending and the war agenda for what it is: An agenda for the protection of the interests of the 1 percent. And for disrupting the acceptance of patriotic pride in U.S. military adventures beyond the borders of the country.

The current work on the part of the United National Antiwar Coalition to encourage concentrated public educational work on Afghanistan in October, the new coalition to oppose U.S foreign military bases and CODEPINK’s military divestment campaign being launched in October are just some of the efforts being organized to take advantage of the moment.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) is part of all of these efforts. As an alliance that is opposed to war, repression and imperialism, BAP believes that the current environment provides an opportunity to make the connections between opposition to the domestic military force in the form of the police and opposition to the war making regime of the U.S. state.

But we are under no illusions regarding the difficulties of the moment. The effective manipulation of public consciousness emerging from the carefully constructed War on Terror, and the domestic blowback from the cultivation and support of the very same forces that the United States pretends to be opposed to has helped to condition the public to accept state repression and violence as the rational response to threats.

Fear coupled with racism and a profound ignorance of the world and the criminal activity of the United States to advance the interests of the corporate and financial elite, has resulted in majority core support for militarism and even war. Here’s an example: As a result of the constant propaganda about North Korea, 58 percent of the public now supports bombing that country even though a majority of Americans have no knowledge of the issues that led to the Korean War.

Opposition to Trump has been framed in ways that supports the agenda of the Democratic  Party—but not the anti-war agenda. Therefore, anti-Trumpism does not include a position against war and U.S. imperialism.

When the Trump administration proposed what many saw as an obscene request for an additional $54 billion in military spending, we witnessed a momentary negative response from some liberal Democrats. The thinking was that this could be highlighted as yet another one of the supposedly demonic moves by the administration and it was added to the talking points for the Democrats. That was until 117 Democrats voted with Republicans in the House—including a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus—to not only accept the administration’s proposal, but to exceed it by $18 billion. By that point, the Democrats went silent on the issue.

The progressive community and what passes for the Left was not that much better. When those forces were not allowing their attention to be diverted into re-defining opposition to White supremacy in the form of the easy opposition to the clownish, marginal neo-Nazi forces, they were debating the violence of Antifa. And since hypocrisy has been able to reconcile itself with liberalism, they didn’t see that their concerns with the violence of Antifa was in conflict with their support for violent interventions by the U.S. state in places like Libya and Syria. So for that sector since war and violence had been normalized unless it is carried out by unauthorized forces like oppressed peoples,Antifa forces and nations in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism—it is opposed. Why bother with the issues of war and militarism. And so the anti-war and anti-imperialist position was not included as part of anti-Trumpism!

The Democrat’s are playing games with the people by pretending they are going to block increases in military spending during the appropriation stage of the process. And their criticisms of Trump’s bellicosity and claims that he is reckless also are disingenuous because if they thought he was militarily reckless, they wouldn’t have joined Republicans in supporting increased military spending.

Both parties support militarism because both parties support the interests of the oligarchy and the oligarchy is interested in one thing—maintaining the empire.

And to maintain the empire, they are prepared to fight to the last drop of our blood. But we have a surprise for them.

Ajamu Baraka is a board member with Cooperation Jackson, the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for CounterPunch. He can be reached at www.AjamuBaraka.com

Featured image is from Xavi | CC BY 2.0.

In its latest breach of international law, the U.S. is unilaterally attempting to prevent the Syrian government from reclaiming its own territory. From Reuters:

“U.S.-backed Syrian militias will not let government forces cross the Euphrates River in their bid to recover eastern Syria, their commander said on Friday, but Russia said army units had already done so near the city of Deir al-Zor.”

He added:

“We have notified the regime and Russia that we are coming to the Euphrates riverbank, and they can see our forces advancing…We do not allow the regime or its militias to cross to the eastern riverbank.”

The “Deir ez-Zor military council” was established under the banner of the U.S.-backed SDF as recently as December 2016. This was arguably a poor attempt to legitimize Washington’s aspirations for the oil-rich region. In actuality, 4,000 fighters backed by foreign powers can hardly be a more legitimate force than the current Syrian government and its forces, but as is usually the case, the United States is not remotely concerned with the legality of this current strategy.

According to Reuters, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the SAA had already crossed the Euphrates, making a difficult scenario for America’s ambitions in the region. Not only is the Syrian army ignoring Washington’s directions, Russia is apparently unfazed by these developments, as well.

Unsurprisingly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov just held a phone call to discuss Syria, presumably to try to come to some agreement about the partition of the region.

Why Russia and Syria should concede Syrian territory to the U.S. and its allies has not been made clear given the land belongs to Syria in the first place. The corporate media’s longstanding anti-Assad narrative was undermined when the U.N. reported that 500,000 Syrians had begun returning home to areas liberated by the Syrian army in the first half of 2017 alone.

The U.S. media has also downplayed the fact that Russia is backing one side of this conflict and the U.S. is backing another — even though this emerging conflict puts 900 U.S. personnel directly at risk. What happens if and when the Syrian army decides it wants to defend itself from the U.S.-backed forces? Will the Russian and American air forces collide – or will the situation be successfully de-escalated?

That is a question no one seems prepared to answer — and that no one is even willing to discuss. The ‘trusted’ media outlets who do touch on the issue tend to fully support the United States’ bid to interfere further in Syria.

Global Research announces the release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes one additional chapter. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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Trump was seen as a presidential candidate who would possibly move towards a less interventionist foreign policy. That hope is gone. The insurgency that brought Trump to the top was defeated by a counter-insurgency campaign waged by the U.S. military. (Historically its first successful one). The military has taken control of the White House process and it is now taking control of its policies.

It is schooling Trump on globalism and its “indispensable” role in it. Trump was insufficiently supportive of their desires and thus had to undergo reeducation:

When briefed on the diplomatic, military and intelligence posts, the new president would often cast doubt on the need for all the resources. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson organized the July 20 session to lay out the case for maintaining far-flung outposts — and to present it, using charts and maps, in a way the businessman-turned-politician would appreciate.

Trump was hauled into a Pentagon basement ‘tank’ and indoctrinated by the glittering four-star generals he admired since he was a kid:

The session was, in effect, American Power 101 and the student was the man working the levers. It was part of the ongoing education of a president who arrived at the White House with no experience in the military or government and brought with him advisers deeply skeptical of what they labeled the “globalist” worldview. In coordinated efforts and quiet conversations, some of Trump’s aides have worked for months to counter that view, hoping the president can be persuaded to maintain — if not expand — the American footprint and influence abroad.

Trump was sold the establishment policies he originally despised. No alternative view was presented to him.

It is indisputable that the generals are now ruling in Washington DC. They came to power over decades by shaping culture through their sponsorship of Hollywood, by manipulating the media through “embedded” reporting and by forming and maintaining the countries infrastructure through the Army Corps of Engineers. The military, through the NSA as well as through its purchasing power, controls the information flow on the internet. Until recently the military establishment only ruled from behind the scene. The other parts of the power triangle, the corporation executives and the political establishment, were more visible and significant. But during the 2016 election the military bet on Trump and is now, after he unexpectedly won, collecting its price.

Trump’s success as the “Not-Hillary” candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control of the White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public figure head of a stratocracy – a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.

Stephen Kinzer describes this as America’s slow-motion military coup:

Ultimate power to shape American foreign and security policy has fallen into the hands of three military men […]
…
Being ruled by generals seems preferable to the alternative. It isn’t.
…
[It] leads toward a distorted set of national priorities, with military “needs” always rated more important than domestic ones.
…
It is no great surprise that Trump has been drawn into the foreign policy mainstream; the same happened to President Obama early in his presidency. More ominous is that Trump has turned much of his power over to generals. Worst of all, many Americans find this reassuring. They are so disgusted by the corruption and shortsightedness of our political class that they turn to soldiers as an alternative. It is a dangerous temptation.

The country has fallen to that temptation even on social-economic issues:

In the wake of the deadly racial violence in Charlottesville this month, five of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were hailed as moral authorities for condemning hate in less equivocal terms than the commander in chief did.
…
On social policy, military leaders have been voices for moderation.

The junta is bigger than its three well known leaders:

Kelly, Mattis and McMaster are not the only military figures serving at high levels in the Trump administration. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke each served in various branches of the military, and Trump recently tapped former Army general Mark S. Inch to lead the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
…
the National Security Council [..] counts two other generals on the senior staff.

This is no longer a Coup Waiting to Happen The coup has happened with few noticing it and ever fewer concerned about it. Everything of importance now passes through the Junta’s hands:

[Chief of staff John] Kelly initiated a new policymaking process in which just he and one other aide […] will review all documents that cross the Resolute desk.
…
The new system [..] is designed to ensure that the president won’t see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports and even news articles that haven’t been vetted.

To control Trump the junta filters his information input and eliminates any potentially alternative view:

Staff who oppose [policy xyz] no longer have unfettered access to Trump, and nor do allies on the outside [.. .] Kelly now has real control over the most important input: the flow of human and paper advice into the Oval Office. For a man as obsessed about his self image as Trump, a new flow of inputs can make the world of difference.

The Trump insurgency against the establishment was marked by a mostly informal information and decision process. That has been destroyed and replaced:

Worried that Trump would end existing US spending/policies (largely, still geared to cold war priorities), the senior military staff running the Trump administration launched a counter-insurgency against the insurgency.
…
General Kelly, Trump’s Chief of Staff, has put Trump on a establishment-only media diet.
…
In short, by controlling Trump’s information flow with social media/networks, the generals smashed the insurgency’s OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act). Deprived of this connection, Trump is now weathervaning to cater to the needs of the establishment …

The Junta members dictate their policies to Trump by only proposing to him certain alternatives. The one that is most preferable to them will be presented as the only desirable one. “There are no alternatives,” Trump will be told again and again.

Thus we get a continuation of a failed Afghanistan policy and will soon get a militarily aggressive policy towards Iran.

Other countries noticed how the game has changed. The real decisions are made by the generals, Trump is ignoredas a mere figurehead:

Asked whether he was predicting war [with North Korea], [former defence minister of Japan, Satoshi] Morimoto said: “I think Washington has not decided … The final decision-maker is [US Defence Secretary] Mr Mattis … Not the president.“

Climate change, its local catastrophes and the infrastructure problems it creates within the U.S. will further extend the military role in shaping domestic U.S. policy.

Nationalistic indoctrination, already at abnormal heights in the U.S. society, will further increase. Military control will creep into ever extending fields of once staunchly civilian areas of policy. (Witness the increasing militarization of the police.)

It is only way to sustain the empire.

It is doubtful that Trump will be able to resist the policies imposed on him. Any flicker of resistance will be smashed. The outside insurgency which enabled his election is left without a figurehead, It will likely disperse. The system won.

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Fact Checking Benjamin Netanyahu’s General Assembly Speech

By Adam Garrie, September 20, 2017

The other country on Netanyahu’s list that has been occupied by Israel and not Iran is Lebanon. After invading Lebanon in 1982, Israel set up a permanent occupying force in southern Lebanon between 1985 and the year 2000. Israel maintained a presence in the country until 2006, when Israeli forces retreated in the face of strong Hezbollah defences.

Amidst Universal Opposition to KRG Referendum, Israel Stands by Kurds

By Sarah Abed, September 20, 2017

The Kurds are allied with Syria’s fiercest enemy – Israel – whose planned Greater Israel project coincidentally aligns almost perfectly with the Kurds’ plans for “Kurdistan.”  In the Oded Yinon plan, which is the plan for a “Greater Israel,” it states the imperative use of Kurds to help divide neighboring countries in order to aid in their plans for greater domination. Interestingly enough, Kurds brush this alliance off as being just another step in achieving their ultimate goal of creating an autonomous Kurdistan.

The UN, Trump and Netanyahu: When Did Democracy, Justice and Equality Just Disappear?

By Anthony Bellchambers, September 20, 2017

‘America First’ means just that, but to include also its creature state, Israel, which was established in 1948 thanks solely to the pressure exerted on the then newly constituted and unrepresentative, minority United Nations by the American Zionist Council, now better known as AIPAC the US Israel lobby group, which is a major [but unelected] force in shaping American foreign policy.

A New Provocation: US Establishes First Permanent Military Base Inside of Israel

By Patrick Henningsen, September 20, 2017

The US base may also be used to launch air sorties to defend Israel’s recent illegal annexation of the part of the Golan Heights, land which it has managed to take under the cover of the Syrian conflict. Recently, Israel has managed to pry away this contested land from Syria with the help of Al Nusra terrorists on the ground, after they previously chased out UNDOF Peacekeepers which had been positioned there since 1974. Amazingly, the UN still has not updated its website to express this new reality on the ground (still showing a mission photo from 2012).

The House that Bibi Built as Prime Minister of Israel

By James Zogby, September 19, 2017

This unholy alliance between US neoconservatives and Netanyahu was no accident. They had long been partners. Back in the late 1970’s, Netanyahu convened many of these same thinkers to Israel for a summit at the Jonathan Institute—an event which some have called the birth of the American neoconservative movement. Back then, their focus was hostility to the Soviet Union and the “national liberation movements” alleged to be Soviet pawns. The ideology they spawned was decidedly pro-Israel and anti-Arab, and extremely hostile to all things Palestinian.

Trump’s UN Address to Call for Action Against Nonexistent North Korean and Iranian Threats

By Stephen Lendman, September 19, 2017

Trump’s UN address will likely heighten world tensions, not ease them. War is America’s favored geopolitical strategy. Who’s next on its target list?

Yesterday, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before the United Nations in a speech that served as a kind of appendix to Donald Trump’s controversial, bellicose declaration that was delivered hours earlier.

Both speeches predictably focused on Iran and both leaders told a great deal of untruths and half-truths about the situation. Here are some of the most glaring untruths, followed by a factual explanation of the situation.

1. Iran is “devouring nations”. 

The full quote from Netanyahu is as follows:

“Well as you know, I strongly disagreed. I warned that when the sanctions on Iran would be removed, Iran would behave like a hungry tiger unleashed, not joining the community of nations, but devouring nations, one after the other. And that’s precisely what Iran is doing today.

From the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, from Tehran to Tartus, an Iranian curtain is descending across the Middle East. Iran spreads this curtain of tyranny and terror over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere, and it pledges to extinguish the light of Israel”.

In reality, Iran occupies zero countries and has not occupied any country in its modern history. By contrast, Israel has occupied part of Syria, the Golan Heights, since 1967. This occupation is condemned by the United Nations and all five permanent members of the Security Council, including the United States.

The other country on Netanyahu’s list that has been occupied by Israel and not Iran is Lebanon. After invading Lebanon in 1982, Israel set up a permanent occupying force in southern Lebanon between 1985 and the year 2000. Israel maintained a presence in the country until 2006, when Israeli forces retreated in the face of strong Hezbollah defences.

Israel continues to occupy Palestine according to the UN and most impartial observers. It previously occupied Egypt, the Jordanian West Bank and in 1981, illegally bombed Iraq.

Iran by contrast has done no such things. The Iranian assistance provided to Syria during the conflict in the country has been done under a legal agreement with Damascus based on mutual friendship and a common cause against Salafist terrorism. Iran’s training of some Iraqi volunteers has been conducted on a similar basis.

By no logical stretch of the English language, could this been seen as “devouring nations”.

2. “We will act to prevent Iran from establishing permanent military bases in Syria for its air, sea and ground forces”

This statement while designed to sound like a defensive measure is actually an admission of a premeditated war crime. No foreign country can use the threat of force to blackmail its neighbours or anyone else when it comes to internal affairs.

If Syria invites Iran to establish some sort of permanent presence in the country, that is a matter which is strictly between Syria and Iran. To use this as a pretext for an act of war, is put simply, a war crime.

3. “Syria has barrel-bombed, starved, gassed and murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens and wounded millions more, while Israel has provided lifesaving medical care to thousands of Syrian victims of that very same carnage. Yet who does the World Health Organization criticize? Israel”.

This one is full of outright lies. First of all, prior to the conflict, not only were all Syrisns feed, but food prices were subsidised by the government, making nutritious foodstuffs more affordable in Syria than in most parts of the region.

Even today, Syrians are not starving, but due to western backed sanctions, food is more expensive and medicine is both more expensive and more scarce than they were prior to the conflict with Salafist terrorism. None of this has to do with the Syrian government nor its partners who continue to deliver aid.

Syria has not possessed any chemical weapons since 2013. In a joint effort by both Russia and the US, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons certified that by early 2014, there were no chemical weapons left in the Syrian governments hands.

Syria did develop a chemical weapons program in the 1970s in response to intelligence about Israel’s secretive nuclear weapons program.

In spite of this, Syria has never used chemical weapons, not on a foreign power and not internally.

The only chemical weapons in Syria today, are those in the hands of terrorists who are fighting Syria.

In respect of the Israeli hospital program. These hospitals have not been open to ordinary Syrians, let alone to the Syrian soldiers fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Instead, the hospitals have perversely been used to give medical treatment to al-Qaeda and ISIS fighters who are known as some of the most violent terrorists in the world.

4. “Two years ago, I stood here and explained why the Iranian nuclear deal not only doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb, Iran’s nuclear program has what’s called a sunset clause”.

Not only does the JCPOA (aka Iran nuclear deal) prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but Barack Obama’s administration admitted this openly. The EU and Russia continue to express their support of the deal and the US State Department, EU and UN have all agreed that Iran is in full compliance with the deal.

The only country in the Middle East to develop and maintain nuclear weapons is Israel. Furthermore, Israel obtained its nuclear weapons without international sanction and to this day, refuses to admit to having nuclear weapons. As such, Israel is not a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Israel is one of only four nations in the world to have never signed the treaty.

Israeli historian Avner Cohen as well as the award-winning US journalist Seymour Hersh have confirmed the existence of the so-called ‘Samson Option’, wherein Israel will deploy its nuclear weapons if it feels its security is threatened.

During his speech at the UN, Netanyahu alluded to the ‘Samson Option’ in saying,

“Those who threaten us with annihilation put themselves in mortal peril. Israel will defend itself with the full force of our arms and the full power of our convictions”.

In this sense, Iran has much more to fear form Israel than Israel has to fear from Iran, yet ironically it is Israel that continually protests about its own fears.

CONCLUSION: 

While Iran hasn’t invaded another country in its modern history, nor has it occupied a single country, Israel has occupied five: Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. Unlike Iran, Israel has nuclear bombs, unlike every other country in the Middle East.

With this record, it becomes clear who should be afraid of whom.

Featured image is from the author.

With the September 25th scheduled Kurdish Referendum in Iraq less than a week away, nations worldwide including; the US, UK, France, UN, Iran, and Iraq have expressed their objection and dissent and are calling for its suspension.

All except for Israel, a lone supporter, and longtime friend of the Kurds.

However, this doesn’t seem to have any impact on deterring the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq led by Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani from holding the referendum as planned.

In 2014, Time Magazine had this to say about the “Time Person of the Year” runnerup Mr. Barzani and “Kurdistan”. “Massoud ­Barzani, The Opportunist: When ISIS threw the Middle East jigsaw puzzle into the air, the Kurdish leader reached for a piece. What does it say that the most reliable U.S. ally in its campaign against ISIS is an imaginary country? Kurdistan—Land of the Kurds—exists only in two spheres. One is on maps sold in bazaars wherever the Kurdish language is spoken. The other is on yellow-red-and-green flags Kurds sometimes wave in the countries where they actually reside (according to maps sold everywhere else in the world). Yet in one of those countries, the Kurds have built themselves a state in all but name. Far to the north of Baghdad, where Iraq’s deserts rise into stony foothills and then into mountains, the Kurdistan Regional Government holds sway”.

The only non-Kurdish flag at rally going on now in #Erbil. Israel the sole country to support independence referendum pic.twitter.com/MMGxTsOrLN

— jane arraf (@janearraf) September 16, 2017

I wrote about the Kurdish-Israeli relationship in depth and how it has matured significantly over the years in this article.

Since at least the 1960s, Israel has provided intermittent security assistance and military training to the Kurds. This served mostly as an anti-Saddam play – keeping him distracted as Israel fought two wars against coordinated Arab neighbors – but mutual understanding of their respective predicaments also bred an Israeli-Kurdish affinity.

All signs point to this security cooperation continuing today. Israeli procurement of affordable Kurdish oil not only indicates a strengthening of economic ties, but also an Israeli lifeline to budget-starved Erbil that suggests a strategic bet on the Kurds in an evolving region.

The people closest to the Jews from a genetic point of view may be the Kurds, according to the results of a study by Hebrew University.

The Kurds are allied with Syria’s fiercest enemy – Israel – whose planned Greater Israel project coincidentally aligns almost perfectly with the Kurds’ plans for “Kurdistan.”  In the Oded Yinon plan, which is the plan for a “Greater Israel,” it states the imperative use of Kurds to help divide neighboring countries in order to aid in their plans for greater domination. Interestingly enough, Kurds brush this alliance off as being just another step in achieving their ultimate goal of creating an autonomous Kurdistan.

Every major Kurdish political group in the region has longstanding ties to Israel. It’s all linked to major ethnic violence against Arabs, Turkmens, and Assyrians. From the PKK in Turkey to the PYD and YPG in Syria, PJAK in Iran to the most notorious of them all, the Barzani-Talabani mafia regime (KRG/Peshmerga) in northern Iraq.

Thus it should come as no surprise that Erbil supplied Daesh (ISIS) with weaponry to weaken the Iraqi government in Baghdad. And when it becomes understood that Erbil is merely the front for Tel Aviv in Iraq, the scheme becomes clear.

Israel has reportedly been providing the KRG with weapons and training even prior its military encounters with Daesh. On the level of economic strategy, Israel granted critical support to the KRG by buying Kurdish oil in 2015 when no other country was willing to do so because of Baghdad’s threat to sue. KRG Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami even admitted to the arrangement, saying that Kurdish oil was often funneled through Israel to avoid detection.

In January 2012 the French newspaper Le Figaro claimed that Israeli intelligence agents were recruiting and training Iranian dissidents in clandestine bases located in Iraq’s Kurdish region. By aligning with the Kurds, Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq, and Syria. A year later, the Washington Post disclosed that Turkey had revealed to Iranian intelligence a network of Israeli spies working in Iran, including ten people believed to be Kurds who reportedly met with Mossad members in Turkey. This precarious relationship between Israel and Turkey persists today.

According to Foreign Policy September 18th, 2017:

Iraqi President Fuad Masum who was scheduled to speak to the U.N. General Assembly this week in New York canceled his trip to the United States in order to address the upcoming Kurdish independence referendum. He stated that the impending vote “threatened the stability of Iraq”. The president decided to remain in Iraq to jump-start an initiative to resolve the crisis.

While the referendum is not necessarily legally binding, Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish autonomous region, hopes that a strong show of support will strengthen the Kurds’ hand in future negotiations with Baghdad.

Adding to the flurry of activity, a Kurdish delegation is expected in Baghdad on Tuesday for more talks, and British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon is set to meet with Barzani in Erbil late Monday.

“I will be in Erbil to tell Massoud Barzani that we do not support the Kurdish referendum,” Fallon said at a press conference in Baghdad before leaving for the north.

The United States, United Kingdom, and most other states involved in the American-led anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Turkey and Iran, have come out forcefully against the referendum. Those countries are reportedly backing an as-yet-unannounced “alternative” plan for immediate negotiations between Baghdad and Erbil — in exchange the Kurdish government’s halting the referendum.

According to Bloomberg on September 13th, 2017:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced support for Kurdish statehood, offering a lone source of backing for an autonomy referendum in Iraq this month that allies oppose.

Israel “supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state,” Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday night during his visit in Latin America.

His endorsement clashes with the U.S. and Turkish positions. The Turkish government is concerned that sovereignty for Iraqi Kurds would encourage its own Kurdish insurgents. The U.S. says a Kurdish vote could destabilize the region and undercut the war on extremism.

Israel, with few allies in the region, has previously spoken in support of Kurdish autonomy, but the timing of Netanyahu’s statement so close to the scheduled vote gives it added significance. Iraq’s Kurds plan to hold a referendum on Sept. 25, to be followed by another for a new parliament and president on Nov. 6.

According to BBC on September 18th, 2017:

“Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has formally demanded the suspension of next week’s referendum on Kurdish independence.

The Supreme Court also ordered that the poll must be postponed until questions over its legality were addressed.

Despite global opposition, the Kurdistan Regional Government backed the 25 September vote on Friday”.

According to Al Masdar on September 18th, 2017:

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Stéphane Dujarric, issued a statement on Sunday that rejected the recent Kurdish independence referendum in Iraq.

The United States of America is the world’s greatest super-state with the largest economy and global GDP. It possesses the most powerful military machine in history backed by the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in existence.

Its ‘sidekick’ in the Middle East is the state of Israel and they work in concert to exert disproportionate influence on both the global economy and international politics through their combined position in the United Nations and through the economic and political power of the Likud-leaning, US Congress. All this is done publicly with no attempt to hide this blatant, bilateral US-Israeli agenda.

That agenda is to overtly increase the economic and political power of Washington to the exclusion and at the expense of the other 191 member states of the United Nations General Assembly that includes Britain, Germany, France, Spain and Italy [among others in Europe]. This is no secret pact but a publicly-stated aim of the current Trump presidency.

‘America First’ means just that, but to include also its creature state, Israel, which was established in 1948 thanks solely to the pressure exerted on the then newly constituted and unrepresentative, minority United Nations by the American Zionist Council, now better known as AIPAC the US Israel lobby group, which is a major [but unelected] force in shaping American foreign policy.

However, it is only now in 2017 that international affairs in general are in the hands of not only these two heads of state but also that of their extended families i.e. wives, children, sons in law and various other unelected family intimates. Currently, certain individuals within this bilateral family grouping are being officially investigated for corruption, bribery and/or fraud, by the relevant authorities. Strangely, this does not, as yet, appear to have had any impact upon the families’ global political influence.

