Global Research

A few days after Burundi, South Africa and The Gambia announced their intention to withdraw from the International Criminal Court an article appeared in the American journal, Foreign Policy, stating that the ICC is considering investigating allegations of war crimes that may have been committed in Afghanistan. The allegations are spread among the Afghan resistance to the western invasion and occupation of the country, the puppet government installed by the United States, and the United States itself.

This has caused some surprise among observers of the ICC who have correctly criticised the tribunal as an asset of the US and its allies since it has only gone after certain African leaders who stand in the way of western interests while providing complete immunity to other leaders who are useful agents of those interests. Some of have accused it of racism, a charge difficult to refute but misses the point that the objective is the projection of imperial power.

The United States, though not a member of the ICC, has established its dominating influence in the staff of the tribunal so that it and its Canadian and EU allies effectively control its machinery, most importantly the prosecution, the administration and the selection of judges. It is because of this influence that the ICC falsely accused Muammar Gadhafi with crimes in 2011 thereby helping it excuse the NATO aggression against Libya and also provoking and excusing his murder.

The ICC is meant to prevent war crimes and war but it has been used in fact to overthrow governments and throw their leaders in prison, or in the tragic case of Muammar Gadhafi, provoke war and excuse murder; just as the ICTY in The Hague was used to justify the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia and the arrest and death in NATO hands of President Milosevic. The ICC continues in that criminal tradition.

But is this announcement a surprise, a hopeful step that the ICC may live up to its claims? The answer is a clear no. The timing of the announcement and its delivery are interesting. It comes within a few days of the disastrous blows to its prestige and credibility with the withdrawal of the African countries. Something needed to be done to try to restore some credibility, some appearance of impartiality; and that is what the announcement does, or tries to do because it will soon be realised that it is a cheap trick, a charade, designed to save the ICC so that the United States and its allies can continue to use it as they see fit, as a means of control, not justice.

It is not a surprise in the first place because the ICC made public its Report on Preliminary Examination Activities on November 12, 2015. In that report there is a section on Afghanistan setting out more or less the contents in the Foreign Policy Report. It makes interesting reading and starts off with a lie that indicates where we can expect this investigation to go.

On page 26 the document states,

113. “After the attacks of 11 September 2001, in Washington D.C. and New York City, a United States-led coalition launched air strikes and ground operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban, suspected of harbouring Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban were ousted from power by the end of the year. In December 2001, under the auspices of the UN, an interim governing authority was established in Afghanistan. “

This is a lie because the Taliban government, a government installed by the United States in the first place, was not “harbouring” Bin Laden. They stated to the US government, when it demanded they turn him over in 2001, that he was in the country but by law they were required to demand that the US provide them with evidence that he was involved in the events in New York. The US flatly refused to provide any evidence to form the basis of a legal extradition so the Afghanistan government refused to hand him over. Any country would have been required by law to do the same. Instead of a file containing evidence they received cruise missiles and exploding bombs. Bin Laden of course was just the excuse, not the reason for the war. So for the ICC to state a lie that serves the narrative of the United States and then to continue with the joke that instead of the US overthrowing the Afghan government, (they were “ousted from power” they say, but how and by who is not said), they in fact helped to reestablish government, with the help of the peace loving UN, is to give the United States immunity from prosecution of the ultimate crime of aggression against Afghanistan that still continues today and all the war crimes that have flowed from that aggression. They bear the ultimate responsibility. But since the ICC sees fit to rewrite history in favour of the United States in its investigation of the war how can we expect it to ever prosecute that nation for the crimes it has committed?

Most of the document discusses allegations of crimes and some attention is paid to allegations against US forces and Afghan government forces but most of it is concerned with crimes of the Taliban. Where it discusses war crimes allegedly committed by the United States it points out that the US is investigating those allegations and has taken disciplinary action against those responsible in hundreds of cases. The question then is whether the United States is properly investigating and then prosecuting those cases in its military discipline system. For if the United States were in fact properly investigating and actively prosecuting soldiers and officials then the ICC cannot step into the situation. Only if this is not being done and cases appear to be sham cases can the ICC claim jurisdiction. This writer cannot imagine the United States ever accepting a finding from the ICC that it is not acting correctly, and having regard to its rewriting of history, I do not expect it to make such a finding.

That this is a public relations exercise is supported by the source of the article, Foreign Policy, which is owned by the Washington Post; and the writer, David Bosco, who lectures on international law and the ICC at the Washington College of Law, in Washington D.C. has an interesting career. After graduating from Harvard he worked on “refugee issues” in Bosnia, first for an “ngo” then the UN and NATO and interned at NATO Military Headquarters in Belgium, then went to the State Department, and has largely been an editor at the journal and law lecturer ever since. You can understand my doubts of the bone fides of their intentions when you know that.