All of which leaves us with the vitally important question:

When did Democracy, Justice, Equality and the Rule of Law, just disappear and what will be the eventual impact upon Europe and the wider world?

Featured image is from VOA News.

I listened to part of Trump’s UN speech this morning. I was so embarrassed for him and for my country that I had to turn it off.  

I wonder if whoever wrote the deplorable speech intended to embarrass Trump and inadvertently embarrassed America as well, or whether the speechwriter(s) is so imbued with the neoconservative arrogance and hubris of our time that the speechwriter was simply blind to the extraordinary contradictions that stood out like sore thumbs all through the speech.

I am not going to describe all of them, just a couple of examples.  

Trump went on at great length about how America respects the sovereignty of every country and the people’s will of every country, and how the US, despite its overwhelming military power, never tries to impose its will on any country. What was the administration thinking, or can it think? What about Yugoslavia/Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Crimea, Ukraine, Venezuela, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, just to mention countries in the 21st century that have been subjected to US military attacks, government overthrows, and removals of political leaders who did not conform to US interests?  

Is it respect for the sovereignty of countries to force them to support US sanctions against Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela? Is it respect for the sovereignty of countries to impose sanctions on the countries? If this is not imposing Washington’s will on other countries, what is?

Is it respect for other countries to inform them that unless they do as they are told, “we will bomb you into the stone age”?

I heard Trump complain that the UN Human Rights commission had as members countries with the worst human rights records of our time, and I wondered if he was talking about the United States. Clearly, Trump, the speechwriter(s), the State Department, the National Security Council, the US Ambassador to the UN, indeed the entire administration, do not think that the endless slaughter, maiming, orphaning, widowing, and dispossessing of millions of peoples in many countries, producing waves of refugees, comprise human rights violations.

The arrogance conveyed by Trump’s speech is unprecedented.  

After assurances that America respects everyone, Trump then made demand after demand and threat after threat against the sovereignty  of Iran and North Korea, demanding that the rest of the world back him up. 

Neither country is a threat to the US. Unlike the US and Israel, Korea has not been at war since 1953. Iran’s last war was in the 1980s when Iran was attacked by Iraq. Yet both North Korea and Iran are subjected to constant threats from the US. At the UN Trump threatened North Korea with destruction, and Washington is telling more lies about Iran in order to justify military action.

Here is what former Secretary of State Colin Powell says about how carefully Washington thinks about other peoples:

“We thought we knew what would happen in Libya. We thought we knew what would happen in Egypt. We thought we knew what would happen in Iraq, and we guessed wrong. In each one of these countries the thing we have to consider is that there is some structure that’s holding the society together. And as we learned, especially in Libya, when you remover the top and the whole thing falls apart . . . you get chaos.”

That’s what Washington does. It brings chaos to tens of millions of peoples, destroying their lives and the prospects of their countries. This is the behavior that Trump described as American compassion for others. This is what Trump says is respecting others and the sovereignty of their countries. Washington dresses up its crimes against humanity as a “war on terror.” The tens of millions of slaughtered, maimed, and displaced persons are merely “collateral damage.”

This is why the US is considered the greatest threat to peace. International polls show that the world regards the US as a much greater threat to peace than North Korea and Iran. Yet Trump described the US, universally regarded as the greatest threat to the world, as the great protector of peace. Has there ever been a greater disturber of peace?

One wonders if the rest of the world, especially Russia and China, got Washington’s message. Washington’s plan for UN “reform” is a plan to turn the organization into another instrument of US foreign policy, like NATO and the EU.  The message that Trump was sent to deliver to the UN is that henceforth the UN is expected to support Washington’s foreign policy agenda. Opponents to Washington’s war policy are to be isolated and lumped together with the bad countries as defined by Washington. 

In other words Washington accepts no limits on its unilateralism. This means war for every country that does not accept Washington’s hegemony.

Featured image is from National Review.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

The late comedian Jerry Lewis once said old people are discarded like yesterday’s garbage.

In congressional testimony at age 92, actor Mickey Rooney explained abusive treatment he received from his stepson, saying “(y)ou can’t believe it’s happening to you.”

“You feel overwhelmed.” He urged Congress to criminalize what’s happening.

“I’m asking you to stop this elderly abuse,” he urged. “I mean stop it now. Not tomorrow. Not next month, but now.” Pass legislation saying “it’s a crime, and we will not allow it in the United States of America.”

Congress failed to act. Elder abuse is rampant. An earlier House Government Reform Committee study found nearly a third of US nursing homes cited for elder abuse – thousands of incidents nationwide over a two-year period alone.

Common problems include untreated bedsores, inadequate medical care, malnutrition, dehydration, preventable accidents, along with inadequate sanitation and hygiene – often jeopardizing the health, welfare and lives of elderly Americans, at times responsible for serious illnesses, injuries or deaths.

The avoidable deaths of eight elderly Hollywood, Florida nursing home residents during Hurricane Irma highlighted the problem – perishing needlessly in sweltering, instead of evacuating them to Memorial Regional Hospital across the street, a criminal act unlikely to be punished.

The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills nursing facility was low-rated because of unsanitary conditions and poor food – besides negligent medical care when vitally needed as now revealed.

Victims ranged from age 71 to 99, perishing after the facility lost power, its management doing little or nothing to protect its residents, either with no plan in case of emergencies or failure to implement one.

They knew the risks to their residents, failed to act responsibly, leading to eight needless deaths, criminal negligence responsible.

Elders in nursing facilities need others to care for their needs, largely or wholly dependent on staff members. Otherwise they wouldn’t be there – in end-of-life warehouses, a former US congressman once calling them “halfway houses between society and the cemetery.”

They’d become a multi-billion dollar industry, comprised of thousands of facilities nationwide, largely or inadequately regulated.

Care varies widely – from responsibly looking after residents to as little as possible, indifferent and abusive treatment, too often causing serious problems, including deaths from neglect.

Washington is largely indifferent, the Trump administration hostile to regulations. Around 70 – 80% of nursing home revenues come from Medicaid and Medicare, government with a direct stake in how they operate.

The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills has a disturbing history of healthcare fraud, abusive treatment and related violations. Yet Florida authorities let it continue operating.

The same problem exists nationwide, good facilities outnumbered by marginal and poorly operated others.

America’s elderly and infirm deserve better. Federal, state and local authorities owe them the care they deserve – late in life, on their own inside facilities, dependent on others for care they’re unable to provide for themselves.

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

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

In terms of US and Middle East geopolitics, something extremely significant has just taken place this week, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the Western mainstream press. This latest addition to the Pentagon’s imperial portfolio of over 800 overseas military bases is sure to fuel even more resistance to what many see as a policy of global hegemony.

On Monday, the United States formally unveiled its plan to establish a permanent military installation inside of Israel.

The new US air defense base will be located in the Negev desert – a “base within a base” sharing the new location with an existing IDF facility at Mashabim Air Base located between the towns of Dimona and Yerucham. The base will fall under the umbrella of US European Command (EUCOM) headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.

Plans for the new US Air Force base began under former US president Barack Obama, and transitioned to formation under President Donald Trump.

Visited Israel to thank US Soldiers serving & training with Israeli troops. US/Israel relationship is deep-rooted. @USArmyEurope pic.twitter.com/DWVEw47qUl

— MG John Gronski (@MGGronski) September 18, 2017

According to the Times of Israel:

Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch, head of the IAF’s Aerial Defense Command, announced the establishment of the installation on Monday evening.

“It’s nothing short of historic,” he said. It demonstrates the “years-old alliance between the United States and the State of Israel.”

Already, we have seen Israeli PM Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu threaten Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding Iran’s military presence in Syria, warning that ‘Israel may act to curb Iran’s clout in Syria.’  Naturally, this new facility will be viewed by regional stakeholders as a counter weight to the new Syrian situation.

The US base may also be used to launch air sorties to defend Israel’s recent illegal annexation of the part of the Golan Heights, land which it has managed to take under the cover of the Syrian conflict. Recently, Israel has managed to pry away this contested land from Syria with the help of Al Nusra terrorists on the ground, after they previously chased out UNDOF Peacekeepers which had been positioned there since 1974. Amazingly, the UN still has not updated its website to express this new reality on the ground (still showing a mission photo from 2012).

Earlier reports clearly show how Tel Aviv has been providing material assistance to Al Nusra terrorist fighters – a policy which Israel has not apologised for.

This week’s joint military announcement by the US and Israel also happens to coincide with the Jewish feast Rosh Hashanah. The Times says:

“It’s a few days before Rosh Hashanah” — the Jewish new year — “and we are undergoing a renewal and growing in our abilities that are important and necessary for the State of Israel.”

According to the Israeli spokesperson, the establishment of a US base in Israel will send a “message to the region.”

Whether that’s perceived as a positive message, or a message of US imperial expansion remains to be seen, but by most accounts, it’s likely to be the latter.

If anything, the establishment of a US base in occupied Palestine could help to reinvigorate the international pro-Palestinian activist movement, which traditionally has had an anti-Imperialist message in its mission.

Generally speaking, it’s hard to see how such a move by the US can be seen as a positive development for the region. Add to this other direct provocations by the US on behalf of Israel, and we have a recipe for potential disaster down the road. Earlier in his term, Trump also announced his desire to relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – seen by many as an aggressive move by Washington, which would be viewed as an affront to a long-established policy respecting the political and religious neutrality of Jerusalem. Note that the Jerusalem Embassy Act was passed into law in 1995, although successive US presidents have opted out of such a move in the interests of maintaining peace over this contentious issue.

Somewhat shockingly, Gen. Haimovitch went on to claim that this new base would somehow help to support an operation like the brutal Israel bombing of Gaza in the summer 2014, which saw the slaughter of some 1,500 Palestinian natives, many of them women and children. The Times explains:

He said that the importance of air defense was made clear during the 2014 Gaza war, when thousands of rockets were fired at Israel, as well as through “assessments of the threats we expect to face in the future.”

For decades, cohorts of US forces and technical advisors have been based in Israel, running joint exercises with the IDF, and also installing and operating military projects like the famous Iron Dome missile defense array (also run out of Stuttgart, Germany) which went online in 2011.

The Arrow 3 missile defense system that was delivered to the Israeli Air Force on January 18, 2017 (Source: Israeli Defense Ministry)

It seems that this latest deployment is not only about defense, but about projecting power in the region – with neighbors Syria and Lebanon in its immediate sights. The new project will feature a new long-range missile system, the Arrow 3, delivered by the US to Israel in January (image, left), and the medium-range “David’s Sling” missile system, and an expansion of the short-range Iron Dome missile defense system.

The nearby town of Dimona is also home to Israel’s notorious nuclear reactor, and its unaccounted for nuclear warhead arsenal.

Journalist Richard Silverstein explains the fundamental problem with Israel’s ‘undeclared’ nuclear weapons operation at Dimona:

“In 1959, Israel began construction on its reactor in Dimona. Eventually, there were thousands of workers both building the plant and, once it was constructed, working within it to build the arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons Israel is reputed to possess. An excellent short overall history of the project can be found online.”

“The secrecy of the nuclear programme, one interviewee calls it a “KGB state,” goes hand in hand with the Israel’s overall opacity around all manner of security issues. It’s not surprising that Israel has put its fate in the hands of a few nuclear bureaucrats like those who run Dimona, because it runs its overall military apparatus in the same way. No civilian oversight to speak of. The generals get what they want. All in the name of protecting the state. It’s a devil’s bargain.”

Aside from being Israel’s alleged ‘nuclear deterrent’, many also regard Dimona as a nuclear liability, and a giant ‘dirty bomb‘ contamination risk to the region.

Now Israel has a US base on its soil – another perfect Casus Belli, or target. It goes without saying that if anyone so much as grazes this sacred facility, or even threatens to do anything to it, this will undoubtedly be used by the US to step-up ‘security operations’ in the region and further inflaming an already tense situation in the Middle East.

All by design, of course.

Amid renewed talk by the Trump administration of a military option against North Korea, one salient fact goes unnoticed. The United States is already at war with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea). It is doing so through non-military means, with the aim of inducing economic collapse. In a sense, the policy is a continuation of the Obama administration’s ‘strategic patience’ on steroids, in that it couples a refusal to engage in diplomacy with the piling on of sanctions that constitute collective punishment of the entire North Korean population.

We are told that UN Security Council resolution 2375, passed on September 11, was “watered down” so as to obtain Chinese and Russian agreement. In relative terms, this is true, in that the original draft as submitted by the United States called for extreme measures such as a total oil embargo. However, Western media give the impression that the resolution as passed is mild or mainly symbolic. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The resolution, in tandem with previous sanction votes and in particular resolution 2371 from August 5, is aimed squarely at inflicting economic misery. Among other things, the August sanctions prohibit North Korea from exporting coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore, and seafood, all key commodities in the nation’s international trade.  The resolution also banned countries from opening new or expanding existing joint ventures with the DPRK. [1]

September’s resolution further constrains North Korea’s ability to engage in regular international trade by barring the export of textiles. It is estimated that together, the sanctions eliminate 90 percent of the DPRK’s export earnings. [2] Foreign exchange is essential for the smooth operation of any modern economy, and U.S. officials hope that by blocking North Korea’s ability to earn sufficient foreign exchange, the resolutions will deal a crippling blow to the economy. For North Korea’s estimated 100,000 to 200,000 textile workers the impact will be immediate, plunging most of them into unemployment.

“If the goal of the sanctions is to create difficulties for ordinary workers and their ability to make a livelihood, then a ban on textiles will work,” specialist Paul Tija wryly notes. [3]

With around eighty percent of its land comprising mountainous terrain, North Korea has a limited amount of arable land, and the nation typically fills its food gap through imports. Sharply reduced rainfall during the April-June planting season this year reduced the amount of water available for irrigation and hampered sowing activities. Satellite monitoring indicates that crop yields are likely to fall well below the norm. [4] To make up for the shortfall, the DPRK has significantly boosted imports. [5] How much longer it can continue to do so remains to be seen, in the face of dwindling reserves of foreign exchange. In effect, by blocking North Korea’s ability to engage in international trade, the United States has succeeded in weaponizing food by denying North Korea the means of providing an adequate supply to its people.

The September resolution also adversely impacts the livelihoods of North Korea’s overseas workers, who will not be allowed to renew their contracts once they expire. They can only look forward to being forced from their jobs and expelled from their homes. [6]

International partnership is discouraged, as the resolution bans “the opening, maintenance, and operation of all joint ventures or cooperative entities, new and existing,” which in effect permanently kills off any prospect of the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex. With only two exceptions, all current operations are ordered to shut down within four months. [7]

A cap is imposed on the amount of oil North Korea is allowed to import, amounting to about a thirty percent reduction from current levels, along with a total ban on the import of natural gas and condensates. [8] Many factories and manufacturing plants could be forced to close down when they can no longer operate machinery. For the average person, hardship lies ahead as winter approaches, when many homes and offices will no longer be able to be heated.

What has any of this to do with North Korea’s nuclear program? Nothing. The sanctions are an expression of pure malevolence. Vengeance is hitting every citizen of North Korea to further the U.S. goal of geopolitical domination of the Asia-Pacific.

Like North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel are non-signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and have nuclear and missile arsenals. India and Pakistan launched ICBMs earlier in the year. North Korea is singled out for punishment, while the others receive U.S. aid. There is no principle at stake here. For that matter, there is something unseemly in the United States, with over one thousand nuclear tests, denouncing North Korea for its six. The U.S., having launched four ICBMs this year, condemns the DPRK for launching half that many. Is it not absurd that the United States, with its long record in recent years of bombing, invading, threatening, and overthrowing other nations, accuses North Korea, which has been at peace for several decades, of being an international threat?

North Korea observed the fate of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, and concluded that only a nuclear deterrent could stop the United States from attacking. It is the “threat” of North Korea being able to defend itself that has aroused U.S. ire on a spectacular scale.

The U.S. war on the North Korean people does not stop with UN sanctions. In a recent hearing, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce called for Chinese banks that do ordinary business with North Korea to be targeted:

“We can designate Chinese banks and companies unilaterally, giving them a choice between doing business with North Korea or the United States…It’s not just China. We should go after banks and companies in other countries that do business with North Korea in the same way…We should press countries to end all trade with North Korea.” [9]

At the same hearing, the Treasury Assistant Secretary Marshall Billingslea mentioned that his department had worked with the Justice Department to blacklist Russia’s Independent Petroleum Company in June, along with associated individuals and companies, for having shipped oil to North Korea. Despite the fact that there was no UN resolution at that time which forbade such trade, the U.S. seized nearly $7 million belonging to the company and its partners. [10]

Acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton was, if anything, more aggressive in her rhetoric than her colleagues, announcing that

“we continue to call for all countries to cut trade ties with Pyongyang to increase North Korea’s financial isolation and choke off revenue sources.”

She cautioned China and Russia that they must acquiesce to U.S. demands, warning them that if they “do not act, we will use the tools we have at our disposal. Just last month we rolled out new sanctions targeting Russian and Chinese individuals and entities supporting the DPRK.” [11]

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had threats to deliver, as well, warning China that if its actions against North Korea fail to live up to U.S. expectations,

“we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system.” [12]

Since all international financial transactions process through the U.S. banking system, this threat is tantamount to shutting down Beijing’s ability to conduct trade with any nation. It was a rather extravagant threat, and undoubtedly a difficult one to pull off, but one which the Trump administration is just reckless enough to consider undertaking.

There is nothing illegal or forbidden in a nation trading with North Korea in non-prohibited commodities. Yet, a total trade blockade is what Washington is after. U.S. officials are preparing sanctions against foreign banks and companies that do business with North Korea.

“We intend to deny the regime its last remaining sources of revenue, unless and until it reverses course and denuclearizes,” Billingslea darkly warns. “Those who collaborate with them are exposing themselves to enormous jeopardy.” [13]

In essence, Washington is running an international protection racket: give us what we demand, or we will hurt you. This is gangsterism as foreign policy.

China opposed the UN sanctions that the Trump administration presented at the UN Security Council in September. However, according to U.S. and UN officials, the United States managed to extort China’s acquiescence by threatening to hit Chinese businesses with secondary sanctions. [14]

Before the August UN vote, similar threats were conveyed to Chinese diplomats at the U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue, as U.S. officials indicated that ten businesses and individuals would be sanctioned if China did not vote in favor of sanctions. [15]

As a shot across the bow, the U.S. sanctioned the Chinese Bank of Dandong back in June, leading to Western firms severing contacts with the institution. [16]

Washington’s threats prompted China to implement steps in the financial realm that exceed what is called for by the UN Security Council resolutions. China’s largest banks have banned North Korean individuals and entities from opening new accounts, and some firms are not allowing deposits in existing accounts. [17] There is no UN prohibition on North Koreans opening accounts abroad, so the action is regarded as a proactive measure by Chinese banks to avoid becoming the target of U.S. sanctions. [18]

The demands never cease, no matter how much China gives way. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently insisted that China impose a total oil embargo on North Korea. [19] China refused to go along, but it can expect be subjected to mounting pressure from the U.S. in the weeks ahead.

U.S. officials are fanning out across the globe, seeking to cajole or threaten other nations to join the anti-DPRK crusade. Since most nations stand to lose far more by displeasing the U.S. than in ending a longstanding relationship with the DPRK, the campaign is having an effect.

In April, India banned all trade with North Korea, with the exception of food and medicine. This action failed to satisfy the Trump administration, which sent officials to New Delhi to ask for the curtailing of diplomatic contacts with the DPRK and help in monitoring North Korean economic activities in the region.[20] The Philippines, for its part, responded to U.S. demands by suspending all trade activity with North Korea. [21] Mexico and Peru are among the nations that are expelling North Korean diplomats, on the arbitrary basis of responding to U.S. directives. [22] In addition to announcing that it would reduce North Korea’s diplomatic staff, Kuwait also said it would no longer issue visas to North Korean citizens. [23]

Many African nations have warm relations with the DPRK, dating back to the period of the continent’s liberation struggles. U.S. officials are focusing particular attention on Africa, and several nations are currently under investigation by the United Nations for their trade with North Korea. [24] The demand to cut relations with North Korea is not an easy sell for Washington, as Africans remember the U.S. for having backed apartheid regimes, while the DPRK had supported African liberation.

“Our world outlook was determined by who was on our side during the most crucial time of our struggle, and North Korea was there for us,” says Tuliameni Kalomoh, an official in Namibia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. [25]

This is not the kind of language Washington likes to hear. U.S. economic power is sufficient to ruin any small nation, and with little choice in the matter, Namibia cancelled all contracts with North Korean firms. [26]

Egypt and Uganda are among the nations that have cut ties with the DPRK, and more nations are expected to follow suit, as the United States turns up the heat. Outside of the United Nations, the Trump administration is systematically erecting a total trade blockade against North Korea. Through this means, the U.S. hopes that North Korea will capitulate. That aim is premised on a serious misjudgment of the North Korean character.

The Trump administration claims that UN sanctions and its policy of maximum pressure are intended to bring North Korea to the negotiating table. But it is not the DPRK that needs to be persuaded to talk. President Trump has tweeted,

“Talking is not the answer!”

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert laid down a stringent condition for negotiations:

“For us to engage in talks with the DPRK, they would have to denuclearize.” [27]

The demand for North Korea to give the United States everything it wants upfront, without receiving anything in return, as a precondition for talks is such an obvious nonstarter that it has to be regarded as a recipe for avoiding diplomacy.

North Korea contacted the Obama administration on several occasions and requested talks, only to be rebuffed each time and told it needed to denuclearize. This sad disconnect continues under Trump. In May, the DPRK informed the United States that it would stop nuclear testing and missile launches if the U.S. would drop its hostile policy and sanctions, as well as sign a peace treaty ending the Korean War. [28] The U.S. may not have cared for the conditions, but it could have suggested adjustments, had it been so inclined. Certainly, it was an opening that could have led to dialogue.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying (Source: fmprc.gov.cn)

It is not diplomacy that the Trump administration seeks, but to crush North Korea. If the ostensible reason for UN sanctions is to persuade a reluctant party to negotiate, then one can only conclude that the wrong nation is being sanctioned. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying was scathing in her criticism of American and British leaders:

“They are the loudest when it comes to sanctions, but nowhere to be found when it comes to making efforts to promote peace talks. They want nothing to do with responsibility.” [29]

The months ahead look bleak. Unless China and Russia can find a way to oppose U.S. designs without becoming targets themselves, the North Korean people will stand alone and bear the burden of Trump’s malice. It says something for their character that they refuse to be cowed.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. He is also a member of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific. His website is https://gregoryelich.org Follow him on Twitter at @GregoryElich

Notes

[1] SC/12945, “Security Council Toughens Sanctions Against Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 2371 (2017), United Nations Security Council, August 5, 2017.

[2] “UN Security Council Toughens Sanctions on North Korea,” Radio Free Europe, September 12, 2017.

[3] Sue-Lin Wong, Richa Naidu, “U.N. Ban on North Korean Textiles Will Disrupt Industry and Ordinary Lives, Experts Say,” Reuters, September 12, 2017.

[4] “Prolonged Dry Weather Threatens the 2017 Main Season Food Crop Production,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, July 20, 2017.

[5] “North Korean Food Imports Climb in June: KITA,” NK News, August 18, 2017.

[6] “Fact Sheet: Resolution 2375 (2017) Strengthening Sanctions on North Korea,” United States Mission to the United Nations, September 11, 2017.

[7] SC/12983, “Security Council Imposes Fresh Sanctions on Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Including Bans on Natural Gas Sales, Worth Authorizations for its Nationals,” United Nations Security Council, September 11, 2017.

[8] “Fact Sheet: Resolution 2375 (2017) Strengthening Sanctions on North Korea,” United States Mission to the United Nations, September 11, 2017.

[9] Opening Statement of the Honorable Ed Royce (R-CA), “Sanctions, Diplomacy, and Information: Pressuring North Korea,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing, September 12, 2017.

[10] “Testimony of Assistant Secretary Marshall S. Billingslea,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing, September 12, 2017.

“Treasury Sanctions Suppliers of North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Proliferation Programs,” U.S. Department of Treasury, June 1, 2017.

[11] “Statement of Susan Thornton, Acting Secretary of State,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing, September 12, 2017.

[12] Ian Talley, “U.S. Threatens China Over North Korea Sanctions,” Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2017.

[13] Ian Talley, “U.S. Threatens China Over North Korea Sanctions,” Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2017.

[14] “Clear and Present Blackmail: US Coaxes China to Back Anti-N Korea UN Resolution,” Sputnik News, September 12, 2017.

[15] Yi Yong-in, “US Pledges to Sanction Ten More Chinese Entities if China Doesn’t Cooperate in NK UNSC Resolution,” Hankyoreh, July 22, 2017.

[16] Matthew Pennington, “US Blacklists China Bank, Revving Up Pressure Over NKorea,” Associated Press, June 30, 2017.

Joel Schectman and David Brunnstrom, “U.S. targets Chinese Bank, Company, Two Individuals Over North Korea,” Reuters, June 20, 2017.

[17] “China’s Biggest Banks Ban New North Korean Accounts,” Financial Times, September 12, 2017.

[18] Stephen McDonell, “China Banks Fear US North Korea Sanctions,” BBC News, September 12, 2017.

[19] Nick Wadhams, “China Rebuffs U.S. Demand to Cut Off Oil Exports to North Korea,” September 15, 2017.

[20] Indrani Bagchi, “Scale Back Engagement with North Korea, US Tells India,” The Times of India, July 30, 2017.

[21] “Philippines Suspends Trade with N. Korea,” Yonhap, September 9, 2017.

[22] “North Korea-U.S. Te4nsions Are Not Mexico’s Business: Diplomat,” Reuters, September 8, 2017.

“Peru Says Expelling North Korean Ambassador Over Nuclear Program,” Reuters, September 11, 2017.

[23] “Kuwait Decides to Reduce N.K. Diplomatic Staff, Stops Issuing Visas for N. Koreans,” Yonhap, September 16, 2017.

[24] Kevin J. Kelley, “UN Probes Tanzania and Uganda Deals with North Korea,” East African, September 13, 2017.

[25] Kevin Sieff, “North Korea’s Surprising, Lucrative Relationship with Africa,” Washington Post, July 10, 2017.

[26] George Hendricks, “North Korean Contracts Terminated,” The Namibian, September 15, 2017.

[27] Heather Nauert, “Department Press Briefing,” U.S. Department of State, June 15, 2017.

[28] Jeong Yong-soo, “In May, North Offered to End Testing if Washington Backs Off,” JoongAng Ilbo, September 5, 2017.

[29] “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying’s Regular Press Conference on August 30, 2017,” (China) Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 30, 2017.

Featured image is from David Stanley | CC BY 2.0.

First published by RT, crossposted on GR on May 3, 2018

Biotech giant Monsanto is being accused of hiring, through third parties, an army of Internet trolls to counter negative comments, while citing positive “ghost-written” pseudo-scientific reports which downplay the potential risks of their products.

Featured image: Senator Nick Xenophon (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

It was never spectacular, but the Australian media scape is set to become duller, more contained, and more controlled with changes to the Broadcasting Services Act.  In an environment strewn with the corpses of papers and outlets strapped for cash, calls for reforming the media market have been heard across the spectrum.

The foggy deception being perpetrated by the Turnbull government, assisted by the calculating antics of South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, is that diversity will be shored up by such measures as the $60 million “innovation” fund for small publishers while scrapping the so-called two-out-of-three rule for TV, radio and press ownership. Such dissembling language is straight out of the spin doctor’s covert manual: place innovation in the title, and you might get across the message.

As Chris Graham of New Matilda scornfully put it,

“The Turnbull government is going to spend $60 million of your taxes buying a Senator’s vote to pass bad legislation designed to advantage some of the most powerful media corporations in the world.”[1]

Paul Budde of Independent Australia was similarly excoriating.[2]

“To increase power of the incumbent players through media reforms might not necessarily have an enormous effect on the everyday media diversity, but it will allow organisations such as the Murdoch press to wield even greater power over Australian politics than is already the case.”

As the statement from Senator Xenophon’s site reads,

“Grants would be allocated, for example, to programs and initiatives such as the purchasing or upgrading of equipment and software, development of apps, business activities to drive revenue and readership, and training, all of which will assist in extending civic and regional journalism.”[3]

The communications minister Mitch Fifield went so far as to deem the fund “a shot in the arm” for media organisations, granting them “a fighting chance”. 

The aim here, claims the good senator, is to throw down the gauntlet to the revenue pinchers such as Facebook and Google while generating a decent number of recruits through journalism cadetships. Google, claimed Xenophon in August, “are hoovering up billions of dollars or revenue along with Facebook and that is killing media in this country.”[4]

Google Australia managing director Jason Pellegrino had a very different take: you only had to go no further than the consumer.

“The people to blame are you and I as news consumers, because we are choosing to change the behaviour and patterns of (how) we are consuming news.”

Xenophon’s patchwork fund hardly alleviates the consequences that will follow from scrapping of the rules on ownership. Having chanted the anti-Google line that its behaviour is distinctly anti-democratic, his agreement with the government will shine a bright green light for cash-heavy media tycoons keen on owning types of media (radio, television, papers) without limits. The line between commercial viability and canned journalism run by unelected puppet masters becomes all too real, while the truly independent outlets will be left to their social Darwinian fate.

Labor senator Sam Dastyari saw the Turnbull-Xenophon agreement has having one notable target, and not necessarily the social media giants who had punctured the media market with such effect. 

“They are doing in the Guardian. You have thrown them under the bus.”[5]

The measure is odd in a few respects, most notably because regional papers were hardly consulted on the measure. This, it seemed, was a hobby horse run by the senator through the stables of government policy. In the end, the horse made it to the finishing line.

The very idea of linking government grants to the cause of journalism constitutes a form of purchasing allegiance and backing. How this advances the cause of civic journalism, as opposed to killing it by submission, is unclear. The temptation for bias – the picking of what is deemed appropriately civic, and what is not, is all too apparent.

The package supposedly incorporates an “independence test” by which the applicant publisher can’t be affiliated with any political party, union, superannuation fund, financial institution, non-government organisation or policy lobby group. Further independence is supposedly ensured by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which will administer the fund.

The decision about which organisation to fund is already implied by the scale of revenue. The cut-off point, for starters, is an annual turnover of not less than $300,000 in revenue. The other end of the scale is a ceiling of $30 million, which, for any media outlet, would be impressive.

This media non-reform package also comes on the heels of another dispiriting masquerade: an attempt to import a further layering of supposed transparency measures on the ABC and SBS, a position long championed by senator Pauline Hanson. This reactionary reflex, claimed the fuming crossbench Senator Jacqui Lambie, was “the worst lot of crap I have seen”, the sort of feculence designed to punish the public broadcaster for being “one step ahead when it comes to iView and their social media platforms.”[6]

Between the giants of Google and Facebook, and a government happy to sing before the tycoons, a small publishing outlet is best going it alone in an already cut throat environment, relying on the old fashioned, albeit ruthless good sense, of the reader. Have trust that the copy will pull you through, or perish trying to do so.

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

Notes

Featured image: Senator Nick Xenophon (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

It was never spectacular, but the Australian media scape is set to become duller, more contained, and more controlled with changes to the Broadcasting Services Act.  In an environment strewn with the corpses of papers and outlets strapped for cash, calls for reforming the media market have been heard across the spectrum.

The foggy deception being perpetrated by the Turnbull government, assisted by the calculating antics of South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, is that diversity will be shored up by such measures as the $60 million “innovation” fund for small publishers while scrapping the so-called two-out-of-three rule for TV, radio and press ownership. Such dissembling language is straight out of the spin doctor’s covert manual: place innovation in the title, and you might get across the message.

As Chris Graham of New Matilda scornfully put it,

“The Turnbull government is going to spend $60 million of your taxes buying a Senator’s vote to pass bad legislation designed to advantage some of the most powerful media corporations in the world.”[1]

Paul Budde of Independent Australia was similarly excoriating.[2]

“To increase power of the incumbent players through media reforms might not necessarily have an enormous effect on the everyday media diversity, but it will allow organisations such as the Murdoch press to wield even greater power over Australian politics than is already the case.”

As the statement from Senator Xenophon’s site reads,

“Grants would be allocated, for example, to programs and initiatives such as the purchasing or upgrading of equipment and software, development of apps, business activities to drive revenue and readership, and training, all of which will assist in extending civic and regional journalism.”[3]

The communications minister Mitch Fifield went so far as to deem the fund “a shot in the arm” for media organisations, granting them “a fighting chance”. 

The aim here, claims the good senator, is to throw down the gauntlet to the revenue pinchers such as Facebook and Google while generating a decent number of recruits through journalism cadetships. Google, claimed Xenophon in August, “are hoovering up billions of dollars or revenue along with Facebook and that is killing media in this country.”[4]

Google Australia managing director Jason Pellegrino had a very different take: you only had to go no further than the consumer.

“The people to blame are you and I as news consumers, because we are choosing to change the behaviour and patterns of (how) we are consuming news.”

Xenophon’s patchwork fund hardly alleviates the consequences that will follow from scrapping of the rules on ownership. Having chanted the anti-Google line that its behaviour is distinctly anti-democratic, his agreement with the government will shine a bright green light for cash-heavy media tycoons keen on owning types of media (radio, television, papers) without limits. The line between commercial viability and canned journalism run by unelected puppet masters becomes all too real, while the truly independent outlets will be left to their social Darwinian fate.

Labor senator Sam Dastyari saw the Turnbull-Xenophon agreement has having one notable target, and not necessarily the social media giants who had punctured the media market with such effect. 

“They are doing in the Guardian. You have thrown them under the bus.”[5]

The measure is odd in a few respects, most notably because regional papers were hardly consulted on the measure. This, it seemed, was a hobby horse run by the senator through the stables of government policy. In the end, the horse made it to the finishing line.

The very idea of linking government grants to the cause of journalism constitutes a form of purchasing allegiance and backing. How this advances the cause of civic journalism, as opposed to killing it by submission, is unclear. The temptation for bias – the picking of what is deemed appropriately civic, and what is not, is all too apparent.

The package supposedly incorporates an “independence test” by which the applicant publisher can’t be affiliated with any political party, union, superannuation fund, financial institution, non-government organisation or policy lobby group. Further independence is supposedly ensured by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which will administer the fund.

The decision about which organisation to fund is already implied by the scale of revenue. The cut-off point, for starters, is an annual turnover of not less than $300,000 in revenue. The other end of the scale is a ceiling of $30 million, which, for any media outlet, would be impressive.

This media non-reform package also comes on the heels of another dispiriting masquerade: an attempt to import a further layering of supposed transparency measures on the ABC and SBS, a position long championed by senator Pauline Hanson. This reactionary reflex, claimed the fuming crossbench Senator Jacqui Lambie, was “the worst lot of crap I have seen”, the sort of feculence designed to punish the public broadcaster for being “one step ahead when it comes to iView and their social media platforms.”[6]

Between the giants of Google and Facebook, and a government happy to sing before the tycoons, a small publishing outlet is best going it alone in an already cut throat environment, relying on the old fashioned, albeit ruthless good sense, of the reader. Have trust that the copy will pull you through, or perish trying to do so.

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

Notes

A Gallup poll headlined on September 17th, “Seven in 10 Dissatisfied With Way U.S. Is Being Governed”, and reported that 71% said they were “Dissatisfied” and that 28% said they were “Satisfied,” with the U.S. Government. The question, as it had been posed, was “On the whole, would you say you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed?”

At the height of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, when this question was asked during 21-24 September 1973, the until-then all-time-lowest level of satisfaction with the Government was recorded, 26% (compared with 28% who are “Satisfied” today); but, at that time, only 66% said they were outright “Dissatisfied”; so, at that time, a larger percentage than now, were on the fence, about this question. (Thus, 71% are “Dissatisfied” today, whereas only 66% were, back in 1973.) Subsequently, the figure of only 26% who were “Satisfied,” wasn’t reached again until the very end of George W. Bush’s Presidency and the peak of the 2008 economic crash, when, yet again, 26% were “Satisfied”; but, in that instance, an until-then all-time-record high 72% declared themselves “Dissatisfied” with their Government. So, that was the all-time-worst finding, up to that moment in time. But, then, things got even worse: 

After a few months of hope, immediately following Barack Obama’s election as President to replace the by-then-widely-despised Bush, even lower levels of satisfaction were soon reached: late in 2011, it was 19% “Satisfied” and a full 81% who were “Dissatisfied”; and, late in 2013, it was, yet again, 81% “Dissatisfied,” but an all-time-record-low of 18%, who were “Satisfied.” So: that’s the worst finding, up to and including, the current one. 

The period from 1985-2002 experienced a remarkably stable 55% to 59% of Americans who were “Satisfied,” and 37% to 39% who were “Dissatisfied.” But, then, the big plunge came. After exposure of the big lie, that Saddam Hussein had WMD which George W. Bush constantly repeated and consciously lied about and said necessitated invading Iraq, seeped out to have been a lie, gradually entering into the public’s consciousness from a press that was extremely reluctant to report the fact (and with assisting cover-up from a see-no-evil Congress), the lie became silently known, but only in retrospect, by Americans, to have been a lie, after all. And that 2002 level of 59% “Satisfied” thus  sank year-by-year down to reach the 26% figure in the Bush-Presidency’s final months. Americans’ extreme disappointment with the U.S. Government during Obama’s Presidency has produced a new normal, of extreme dissatisfaction, with the U.S. Government — exceptionally poor ratings that continue (though not quite as bad as Obama’s) till the present time.

Gallup’s latest report, on September 17th, attributes the current high disapproval, to Congress, mainly:

“Americans’ assessments of the job Congress is doing is significantly related to changes in their views of how the nation is being governed, as would be expected. As views of Congress have gone up or (mostly) down, so have views of the way the nation is being governed.”

However, that view could be a misrepresentation of the reality, if Americans have been becoming increasingly disillusioned with the condition of American ‘democracy’ and been starting to doubt the truthfulness of the entire American Establishment — President, Congress, newsmedia, etc. Gallup’s own data have consistently been showing this disenchantment with America’s Establishment, to have been actually occurring. 

On June 14th, I headlined “Gallup Finds Stunning Decline in Americans’ Respect for U.S. Government”, and reported that “The federal government” scored the very lowest of 15 named U.S. “Business and Industry Sector Ratings,” which covered not only “Business and Industry Sector” entities such as “Education,” “Banking,” “Accounting,” and “Farm and agriculture,” but also “The federal government,” which was scored at the very bottom, with a net approval-rating of around -30%. The entity at the far-opposite end, the very top, was the “Restaurant industry,” with a net +59% approval-rating. However, something was actually higher even than that: Gallup’s listing of “Business and Industry Sectors” excluded “Military” as being a category, even though it’s one of the biggest business and industry sectors of all. But the military was, in fact, extremely popular. If Gallup was excluding that category under the presumption that Americans would think of that sector as being subsumed within “The federal government” (the lowest-rated “sector” of all) which paid the bills for that entire military sector, then Gallup was woefully wrong, as even Gallup actually knew. On July 27th, Gallup reported: “Americans have given the military the highest confidence rating of any institution in American society for nearly two decades.” “The military” scored actually higher than any other of the listed 17 “institutions” — and here all of them were, in the order that Gallup presents them: 

“Confidence in Institutions”:

The church or organized religion, 41%

The Supreme Court, 40%

Congress 12%

Organized labor, 28%

Big business, 21%

The public schools, 36%

Newspapers, 27%

The military, 72%

The presidency, 32%

The medical system, 37%

Banks, 32%

Television news, 24%

The police, 57%

The criminal justice system, 27%

Small business, 70%

News on the internet [such as you’re now reading], 16%

Health Maintenance Organizations or HMOs, 19%

Clearly, the 72% score for “The military” dwarfs everything except the 70% score for “Small business.” (Presumably, the American public considered “Restaurant industry” to be a part of that category.)

A few months earlier, on April 26th, I had headlined “POLL: Americans Support Military-Industrial Complex Above All Else”, and reported that:

A new Morning Consult/POLITICO survey, published on 26 April, indicates that most American voters support the military-industrial complex more than they support any other recipient of U.S. federal government spending. The military-industrial complex includes almost all federal contractors, the top ten of which, in the ranking of the “Top 100 Contractors of the U.S. federal government”, are all military suppliers: 1: Lockheed Martin. 2: Boeing. 3: General Dynamics. 4: Raytheon. 5: Northrop Grumman. 6: McKesson. 7: United Technologies. 8: L-3. 9: Bechtel. 10: BAE. Those ten firms would be the likeliest main beneficiaries from today’s America’s extremely pro-military-industrial-complex public, which is clearly revealed in this poll.

2,032 American voters were asked in the poll a list of objectives that might be so important as to justify “the government must shut down.” Only one single objective was close to being supported by an absolute majority of the respondents, so that the government’s going to shut-down would, in those respondents’ view, be justified for Congress to do in order to achieve that given objective, which was stated as: “Increase funding for defense and homeland security.”

So, Americans respect America’s weapons-producers above any other “Sector” or “Institution.” Americans are, quite evidently, in love with all those recipients of federal money who are in the killing-and-being-killed “Sector” or “Institution,” but despise “The federal government” itself (which pays for them). It’s as if “The military” were viewed as being not at all a part of “The federal government.” Obviously, there’s a whole lot of lying going on, and it’s VERY effective. What should be at the very bottom, is instead at the very top.

I headlined, 16 February 2016, “How Corruption Cripples America’s Military”, and documented that the U.S. military is the world’s most wasteful (corrupt — actually extremely corrupt). But, of course, Americans clearly don’t know this. They think the opposite. The ‘news’media don’t tell them nearly as much about the military’s corruption as about the waving flags and military honors. However, William J. Astore, a non-staff contributing writer at the Democratic Party’s The Nation, headlined on 16 December 2016, “Trump’s Cabinet Is a Coup Waiting to Happen”, and he explained how, in the U.S. military, competency does not determine a general’s rise to the top ranks, but corruption does, and Astore gave as examples, the Republican Trump’s appointees such as James Mattis and John Kelly, and said:

Americans, who strongly admire their military, like to think that its most senior leaders rise on merit. This is not, however, the way the military promotion system actually works. Officers who reach the rank of general have usually been identified and sponsored at a young age, often when they are still company-grade officers in their mid-twenties. They are, in a word, groomed. Their careers are carefully “curated.” 

And, then, they retire to become board members at firms such as Lockheed Martin, whose products they had so successfully marketed while they had been in uniform.

So, this is what happens in a country where marketing has become more important than what’s marketed. It’s called soft fascism, and maybe is producing ultimately a soft coup in America.

This is a natural outcome for a country that has actually been a dictatorship since at least 1981. It’s simply becoming a bit more of that. But the American people aren’t being informed of it — they know that something’s wrong (as is clearly shown by those extremely low approval-ratings for “The federal government”), but the only ‘explanations’ they know for it are ‘illegal immigrants’, or ‘the Jews’, or ‘the Blacks’, or ‘the liberals’, or ‘the conservatives’, or  — maybe (if the military-industrial complex will have its way to the very end) — ‘the Russians’, or ‘Iran’. What’s most important for Americans to know (things such as this) is unfortunately also what’s most important for America’s ‘news’media to hide. Thus, the American people are sleepwalking into catastrophe. And we’ve been doing it for decades now. We’re going farther and farther down, and wondering “Are we going down to the top of an abyss?” Is that what’s at the end of this? Or: will we (somehow) wake up in time to prevent it from happening?

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation where the featured image was sourced.

Trump’s speech at the UN this morning is one of the best speeches I have heard aimed at an ignorant uninformed audience, essentially his Make America Great Again (MAGA) followers, and his political state handlers. Staying on script from the teleprompters, it was obvious that while many of these ideas were his, most of the writing, indeed probably all of it, was done by someone else.  

The platitudes and homilies about peace, security, and sovereignty were many, supporting his idea that MAGA includes the whole world supporting and abiding by U.S. dictation. The information provided went far beyond homilies to being outright lies, large areas of historical amnesia – especially for Iran and North Korea – replete with double standards, and not so subtle bombast and hubris.  

Introduction

The speech began with comments about how well the U.S. was doing. Trump noted that the stock market was at record highs. He did not mention that this was because of the Fed’s zero interest policy, the essentially free money corporations could borrow to buy back their own stock and artificially boost the market; nor did he mention all the interventions the Fed and corporations use to control stock and commodities prices.

He followed by bragging about the great growth in employment, without noting that most of the new jobs are part-time, on call, and generally low paid service jobs (really, how many bartenders can one country have?). The employment statistics are manipulated through the artful use of a ‘birth-death’ model (with its assumption of more businesses being created, and thus more employment, than are going out of business) and the use of ‘seasonal adjustments’ (from which very small tweaks can produce large shifts in numbers). Ironically in his closing statements of trade, he argued that the U.S. has lost large numbers of factories and workers to other countries due to the unfair trade arrangements (how many bartenders again?).

The introduction continued with wonderful platitudinous lies about the beneficence of the U.S. way of life, such that “we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone”, and letting us “shine as an example for everyone to watch.” He repeated it very shortly afterwards, saying the U.S. “did not attempt to impose our way of life on others,” as if repetition makes it true – although it does become reality within the big lie technique of propaganda. In short, Trump has denied centuries of U.S. military/economic adventurism that imposed – well perhaps not exactly their way of life – their will, greed, avarice, and power on other people. 

“Small group of rogue regimes…”

Trump then transitioned into his main topics, the “small group of rogue regimes” who did not abide by the ‘rule of law’ and sovereign independence. It could be asked whose rule of law – U.S. military law or international humanitarian law, or the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions on occupied territories and prisoners of war? And of course it would never occur to him that these rogue states are the ones that generally have suffered highly due to U.S. adventurism into their internal sovereign affairs.  

North Korea

North Korea was up first, the “depraved nation” that “imperils the world with nuclear destruction.” So why not the depraved nations such as the U.S. that has actually used nuclear weapons; or Israel that continually reminds friends and neighbours that it has its ‘doomsday option’; or Pakistan and India who remain outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which requires nations to find means to reduce their arsenals. No, the real nuclear threat grows from the dimly lit insides of Trump’s mind, accompanied by the still existing neocon desire for a nuclear first strike – perhaps trying to use North Korea as an example of what it can do.

Unfortunately, this is a case of enormous historical amnesia. North and South Korea had regular skirmishes against each other before the actual war. South Korea was a U.S. puppet dictatorship that killed many of its own citizens and has been reported quite authoritatively to have actually attacked and captured a North Korean town before the North retaliated en masse. Eventually, with the war stalemated, the threats of nuclear bomb use eliminated, the U.S. air force destroyed all infrastructure in the North, including all components of civilian support, killing an estimated one third of the population. And you wonder why they want nuclear weapons? And you forget what happened to Hussein and Gaddafi after they gave up their nuclear ambitions?

Iran

Next came “another reckless regime”, Iran, “an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos.” My, my, Trump cannot seem to remember either U.S. history or the history of Iran. It was the U.S. (along with Britain) that overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh government of Iran in 1953 over – you guessed it – control of oil. It was the U.S. that imposed the Shah and his secret service torturers, the Savak, on the people, who unsurprisingly rebelled and began their religious revolution.

Essentially Trump blamed Iran for all the wars, terrorists, and political chaos in the Middle East. More irony, as he then goes on to talk about his speech to Saudi Arabia in which he says the group agreed to “confront terrorism and confront the Islamic extremism that inspires them….to expose and hold responsible those countries who support and finance terror groups….” One can hear the Saudis quaking in their slippers at this line, as they silently go about their financing and arming of terror both for and against the will of the U.S., while maintaining the petrodollar as the world’s reserve currency in support of the truly greatest terror country in the world. 

Trump also denounces the recent Iranian nuclear deal, saying he “cannot abide by an agreement” that could lead to a nuclear weapon and that it is “an embarrassment to the United States.” Well, no, Trump is the true embarrassment – or should be – as the other co-signatories to the agreement have so far stood by it.

Syria and segues

Of course Syria could not be left off the table, after a brief sojourn through Afghanistan (“new rules of engagement”). Trump brags that the U.S. accomplished more in eight months than in the previous three years, and thanked the UN for their assistance in liberated areas. Really? Has Trump taken out Russian citizenship? The UN is not in Syria, and it is Russian leadership that has liberated most of Syria from U.S./Saudi/Qatari supported terrorists.

This segment segues into the problem of refugees and thus, through implication, with Mexico. Arguing that the U.S. is a “compassionate nation” he indicates that the country that loses people as immigrès is worse off because those are the people who could change the defects of the country they are leaving….? But what if – what if those defects are caused by unfair trade agreements (Mexico was overwhelmed with U.S. subsidized corn that pushed many farmers off their lands into the hands of corporate landlords in the Maquiladora) and the predatory practices of businesses within the U.S.?

This segues again into another topic the UN itself with part of the argument being that “some governments with egregious [pretty big word there, Donald] human rights records sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council.” Were you perhaps referring to Saudi Arabia, the titular head of the UNHRC, you know, the country that won’t let women drive or vote or dress how they want – and supports al-Qaeda and ISIS and attacked the sovereignty of Yemen and Qatar and suppresses dissent domestically and withs its neighbour Bahrain? Yeah, those egregious guys.

Socialism is evil

Following this came his attacks on Cuba and Venezuela with his own egregious statement [yeah, pretty big word eh, Donald?] that the worst countries in the world are those where “Socialism has been faithfully implemented.” Wow, this statement involves ignorance of current affairs, of global and U.S. history – anything in short that has to do with any and all economic/military practices of the past two centuries.

So the Scandinavian countries are failures? Well, perhaps they didn’t implement socialism fully, that’s their problem. And Cuba a failure? I would argue that in spite of U.S. sanctions and embargos that Cuba has done quite well considering, with Cuban life expectancy rising, and the U.S.’ falling, Cuba has a higher literacy rate than the U.S., and their health services are free – not only domestically, but provided throughout – imagine this – hurricane battered islands of the Caribbean! 

Former President of Chile, Salvador Allende

Further, more globally, yes there have been failures within socialism. The Soviet Union is perhaps the biggest example, but they self-corrected. How’s China doing? Are they not competing with you for global economic supremacy? And what about Iran – oh yeah, you guys overthrew their social democratic government. And then Chile – oh yeah – you provided Pinochet with the power to overthrow the democratically elected Allende social government there. And Vietnam – well millions of tons of bombs later, along with chemical weapons – without forgetting the bombings in Laos and Cambodia and you almost defeated communism there. The list goes on, the reader’s best reference on this should be the writings of William Blum.  

But I forgot Venezuela. Another oil country. Another country that has seen U.S. fomented attempts at government overthrow. Another country that has had large corporate oil interests that were taken over by the state. Another country that has had sanctions placed on it. And by gosh, socialism is the reason they are failing….?

Trump claims all of Latin America as good economic partners – perhaps that is because all countries of South and Central America have at one time or another – Honduras under Hillary Clinton’s watch most recently, 2009 – undergone covert or overt U.S. intervention to bring their governments into line with U.S. corporate interests – thus good economic partners, with a distinct lack of sovereign integrity.  

Finale

What was truly significant during this anti-socialist tirade was the reaction of the audience when he announced that the implementation of socialism was the problem in all these failed countries. There was an immediate and distinct shuffle and commotion with only a few scattered bits of applause (probably from Macron, Trudeau, Merkel, always by the U.S. in spirit). Throughout the speech, the cameras also focused in on the leaders being taken to task, and all had the same disgusted, steadfast, steely look of someone who has to listen to an idiot ramble on with the usual imperial rhetoric and hubris. Well, except for Netanyahu, who was seen nodding in agreement to Trump’s rhetoric.  

The speech ended with more of that hubris and rhetoric, repetition of the platitudes and bombast from the introduction – another good sign Trump did not actually write the speech, who would probably not know this paradigm of good speech/essay writing. Claiming that the U.S. is “among the greatest forces for good in the history of the world,” he eventually signed off, much to the relief of all but his ardent followers and the U.S. deep state.

We must not sleepwalk our way into nuclear war.” – UN Secretary General António Guterres, Sep 19, 2017

Having gone soft on the United Nations in his initial remarks, US President Donald Trump returned to stupendous form with the language of annihilation in his address to the 72^nd session of the General Assembly.  Jaws dropped; heads were covered by hands; arms were resolutely folded.  It was exactly the sort of “hate speech,” snorted Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, that belonged to the medieval age, “unworthy of reply.”[1]

In one fundamental sense, Trump’s spiky language resembled that of a previous US president, one whose simplicity remained innocent to the deep greyness of international politics. George W. Bush, whose childish rendering of the world into friends and those of the “axis of evil”, would have found little to disagree with.

“Authority and authoritarian powers seek to collapse the values, the systems, and alliances that prevented conflict and titled the world toward freedom since World War II.”[2] 

Trump’s tone of menace proved particularly apocalyptic, painting a truly hideous world for member states.  “International criminal networks traffic rugs, weapons, people; force dislocation and mass migration; threaten our borders; and new forms of aggression exploit technology to menace our citizens.”

Nothing is ever to scale in such Trumpian performances. North Korea’s “depraved regime” had killed millions by means of starvation, with millions more tortured, and killed (presumably by other means), and oppressed.  Pyongyang was responsible for the looming spectre of mass death, its “reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles” threatening the globe “with unthinkable loss of human life.”

The next stage of the Korean gamble shows the public front of delusion and self-denial. Trump retains the cobwebbed view a growing number of US strategists disagree with: that denuclearisation at the moment is pure fantasy. Take it off the table, as the Kim Jong-un regime will never have a bar of it.

Not so Trump:

“No nation on earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles.”

Indeed, Trump felt that “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.” The noble, restrained United States, with its “great strength and patience” would, if forced to defend itself or its allies, “totally destroy North Korea.” Such suitable restraint.

Iran also reserved a special spot in the Trump show of rancour.

“It is time for the entire world to join us in demanding that Iran’s government end its pursuit of death and destruction.”

Iran, supporter of terror, enemy of peaceful Israel, an impoverished rogue state which should never have received international blessing in “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”

Without any glimmer of contradiction, Trump noted a visit to that great standard bearer of peace and moderation, Saudi Arabia, where he was “honoured to address the leaders of more than 50 Arab and Muslim nations.” The theme? Combating terrorism and Islamist extremism. No better place, perhaps, than Riyadh to address these niggling points.

Then came another regime to target with an expansive tongue lashing:

“The socialist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro has inflicted terrible pain and suffering on the good people of [Venezuela].”

Across the country were instances of starvation, democratic corrosion, an “unacceptable” situation that demanded intervention, military, if necessary.

Trump’s address ticked the boxes of a very distinct nomenclature, the sort alien to the diplomatic corps and dogmatists of the liberal market credo. Swedish foreign minister Margo Wallström found his performance barely believable.

“It was the wrong speech, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience.”

In other respects, Trump foisted upon his UN audience a brand thinning with each speech and press release: the America First label, the art of the necessary deal centred on a responsibility for citizens.

“For too long, the American people were told that mammoth multinational trade deals, unaccountable international tribunals, and powerful global bureaucracies were the best way to promote their success.”

Trump preferred the necessary deal, America First as a warming vision of cosy affluence, a form of nostalgia in action, an effort to restore those vanished jobs running into the millions and confront those who “gamed the system and broke the rules.” In so doing, the middle class received a historical caning, forgotten in a bout of mass amnesia.  Never again, he intoned, would they be forgotten.

It was a speech insistent on the supremacy of sovereignty while also praising the UN as a forum where disputes and challenges could be resolved.

“If we are to embrace the opportunities of the future and overcome the present dangers together, there can be no substitute for strong, sovereign, and independent nations”. 

This is Trump pure and simple, unable to reconcile the dictates of stomping sovereign will with the notion of calm collective action, thereby undermining both. 

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

Notes

This month, the Robert Lehman Wing of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is hosting the work of Mexican baroque artist, Cristóbal Villalpando (1649 –1714). The highlight of the show is Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus (1683), a staggering 28-foot tall altarpiece that until now has never left its home in Puebla Cathedral.

Two distinct scenes are unfolding within a landscape that includes at once the wilderness of Exodus, and the Holy Mounts of Calvary and Tabor. It is of such scale and scope that one is swept away by the sheer grandeur of it.

The painter has arranged the scenes vertically and hierarchically – the bottom half concerns an episode from Chapter 21 in the Book of Numbers: when “the people spoke against God and against Moses,” questioning why they were brought out of Egypt “to die in the wilderness.” God immediately answers their impatience and ingratitude by sending “seraph serpents against the people” – deadly vipers that ‘consume man by the poison of their fangs.’ For Villalpando, these are a terrifying brood of winged monsters, suggested perhaps by the flying serpents mentioned in Isaiah (14:29).

Moses intercedes on behalf of the Israelites: he prays for the people to be forgiven and ‘one from whom forgiveness is asked… should not be so cruel as not to forgive’ (Rashi). God tells Moses to “make a seraph figure and mount it on a standard. If anyone who is bitten looks at it, he shall recover.” Moses fashions a serpent of brass and displays it as an ensign for the people.

Villalpando shows us Moses, luminescent horns beaming from his head, standing beside the pole around which is coiled a mighty winged serpent. The people gather round to gaze up towards it and be healed. Aaron, Moses’ brother, stands to the right of the pole wearing the elaborately embroidered garb of the high priest, ‘vested for beauty and for glory’, atop his head a horned mitre; at his feet are the wretched victims of God’s wrath, contorted bodies and bulging eyes.

Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus (Source: The Met)

In the upper half we are presented with the Transfiguration of Jesus as described in the Synoptic Gospels: three apostles gaze up at the glorified body of Jesus, overwhelmed by his divine incandescence. Beside Christ are Moses and Elijah, presumably speaking of Jesus’ imminent crucifixion – reinforced by the imposing cross perched on the edge of a gloomy promontory, Calvary.

Villalpando brings together these two episodes, from the Old and New Testaments respectively, with a quote from the Gospel of John: “And as Moses lift up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lift up, that none that believeth in him perish” (3:14). The brazen serpent was not only a remedy for the wounded Israelites; it was later viewed as anticipating the Messiah, a sign of salvation.

Villalpando was not attempting simply to visually depict the brazen serpent – in a sense his aim was a far more ambitious one: to create or recreate as it were a brazen serpent, a work of art that is meant to heal the tortured, forsaken and forgotten. The brazen serpent healed the victims of the venomous snakes by their looking on it. Whatever power it had to heal was transmitted, in a sense, visually. This fact was obviously not lost on a painter as astute as Villalpando. Both the transfiguration and the brazen serpent ‘privilege vision as a means of comprehending the divine.’ His painting is among other things about the power of the artist to communicate the divine through painting.

Ten other works are part of the exhibit – including an extraordinary oil on copper depicting The Deluge (1689): not unlike Moses and the Brazen serpent, Noah’s building of the ark according to God’s instructions is, for Villalpando, a biblical precedent for artistic creation. The sky is streaked with lightening – scenes of mayhem and death crowd the picture’s foreground. The sight of rooftops peaking up above rising floodwaters cannot but resonate with us in the aftermath of storms like Hurricane Harvey that recently battered Texas.

The ark is presented as inaccessibly distant, but centrally fixed; its bronze hue is strikingly visible against the leaden sky and foamy sea. Size and pictorial distance do not seem to be realistically correlated in the Deluge: it is as if the painter has chosen to magnify certain scenes so as to emphasize and individualize the personal catastrophes that are unfolding amidst the general devastation.

The Brazen Serpent and Transfiguration is reason enough to make the pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum. Villalpando’s first true masterpiece is a visual feast: a massive tour de force. Indeed, the artist accomplished something extraordinary with this painting: a breathtaking and powerfully dramatic vision of pain and anguish, hope and healing; of redemption and transformation, a depiction of the victory of love and forgiveness over fear and despair, and a most welcome reprieve at this moment in time.

Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

For half of the past two decades Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has served as prime minister of Israel. Whatever his ultimate fate (given the ongoing criminal investigations he is currently facing), it is clear that he has had a profound impact on Israel, the Palestinians, and the entire region.

There are those who have doubted that Netanyahu had any core beliefs, other than the desire to retain power. But even with his maneuvering and his penchant for prevarication, there are, in fact, core beliefs that have directed his career. 

Shortly after his first election as Prime Minister, and before his maiden address to the US Congress, a team of Reagan-era neoconservatives (many of whom ended up in senior positions in the George W. Bush Administration) wrote a paper for Netanyahu to guide his remarks before Congress and to US audiences. The paper, echoing many themes from Netanyahu’s own writings, was called “A Clean Break.” Since he was already aligned with these views, he repeated the paper’s themes and policy proposals during his many public appearances in Washington. “A Clean Break” can be seen as Netanyahu’s road map to relations with the US and the Middle East region.

The central themes of the paper were:

• ending the Oslo process and rejecting “land for peace” formula; reasserting Israel’s claim to the “land of Israel”; weakening the ability of the Palestinian Authority to govern; and poisoning the PA’s image in the US to damage its standing,
• securing Israel’s northern border, by confronting Iran, promoting internal conflict in Lebanon, and destabilizing Syria,
• strengthening ties with US Republicans, including proposing ending US economic aid in favor of military aid and buying into the Reagan-era idea of a “missile defense” system—a concept favored by the GOP, and
• confronting Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Over the past two decades, Netanyahu and his US allies, whether in or out of office, pursued these same objectives. To a great extent, they have succeeded.

This unholy alliance between US neoconservatives and Netanyahu was no accident. They had long been partners. Back in the late 1970’s, Netanyahu convened many of these same thinkers to Israel for a summit at the Jonathan Institute—an event which some have called the birth of the American neoconservative movement. Back then, their focus was hostility to the Soviet Union and the “national liberation movements” alleged to be Soviet pawns. The ideology they spawned was decidedly pro-Israel and anti-Arab, and extremely hostile to all things Palestinian.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Oslo peace process, and the election of Bill Clinton, the focus of both the neocons (as they were called) and Netanyahu shifted. Seeing US Republicans as his allies in the effort to sabotage the peace process, Netanyahu’s Likud party set up a shop to provide talking points to GOP members of Congress. Their goal was to make Republicans partners in their fight with the Clinton administration/Labor Party endorsed peace process. With the GOP take-over of Congress in 1995, followed by Netanyahu’s election in 1996, the stage was set to kill the Oslo process. It was an unholy alliance of Likud and the GOP squared off against Labor and the Clinton Administration.

The goals laid out in “A Clean Break” were not so much prophetic as they were a road map in which the neocons and Netanyahu laid out their plans for a new US-Israel partnership, a destabilized Arab World, and an end to Palestinian aspirations for independence.

Whenever Netanyahu met with resistance from Clinton, he turned to the Republican-led Congress for support. He was dogged in his efforts to sabotage peace and largely succeeded. Even the one agreement Clinton finally forced him to sign with Arafat only served to lock the Palestinians into an untenable situation by consolidating Israeli control over much of the West Bank and their nightmarish presence in the heart of Hebron.

While the “break” envisioned in “A Clean Break’ was not as “clean” as the one he may have sought, the impact of Netanyahu’s first term created conditions that ultimately led to his hoped for end of the peace process.

After his return to office in 2009, he was forced to endure eight years of a Democratic administration, led by Barack Obama. Once again, he turned to his relations with a Republican-led Congress to resist pressures to make peace.

With the election of Donald Trump coupled with Republican control of Congress, Netanyahu feels more comfortable. His allies in Congress are vigorously pushing his agenda. There are bills designed to: further punish and discredit the already weakened PA; deny funding to UNWRA; outlaw the BDS movement; and recognize, through clever slight of hand language, Israel’s control over the “territories.” The Trump Administration, which began its tenure, proposing to deliver “a great deal” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reportedly lowered its ambitions to a proposal mirroring a long-discredited 40-year-old Likud concept of “limited Palestinian autonomy” denying Palestinians full sovereignty and any rights in Jerusalem, while releasing large areas of the West Bank to Israeli expansion.

Netanyahu, the Likud, and their neoconservative allies can rightly claim that the vision they projected for the Middle East in “A Clean Break” is being realized. But, in reality, what they have created is an unsustainable mess that includes: a weakened and dependent PA that was denied the ability to govern causing it to lose legitimacy; a fractured Palestinian polity, with Hamas in control of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza; an Iraq in shambles and in its wake, an empowered and emboldened Iran and a metastasized terrorist threat that now challenges many countries; and a hardened, though divided Israeli electorate from which it is unlikely to see any new peace-oriented leadership emerging.

So this is the “House that Bibi Built.” It is his legacy. While Israel proceeds along its merry way, each day building more settlements, demolishing more Palestinian homes, dishing out more hardships to an embittered captive people, far from being the secure and stable dream Netanyahu envisioned, it is seething cauldron waiting for the next explosion.

James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute. 

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons.

China’s continuing shift to green sources of electric power generation is confirmed in the latest data published by the National Energy Administration (NEA) and the China Electricity Council (CEC). New capacity additions in the first half of 2017 have seen the proportion of capacity added sourced from water, wind and sun (WWS) reaching 70%, with thermal capacity added being reduced to 28% and nuclear to just 2%. Overall, the China electric power system has swung from one that was dependent on WWS sources for just 20% in 2007 to 35% in 2017 (1H) – an astonishing 15% swing in just a decade. Meanwhile actual electric energy generated in 1H 2017 remains heavily dependent on thermal sources to the extent of 75%, with WWS accounting for 21% and nuclear for 4%. The system is greening at the margin (in terms of new additions) but it still remains a large fossil-fuelled system.

China’s energy-related agencies, the National Energy Administration (NEA) and the China Electricity Council (CEC), have released data on the operation of China’s electric power system in the first half of 2017 (1H 2017), noting that renewable sources (water, wind and sun) accounted for 69.8% of new capacity added, with thermal sources (mainly coal) accounting for 28%, and nuclear just 2% (Fig. 1). These results reveal a marked shift towards green sources of electric power, when compared with the 2016 data which recorded that renewable sources (WWS) added 51.9% of new capacity, while thermal accounted for 42.9% and nuclear for 5.2%. The first half results for 2017 thus reveal that the electric power system is continuing its green shift, with WWS sources increasing their influence and thermal sources declining in proportion. The trends therefore continue those analyzed previously by Dr Hao Tan and myself – see here. The 2017 data also reveal that the absolute numbers of new capacity additions are down on 2016, with total capacity added in 1H 2017 standing at just 50.6 GW, compared with 124.6 GW capacity additions for the whole of 2016. This is consistent with a general cutback in investment levels across the economy in China in 2017. WWS sources accounted for 35.3 GW in 1H 2017 – or nearly 6 billion watts per month.

Figure 1. New electric capacity added in 1H 2017

Meanwhile the data for investments made in 2017 (1H) released by CEC reveal a continuing preponderance of investment in WWS-sourced generating plant vs thermal sourced plant. New investments made in power plants in 1H 2017 amounted to RMB 104.6 billion (US$ 15.9 million) — with RMB 55 billion (52.6%) of investment in new generating plant being sourced from WWS compared with only RMB 31.3 billion (29.9%) for thermal sources. The data also reveal that RMB 18.3 billion (17.5%) of investment in new power generation was directed to nuclear power systems

By contrast with the capacity additions in 2017 1H, the actual electrical energy generated over the first half of the year stands at just under 3000 TWh (which is comparable with the generated amount in the full year 2016 when compared over the same time scale), with WWS sources accounting for 21%, nuclear for 4% and thermal for 75%. This may be contrasted with the 2016 full-year results, which were that thermal accounted for 71.6%, WWS sources for 24.8% and nuclear for 3.6%. Thus in terms of electricity generated, the year 2017 has so far seen an increase in the proportion of thermal power generated and a corresponding decrease in WWS power, with nuclear marginally increasing its proportional contribution. This result reflects the continuing strength of fossil fuels in the total electric power system, and is also likely to be the effect of continuing curtailment of renewable sources (i.e. generating power but not contributing to the grid) – as discussed in the final section below. The system is greening at the margin (in terms of new additions) but it still remains a large fossil-fuelled system.

The situation at the close of the 1H 2017 for the three aspects of the electric power system, encompassing capacity additions, electric energy generated and new investments, over the period of the first half of the 13^th Five Year Plan (2015 – 2017 (1H)), with data for 2010 included as comparison, is shown in Table 1.¹

Table 1. China’s electric power system, 2010, 2015-2017 (1H)

When we turn to examine new capacity additions and investments in WWS sources in 2017 (1H) we see that the green shift continues to operate at a level that far exceeds what is found elsewhere in the world.

Solar

The 23.6 GW new solar PV power capacity added in 2017 (1H) is another world record for China, taking the cumulative installed capacity to 101 GW by end of June 2017 (and to 112.3 GW by July 2017– which is already above the (conservative) target of 105 GW set for 2020 by the ND&RC in its 13^th FYP for energy). Some observers like the AECEA see China’s solar PV installations as likely to top 40 GW in 2017 for the full year – see here. The AECEA projects the 2020 cumulative total for China as likely to reach 230 GW, which would dominate the global picture. Now the NEA in China in August has acted to raise the target for solar PV power in China by 2020, setting a new target of 213 GW – doubling the previous target total, which is already five times the current installed capacity in the US – see here. This means that the AECEA projected target for 2020 is in line with official Chinese targets. Greenpeace also notes that China plans by 2020 to have installed no less than 54.5 GW of large-scale solar projects, encompassing Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), solar PV and combinations of solar and food production systems – see here. Greenpeace capture the situation with solar PV as shown in Fig. 2.

Figure 2. China solar PV capacity growth and 2020 targets

Wind

The 6.0 GW new capacity added for wind in China for 2017 (1H) – or 1 GW per month (equivalent to 400 new turbines built and erected, rated at 2.5 MW each). This is a 4.7% increase on the pro rata figure for 2016, which saw wind capacity additions reaching 17.3 GW, and the cumulative total reaching 154.6 GW, easily the largest in the world. According to Greenpeace, China is on track to install 110 GW onshore wind capacity by 2020 – raising cumulative wind capacity to 259 GW, well in excess of the 210 GW target set for the end of the 13^th FYP period in 2020. The situation for wind power capacity and generation is depicted in Fig. 3.

Figure 3. Wind power China: Capacity additions and electricity generated

The total solar and wind capacity would exceed 400GW by 2020, according to the latest NEA plan, as shown in Fig. 4.

Figure 4. Solar and wind capacity in China’s 13^th FYP.

Hydro

Meanwhile hydro continues to expand at a moderate rate in China, with the 5.6 GW capacity added in 2017 (1H) representing a 28% increase on the pro rata figure for 2016 of 4.37 GW new capacity additions. The cumulative total for hydro at the end of 2017 (1H) stood at 340 GW, meaning that China has already installed hydro to the target level for 2020. This must be close to the absolute limit for China, given that there is a natural limit to the widespread damming of rivers, nearly all of which are already fully dammed.

Competing sources of electric power: WWS versus Thermal

There is a major struggle now under way in China between the interests backing renewable sources (mainly hydro, wind and solar) and those continuing to support thermal sources for power generation (mainly coal but also gas and a very small amount of oil). China’s problem is to allow the renewable sources to grow while reducing the activities of the thermal power sector in a socially responsible way.

China’s total power system has moved in a steady green direction, with the proportion accounted for by WWS sources growing from just 20% in 2007 to 35% by 2017 (1H), as shown in Fig. 5. This 15% swing in favour of WWS sources in just a decade is a truly extraordinary shift in the largest electric power system in the world. At this rate, China’s electric power system will be expected to reach 50% green capacity (WWS) within another decade, by 2027, i.e. well before 2030. Carbon emissions will be expected to fall accordingly.

Figure 5 also includes the proportion of WWS anticipated by 2015 in the 12^th FYP – already exceeded in the 2015 results.

Figure 5. China: Trends in electric generating capacity, 1990-2017(1H)

During the first half of the 13^th FYP, running from 2015, 2016 and 2017 (1H) (Table 2), new capacity of 152.4 GW based on thermal sources was added as against 169.2 GW for renewable sources (hydro, wind and sun). So over this period new WWS capacity surpassed thermal sources by 11%. The advantage in favour of WWS sources was even greater when examining investment. In fact investment in thermal sources over the first half of the 13th FYP accounted for RMB 265 billion, as against RMB 450 billion for WWS, or WWS exceeding thermal investment by 70%. Over the same period of the first half of the 13^th FYP, WWS sources accounted for 55% of the new capacity added – making it clear that the trends revealed in Fig. 5 may be expected to continue. However in terms of actual electricity generated over the first half of the 13^th FYP, thermal sources amounted to 10,696 TWh, as opposed to 6,446 TWh for WWS sources – with renewable (WWS) accounting for just 32.2% of electric energy generated from thermal sources. This underlines the fact that China’s electric power system is still a large coal-fired system.

Table 2. Thermal vs WWS sources, 13^th FYP

Source: Based on data from the CEC

Negative influences

There are some negatives to set against all these positives. Apart from the continued burning of large volumes of coal, leaving China with the world’s leading greenhouse gas emissions, if only a fraction of US emissions in per capita terms, there is the issue of curtailment, or failure to connect wind and solar power farms to the grid with the result that China is presently generating unused electric energy. Greenpeace notes that in 2017 (1H) the national wind curtailment rate stood at 13.6%, and solar curtailment in five northwest provinces at 15.5%. Curtailment refers to power generated from renewable sources that is not fed into the grid, either because the grid cannot accept fluctuating sources of power or the grid operator refuses to accept the renewable power. The NEA acknowledges the problem, and has announced steps to deal with it. First, the NEA has ruled that provinces with serious wind and solar PV curtailment problems (such as the western provinces of Gansu, Xinjiang and Ningxia) may not install any more new capacity. This would have the effect of nudging these provinces to make better use of the capacity already installed. Second, the NEA identifies seven provinces (including Beijing and Shanghai) as being released from controls and becoming free to add as much solar capacity as they wish, subject only to the constraint that they must not make the curtailment problem any worse. See here.

Acknowledgment: I would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions made by Ms Carol Huang to this article. JM

John A. Mathews is Professor of Management, MGSM, Macquarie University, Australia, and formerly Eni Chair of Competitive Dynamics and Global Strategy at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. His research focuses on the competitive dynamics of international business, the evolution of technologies and their strategic management, and the rise of new high technology industries.

Note

¹ It is worth noting that different definitions of ‘clean energy’ can lead to varying estimates of China’s green shift. For example reports in the China press in July that China’s ‘clean energy’ generation in 1H 2017 reached 27.2% of total power generation are at variance with the estimates given here (see for example , ‘China’s clean energy generation accelerates in first half’, China Daily, 19 July 2017). The estimates cited here are based on CEC data and a characterization of ‘clean’ as meaning energy generated from WWS sources.

The eldest son of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself an unlikely poster boy for David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.

Last week these cheerleaders for Jew hatred described 27-year-old Yair Netanyahu as “awesome” and “a total bro” for posting a grossly anti-semitic image on social media.

It depicts an Illuminati-like figure and a reptilian creature controlling the world through money and dark arts. Alongside them are a cabal of conspirators, their faces altered to show Netanyahu’s main opponents. They include George Soros, a Holocaust survivor who has invested billions in pro-democracy movements, and Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister turned government critic.

This is not Yair’s first troubling outburst. Last month he emulated US President Donald Trump in decrying demonstrators who opposed a rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left a woman dead.

These might be dismissed as the immature rantings of a wayward son, had Yair not been groomed by his father as Israel’s “crown prince”. Netanyahu Jnr was supposedly behind an online media strategy that steered Netanyahu to electoral victory in 2015. He can be seen at his father’s side at meetings with world leaders.

The Israeli media were shocked not only by the post but Netanyahu’s determined refusal to criticise his son. An editorial in the Haaretz daily concluded that the prime minister’s silence signaled his “consent to the ongoing demonization of anyone who doesn’t get in line with the Israeli right”.

Yair’s choice of targets was revealing, particularly the image’s “Grand Jew” – George Soros.

In July, Netanyahu met his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban, an ultra-nationalist who has led a xenophobic campaign against immigrants. In a bid to crush opposition, the Orban government has vilified Soros, an American-Hungarian who promotes progressive causes. A billboard campaign against the billionaire unleashed a wave of anti-semitism across the country.

As leader of a Jewish state professing to be the world’s only refuge against anti-Semitism, Netanyahu ought to have rushed to Soros’s defence. Instead he echoed Orban’s incitement. Soros, he said, had “undermined” and “defamed” Israel too – by funding human rights groups opposed to the occupation.

Sympathy with the European and US far-right is not restricted to the Netanyahu camp. It is moving into the Israeli mainstream. Last week the Herzliya conference – an annual jamboree for Israel’s security establishment – invited Sebastian Gorka as a keynote speaker.

Gorka, another American-Hungarian and Trump’s former terrorism adviser, is a figurehead of the alt-right, a term for US white supremacist groups. Gorka told the conference that Israel and the US were “founding members of the Judeo-Christian civilization” and would defeat their “common enemies”.

Meanwhile, another US alt-right leader, Richard Spencer, appeared on Israeli TV last month to call himself a “white Zionist”.

The affinity between Netanyahu’s Israel and the west’s far-right is understandable. Both detest a human rights discourse they have yet to crush. Both mobilise their supporters with dog-whistle Islamophobia. Both prefer militarised, fear-based societies. And both share an obsession with Jew hatred.

Israel is so esteemed by white supremacists because it offers a double whammy of anti-semitism. For decades Israel has sought to persuade the west that it faces an endless war against Arab and Muslim “terror”; while Israel also declares itself the only true home for Jews.

For an alt-right bristling with hatred for all semites, Jews and Muslims alike, this is manna from heaven. It too wants an apocalyptic battle against Islam, and it too is happy to see the west cleared of Jews by herding them into the Middle East.

At first sight, that has created an ideological inconsistency on the Israeli right that Yair Netanyahu’s meme highlights.

The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly called on all Jews to come to Israel, claiming it as the only safe haven from an immutable global anti-semitism. And yet Netanyahu is also introducing a political test before he opens the door.

Jews supporting a boycott of Israel are already barred. Now liberal Jews and critics of the occupation like Soros are increasingly not welcome either. Israel is rapidly redefining the extent of the sanctuary it offers – for Jewish supremacists only.

The paradox may turn out to be more apparent than real, however. For Netanyahu may believe he has much to gain by abandoning liberal Jews to their fate, as the alt-right asserts its power in western capitals.

The “white Zionists” are committed to making life ever harder for minorities in the west, in a bid to be rid of them. Sooner or later, on Netanyahu’s logic, liberal Jews will face a reckoning. They will have to concede that Israel’s ultra-nationalists were right all along, and that Israel is their only sanctuary.

Guided by this cynical convergence of interests, Jewish and white supremacists are counting on a revival of anti-semitism that will benefit them both.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Since the 1928 Red Line Agreement between British and French and American oil majors to divide the oil riches of the post-World War I Middle East, petroleum or more precisely, control of petroleum has constituted the thin-red-line of modern geopolitics. During the Soviet time Russian oil exports were largely aimed at maximizing dollar hard currency income in any possible market. Today, with the ludicrous US and EU sanctions on Russia and the Washington-instigated wars in the Middle East, Russia is evolving a strategic new frame for its oil geopolitics.

Much has been said about how Russia under the Putin era has used its leading role as a natural gas supplier as a vital part of its geopolitical diplomacy. Nord Stream and soon Nord Stream II gas pipelines direct from Russia undersea, bypassing the political NATO minefields of Ukraine and of Poland, have the positive benefit of building an industry lobby in the EU. Especially in Germany, which would think twice about the more lunatic Russo-phobic provocations of Washington. Similarly Turkish Stream that gives South East Europe a secure prospect of Russian natural gas for industry and heating independent of Ukraine is positive both for the Balkans as for Russia. Now a new element is emerging in the strategy of Russian state-owned oil majors to develop a new geopolitical strategy using Russian oil and oil companies.

Matryoshka dolls, Qatar and Rosneft

On December 7, 2016 Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian state had sold a 19.5% share of Rosneft to a joint venture between Swiss commodity giant, Glencore and the Qatar Investment Authority for €10.2 billion. Russia retained more than 60% control by the sale. There was great mystery as to the ultimate details which were buried in what in Russian is called a matryoshka doll structure, referring to the famous Russian painted dolls which when opened, reveal a smaller doll and again, an even smaller doll and so on. It referred to the nested structure of offshore shell companies used in the Rosneft-Qatar/Glencore purchase.

Whatever the details of that December sale, which brought the Russian treasury badly needed funds amid a budget shortfall caused by the sharp decline in world oil prices, some ten months later, Russia and Rosneft have now negotiated with Qatar, Glencore and China’s CEFC China Energy Company Ltd., for CEFC to buy 14% of the 19.5% share of Rosneft.

Qatar clearly is reacting to Saudi-driven economic sanctions and the resulting cash drain on its economy by selling most of its share in Rosneft. The most significant aspect however is that Rosneft for the first time makes a share holding with a Chinese major oil company in the process. CEFC, a $34 billion annual income private Shanghai company with its subsidiaries is engaged in oil and gas agreements worth more than US$50 billion with companies in the Middle East and Central Asia. The synergies of the Rosneft-CEFC deal for the elaboration of the mammoth Eurasian Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) are obvious.

An analyst with Wood Mackenzie, Christian Boermel, commented on the significance:

“This deal intensifies the energy relationship between Russia and China. A direct stake in Rosneft will make CEFC China the main driver for the relationship of Rosneft with China, ahead of CNPC, Sinopec and Beijing Gas.”

With this deal Russian and Chinese state oil companies will cooperate on joint oil development around the world, a major cementing of a bilateral relationship that has emerged as a direct consequence of Washington stupidity in the past years, first with the 2007 ballistic missile defense stations in Poland and across the EU aimed at Russia, then the 2014 Ukraine coup d’etat by the CIA and US State Department, obviously intended to drive a wedge between Russia and the EU, a coup that has cost the EU economies an estimated $100 billion since 2014 according to a new UN report.

Like most Pentagon and neocon projects, the Ukraine coup boomeranged and turned Russia in a most significant way to an Eastern pivot towards cooperation with China and all Eurasia. Now with Russia’s Rosneft–the world’s largest publicly traded oil company–in a strategic partnership with China’s huge CEFC Energy, a significant new element is added to Russia’s potentials of energy geopolitics, as well those of China.

Russia with Turkey in Iran

In another highly significant geopolitical move, the Russian state oil company JSC Zarubezhneft announced in August that it has entered a triangular oil development agreement with the Turkish energy group, Unit International Ltd. and the Iranian Ghadir Investment Company in well drilling projects in Iran worth a reported $7 billion. The three companies will finance and develop energy projects, including development of Iran’s vast undeveloped oil resources.

Unit International earlier this year signed an agreement together with a South Korean engineering company to build five gas-fired power plants in Iran worth $4.2 billion having a generation capacity of 5,000 megawatts, making them Iran’s largest privately developed power plants. Iran is also the second largest gas supplier to Turkey after Russia. Clearly here at least the Sunni vs Shi’ite antagonisms take a back seat to pragmatic strategic energy cooperation, and that’s all to the good. Wars of religion never produce good as we see today.

The Turkish joint venture with the Russian state oil company in Iran comes at the same time Turkey announced that it has finalized purchase of the advanced Russian S-400 Triumf anti-aircraft system, said to be the world’s most advanced, over howls of protest from Washington.

Zarubezhneft is a Russian state oil company specialized in drilling projects outside Russia. They are currently active in Vietnam, Cuba, Republika Srpska, Jordan and elsewhere. The geopolitical dimension of those projects, and now the joint Russia-Turkey oil and gas development agreement in Iran, begins to suggest a geopolitical strategy. Joint energy development is serving to weave vital economic ties around Russia.

When all these developments are viewed superimposed on a map of Eurasia, it becomes clear that a new geopolitical relationship, what we might call an economic energy force field is drawing Turkey closer to Russia and to Iran, as well as China.

For its part, Qatar, a nominally Sunni country which earned the enmity of Prince and soon-to-be King, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, did so less for Qatar’s earlier support of the Muslim Brotherhood and more for its developing relations with not only Moscow, but also with Shi’ite Iran and with China. Qatar had been in secret negotiations with Iran for joint development of their shared Persian Gulf natural gas field.

Previously Qatar, along with the Saudis and even Turkey, financed the war against Bashar al Assad for Assad’s refusal to go with a Qatar gas pipeline via Syria to Europe. Assad instead joined with Iran and Iraq in an alternative Iran gas pipeline to Europe and the six-year-long terrorist war against Assad was launched.

At some point following Russia’s decision to aid Assad in late 2015, in a pragmatic turn that infuriated the Pentagon and Prince Salman, Qatar made a new decision along the lines “if you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.” Qatar entered secret talks with Iran over Syria and over a joint Qatar-Iran pipeline that would mutually develop the world’s largest known natural gas field they both share in the Persian Gulf—the South Pars/North Dome field, by far the world’s largest natural gas field according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The battle to control Qatar in a sense is the battle to dominate world natural gas markets, today almost as economically significant as oil to the future world economy.

In response to the Trump-Kushner inspired Saudi and UAE-led economic sanctions against Qatar last June, Qatar has stepped up its relations with Iran, with Russia and with China, while refusing the impossible Saudi-UAE demands. The Chinese state bank in Doha has transacted the dollar equivalent of over $86 billion worth of transactions in Chinese Yuan since the opening of the Doha branch of China’s Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2015, and has signed other agreements with China that encourage further economic cooperation.

Then on August 23, Qatar announced it was restoring full diplomatic relations with Iran, not exactly what Jared Kushner’s friends in Washington and in Tel Aviv wanted to see. Since the Saudi-led sanctions to isolate and starve Qatar into submission, Iran has provided Qatar with sea shipments of fresh food and allowed Qatar planes to cross its airspace.

Moreover, Qatar relations with Russia are developing. Qatar, Iran and Russia are the main lobbyists for the creation of the so-called “Gas OPEC”, which Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States vigorously oppose.

Add to this changing force field in the Gulf the fact that Erdogan’s Turkish government, previously a staunch ally of Saudi Arabia, condemned the Saudi actions against Qatar. Turkey sent food supplies to prevent embargo-related shortages in Qatar after June and passed legislation through parliament to deploy Turkish troops on Qatari soil.

A new geometry

Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Qatar. They are weaving deeper peaceful economic

ties, walking away in the case of Qatar and Turkey from their ill-conceived US-inspired war against Syria’s Bashar al Assad, developing long-term energy cooperation and defense ties. At the heart is Russia’s emerging new oil geopolitics.

The response to this all from the sinking Titanic that used to be known as the United States of America, of its military lobby and their Wall Street bankers who actually run Washington policy via their web of think-tanks, is infantile: war, destabilizations, color revolutions, sanctions as a form of economic war, demonization, lies. That’s all rather stupid and ultimately boring.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Featured image is from the author.

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Starve Them to Death: Wall Street Journal’s Solution to North Korea

By Mike Whitney, September 19, 2017

In an article titled “Options for Removing Kim Jong Un” the WSJ’s editorial board suggests that the US use “all of its tools to topple the North Korean regime” including, of course,  vital food imports which keep women and children from facing an agonizing death by starvation.

Donald Trump at the UN

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 19, 2017

Prior to heading to the White House, Trump mined the quarries of American resentment, sharpening the America First line which entailed putting the UN last. The organisation, he asserted, was no “friend of democracy”, inimical to freedom, and even unfriendly to the United States.

Dangerous Words of Escalation: Trump Threatens to Abandon Iran’s Nuclear Deal as Israeli Officials Call for Action Against Iran

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, September 19, 2017

As the Western media’s attention has been focused on the North Korea crisis (which is also another very serious matter), another development has been taking place in Tel Aviv, as calls for action by Israeli officials against Iran’s Nuclear Program although it’s not a new development (it’s been going on for many years). Channel 2 on Israeli TV reported that Mossad chief Yossi Cohen is calling on the Israeli government to take action against the Iranian government.

US Opens First Permanent Military Base in Israel as Tensions with Iran Rise

By RT News, September 19, 2017

Even though the US has routinely deployed forces to Israel, it is only now opening an official permanent military base in the country. The move, largely seen as symbolic, is meant to send a strong message to Israel’s enemies.

Trump Again Threatens Venezuela

By Stephen Lendman, September 19, 2017

He threatened unspecified actions he intends, earlier threatening “a possible military option.” He disgracefully accused President Nicolas Maduro of “def(ing) his own people,” calling his leadership “disastrous,” suggesting further hostile US actions coming.

«A partire da questa settimana si indica il prezzo medio del petrolio in yuan cinesi»: lo ha annunciato il 15 settembre il Ministero venezuelano del petrolio.

Per la prima volta il prezzo di vendita del petrolio venezuelano non è più indicato in dollari. È la risposta di Caracas alle sanzioni emanate dall’amministrazione Trump il 25 agosto, più dure di quelle attuate nel 2014 dall’amministrazione Obama: esse impediscono al Venezuela di incassare i dollari ricavati dalla vendita di petrolio agli Stati uniti, oltre un milione di barili al giorno, dollari finora utilizzati per importare beni di consumo come prodotti alimentari e medicinali. Le sanzioni impediscono anche la compravendita di titoli emessi dalla Pdvsa, la compagnia petrolifera statale venezuelana.

Washington mira a un duplice obiettivo: accrescere in Venezuela la penuria di beni di prima necessità e quindi il malcontento popolare, su cui fa leva l’opposizione interna (foraggiata e sostenuta dagli Usa) per abbattere il governo Maduro; mandare lo Stato venezuelano in default, ossia in fallimento, impedendogli di pagare le rate del debito estero, ossia far fallire lo Stato con le maggiori riserve petrolifere del mondo, quasi dieci volte quelle statunitensi.

Caracas cerca di sottrarsi alla stretta soffocante delle sanzioni, quotando il prezzo di vendita del petrolio non più in dollari Usa ma in yuan cinesi. Lo yuan è entrato un anno fa nel paniere delle valute di riserva del Fondo monetario internazionale (insieme a dollaro, euro, yen e sterlina) e Pechino sta per lanciare contratti futures di compravendita del petrolio in yuan, convertibili in oro. «Se il nuovo future prendesse piede, erodendo anche solo in parte lo strapotere dei petrodollari, sarebbe un colpo clamoroso per l’economia americana», commenta il Sole 24 Ore.

Ad essere messo in discussione da Russia, Cina e altri paesi non è solo lo strapotere del petrodollaro (valuta di riserva ricavata dalla vendita di petrolio), ma l’egemonia stessa del dollaro. Il suo valore è determinato non dalla reale capacità economica statunitense, ma dal fatto che esso costituisce quasi i due terzi delle riserve valutarie mondiali e la moneta con cui si stabilisce il prezzo del petrolio, dell’oro e in genere delle merci. Ciò permette alla Federal Reserve, la Banca centrale (che è una banca privata), di stampare migliaia di miliardi di dollari con cui viene finanziato il colossale debito pubblico Usa – circa 23 mila miliardi di dollari – attraverso l’acquisto di obbligazioni e altri titoli emessi dal Tesoro.

In tale quadro, la decisione venezuelana di sganciare il prezzo del petrolio dal dollaro provoca una scossa sismica che, dall’epicentro sudamericano, fa tremare l’intero palazzo imperiale fondato sul dollaro. Se l’esempio del Venezuela si diffondesse, se il dollaro cessasse di essere la principale moneta del commercio e delle riserve valutarie internazionali, una immensa quantità di dollari verrebbe immessa sul mercato facendo crollare il valore della moneta statunitense.

Questo è il reale motivo per cui, nell’Ordine esecutivo del 9 marzo 2015, il presidente Obama proclamava «l’emergenza nazionale nei confronti della inusuale e straordinaria minaccia posta alla sicurezza nazionale e alla politica estera degli Stati uniti dalla situazione in Venezuela». Lo stesso motivo per cui il presidenre Trump annuncia una possibile «opzione militare» contro il Venezuela. La sta preparando lo U.S. Southern Command, nel cui emblema c’è l’Aquila imperiale che sovrasta il Centro e Sud America, pronta a piombare con i suoi artigli su chi si ribella all’impero del dollaro.

Manlio Dinucci

The editors at the Wall Street Journal have settled on a plan for ending the crisis in North Korea. Starve them to death.

I’m not kidding. In an article titled “Options for Removing Kim Jong Un” the WSJ’s editorial board suggests that the US use “all of its tools to topple the North Korean regime” including, of course,  vital food imports which keep women and children from facing an agonizing death by starvation. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“The North is especially vulnerable to pressure this year because a severe drought from April to June reduced the early grain harvest by 30%. If the main harvest is also affected, Pyongyang may need to import more food while sanctions restrict its ability to earn foreign currency….

While the regime survived a severe famine in the 1990s, today the political consequences of a failed harvest would be severe. …. The army was once the most desirable career path; now soldiers are underpaid and underfed. North Koreans will not simply accept starvation as they did two decades ago.

Withholding food aid to bring down a government would normally be unethical, but North Korea is an exceptional case. Past aid proved to be a mistake as it perpetuated one of the most evil regimes in history. The U.N. says some 40% of the population is undernourished, even as the Kims continue to spend huge sums on weapons. Ending the North Korean state as quickly as possible is the most humane course.”

(“Options for Removing Kim Jong Un”, Wall Street Journal)

“Humane”?  The WSJ editors think that depriving people of enough food to stay alive is humane?

And look how cheery they sound about the fact that “40% of the population is (already) undernourished”, as if they’re already halfway towards their goal. Hurrah for the US embargo, still inflicting misery on innocent people some 6 decades after the war!

It’s sick!

Who are these people who grow up in our midst, attend our schools and universities, live in the same neighborhoods, and go to the same churches? Where do these monsters come from?

I’m reminded of what Harold Pinter said in his Nobel acceptance speech:

“What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead?”

It’s sure as hell is dead at the WSJ, that’s for sure. Dead as a doornail.

And what is starvation supposed to achieve anyway? What’s the ultimate objective?

Why regime change, of course, isn’t that what it’s always about, installing a more compliant stooge to  follow Washington’s diktats?

Of course it is. But how’s it supposed to work, after all, depriving people of food isn’t like giving them guns and training them to topple the regime, is it?

No, it’s not, in fact, there’s not even the remotest chance that the plan will work at all. None. But it will help to punish the Korean people for the behavior of their government. It will do that.  And it will generate more suffering, unhappiness and misery. That much is certain.

Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and North Korea had the power cut vital food supplies to people in the United States. Sure, it’s far fetched, but just think about it for a minute. How would you react? Would you gather your neighbors and friends together to concoct a plan to overthrow the government?

The idea is ridiculous, isn’t it? The editors at the WSJ know that. These are educated, intelligent men who understand how the world works and who know the impact of particular policies. They know that starvation isn’t going to lead to revolution.  That’s just not going to happen.

Then why support a policy that won’t work?

Good question, but that’s where we have to veer into a very gray area of analysis, that is, trying to understand why some people are so morally malignant that they seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. Why is that? Why are there so many cruel people in positions of power and authority?

It’s a mystery.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Jennifer Feuchter | CC BY 2.0

Countless concerned individuals are still searching for answers surrounding the mysterious death of the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy. The official narrative, that a lone former Marine named Harvey Oswald assassinated him, is widely disputed.

All available documents from all government entities are required by the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 to be released on October 26th of 2017. But if history repeats itself, the Central Intelligence Agency may not release an entire volume of documents on Oswald, known as “volume 5.”

As Sputnik reports, the release in July of 3,810 CIA and FBI documents on the assassination by the Assassination Records Review Board threw up a number of revelations that JFK researchers have hungrily devoured and enthusiastically publicized. For instance, the mayor of Dallas at the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Earle Cabell, was a CIA asset in the 1950s, and his brother, Charles Cabell, a high-ranking CIA official until 1962.

The release in October has been highly anticipated by those seeking answers. However, thanks to a deliberate fudging or records, or a conveniently timed clerical error, an entire volume may never see the light of day.

Inside Langley Air Force Base’s CIA Headquarters is an office known as the Office of Security. The Office of Security maintains its own top-secret archives known as the Office of Security Archival Holdings and is a separate archive from the agency’s more frequently used facility located in Alexandria, VA known as the Agency Archival Record Center.

As late as 1977, the entire 7-volume collection of documents was intact, having been checked out by Russ Holmes in the Office of General Counsel and noted the 7-volume series was all together, not missing any volumes. But when the CIA was asked to turn over the volume of documents on Oswald, the hitman in the assassination, it seems the agency stonewalled a bit, like a shell game according to independent investigator Malcolm Blunt.

Blunt described the stonewalling:

This huge search by CIA did not surface Oswald’s security files and the Assassination Records Review Board (AARB) remained uninformed about their existence. Not until 1997 when an ARRB staffer stumbled across evidence that two previous congressional investigations had access to these files did CIA “discover” them.

The AARB eventually received the 7-volume set of documents on Oswald in 1998, but staffers quickly realized there was one volume missing—volume 5.

An agency explanation was offered that volume 5 could have been consolidated into Volume 4, or Volume 6 for example. Eventually, the agency concluded, according to Blunt, Volume 5 of Oswald’s Security file may never have existed.

So far, 2017 has been a year of anticipation for JFK conspiracy theorists as they await the release of all files surrounding the assassination of one of the country’s most beloved presidents. One group, known as the Citizens Against Political Assassinations, is chomping at the bits to get to volume 5 and others. They believe the official government narrative is full of holes and needs to be investigated.

Many of its members are lawyers, and as TFTP has reported, have desired to clear Oswald’s name of any wrongdoing if possible.

But it is attorney Lawrence Schnapf, Chair of the Environmental Law Section of the New York Bar Association, whose comments concerning the current president and his relationship with the Deep State (implied but not referred to as such) have the media ablaze with talk of yet another political assassination.

Schnapf is the co-chair of the CAPA legal committee. After a brief discussion of why JFK’s assassination is relevant today, Schnapf compared the early 1960s with 2017. He said the Warren Commission was the “original fake news” organization whose conclusions later became the official government narrative. Although the commission refused to pursue “exculpatory” information, which is now hidden behind “government secrecy,” he says he hopes will come out this year, in compliance with the JFK Assassination Records Act.

Turning attention again to the case of JFK, the group plans to use the shell casings found on the scene and 21st-century ballistics analyses to conclusively determine whether or not Oswald actually killed JFK.

He said they’re first going to conduct a mock trial in November, and later an official legal proceeding called a “Court of Inquiry,” an official court proceeding to definitely prove “Lee Oswald was not the shooter…that’s what we hope to prove.”

The group hopes to expunge Oswald’s name from the official narrative, clearing not only his, but also his daughter’s, to “expunge the stain of their father’s name from” theirs.

“Oswald was not convictable, much less indictable,” he concluded.

The reputable lawyer contends that the mainstream media often overlooks the real story —that the government is not transparent — and that the Department of Justice (which also includes the FBI) has been politicized.

Featured image is from TheFreeThoughtProject.com.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), Hezbollah, the Iraqi Army and the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are preparing for a joint advance on the ISIS border strongholds of al-Bukamal and al-Qaim.

On Saturday, the Iraqi Army and the PMU launched an anti-ISIS operation in the border area, liberated the border town Akashat, the H-3 station, Akashat factory and the Akashat housing complex, and secured a road linking it with the Damascus-Baghdad highway.

At the same day, the SAA and Hezbollah, supported by Liwa Fatemiyoun, Liwa Haydaryoun, Liwa al-Zainabyoun and the National Defense Forces (NDF), captured al-Rutimah, Ghizlaniah and the desert area north of Sharat al-Wa’ar.

On Sunday, Syrian and Iraqi forces officially met on the border near Akashat. The SAA and Hezbollah deployed several special force and armoured units right on the border line. According to the UK-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper, the sides had agreed to establish three joint positions there.

Damascus gave Iraqi forces a permission to enter 10km deep inside the Syrian territory if needed. Iraqi sources claimed that some Syrian battle tanks and armoured vehicles of entered the Iraqi territory and joined Iraqi units.

The expected joint push towards al-Bukamal and al-Qaim will ease a battle against ISIS in the border area. Furthermore, many PMU factions particiapte in an anti-ISIS campaign of the Syrian government inside Syria. Units of these factions could cross the border and to assist the SAA in its advance towards al-Bukamal.

On Saturday, the US-led coalition officially accused Russian forces of striking a position on the eastern bank of the Euphrates near the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and coalition troops. Six SDF members were injured, according to the SDF statement. The alleged strike came after SDF representatives had repeatedly threatened to strike Syrian government forces if they attempt to cross the Euphrates in the Deir Ezzor countryside.

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry rejected these claims adding that Russian forces strike only ISIS positions and the US had received a notice about this in advance. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov added that the Russian military has not observed any fighting between ISIS and SDF in the northern countryside of Deir Ezzor over the past few days.

“Therefore, only representatives of the international coalition can answer the question as to how ‘opposition members’ or ‘military advisers of the international coalition’ managed to get to the IS-held areas in the eastern part of Deir Ezzor without striking a blow.”

The SAA and its allies have liberated Jafrah, Ayyash, the Hujeif mount, Muraieiah, Hawayej, Hawayej Abu Arab, Ain Abu Jumah and Hajj Hammoud as well as some nearby points on the both northwestern and southeastern flanks of the city.

On Monday, Syrian forces crossed the Euphrates east of Deir Ezzor. Since start of September, the SDF and pro-SDF sources have repeatedly claimed that they will not allow the SAA to cross the Euphrates. So what now?

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As I predicted, the erasing of American history will not be limited to Confederate monuments. Last week a member of the board of trustees of the Dallas, Texas, school district recommended changing the name of James Madison High School. James Madison was the father of the US Constitution, considered by Identity Politics, the political ideology of the Democratic Party and the American liberal/progressive/left, to be a “racist document.”

From a British reader comes the news that the various segments of Western society divided into victim groups by Identity Politics have divided very finely and have turned on one another. On September 13, the Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) and their bitter enemies, Trans Activists, clashed in a fist fight in London’s Hyde Park. 60-year-old Maria MacLachlen, who describes herself as a “gender critical feminist,” was knocked to the ground.

The presstitutes at the New York Times even use the crossword puzzle to spread their lies and disinformation. This morning one of the clues was “like the peninsula seized by Russia in 2014.” The NYT is refering to Crimea, for 300 years a Russian province with a Russian population that voted by a 97% majority to rejoin Russia when the US overthrew the Ukrainian government in a coup. The NYT presstitutes treat this exercise in democracy as “Russian aggression.” As the “newspaper of record,” clearly the record is falsified.

My northern acquaintances believe that the South, by definition, is racist even though the cities that were the heart of the Confederacy are ruled by black mayors. The mayor of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, Levar Stoney, is black.

The mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, is black.

The Mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, Stephen Benjamin, is black.

Because of Identity Politics, these black mayors cannot prevent southern history from being cast down the Memory Hole. Any black mayor who stood up for historical truth would be branded an “Uncle Tom.”

There is no greater absurdity than moving history off its factual basis and substituting a fictional basis as dictated by Identity Politics.

In the United States—indeed, in the entirely of the Western world—history has become a construction that serves not the truth but special interests. This is the reason that the Western World is doomed. Peoples whose history is destroyed are defenceless. They have no idea who they are.

There is no substitute for winning

football games and wars.

We are strong and brave,

having been taught winning

is what counts after all.

After all, after all the weeks of sweat,

practice after practice, play after play,

men of strength will win, be honored.

Losers, lacking muscle fight heart

eyes limbs guts and blood

will lose.

So will the children.

Oh the children. Be men, be strong.

Let us not now praise

a man, a man’s man,

a coach of real men,

whose religion was winning Christianity,

whose dedication to god country blood

knew no limits, surely not

the death of children

and grownup children

of families

different, foreign, unreal.

Families of losers.

Oh, Americans, let us not pay

homage to the dead man,

leader of

strong men, winning men.

Leave it to the president to praise

his fighting spirit, bishop bless

his dedication to the cause

of winning games

of warball and football.

My fellow Americans, he is

us and we are he. We stand together

in solidarity, drones the leader

of sycophantery.

Coach, you have shown us

what it means to win on fields

of war and sport for God, team

and country,

in spite of, for spite of

children shrieking out of burning bodies.

Losers, losers, yes,

the children are the losers.

Rest, coach, for you have finally

in the end

lost a big one. You are

at peace.

Your ears cannot hear

children’s tears

as they lose

their  lives.

But didn’t you say:

Winning isn’t everything;

it’s the only thing?

They had their warning,

didn’t they?

And so did we.

We didn’t listen then

and aren’t listening still.

Perhaps we never will.

Who do you think will win

the Doomsday Bowl?

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. A former college basketball player, he teaches the sociology of sports, and writes on a wide range of topics.  His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

One year ago I was in Syria, and for my birthday on September 17 I learned that Western “Coalition” forces, who had been bombing illegally in Syria for years, had just murdered about 100 Syrian Arab Army soldiers who were stationed in the Jabal Thardeh¹ area, where they were protecting the lives of their fellow Syrians from ISIS/Daesh terrorists.

The attack was no doubt executed in collaboration with ISIS, because immediately after the massacre, ISIS was able to occupy the strategically important position.

In terms of Western military strategy, little has changed except that now Syria and its allies are very close to restoring Syria’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity, as they crush the “opposition”, all of whom are supported by the West and its allies.

The West still wants to partition Syria, and for this they are using both “Kurdish” and ISIS “assets”. Coalition forces previously bombed bridges spanning the Euphrates, and ISIS assets did the same, so that they could better occupy and terrorize the oil-rich region. Meanwhile, Kurdish assets will be used to re-occupy and “legitimize” that which is not legitimate. The Kurds, ISIS, and the Coalition are all committing war crimes in their failing efforts to destroy and plunder Syria.

Dr Bouthain Shaaban², political and media advisor to President Assad, recently remarked that US-backed SDF forces captured areas in northeastern Syria from Daesh “without any fighting,” thus demonstrating (yet again), the strategic collusion between SDF and Daesh to occupy and plunder the oil-rich areas, for the benefit of their imperial masters.

Every day, the West’s criminality becomes more transparent. Investigative reporter Dilyana Gaytandzhieva³, for example, recently uncovered primary-source documentation which demonstrates that the Pentagon falsified paperwork to covertly ship as much as $2.2 billion⁴ in weapons to terrorists in Syria.

HUGE: Pentagon caught doctoring records for $2.2 billion in weapons transfers from criminal orgs to #Syria militants https://t.co/kXvkVzb12k

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) September 13, 2017

The West’s double-game of pretending to fight terrorism as it supports terrorism may soon be over in Syria. This will be cause for celebration in Syria, and it should be cause for celebration amongst Western populations as well. 

Notes

1 Leith Fadel, “US Coalition knew they were bombing the Syrian Army in Deir Ezzor.” AMN September 27, 2016. (https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/us-coalition-knew-bombing-syrian-army-deir-ezzor/) Accessed September 18, 2017

2 “ ‘Syria will be Freed Completely from any Aggressor’ ” – Dr Shaaban Challenges US Proxies.” 21st Century Wire, Setember 16, 2017. (http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/09/16/syria-will-freed-completely-aggressor-dr-shaaban-challenges-us-proxies/) Accessed September 18, 2017.

3 Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, “350 diplomatic flights carry weapons for terrorists| Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines transports weapons with diplomatic clearance for Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo.” July 2, 2017. (https://trud.bg/350-diplomatic-flights-carry-weapons-for-terrorists/) Accessed September 18, 2017.

4 Tyler Durden, “Bombshell Report Catches Pentagon Falsifying Paperwork For Weapons Transfers To Syrian Rebels.” September 13, 2017.( http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-13/bombshell-report-catches-pentagon-falsifying-paperwork-weapons-transfers-linked-orga) Accessed September 18, 2017.

Global Research announces the forthcoming release of  the print edition of Mark Taliano’s Book, “Voices from Syria”  which includes two additional chapters. 

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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

Special Pre-Publication Offer

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On September 18, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Syrian Republcian Guard (SRG) officially crossed the Euphrates River and engaged ISIS terrorists on its eastern bank.

The SAA and the SRG advanced on ISIS positions in the Saqr Island and captured a major part of it. According to pro-government sources, ISIS units withdrew towards the Kanafat bridge in the northern part of the island.

Separately, government troops liberated the village of Sabha and entered the villages of Marrat and Mazlum on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq also confirmed that government forces have crossed the Euphreates following multiple airstrikes by the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Air Force.

Amaq said that ISIS members conducted 2 VBIED attacks against government troops in Marrat and Mazlum as well as a VBIED attack against the SAA in the Saqr Island. According to Amaq reports, about 40 SAA troops were killed in the clashes there.

While even Amaq has found strength to admit that the SAA is on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, a spokesman for the US-led coalition still has nothing to say about this. Howeer, he promised that the coalition “will defend itself and the SDF against threats”. Is it an attempt to blame Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance forces?

1/2 @CJTFOIR committed to our #SDF partners in operations to #defeatDaesh in Dayr Az Zawr province; #SDF cleared >40km2 from #ISIS in Syria

— OIR Spokesman (@OIRSpox) September 18, 2017

2/2 @CJTFOIR will defend itself and #SDF against threats; continue to defeat #ISIS in Syria.

— OIR Spokesman (@OIRSpox) September 18, 2017

On the northeastern flank of Deir Ezzor city, government forces liberated Hawi, Zughayr, Hamad and Shumaytah villages and entered the nearby oil wells area.

Meanwhile, Kurdish militias that are a core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) released another propaganda video blaming the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance for combating ISIS in the area of Deir Ezzor. The video was released following the confirmation that government forces crossed the Euphrates.

"If the Russian/#Syria'n attacks continue we will use our right to legitimate defense, we will retaliate in kind." https://t.co/vdQYqiF9CX pic.twitter.com/g05KDqYMHT

— Rojava Defense Units (@DefenseUnits) September 18, 2017

Earlier on September 18, the US asked Russia for a meeting to discuss a future of Deir Ezzor, according to the Russian media. Most likely, the US-led coalitino aims to use the ongoing anti-Syrian/Russian propaganda campaign to strengthen its position during the negotiations. The only problem that this will hardly help amid the rapid advance of the SAA.

Government troops are crossing the Euphrates River:

Photos of government troops near the Euphrates:

Deir Ezzor Airport is fully operational and planes deliver supplies and ammunition to government forces in the city:

It seems to have reached a point of near exhaustion. What will the President of the United States do next? The money was on some diplomatic mayhem, a series of insults, and a trashing of various aspects of the organisation some Americans regard as a world government. But Donald Trump surprised those at the United Nations with a modest tone, and not one the current UN Secretary General disagrees with.

History provides some context on what might have been, but it proves to be a poor tool. In terms of predicting the next Trump move, betting agencies should be raking in a fortune, the odds always slanted in favour of the spontaneous and unscripted. He is a creature that abides by winds of unchecked strength and volatility, a true Aeolian spirit.

With Trump, matters with the UN, as with so much else, had been personal. He failed, for instance, in winning a contract to refurbish its New York headquarters in the early 2000s, claiming that he could do the job at a third of the price (half-a-billion as opposed to the projected cost of $1.5 billion). Given the organisation’ insatiable appetite for self-perpetuation and growth, this was a blow indeed.

Prior to heading to the White House, Trump mined the quarries of American resentment, sharpening the America First line which entailed putting the UN last. The organisation, he asserted, was no “friend of democracy”, inimical to freedom, and even unfriendly to the United States.

To show his disdain for all matters UN, he took the unilateral position to take the US out of the Paris climate agreement, only to then suggest the possibility of remaining on renegotiated terms. Trumpland lends itself to fickle refrains and adjustments, booming promises and drastic revisions.

The opening words in his UN address promised some customarily cringe worthy entertainment. For one, pronouncing the name of the Secretary General António Guterres seemed a bit beyond him, the emphasis all too strong on “Gutter” followed by “ez”.

Then there was that little matter of real estate.

“I actually saw great potential right across the street,” he explained in the context of Trump Tower’s proximity to the UN building. “[I]t was only for the reason that the United Nations was here that it turned out to be such a successful project.”[1]

Then came modest, almost banal reflection. Had the voice of moderation seeped into Trump?

“In recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential because of bureaucracy and mismanagement.”

Hardly a clanger, and certainly one the grand poobahs would agree with.

“We encourage the secretary general to fully use his authority to cut through the bureaucracy, reform outdated systems, and make firm decisions to advance the UN’s core mission.”

Rather than unleashing withering salvos, Trump had time to afford a few carefully chosen words of sugary praise.

“The United Nations was founded on truly noble goals.” These goals, in turn had been advanced “in so many ways: feeding the hungry, providing disaster relief, and empowering women and girls in many societies across the world.”

Trump’s accommodating tone has as much to do with necessity as anything else. While boisterous unilateralism might work on some domestic level, Washington has required the assistance of other UN member states to push such agendas as the containment of North Korea.

“The net result,” writes Richard Gowan, “is that a president who once promised a unilateralist, or outright isolationist, foreign policy, is leaning hard on the world’s main multilateral body to manage the main crisis on the agenda.”[2]

Problematic a beast as it might be, the body is providing, on some level, indispensable.

The reform agenda remains problematic, because any such agenda always has trouble sailing through the behemoth that is the UN. Where states are involved, interests will conflict. Bureaucracies will also battle cutters of the red tape. The old issues persist: the burden of dues paid by wealthier countries; the scepticism of poorer states that such efficiency policies are cover for bullying and undue influence.

Trump’s points, to that end, seem matters of aspiration rather than functional realities.

“To honour the people of our nations, we must ensure that no one and no member state shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden, and that’s militarily or financially.”

Peacekeeping missions, asserted the president, should also be seen in terms of “defined goals and metrics for evaluating success.” All to the good, till these make it to the nigh impossible task of implementation. The UN can only be as good, or as efficient, as what its members want to make it.

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

Notes

Once again, the annual United Nations General Assembly is taking place in New York City with U.S. President Donald Trump set to take center stage as he is expected to focus on the North Korean Crisis and the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

As the Western media’s attention has been focused on the North Korea crisis (which is also another very serious matter), another development has been taking place in Tel Aviv, as calls for action by Israeli officials against Iran’s Nuclear Program although it’s not a new development (it’s been going on for many years). Channel 2 on Israeli TV reported that Mossad chief Yossi Cohen is calling on the Israeli government to take action against the Iranian government. The Times of Israel reported that

 “Channel 2 on Sunday paraphrased Cohen as asserting that “Today’s Iran is the North Korea of yesterday, and so we need to act now so that we don’t wake up to [an Iranian] bomb.”

The report also mentioned that other security officials

“are warning that Israel should not be pushing the US into another Middle Eastern adventure, given what happened when the US tackled Iraq and Saddam’s ostensible weapons of mass destruction over a decade ago.”

However, Netanyahu wants the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to be amended or canceled.

“Our position is straightforward. This is a bad deal. Either fix it — or cancel it. This is Israel’s position,” said Netanyahu in Buenos Aires” the report said.

Netanyahu will meet with Trump and will hold a brief press conference before they go behind closed doors to talk about the Iran Nuclear Deal, Syria and Israel’s future conflict with Hezbollah. The Associated Press (AP) mentioned that the Trump administration has threatened to walk away from the nuclear deal:

U.S. President Donald Trump warned Monday that Washington will walk away from a nuclear deal it agreed to with Iran and five other nations if it deems that the International Atomic Energy Agency is not tough enough in monitoring it

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry quoted Trump at the U.N. agency’s annual meeting in Vienna according to the AP report and said that the deal could either “stand or fail on IAEA access to Iranian military sites, declaring “we will not accept a weakly enforced or inadequately monitored deal.” Arutz Sheva 7 (www.israelnationalnews.com) also reported on what Amos Yadlin, the Executive Director at the Tel Aviv University Institute for National Security Studies had said about Barack Obama who he claims was not an appropriate partner and that the Trump White House was supportive to Israel’s cause:

According to Amos, Netanyahu did not act before now because former US President Barack Obama was not an appropriate partner.

“In 2015, I suggested the Prime Minister sit with the US government and make a strategy for dealing with this problematic agreement,” he explained. “Back then, Netanyahu said we didn’t have a partner in the White House.”

“Thankfully, today we have a supportive government which understands the threat very well, especially in light of what is happening with North Korea. We can’t let this opportunity deteriorate into simple rhetoric, we need to make a general strategy. We need to fight Iran determinedly in every way, including those not included in the Iran deal, such as ballistic missiles, Iran’s support of terror, and their involvement in Syria. We also need to strengthen our supervision of them and collect better intelligence.

“There needs to be an Israeli-American agreement which supports our understanding that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon, and detailing when and how we will work together to ensure our success”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano confirmed that Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitment’s. Amano said that the

“the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under (the 2015 nuclear deal) are being implemented.” Amano continued “the verification regime in Iran is the most robust regime which currently exists. We have increased the inspection days in Iran, we have increased inspector numbers … and the number of images has increased,” he said, “From a verification point of view, it is a clear and significant gain.”

Will the Trump administration ignore the IAEA’s statement that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal? Haaretz also reported what Yisrael Katz, Israel’s Intelligence Affairs Minister had said about Iran’s Nuclear Deal:

Intelligence Affairs Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) said:

“The first mission of the Israeli prime minister during his upcoming visit to the United States is to demand that the U.S. president suspend, amend or annul the nuclear agreement with Iran,” said Katz. “Iran is the new North Korea. Action should be taken against it now, lest we regret tomorrow what we did not do yesterday”

Israel wants Iran destabilized just like its neighbor, Iraq to weaken its political and economic standing in the Middle East. Iran’s allies are Hezbollah and Syria, enemies to both Israel and Saudi Arabia.  Iran is an economic and military power which can challenge the U.S. and Israel’s hegemonic power in the region. Netanyahu is trying to influence Trump’s decision to terminate the nuclear deal, which would put the U.S. on the fast track to war with Iran. Netanyahu would welcome an attack on Iran by U.S. forces which would free Israel’s military and allow it to focus on Hezbollah and possibly Syria in the next conflict with help from Saudi Arabia. It’s been a long-term goal of Washington’s political establishment and Netanyahu to realign the Middle East in Israel’s favor. With Trump in the White House, the Israeli’s see an opportunity while the rest of the world sees pure madness.

This article was originally published by Silent Crow News where the featured image was sourced.

On September 18th, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Syrian Republcian Guard (SRG) officially crossed the Euphrates River using a pontoon bridge and amphibious vehicles.  They then engaged ISIS terrorists on the eastern bank.

The SAA and the SRG advanced on ISIS positions in the Saqr Island and captured a major part of it, liberated the village of Sabha, and entered the villages of Marrat and Mazlum.

ISIS counter-attacked against government forces in both areas with the support of 3 VBIEDs but failed to stop the government advance.

According to the ISIS-linked news agency Amaq, about 40 SAA troops were killed in the clashes there.

On the northeastern flank of Deir Ezzor city, government forces liberated Hawi, Zughayr, Hamad, and Shumaytah villages and entered the nearby oil wells area.

On September 19th, the SAA and the SRG continued developing their advance on the eastern bank in order to liberate Khasham Fooganni, al Abd, at Tabiyah, Albu Muayt, and the al-Tabiyah oil field and to build a buffer zone near the SDF-held area.

Meanwhile, Russian-US negotiations continued behind the scene as the sides were attempting to reach an agreement dividing spheres of responsibility in combating ISIS in eastern Syria.

The SDF, supported by the US-led coalition, has advanced against ISIS in Ramilah, Tishrin, Al-Amin, and the Al-Hani neighborhoods of Raqqah city and captured a notable part of Ramilah and Tishrin.

Since the start of the operation in the city, the SDF has realized major progress and is now pushing towards a final stage of the operation.

Voiceover by Harold Hoover

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Featured image is from South Front.

Featured image: September 7, 2017, in Soseongri, South Korea. Photo by Park Jung-yeop of Newsmin. Used with permission. (Source: The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus)

Apocalyptic panic and glib memes frame much of American discourse about the current North Korean nuclear crisis. Yet the North Korean crisis poses a challenge to the mandate of South Korea’s new liberal president, Moon Jae-in, to usher in an era of truly democratic politics, and indeed, to the fate of his administration. On the critical issue of US plans to install a terminal high area altitude defense (THAAD) system, an issue that has roiled the waters among South Korea, the United States and China, Moon has chosen to leave intact former conservative president Park Geun-hye administration’s undemocratic legacy.

THAAD is a controversial US-operated technology designed to intercept ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. One THAAD battery is comprised of six truck-mounted launchers and a powerful radar system. Following a 2016 bilateral agreement to deploy one THAAD battery in South Korea, in April 2017 the US delivered two launchers and the radar system to a golf course-turned-US installation near the remote village of Soseongri. As a presidential candidate, Moon had criticized the undemocratic and opaque decision-making processes of the original THAAD agreement, as well as the partial THAAD deployment in April. He also called for increased dialogue with North Korea.

Shortly after assuming the presidency, however, following a July 28 North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile test, Moon began calling for a tougher stance toward North Korea. He held an emergency meeting with the National Security Council and, in a reversal of his position on THAAD, announced that he would agree to allow the US to deploy the four remaining launchers to complete the THAAD battery. This decision touched off a fierce sixteen hour confrontation on September 6 and 7 between 8,000 police and 600 protesters in Soseongri as his administration cleared the way for US delivery of the launchers and other equipment.

A portion of the emergency roadblock set up by protesters early on the evening of September 6, 2017.

Moon has claimed that the deployment of the four launchers is only temporary. However, given US insistence on the deployment, and in light of the tense militarized situation on the Korean peninsula, “temporary” could turn out to be a very long time. Earlier in his term Moon said that he was “shocked” to learn that four more THAAD launchers—the very ones he would later allow to be deployed—had been brought into South Korea from the US. They had arrived secretly without his knowledge. Moon was so dismayed that he ordered a probe into the issue.¹

Moon’s late June summit with Donald Trump, which occurred within the context of increasing tensions with North Korea, set the stage for his THAAD reversal. As Tim Beal has argued, Moon displayed a servile attitude at the summit, easily yielding to US demands and avoiding discussion of the THAAD issue altogether in order to ensure a smooth meeting. He squandered his momentum as a popular new president and effectively established a dynamic in which South Korean international affairs would be subsumed within the US-South Korea alliance.² This dynamic, and the THAAD deployment in particular, severely limits the possibility of dialogue with North Korea and strains South Korea’s relationship with China.

Moon’s reluctance to reverse Park’s THAAD decision, and his failure to assert South Korean interests in his summit with Trump, have been heavily criticized by anti-THAAD activists. Although the US does not advertise its intention to encircle China, THAAD’s technical specifications suggest that the primary US interest in deploying THAAD is to deprive China of a second-strike capability in a nuclear war, and to increase US monitoring capabilities in the region.³ In a comparable moment during the Roh Moo-hyun administration, activists pointed out that South Korea was stuck with much of the bill for the spatial reorganization of US bases in South Korea. Base reorganization is part of the US pursuit of “strategic flexibility”, a euphemism for a more regional approach to security in which the US uses South Korea as one of many bases to achieve broader objectives.

The Chinese government has openly expressed dissatisfaction and anger at South Korea’s increasingly obvious role as a base for broader regional US objectives as illustrated by the Moon regime’s decision to accept the deployment of THAAD. China responded to South Korea’s decision to deploy THAAD by banning package tours to South Korea in the spring of 2017, with devastating effect on the tourist industry in places such as Jeju Island. It also retaliated against the Lotte Group, which turned over a golf course near Soseongri to the US to be used as a THAAD deployment site. The Chinese government closed down seventy-four of 99 Lotte stores in China for “fire violations” and encouraged citizen boycotts of Lotte and other South Korean companies.⁴ In the first half of 2017 alone, South Korean companies lost an estimated $4.3 billion as a direct result of conflict with China over THAAD.⁵ While this economic loss is not driving the activism at the center of the anti-THAAD movement, the tangible effects of a degraded relationship with China signal that THAAD is much more than a fringe theme in South Korea, whose largest trade partner is China.

Given North Korea’s ongoing missile testing and its threats against both the US and South Korea, common sense might seem to dictate that South Korean citizens would welcome THAAD as a defensive technology providing US protection against North Korean attack. Indeed, proponents of the system insist that it is the best defense available to protect South Korea from the North. Two successful THAAD tests in the Pacific this summer strengthened this confidence.⁶

Yet prominent experts such as MIT weapons physicist Theodore Postol claim that the system will not work to defend South Korea from North Korea. Not only is the capital city of Seoul, located just thirty miles from the North Korean border, excluded from THAAD’s defense area, but North Korea could also easily trick interceptors by using decoys.⁷ Additionally, the system is only capable of intercepting high altitude missiles, which North Korea would be unlikely to use against its immediate neighbor. Former US defense secretary William Perry also commented on the system in June:

“The US probably gave South Koreans a positive impression about THAAD’s defensive capabilities. But objectively speaking, THAAD probably wouldn’t be that good at defending against a North Korean missile attack”.⁸

At the heart of the anti-THAAD movement is the recognition that the South Korean government has handled the THAAD deployment in an illegal and undemocratic way while yielding to US demands rather than protecting the safety of the South Korean people. The agreement to deploy THAAD was reached between the Park Obama administrations in 2016 after years of US pressure on South Korea.⁹ Park’s decision came under fire from South Korean citizen groups in part because the national assembly was not consulted on the matter before the agreement was finalized, and no public documents were released that would provide detailed information about either the decision making process or the terms of the agreement. Lack of transparency around the agreement raises red flags given that Park and some of her closest associates are now serving prison sentences for various corruption-related crimes committed during her time in office. Activists generally believe that the US pressured South Korea to agree to the deployment as part of its broader regional objective, the encirclement of China. They also see the agreement as part of a corrupt weapons deal with Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the THAAD system. It is not an outlandish conspiracy theory given that state prosecutors recently initiated an investigation into the Park administration’s multi-billion dollar 2014 acquisition of Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters.¹⁰

In July of 2016, the South Korean government announced that Seongju County (which also contains Seongju City as well as the village of Soseongri) would be the THAAD deployment site. Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn traveled to Seongju to persuade residents to accept the decision, but was met with insults and a barrage of raw eggs and plastic water bottles. Standing in front of the county office covered in yolk and egg whites, and shielded by bodyguards who continued to fend off flying objects, his case fell on deaf ears.¹¹

The anti-THAAD movement was at first joined by Kim Hang-kohn, the Seongju County chief who, like Park Geun-hye, was a conservative party member of the now-defunct saenuri dang. He rallied thousands of local citizens to oppose the decision to install THAAD. However, in August 2016 the central government switched the THAAD deployment site from a hill near Seongju City to a new location in Seongju County, the Lotte golf course near Soseongri. Kim then suddenly reversed his stance and took a pro-THAAD position. Kim’s reversal sapped the local movement of much of its popular local appeal. Local activists brand it as a great betrayal of his constituency in the service of party loyalty and personal careerism.¹²

When the anti-THAAD movement began gaining strength in mid-2016, it was in sync with the broader political transition throughout the country and provided momentum to it. A corruption scandal exploded in the autumn of 2016, leading to the popular “candlelight revolution” and the subsequent impeachment and imprisonment of former president Park Geun-hye.¹³ Media investigations revealed that Park’s long time confidant, Choi Soon-shil, used her proximity to the president to extort massive amounts of money from various firms and to wield undue influence in Park’s administration in spite of the fact that she held no official position. By December, Park was impeached, and in 2017 both she and Choi would be convicted of corruption-related crimes and sentenced to years in prison.

After Park’s impeachment, an interim government led by prime minister Hwang Gyo-ahn—the very person who had tried to persuade Seongju residents to accept THAAD and ended up covered with raw eggs—assumed power. Under pressure from the US and worried about the imminent prospect of Moon winning the May election, Hwang approved the rushed partial deployment of THAAD, presenting any new government with a fait accompli. His decision not only reflects US pressure but also the deeply entrenched conservatism and pro-US attitudes of those within the Ministry of National Defense and the South Korean civil service. Under the original agreement between the Park and Obama administrations, the system would not be deployed until the end of 2017. Yet on the morning of April 26, on the watch of the interim government, a US military convoy of 20 vehicles arrived at Soseongri. Stunned villagers, who by all accounts unanimously oppose THAAD, attempted to block the convoy only to be vastly outmatched by police. At the time, Moon, who was leading in the presidential race, criticized the rushed nature of the partial deployment and the lack of transparency surrounding the initial agreement with the US.¹⁴

Since the April deployment, police have maintained a full-time presence in Soseongri. Moreover, right-wing protesters from a reincarnated Northwest Youth League—the paramilitary group that participated in the brutal suppression of the Jeju Uprising in 1948—regularly march through the village, waving American flags, blaring anti-communist rap, and verbally harassing locals through a megaphone.¹⁵ Anti-THAAD activists from around the country, calling themselves “protectors”, take shifts in the village, watching out for the arrival of US military equipment as well as for the Northwest Youth League. Religious groups opposing THAAD deployment have maintained a, twenty-four hour prayer presence in the village. Residents in nearby Seongju City and Gimcheon have held nightly candlelight protests for over a year.

The Northwest Youth League in Soseongri, with anti-communist rap blaring in the background, on July 13, 2017. The group attempted to march through Soseongri, but was stopped by a villager sit-in on the main village road. Mocking an anti-THAAD slogan, the red sign reads, “If THAAD goes then peace will come? A commie lie! The truth??? If THAAD goes then war will come!”

Early in his term Moon ordered a full environmental assessment of the THAAD deployment site, ostensibly barring movement on the issue for a period of a year or more.¹⁶ Meanwhile activists stressed the undemocratic and corrupt government practices that had led to THAAD deployment. Prior to Moon’s reversal on THAAD in late July, activists held to the idea that once the corruption of Park’s government was fully uncovered, the new administration would have no choice but to reverse the THAAD decision.

The situation came to a head on September 6 when the Moon administration sent 8,000 riot police to Soseongri, 200 km south of Seoul, to clear the way for a US military convoy transporting four launchers and other equipment. In a sixteen hour struggle that lasted from late afternoon into the next morning, police encircled the village and eventually broke through a blockade of over 60 parked vehicles and 600 protesters. They ripped through protest tents and leapt on top of cars to break the blockade, forcing protesters to make way for the US convoy.

Ever since farmer Baek Nam-gi sustained fatal injuries during a 2015 protest under the Park government, South Korean police have been under public pressure to refrain from using excessive force against protesters. However, at Soseongri on September 6 and 7, police surged into crowds and nearly trampled fallen protesters. At one point a car almost tipped over on top of a group of people. In total, 38 injuries were reported, including those of six police officers.

Given just a few hours notice of the deployment, anti-THAAD activists from around the country poured into the village throughout the night, traveling on back roads and weaving through rice fields in order to evade the heavy police presence. Some elderly residents watched in tears as the scene unfolded; others hurled melons and sticks, or threw their own bodies into the crowd to push back against the police. By mid-morning, the US convoy transporting the four launchers and other equipment had passed through Soseongri.

Police climb over cars, and protesters attempt to hold them back (left). A Won Buddhist reverend watches police and protesters struggle from inside a modified container hut used by clergy. This photo was taken through the window (right).

Protesters attempt to keep police from ripping through tents that had been permanently set up in order to house activists. Photo by Park Jung-yeop of Newsmin. Used with permission (left). Villagers watch as police break the roadblock and permeate village space (right).

While the anti-THAAD movement is largely driven by residents of Seongju County and the surrounding area, it is supported by networks of activists from all over the country, many affiliated with religious, peace, labor, and social justice organizations that can mobilize their memberships for important events such as the emergency blockade of September 6 and 7.

Particularly influential are the Won Buddhists, whose main pilgrimage site is in Soseongri. For several months, clergy from all over the country have been on continual rotation to Soseongri, maintaining a prayer presence, scuffling with police, and using religious pretexts to set up blockades. Won Buddhist clergy as well as Catholic clergy involved in the struggle have sharply opposed the police and other representatives of the state. Two minor incidents illustrate this. In July, in a reconciliation meeting after a particularly difficult confrontation with Seongju police, a local Won Buddhist reverend told the local police chief that he was acting no differently from police under Japanese colonialism—essentially calling him a colonial collaborator. On September 6 in Soseongri, a local Catholic priest suddenly broke the somber sermon he was delivering from the back of a blockade truck as police gathered alongside the road. Jumping off the bed of the truck and lunging toward the police line, he shouted that they were “sons of bitches” (gaesaekkideul). Fellow protesters had to hold back the priest. Such incidents are regular occurrences in the struggle.

A Won Buddhists reverend approaches the prayer tent on the main road in Soseongri (left). At a July 26, 2017, protest, a Seongju County resident smashes a mock THAAD launcher. In this moment, he is shouting “Korea is not a colony of the US!”. The event was also attended by a US peace delegation that included high-profile activists (right). 

A few activists living in the communities near the deployment site were involved in labor and other progressive movements prior to becoming involved with the anti-THAAD struggle. Many others, however, had never before participated in a political movement, and describe participation in the struggle as a radicalizing experience.

When the THAAD deployment was announced in 2016, locals were initially concerned about health and environmental impacts of the missile defense system, and they were also worried about the locality becoming a target of attack. But this quickly broadened and deepened into a critique of the way in which the US-South Korea relationship subverted South Korean democracy. As evidenced by their discussion of the movement at daily protests, they distrust both the state, which engages in a “one-way conversation” on behalf of the US, and the mainstream media, which “distorts” their cause on the national stage. The political transitions of many are extraordinary given that they are largely first-time activists living in an overwhelmingly conservative part of the country.

On the morning of September 7, in the wake of confrontation between police and protesters, wrecked tents, ripped up mats and banners, and trash were strewn across the main street of Soseongri. Sleep-deprived activists gathered stray watches, single shoes, smashed glasses, and other personal items into a pile in front of the village hall. Several policemen, mostly young conscripts, returned to retrieve lost belongings only to be shooed away by villagers. Villagers on the scene in Soseongri on September 6 and 7 referred to the whole experience as “the second trauma”, the first being April 26.

A reporter sets up for a broadcast in the aftermath of the September 6 -7 struggle. The main street of the village is covered in debris (left). Police file out of Soseongri at noon on September 7, 2017 (right).

Regrouped, but still surrounded by police two hours after the US convoy passed through Soseongri, residents and supporters held a press conference to announce that the anti-THAAD struggle would continue. One Won Buddhist leader stated, “From now on, we can no longer say that the THAAD deployment is simply an evil of the previous government. It is instead a new and illegal action of the Moon Jae-in government.”

Indeed, Soseongri’s “second trauma” did not happen on the watch of a corrupt right-wing government run by the daughter of a dictator, nor by an interim government with zero legitimacy. It happened on the watch of the “candlelight president” himself.

Two days after the THAAD deployment, people who participated in the incident as protesters began to complain that any time they saw a truck, they would become anxious and imagined it was a THAAD launcher. Meanwhile, Moon went on a well-photographed hiking trip with his dog, appearing relaxed. The Blue House reported—perhaps a bit prematurely—that there was no sign of retaliation from the north, and again reiterated its insistence that the THAAD deployment was for the benefit of the people.

Bridget Martin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at UC-Berkeley and researches the relationship between US military installations and local development in South Korea. She spent three weeks living with activists near the deployment site in July, and was present for the duration of the events that unfolded on September 6 and 7 in Soseongri.

Notes

¹ “’Shocked’ S. Korea Leader Moon Orders Probe Into Extra U.S. THAAD Launchers”, Reuters, 30 May, 2017.

² Beal, Tim “A Korean Tragedy”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 15.16, 15 August, 2017.

³ Suh, JJ, “Missile Defense and the Security Dilemma: THAAD, Japan’s ‘Proactive Peace,’ and the Arms Race in Northeast Asia”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 15.9, 27 April, 2017.

⁴ Yang, Heekyong, and Jin, Hyunjoo, “As Missile Row Drags On, South Korea’s Lotte Still Stymied in China”, Reuters, 16 June, 2017.

⁵ Cho, Kye-wan, “In the First Half of 2017, THAAD Retaliation Caused $4.3 Billion in Losses for S. Korean Companies”, The Hankyoreh, 6 July, 2017.

⁶ Johnson, Jesse, “US Holds Successful THAAD Anti-Missile Test in Bid to Reassure Allies Over Nervous North Korea”, Japan Times, 31 July, 2017.

⁷ Yi, Yong-in, “Interview: Expert Says THAAD Needlessly Raises Tensions, Hurts Security”, The Hankyoreh, 11 July, 2016.

⁸ Quoted in Yi, Yong-in, “Former US Defense Secretary Says THAAD Should be Removed if Moon Doesn’t Want It”, The Hankyoreh, 15 July, 2017.

⁹ Elich, Gregory, “Threat to China: Pressure on South Korea to Join US Anti-ballistic Missile System”, Global Research, 1 July, 2014.

¹⁰ Jun, Ji-hye, “F-35, KF-X Deals Likely to Get Scrutiny”, The Korea Times, 24 July, 2017.

¹¹ Choe, Sang-hun, “South Korean Villagers Pelt Premier With Eggs Over Missile Site”, New York Times, 15 July, 2016.

¹² Park, Jung-yeop, “Gimhanggon Gunsu Jesambuji Suyongttgyeongchal Dongwonhae Seongjugunmin Baesin” [“County Chief Kim Hang-gun’s Acquiescence on the Third Deployment Site: Police Mobilize, Seongju Citizens Betrayed], News Min, 22 August, 2016

¹³ Kim, Nan, “Candlelight and the Yellow Ribbon: Catalyzing Re-Democratization in South Korea” The Asia-Pacific Journal.

¹⁴ “South Korean President Frontrunner Moon Regrets Move to Deploy THAAD: Spokesman”, Reuters, 26 April, 2017.

¹⁵ Ryang, Sonia, “Reading Volcano Island: In the Sixty-fifth Year of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 

¹⁶ The interim government circumvented a full environmental assessment by dividing up the deployment site into several smaller sections, which would taken separately require only minimal environmental assessment prior to THAAD deployment. See Park, Byong-su, “THAAD Deployment Could Slow Down as Pres. Moon Orders Environmental Assessment”, The Hankyoreh, 6 June, 2017.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated.

Featured image: Israel Air Force Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich(L) with U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Gronski(R) at the ground-breaking ceremony for the new permanent U.S. Army base in Israel (Source: Israel Defense Forces)

President Donald Trump delivers his first speech to the United Nations today as the 72nd session of its General Assembly convenes in New York City under the shadow of war.

Little more than a week ago, UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres warned that the escalating conflict on the Korean peninsula resembled the events that led to the outbreak of the First World War over a century ago, implicitly raising the prospect of the world sliding into a nuclear third world war.

The American president, who during his “America First” presidential election campaign pointedly denounced the United Nations, appeared briefly at UN headquarters Monday for a forum on “reforming” the international body. He introduced his prepared remarks, which derided the UN for “bureaucracy and mismanagement,” by touting one of his real estate projects, the Trump World Tower, located across the street from the UN, saying that the building’s proximity to the UN had made it more profitable.

By “reform,” Trump means slashing spending. Earlier this year, administration officials suggested reducing the US contribution to the UN by half. The US president complained in his remarks about having to shoulder “a disproportionate share of the burden.” Washington’s annual contribution to the UN is roughly one-tenth of what it spent last year on its 16-year neocolonial war in Afghanistan.

The United Nations was established 72 years ago largely at the initiative of the United States, which emerged from the Second World War as the indisputably dominant imperialist power. At the time, this dominance was based not merely on military might, but above all on American capitalism’s unrivaled industrial strength and Wall Street’s unquestioned dominance over the affairs of world finance capital.

The UN was created as part of a global system designed to further American imperialist hegemony, which included the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and various global and regional alliances and trade organizations.

Written into the UN’s Charter were the so-called Nuremberg principles derived from the post-World War II trials of the surviving leaders of Hitler’s Third Reich, which made “crimes against peace,” i.e., aggressive war, the greatest war crime. The first sentence of the founding document of the UN declares that its purpose is “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

That principle has been reduced to rhetorical window-dressing by Washington’s uninterrupted wars of aggression carried out over the past quarter-century, as the American ruling class increasingly relied on its military supremacy to offset the erosion of its global economic position.

In the person of Donald Trump, the ugly end product of American capitalism’s protracted decline—the rise of financial parasitism and the criminality of American militarism—is rising to the General Assembly’s podium on Tuesday. Trump will address the body under conditions where US imperialism is literally holding a gun to the head of humanity.

In advance of his appearance at the UN, his top aides issued multiple statements affirming that Washington is prepared to make good on the US president’s threat to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against North Korea. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, warned in a television interview Sunday that “North Korea will be destroyed” if the US has “to defend itself or defend its allies in any way.”

She affirmed that Washington had “exhausted all the things we could do at the [UN] Security Council,” adding:

“We wanted to be responsible and go through all diplomatic means to get their attention first. If that doesn’t work, General Mattis will take care of it.”

She was referring to the US defense secretary, Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who has threatened North Korea with “total annihilation.”

Similarly, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated Sunday that

“If our diplomatic efforts fail… our military option will be the only one left.”

And Trump’s national security advisor, Gen. H.R. McMaster, asked whether the US president “will strike” North Korea if it fails to give up its nuclear weapons, replied, “He’s been very clear about that, that all options are on the table.”

Amid these bellicose threats, American warplanes have carried out their most provocative exercises yet, with B-1B nuclear bombers and F-35 fighter jets flying Monday from Guam and Japan to drop bombs near North Korea’s border.

While placing the threat of a nuclear confrontation on the Korean peninsula on a hair trigger, Washington is also seeking to ratchet up tensions with Iran, with the aim of provoking a military confrontation with a country it sees as the main regional obstacle to its drive for hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.

Trump and top administration officials have made repeated statements in recent days indicating that the US administration will refuse to certify that Iran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), with the October 15 deadline for it to report to Congress approaching. Such a refusal would open the door to new rounds of unilateral American sanctions against Tehran. Prior to agreeing to the deal, Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama warned that the only alternative to the agreement was war.

While the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the other major powers that are signatories to the agreement have all acknowledged that Iran is in full compliance with its restrictions on its nuclear program and the IAEA’s intrusive inspections regime, US officials have asserted that Tehran is violating the “spirit” of the agreement. By this they mean that Iran has failed to submit to the undisputed dominance of US imperialism over the entire Middle East.

Notably absent from the opening of the UN General Assembly are both Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping of China. Whether they chose not to make the trip to New York because they believed there was nothing to be gained in a face-to-face meeting with Trump, or because they feared that it would be dangerous to leave their capitals given the state of global tensions, is not known.

The US confrontation with North Korea is bound up with far broader strategic aims of US imperialism for domination of the Eurasian land mass, in which Washington regards both China and Russia as obstacles.

Even as US warplanes were carrying out their provocative bombing runs near the North Korean border, China and Russia were conducting naval exercises off the Russian far eastern port of Vladivostok, not far from the Russia-North Korea border.

In Eastern Europe, Russia, on the one hand, and NATO and Sweden—acting together with the US, France and other countries—on the other, are staging rival war games in Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltics in preparation for a potential military confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

Meanwhile, in Syria, Syrian government forces backed by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, and US-backed Kurdish-dominated militias have advanced on the strategic eastern city of Deir Ezzor from opposite sides of the Euphrates River, heightening the threat of a military confrontation that could draw in both Washington and Moscow.

The UN General Assembly proceedings this week will only heighten the danger of one or more of these regional conflicts triggering a global conflagration. There exists no means of ending war outside of the overthrow of the profit system that is its source.

Many people thought that this day would never come, but it’s official – Russian President Putin will sell his Turkish NATO counterpart S-400 missiles, and there’s nothing that the US or NATO can do about it. This is a profound geo-military pivot for Turkey because it solidifies Russia’s role as the country’s high-level strategic partner for decades to come, considering that Russian experts will be relied on to provide maintenance, repairs, spare parts, and upgrades to these anti-aircraft systems. This move didn’t come out of nowhere, however, since it follows a spree of fast-moving steps that President Erdogan has taken ever since the failed pro-American coup against him last summer to diversify his country’s erstwhile Western unipolar dependency with newfound Eastern multipolar partners such as Russia, China, and Iran.

Ankara has since largely aligned its Mideast policies with all of these three Great Powers, particularly as it relates to Syria, and even though Turkey hasn’t officially done away with its failed “Assad must go” slogan, it’s all but certain that President Erdogan tacitly recognizes the reality that President Assad won’t be overthrown by so-called “moderate rebels”. In addition, he appears to be much more concerned about the rising Kurdish threat all along his country’s southern periphery as his former US “ally” moves forward with carving a de-facto “second geopolitical ‘Israel’” of “Kurdistan” out of Syria and Iraq. It’s this development, more so than anything else, which is driving Turkey to cooperate even closer with Russia, and it’s very possible that the expedited pace at which the S-400 sale went through is due to the imminent danger posed by what might soon become an American- and “Israeli”-backed “Kurdish Air Force” operating out of northern Syria and Iraq.

One needs to remember that the US is losing its decades-old position in the Mideast, particularly in parts of the Gulf and especially Turkey, and it therefore needs to accommodate for the new geostrategic situation ever since the commencement of Russia’s anti-terrorist operation in Syria almost exactly two years ago. There’s been talk ever since last year’s failed coup against President Erdogan that the US might pull out of its Incirlik base in southern Turkey, and some of the Syrian PYD-YPG Kurds were more than willing to invite it into so-called “Rojava” instead. Furthermore, a de-facto independent “Kurdistan” in northern Syria and Iraq would naturally encourage PKK separatist violence in the regions of southeastern Turkey abutting this polity, and if the Kurds were given or sold aircraft by the US and “Israel” for purported “anti-terrorist” purposes, then it’s foreseeable that these assets could end up being used against the Turkish military instead.

After all, it’s very unlikely that Turkey would risk its relations with the US to buy Russian anti-aircraft missiles just to guard against non-existent threats from the neighboring states of Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Cyprus, Greece, and Bulgaria. It’s more probable, then, that it chose to go ahead with this move because it already accepted that its ties with the US are irreparably ruined ever since last year’s failed pro-American coup attempt and that its former American “ally” is now actively working to erase the country from the map by supporting the region-wide rise of a so-called “Kurdistan”, complete, as it might even be, with its own “air force” in Syria and Iraq to assist with anti-Turkish strikes in support of their compatriots.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Sep 15, 2017:

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 global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

Featured image is from the author.

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

On September 14, House members passed the measure one week after its introduction, largely along party lines. Trump expressed support. Senate consideration will follow.

The police state measure defines a criminal gang as a

“group, club, organization, or association of 5 or more persons that has as one of its primary purposes the commission of 1 or more of the following criminal offenses and the members of which engage, or have engaged within the past 5 years, in a continuing series of such offenses, or that has been designated as a criminal gang by the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, as meeting these criteria.” 

• felony drug offenses;
• aiding unwanted immigrants;
  violent offenses;
• obstructing justice;
• and other alleged violations of US laws, shifting responsibility to prove innocence on targeted individuals, not authorities as mandated under international and constitutional law.
  

The measure is far more sweeping than targeting alleged “gang members,” endangering refugees and asylum seekers from designated countries, ones Trump and other hardliners in Washington want kept out or targeted for removal – violating their civil and human rights.

Any immigrant suspected or alleged to be a gang member can be deported. US prisons are filled with wrongfully convicted men, women, youths, and children, mostly people of color.

HR 3697 is a vehicle for the manufacture of human and civil rights abuses, disgraceful legislation, its provisions no just society would tolerate.

It creates a sweeping new definition of “gang member,” giving authorities broad latitude to target social and political groups, clubs, even churches or other religious organizations.

It expands the use of mandatory, no-bond arbitrary detentions, a flagrant violation of international law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits arbitrarily detaining anyone.

Refugees and asylum seekers will be deterred from seeking refuge in America.

It’ll subject law-abiding immigrants to flagrant abuses of power, including Fifth Amendment equal protection rights.

It’ll permit sweeping roundups of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers of color, mainly Latinos. Living in the wrong neighborhood would risk deportation.

So could wearing the wrong colored clothing or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sweeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) roundups are notoriously indiscriminate, many individuals guilty of nothing abusively detained under deplorable conditions and deported.

HR 3697 authorizes deportations if there’s “reason to believe” so-called gang affiliation or association, no credible proof required.

Expansive language permits sweeping up law-abiding people indiscriminately, children as vulnerable as adults.

DHS can target anyone based on secret evidence, classified evidence, no evidence or any pretext cited – without due process, constitutional protections denied.

Humanitarian relief can be denied individuals fleeing persecution from designated countries.

HR 3697 is deplorable legislation, the latest in a long line of US police state laws – certain to be enacted if Senate passage occurs.

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

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Note: This address was delivered at a Workers World Party Detroit branch public meeting held on Saturday September 16, 2017. The gathering was entitled “Topple White Supremacy Do It Like Durham.” There was a report via Facebook from the Durham WWP Branch where 14 leading comrades and allies in North Carolina are facing felony charges for demolishing a monument to the Confederacy on August 15. Other presentations were given by Comrades Jamie Smedley, Mond Jones and Martha Grevatt of WWP Detroit branch. The meeting was chaired by WWP Comrade Kelly Carmichael of Detroit. Two guest speakers from the Detroit Black Youth Project 100, Lynx and Arthur Bowman III, also spoke at the forum.

***
Congratulations to the Detroit comrades for their mission to Durham last weekend. Our party must be thoroughly committed to the elimination of racism and national oppression in the United States.

Institutionalized racism and national oppression grew out of the rise of global capitalism and world imperialism. Today the U.S. is the leading imperialist state in the world. Consequently, the role we play here in the citadel of hegemony by finance capital will be critical in transforming this country and the entire planet.

In Detroit we have been attempting to keep up with the rapidly developing situation. The attacks by the ruling class are intensifying on a multi-faceted level. We can safely say that all of the gains of the African American and Labor movements of the 20th century have been reversed.

Nonetheless, more people are coming out into the streets ready to struggle against racism, class exploitation and police terror. From Durham and St. Louis to Detroit there is a burning hunger for justice, genuine equality and self-determination.

A representative aspect of this emerging mood is the anger surrounding the expulsion of San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a free agent in professional football. This young talented athlete sought to express the mass sentiment in response to the systematic killings of African Americans and other oppressed people by the police across the country.

On Sunday September 10, two members of the party and other friends were able to attend one of the demonstrations against the National Football League (NFL) and its racist policies held outside of Ford Field downtown. The Detroit Lions fans were entering the area in the thousands while people wanting to protest gathered at Grand Circus Park.

As we approached the crowd of about 50 people in the Park the private security guards were telling them that they could not gather there because it was private property. Both of us immediately began to refute the guards who were African Americans.

We told them to go call the police because they had no authority to tell us to leave a public park in downtown Detroit. A young police officer later appeared also saying that Grand Circus Park was private property.

By this time most of the crowd had gone to Brush Street, the area leading into the entrance of Ford Field. Several African American police officers approached the person speaking into a bullhorn apparently telling him that the demonstration would have to be moved to another location. Here again the notion of private property in public spaces that are funded by the people continues to arise as an impediment for the expression of the views of the oppressed and working class.

Finally, the demonstration settled at the corner of Madison and Brush in front of 36th District Court. People knelt in solidarity with Kaepernick and the African American people being oppressed today in the U.S.

What was interesting was the response of the ticket holders which largely consisted of white suburbanites sprinkled with a small minority of African Americans, some of whom were local politicians. Most of the fans acted as if they were indifferent to the demonstration. A small number of people expressed solidarity with the protests although they continued to stream into the stadium. Most strikingly there were a number of whites who conveyed open hostility to the anti-racist demonstration.

This hostility is part and parcel of the overall atmosphere existing downtown along Woodward Avenue and in particular the eastern section of the area. We noticed at a bar on East Adams and John R they were playing a record by Lynyrd Skynyrd entitled “Sweet Home Alabama”, saying that the “southern man don’t want you around.” Clearly such attitudes being blasted in Detroit is an affront to the majority African American population and all people of goodwill and conscience.

Later it was revealed that two African Americans attending the Lions game sat during the playing of the national anthem. A photo was taken of them and posted on social media with derogatory racial epithets attached.

We are in full solidarity with those who are calling these demonstrations against the NFL for its institutional racism and exploitation of players. Are African people in the U.S. still slaves? Obviously, this is a rhetorical question that reveals that over 150 years since the conclusion of the Civil War, African people are routinely attacked if they speak out against their own oppression.

We are encouraging sports fans and all anti-racist forces to continue these demonstrations along with a boycott of the NFL and their corporate sponsors. Most of the profits accrued by the team owners come from advertising. Tickets and merchandise sales also make a significant contribution to the firms’ economic viability. We can no longer continue to pay for our own exploitation and degradation. Kaepernick and any other professional athlete should have a guaranteed right to condemn racism in all of its forms.

District Detroit and Corporate Racism

As it relates to the resurgent private property claims by security and law-enforcement agents deployed downtown, we are currently consulting with the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers about the illegal removal of demonstrators from public spaces. These arbitrary decisions three years ago during the bankruptcy prompted legal action by Moratorium NOW! Coalition and other groups which we successfully settled outside of the courts for an undisclosed amount in damages. The City of Detroit even drafted a new ordinance ostensibly clarifying the rights of the people to protest.

These developments are not taking place within a vacuum. With the consolidation of corporate rule over the city these infringements on the civil rights of the majority African American population will become even more pronounced.

All of the existing stadia, arenas and casino hotels are subsidized by taxpayer funds. These prestige projects were sold to the people and local politicians as mechanisms to create employment and tax money for the improvement of the municipality. Nonetheless, all three of the casino hotels have undergone bankruptcy. The much-championed tax revenues from the casinos opened 18 years ago became a source of legal contention during the bankruptcy when it was revealed that taxes from the casino firms were not going directly into the city coffers and instead being captured by a bond insurer in order to pay the usurious interests to the financial institutions.

The conditions of the present configuration of the District Detroit complex are even more enormous. Little Caesar’s arena was not even voted on in a referendum by the people of the city. There was no debate except within the City Council whose majority of members are bought and sold by the capitalist entities that effectively run Detroit. Several court actions attempting to gain a seat at the table for the people were ineffective due to the lack of a mass movement specifically targeting the corporate racism that dominates the city.

According to an article published by the Detroit Free Press:

“The initial estimate was $450 million for the arena. But as the scope of the project increased to accommodate the Pistons’ move back downtown, the cost of the arena swelled to $863 million, including the four-story mixed-used buildings facing Woodward and Cass as well as the Via, or internal concourse, the new Chevrolet Plaza, and parking. Various public financing will pay for $324 million of that, with the Ilitch family responsible for finding the rest of the financing.” (Sept. 4)

The stated aims of the District Detroit project are to link Midtown and Downtown with shops, restaurants, apartments and bars. These construction deals and financing are being carried out absent of any consultation with the communities being impacted. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being earmarked for this development while the neighborhoods, schools, water services, environmental safety of the residents of Detroit are being consistently eradicated.

There were two demonstrations against Kid Rock as the opening act at Little Caesar’s on September 12. The first organized by the Michigan National Action Network (NAN) marched in the street up to the arena and then circling back around to head back to Grand Circus Park where it began.

Another group of activists from the initial demonstration wanted to make a direct challenge to the corporate magnates of Illitch Holdings, the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and the politicians whom carry out their biddings. A crowd of 200 youth and community people marched on the sidewalk back up to the arena to set up a picket of the Kid Rock event.

Thousands of right-wing Trump supporters attended the event. A group of 200 bikers drove up the streets on the opposite side during the initial march and set up camp in front of the arena along Woodward Avenue. These bikers were relocated to the rear of the arena after the second march set out from Grand Circus Park to directly confront the corporate racists and their supporters in District Detroit.

Just one day later on September 13, the opening of Crain’s so-called “homecoming” was held at the long-closed Detroit train station on Michigan Avenue. The purpose of the annual event as promoted by the corporate media is to bring back wealthy former residents to assist in the revitalization of the city.

Several organizations including the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and the Charlevoix Village Association announced they would protest this event as well. This “homecoming” for the rich and famous was well publicized by the local business media. Early on that morning, Fox News Detroit gleefully reported on the gathering with the caveat that it is an invitation only affair, as an announcer said:

“if you don’t have an invitation you cannot get in.”

Such an outrageous news report is typical of the role of corporate media in the city. The television and newspaper outlets routinely treat the masses with contempt, promoting the notions that the billionaire ruling class will be the salvation of Detroit.

The demonstrators outside the train station chanted slogans saying:

“Detroit Needs Water, Not Champagne.”

This slogan points to the tens of thousands of water shut-offs in Detroit since the advent of emergency management, municipal bankruptcy, the Duggan administration and the Financial Review Commission oversight board composed of representatives of capital and the comprador political functionaries from City Hall.

Those in attendance at the event could hear the chanting and speeches outside. Many left the party long before it was over. However, others stayed while a few came out in an attempt to talk with the demonstrators.

Issues related to property tax foreclosures, corporate tax captures, police terrorism, the dictatorship of capital and the role of the subservient political operatives were addressed by the speakers. Our position is that there can be no genuine revival of Detroit without addressing the needs of the people for a moratorium on property tax foreclosures, the rebuilding of the public school system, quality housing for African Americans and working people, cleaning up of the environment and effective political empowerment of the masses.

Forward to the World Conference of Mayors

It is imperative that we continue to answer the corporate racists who are spending millions of dollars for public relations consultants every month in an attempt to foster a false perception of the actual conditions in Detroit. We must bring an anti-capitalist position to these debates taking place in the city and its environs.

Our message cannot be muddled like some who are saying that they are not opposed to Dan Gilbert and the Illitch family, only the appearance of Kid Rock. They also eschew posters that portray the people of Detroit, who are 80 plus percent African American, as white. The disempowerment of the Black majority is a precondition for the escalation of the super-exploitative conditions under which we live. The dissolution of bourgeois democratic practice is being enacted in order to maximize profitability for the banks and multi-national corporations such as Bedrock, Quicken Loans and Illitch Holdings.

Therefore, the upcoming World Conference of Mayors scheduled for late October should be viewed as a terrain of ideological and political struggle over the future of the city and its working and poor people. Detroit is by no means a viable model for urban revitalization in the 21st century. The real agenda of the ruling class is the further displacement, disenfranchisement and repression of the African American majority in Detroit.

We need to provide an alternative program which challenges private capital and its control over our lives. We are for self-determination and social justice. Capitalism in its present modern-day form cannot grant these demands. Consequently, our ultimate objective is the realization of a socialist society which is controlled by the working class and the oppressed.

All images in this article are from the author.

As we meet here this evening, a radical overhaul is underway – of our political, economic, financial, social and cultural system. A new Constitution is being discussed, at the same time a plethora of radical reforms are being rushed through. The fact that many of these reforms are being challenged as unconstitutional indicates that the new Constitution is aimed at making what is un-Constitutional today, Constitutional tomorrow, making legal what is illegal by a simple trick of changing the Law!

The issue is not whether a new Constitution is needed or not. It is the fundamental and inalienable right of the people to determine the economic, social, political and cultural system in which they choose to live. But that choice will be their choice only if it is freely made, not with a gun pointed at their heads. Today, Sri Lanka finds itself practically under a form of tutelage to the US, a global power whose strategic objective is to maintain its global hegemony.

It is indeed symbolic that the US Ambassador chose to announce Washington’s decision to “assist” Sri Lanka draft its Constitution and implement the Human Rights Council resolution from the amphibious warship USS New Orleans, which is used to land and support ground forces on enemy territory and patrols provocatively close to China. It is also ironic that it is from Temple Trees that the Acting US Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells declared, last week, that

“the United States is – and will continue to be – an Indo-Pacific power.”

She was the first to announce America’s “first ever naval exercise” in Sri Lanka in October, in Trincomalee.

You will agree that rewriting the Constitution under such conditions can only advance Washington’s cause, not ours!

There are also other guns pointed at us: the 2015 Human Rights Council resolution and the notorious IMF/World Bank conditionalities, including in particular the political conditionality misleadingly known as ‘Good Governance,” a neoliberal project inimical to the national interest.

Yes, ‘Good Governance” – or “Yahapalana” as we know it here – was not invented by Ranil, Chandrika, Sirisena or Mangala! The IMF, World Bank and the US Treasury coined the term in the late 1980s as a political conditionality for the enslavement of indebted Third World countries such as ours to make us permanently indebted and dependent, facilitating external interference and domination!

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

“Good Governance” takes politics out of government and manages a shift from government to governance. By doing so, it has undermined nation-building wherever it has been implemented, and fuelled identity conflicts especially in multi-ethnic societies. You will find the same buzzwords in the Human Rights Council resolution and in the ‘good governance’ conditionality: “rule of law,” “democracy,” “devolution,” “participation,” etc.  These are the same buzz words parroted by the Yahapalana regime.  In January 2016 last year, the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe told Parliament that the purpose of the new Constitution was, among other things, to establish “a political culture that respects the rule of law and strengthens democracy.”

The aim of ‘Good Governance’ is to convert whatever remains of the State into effective and strong state agencies that guarantee the interests of foreign capital in particular. This not only means that the State will no longer serve the public interest; it will actually be turned into a repressive State against the very people it must serve. Even the World Bank admits that good governance is anti-democratic, that it demands measures directed against the expectations of the majority of the people. In a 2002 report, the World Bank was explicit:

“Good governance requires the power to carry out policies and to develop institutions that may be unpopular among some − or even a majority − of the population.”

Behind both these threats  –  the Human Rights Council resolution and the IMF/World Bank conditionality – is the same face: Washington’s!

Let’s be clear. The demands contained in the Human Rights Council resolution are not Burundi’s or Cuba’s or Russia’s or China’s. They are Washington’s. It was Yahapalana’s abject servility that made it possible for Washington to turn it into a weapon against the Sri Lankan people and their nation. As for the international financial institutions, they are dominated by Washington, which controls nearly 50% of the IMF vote share compared to Sri Lanka’s 0.19%!

The reforms demanded of us are so fundamental that they cannot be implemented without changing the Republican Constitution. A hybrid court is one. Another is the so-called devolution of power, which is a project to dismantle the State. Yet another is the conversion of our armed forces into an auxiliary of the US armed forces against our national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. That will require wide-ranging security sector reforms; demilitarisation of the North and East (which means two-thirds of our coastline); external control over recruitment and vetting of employees and officials; ending military involvement in civilian activities; etc. etc.

Underpinning the resolution is the demand for accountability, accountability is the pillar on which the so-called “Responsibility to Protect” (or RtoP) stands, and the goal of RtoP is to legitimise US intervention and domination!

In the late 19^th century, the US and Great Britain justified their “savage wars of peace” as the “White Man’s Burden” to bring “civilization and progress” to barbaric non-Western, non-Christian, non-white peoples. Today, the justification is “Responsibility to Protect,” which is claimed by the US and its junior partners in the West as the right to intervene in other countries under the pretext of protecting citizens of those countries. The moral rhetoric is human rights and humanitarianism. The victims are the same – non-Western, non-Christian, non-white.

RtoP is a project of re-colonisation, associated with tutelage. In a report on Responsibility to Protect, the UN Secretary General called for revising the UN Trusteeship System, i.e., the system of tutelage for “non-self-governing” colonial territories (2013). The original proposal came from former US Ambassador Edward Marks who was Deputy Chief of Mission in Sri Lanka, in 1987. Marks talked about an international regime of tutelage for multi-ethnic societies, which he said were “failed States.” His argument is that

“the transition from colonial rule to political and economic independence in the nation-state model is proving to be too much for some very fragile multi-ethnic societies.”

The implications of the resolution are far reaching in terms of the ability of foreign powers to intervene in the sovereign affairs of a country, despite domestic opposition. An OHCHR Report on Rule of law tools for post-conflict States (2006), is unambiguous. According to it, in case of domestic opposition to international involvement, an international mandate “provides international actors with the authority and means to intervene directly in domestic affairs and overrule domestic procedures if necessary.”

US interference in Sri Lanka began long before the resolution was adopted. It was, however, the Yahapalana regime that gave it wings and also international legitimacy.

United Nations Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Sri Lanka to fix the road map even before a legitimate Government was in place. The two visits to Sri Lanka of Jeffrey Feltman, the UN Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs, are also significant. On his first visit shortly after the 2015 Presidential elections, Feltman declared he was here “to assist in the process of accountability and reconciliation.” On his second visit last month he revealed that accountability and reconciliation had meant changing the Constitution. He came to monitor progress.

Feltman is a former US Assistant Secretary of State, a neoconservative hawk linked to Robert Kagan – their theoretician, Victoria Nuland and Samantha Power. Feltman has been involved – at the highest level – in regime change, destabilization, the break-up of sovereign States into ethnic enclaves, fomenting violence. I would require more time to give an account of his role in covert operations in the Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Moldova, Georgia, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, etc.

Other significant visits include that of Samantha Power, also known as the “Liberal War Hawk,” and George Soros, US multi-billionaire who believes we don’t have enough “constitutional democracy.”

Once the Council resolution was adopted, things moved into high gear. Three months later, the Prime Minister announced the establishment of the Constitutional Assembly, two months later, along with USAID, he said assistance would be obtained from Washington, the European Union, and the UK through the Foreign Office funded Westminister Foundation for Democracy, which was set up in 1992  to organize political parties in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the socialist bloc. In July 2016, the US Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal visited Sri Lanka and admitted there was a direct link between the Council resolution and a new Constitution. She said the Constitution was part of the work “foreshadowed” in the Council resolution and that as ‘co-sponsor,’ the US felt it was “a shared responsibility to help this process through.” That was just before the US Ambassador’s announcement from USS New Orleans that Washington would assist with the drafting.

What began as an agenda to abolish the Executive Presidency was transformed overnight into a full-blown reform of the Constitution.

With the new Constitution, as with the resolution, the Yahapalana regime is trying to convert us Sri Lankans into Washington’s little soldiers who will defend a hegemonic vision based on “invisible threats.” With the arrival of the Yahapalana regime, there has been a strengthening of military ties between the two countries, as confirmed before the US Congress by Acting US Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells. The recent launch of the US-trained Sri Lanka’s first Navy Marine Force trained for rescue and evacuation of US troops in case of attacks at sea, and the Indian Ocean Conference at Temple Trees, are part of a process that will permanently affect Sri Lanka’s independence and sovereignty.

It is significant that the Minister holding the Foreign Affairs portfolio at the recent Indian Ocean Conference in Temple Trees (August-September) had been involved in drafting a military agreement with high-level US military officials in secret meetings in 2002. He was then Minister of Defence. The Prime Minister on both occasions was the same and was believed to have met with the then US President George Bush in Washington to discuss the Agreement that was to be signed in December.

Coming back to the “invisible threats” to Washington that Sri Lanka will be called upon to fight, what are they? Where is the evidence? These are legitimate questions.

The response to these questions by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shows that Sri Lanka will be dragged into wars and conflicts over which it has no knowledge or control. Rumsfeld was referring to Iraq and so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction, which turned to be a fiction of Washington’s fertile, but sick, imagination, but for which a modern day “savage war for peace” was fought, people massacred and a country destroyed. Here’s what he said:

the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence….There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. … Each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.”

In this regard, I will leave you with a question for further reflection. It was posed by the famous American writer and filmmaker, Errol Morris:

“Imagine someone tells you that there is an elephant in the room. You search the room, opening drawers, checking closets, looking under the bed. No elephant. Absence of evidence or evidence of absence?”

Friends, fellow Patriots, if the Constitution is to be ours, written by a free people, we must first resist this diabolical project!

Note: This is the text of a speech delivered at the launch of the movement Elya (Light) during a mass and very successful meeting in Colombo on September 6th. 

On 29 August, the Kirkuk Provincial Council voted on a demand from governor Najmaldin Karim, a Kurd and a high-ranking member of the Patriotic Union Of Kurdistan (PUK – the party of former Iraqi president Jalal Talbani), one of the leading Kurdish parties, on whether Kirkuk should take part in the referendum on Kurdish independence scheduled for 25 September.

On Tuesday, the Iraqi parliament has refused to accept the referendum on Kurdish independence, saying that Article 109 of the Iraqi Constitution states that MPs should work to ensure Iraqi unity and sovereignty. Article 50 obligates MPs to work for the unity of Iraq.

The parliamentary resolution asked the Iraqi government to protect the unity of Iraq and to take all necessary measures towards this end, including beginning dialogue with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq to solve the region’s problems and head off the referendum.

The Turkmen and Arab blocs in the Kirkuk Provincial Council in August boycotted the meeting, which was attended by 24 of its 41 members, including governor Karim. Twenty-two voted in favour of participating in the referendum, leading to denunciations from the Turkmen and Arab members, who said it was unconstitutional and represented only the policy of the Kurds.

However, at a press conference Karim said that all ethnic groups had been represented.

“The Turkmen and Arabs who boycotted the meeting did not represent their people,” he said.

Majeed Ezzat, a member of the Turkmen bloc, told Al-Ahram Weekly that

“those who boycotted the meeting are the real representatives of our people. The others, whether Turkmen, Arab or Christian, are members of the Kurdish bloc and were on the Kurdish list in the local elections. They have been brought by the Kurds and follow Kurdish policies.”

Aziz Omer, a Turkmen political analyst, told the Weekly that during the former Baath Party regime in Iraq there were Kurdish parties in Baghdad, but the “real Kurdish parties” did not recognise them.

“They used to say that the Kurdish parties in Baghdad were fake and parts of the regime,” he said, adding that “the leading Kurdish parties began doing the same thing after [the fall of the Baath regime in] April 2003, establishing and funding many Turkmen parties in the city of Erbil and so-called disputed areas in a bid to impose Kurdish policies.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi and many leading political blocs in Iraq have rejected the decision of the Kirkuk Council because Kirkuk and the other disputed areas are not part of the KRG, and they have refused to accept the referendum that they say violates the Iraqi Constitution that confirms the unity of Iraqi territory.

Hadi Al-Amiri, head of the Badr Organisation, a political bloc, has asked the Kurds to choose either the referendum or Article 140 of the Constitution regarding the so-called disputed areas.

MP Hassan Turan, a Turkmen representative from Kirkuk and a member of the legal committee of the Iraqi parliament, told the Weekly that

“the Kurds’ pretext is that Article 140 has not been applied. But this article is controversial. The Kurds are demanding that it be applied and the Turkmen have said the article should be modified.”

“But the two parties [Turkmen and Kurds] have not asked the opinion of the Iraqi Higher Federal Court.”

Turan said the Arabs and the majority of the blocs in parliament had the same opinion, agreeing that Article 140 is inapplicable because it generates problems over borders that could lead to the amalgamation of governorates.

In a 2009 report, Staffan de Mistura, UN secretary-general special representative in Iraq from 2007 to 2009, had said that Kirkuk was a “perfect fit” for the province, Turan said. The report had set out a road map for solving the Kirkuk issue on the basis of agreement among all the ethnic components of Kirkuk.

“The Turkmen will boycott and refuse the results of the referendum and will go to the Federal Court,” Turan said, adding that “any problems regarding Kirkuk and the so-called disputed areas cannot be solved without the participation of the Turkmen.”

Torhan Al-Mufti, general-secretary of the Iraqi Higher Commission for Coordination among the provinces, told the Weekly that

“local elections have only been held once in Kirkuk since 2004 because there are doubts about voter-registration records. These should be reviewed according to Article 37 of the elections law.”

“If elections cannot be held, how can a referendum,” he asked.

Al-Mufti said the result could not at present be taken into consideration either in Iraq or elsewhere. When the constitution was written, he said, there was the Taamim governorate and the term Kirkuk in Article 140 did not clarify whether it referred to the city, township or province.

MP Mohamed Tamim, an Arab representative from Kirkuk, told the Weekly that

“the real representatives of the Arabs in Kirkuk are those who were elected by the Arabs in the province, and we refuse the referendum.”

“I have heard that the Kurds are using the referendum to push Baghdad into accepting their conditions, especially on the funding issue, but they should pay Baghdad $28 billion from the proceeds of policing the northern borders and selling the oil of Kirkuk.”

Tamim said that the Arabs in Kirkuk had been asked to boycott the voting, and “we have warned it could generate a new wave of ongoing violence.”

MP Emad Youkhnna, a Christian from Kirkuk, issued a communiqué rejecting the referendum in Kirkuk and denouncing the Christian members of the council who had voted in favour of it.

Mohamed Mahdi Al-Bayati, a Turkmen politician and the commander of the Badr Northern Axis who is from Tuz Khormato 74 km south of Kirkuk, another disputed area with a Turkmen majority and part of the Salahuddin Province, told the Weekly that

“in Tuz Khurmato, the Kurds might put ballot boxes in their party buildings, but they could not put them in the Turkmen neighbourhoods because the political equation is different than it is in Kirkuk. Here the Turkmen have the power.”

 “We will refuse the results of the referendum in Kirkuk and elsewhere,” he said.

The Diyala Provincial Council has rejected the referendum, yet many towns in Diyala will participate in it, among them Kara Tepe, where more than 60 per cent of the population are Turkmen, according to a source from Kara Tepe who spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity.

Three members (one Turkmen and two Arabs) from the 15-member town council have refused the referendum, and the Turkmen member has begun receiving threatening messages, he said. In Mandly (60 per cent Arabs and 25 per cent Turkmen) in Diyala Province, 90km northeast of baghdad, the Arabs have organised protests against the referendum.

Masoud Barzani, the president of the Iraq Kurdistan Region who has insisted on holding the referendum on 25 September, has said that an independent Kurdistan “won’t be a Kurdish national country, but will be a country for all ethnicities living in it”.

One Kurdish political analyst who spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity said that self-determination was the right of all the nations in Iraq, but that Kurdistan would need to be recognised as a new state by the UN.

When South Sudan became a new state, some 80,000 documents were presented to the UN, for example, he said.

However, Turkey, Iran, the Arab League, the US, the EU and the UN have either rejected the referendum or demanded that it be postponed for the time being.

Iraqis who fear another wave of civil war say that there is still the possibility of negotiations to maintain Iraqi unity before the drums of civil war explode the powder keg.

Featured image is from the author.

The Indian Ocean Conference (IOC) organised by the India Foundation and held at the Sri Lankan Prime Minister’s official residence ‘Temple Trees’ from Aug. 31 to Sept.1, was billed as a gathering of Indian Ocean Region countries and ‘other concerned nations’ with a view to advancing ‘Peace, Progress and Prosperity” in the Indian Ocean. While this is no doubt a laudable goal, the absence of perspectives from regional players like China and Pakistan points to somewhat more partisan objectives than those advertised.

The delegate described as ‘Principal, Ambassadors’ LLC Group, China’ was actually an American citizen, and while there was ambiguity as to the interests she represented it would be safe to surmise that she did not represent the People’s Republic of China. However, the US, also an external power, was represented by its Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asia, Alice Wells.

A post on the Conference’s Facebook page points to objectives not revealed elsewhere. It describes the gathering as being “part of India’s efforts to rejuvenate ties with IOR countries and increase its outreach in the region to counter growing Chinese influence in the region.” The IOC’s real purpose is candidly stated:

“The event can be seen as an effort to counter China’s growing influence in the IOR.”

India’s worries over China’s growing maritime footprint are shared by the US, resulting in converging interests in the IOR.

“Given its economic downturn, the US seeks like-minded democracies in the Indo-Pacific region to balance China” says Indian Ocean researcher Lindsay Hughes in an article published by ‘Future Directions International.’ “It has strong relationships with Australia, Japan and South Korea” but “It lacks a similar partner in the eastern Indian Ocean …”

Referring to Washington’s agreement with Delhi to share military facilities and its efforts to sign an intelligence-sharing agreement as well, this analyst says that a close partnership with India “suits Washington’s strategy of passing some of the responsibility for maintaining security in the Indian Ocean Region to regional partners.”

Wells in her Colombo address unequivocally asserted that

“the United States is and would continue to be an Indo-Pacific power.”

It may be noticed that the terms ‘Indo-Pacific’ or ‘Indo-Asia Pacific,’ combining the two oceans as if they are a single entity, is increasingly used now by American officials. The terminology may be intended to make the increasing US assertiveness in the IOR seem ‘normal’ although the US lacks presence in the Indian Ocean comparable to its massive build-up in the Pacific theatre. The US’s deepening ties with the Sri Lanka Navy in recent times are also worth noting in this context. At the conference, Wells announced the first ever US-Sri Lanka naval exercise to be carried out in October. According to reports this exercise will be conducted by the US Seventh Fleet in Trincomalee, a strategically located deep water port on the country’s East coast.

The US has increasingly referred to ‘Freedom of Navigation and Over flight’ in its rhetoric, seeking to enlist the support of partners in its enforcement. While in her speech Wells called on others to “adhere to a common vision that respected international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention,” it is ironic that the US itself has not acceded to the LOS Convention. All the same the US has been in the habit of challenging other states when they act in ways that the US believes pose a threat to ‘freedom of navigation,’ by sending its warships into the waters concerned. These ‘Freedom of Navigation (FON) assertions by the US have dangerously racked up tensions with China in the South China Sea. In the latest incident reported last month, the USS John S. McCain sailed within 12 nautical miles (the internationally recognized territorial limit) of Mischief Reef in the Spratly islands, causing Beijing to express displeasure over what it called an act of provocation. The incident took place in disputed waters where China’s claims are contested by neighbours. The volatility of the situation is compounded by the fact that this was a time when China’s help was being sought to defuse tensions with North Korea over its missile tests.

Armitai Etzioni of The George Washington University, Washington DC says the US is acting, as it is often accused, as the world’s policeman.

“ .. as far as FONA (Freedom of Navigation Assertions) is concerned, the United States decides on its own which new restrictions introduced by any nation in the world are ‘‘excessive,” and what it considers the correct interpretation of international law and UNCLOS” he said in a 2015 research paper. “And it unilaterally applies its military force ….. to enforce the rules. In short, in these matters the United States acts as accuser, judge, jury, and executioner.”

Etzioni warns that these types of actions add a security risk “as they can quite readily escalate into dangerous clashes between the forces of the super powers.”

It is in this context of ambiguity as to the motives of various parties, that Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe pledged at the IOC that Sri Lanka would take the lead in initiating a discussion “to deliberate on a stable legal order on freedom of navigation and over flight in the Indian Ocean.” In view of the US’s eagerness to strengthen military ties with Sri Lanka, the question arises as to whether the US agenda of containing China has been taken on as well. The language used by India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, by comparison, was more circumspect, and did not refer to ‘freedom of navigation’ but rather Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region’ (SAGAR). Given the prevailing tensions in the IOR Sri Lanka will need to beware of being used as the cat’s paw of any big power in its games of brinkmanship – it does not need to become another South China Sea!

Palitha Kohona (Source: Asian Tribune)

Asked to comment, Palitha Kohona, former head of the UN Treaty Section in New York expressed the view that Sri Lanka must again take a high profile position in discussions relating to the oceans and the blue economy. Dr. Kohona was also Chair of the UN Sixth Committee (Legal), Chair of the UN Committee on Biological Diversity Beyond National Jurisdiction and Chair of the Indian Ocean Committee. He made this assertion “given that Sri Lanka, with its 200-mile EEZ and potentially vast continental shelf would increasingly turn to the ocean for its future prosperity (fisheries, petroleum and mineral extraction, environmental protection, including coral reefs, dolphins and whales, migratory fish species, tourism, etc).” On an optimistic note he added that Sri Lanka’s input will be respected “where the Convention on the Law of the Sea needs further elaboration or clarification, including in the formulation of codes.”

“Of course, like many rules of international law, the provisions of the LOSC also tend to be interpreted to suit the convenience of those relying on them. Some major powers are not parties to the LOSC but subscribe to its provisions as reflecting customary international law – the US, Turkey and Venezuela among them” he said.