Why is it that this information had to come from this source and not the ICC itself? The answer is that if it came from the ICC no one would believe it. Its credibility is in tatters. It would look like the face-saving action it is. So it had to be made to look like a revelation of something daring that the ICC was reluctant to make it public, a bold step for mankind, all hush hush, so the US cannot get in the way of justice. But instead of a revelation it looks like a manipulation, a propaganda action to support the ICC as a tool of domination by the west against the rest of the world. And so, the game continues.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

San Francisco. This is penned on November 8, and the United States goes to the polls in a swell of turbulence. 

The milk has long soured, the wishes of the electorate curdled by dissatisfaction and disgust. The sense of wishing to vote for neither candidate – Hillary Clinton for the Democrats or Donald Trump for the Republicans – has been thrown in along with partisan voices and furious promises.

This, however, is only the tip of what is a vast, bulky structure that has been put into motion.  The outsider casting a cold eye on the proceedings will marvel at the various suggestions, multiplied through various formats, guides, and punditry.  Activism abounds in various shades. There are suggestions, and in some cases, all out endorsements for candidates at all levels of government.

Much of this has the tone of a fund drive for a struggling charity or radio station, and a desperate one at that.  In a society where voters may be discouraged, rendered irrelevant by helplessness and estrangement, the cry of “Vote!” is loud, incessant, and a source of unconvincing persuasion.

“Don’t stand still, vote,” goes a stilted slogan from the Clinton campaign, featuring Hillary, Bill and Bon Jovi, all taking the irony-free Mannequin challenge.  Each election, many are not convinced by what is seen as an essentially impotent exercise, and participation rates tend to be horrendously low.  Voters, in some instances, might as well be backing candidates in mid-freeze, dumb to their wishes.

In San Francisco, as with everything else, the activism has a singular slant. There are suggestions from such pundits as Broke-Ass Stuart (Stuart Schuffman), former mayoral candidate for the city, poet, and irate columnist for the SF Examiner.  He advises voters today to go raise money for the homeless and protect the arts. That is merely the start of it.

His suggestions are predictable at the federal level: Clinton for President; Kamala Harris for US Senator while two Congressional districts (12^th and 14^th) also feature. The State levels follow – California State Senate Districts 11, 17 and 19.  Within San Francisco itself come more cheat sheet recommendations that comprise more districts, the Board of Education, the City College Board, legal officers, and the BART Board. Democracy rings curiously, and variously, indeed.

While foreign presses and audiences tend to focus on the presidential election itself, with some concern of the composition of Congress, ballot initiatives tend to be ignored.  These tend to form an essential, and in some cases vital softening, of the result at the Presidential level.  Madness may prevail in the machinery of Washington, but that is hardly an excuse to not get hands dirty at the local level.

An overview of some of these suggests how extensive they potentially are. The complex fabric of the United Stateswarrants an understanding of what is happening at the elemental level. In California itself, there are propositions 51 to 67, among them the legalisation of marijuana (Proposition 64), and Proposition 62 (Death Penalty Abolition) and Proposition 66 (Death Penalty Procedures).

The wonder here is how some of these propositions ever reach the voter’s scrawl. Not all have the gravitas of abolishing the death penalty or feeding the libertarian instinct of having pot.  Proposition 60 covers the issue of condoms in Adult Films.  (Broke-Ass Stuart suggests voting No for this one.)

Then come the avalanche of Propositions A to X, finished by Measure RR dealing with safety for the BART train system. These are similarly as varied as the numbered propositions, with Prop H calling for a public advocate, and Prop F insisting on engaging youth in the electoral process.

Such bewildering options can be daunting, and may serve to do less for informed democratic practice than supposed. Voting is trumpeted as a sacredly held responsibility, but that does not mean it will be discharged before the mountain of considerations facing the voter.

Adding to that is the structural set up of polling stations, with variable voting equipment and facilities. These can be found in the most curious of places.  Restaurants, for instance, can be transformed on Election Day for reasons of proximity to the registered voter.  (Ala Turca Restaurant on Geary Street is one such venue.)

What matters in counting as a polling place are certain “management requirements” outlined by the Election Assistance Commission, including accessibility and adequate space for setting up the equipment for voting. Law requirements specific to the state also apply.

Last but not the very least for the voter today is the distinct nature of this particular election.  Brock Keeling, writing for San Francisco Curbed (Nov 7) suggested steps to take in the event of violence.  “Seeing as how this has been both a dividing and violent election season, it’s always a small possibility that there could be instances of voter intimidation on Tuesday.”  The recommendation is to call the California Secretary of State or Election Protection.  To the very last, this promises to be a day of fear and loathing, garnished with a good deal of paranoia.

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

(update added 8 November 2016)

In a previous report, I indicated “Why Hillary Clinton’s Paid Speeches Are Relevant”, but not what they contained. The present report indicates what they contained. 

One speech in particular will be cited and quoted from as an example here, to show the type of thing that all of her corporate speeches contained, which she doesn’t want the general public to know about.

This is the day’s keynote speech, which she gave on Wednesday, 25 June 2014, to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a lobbying organization in DC, at their annual convention, which in 2014 was held in San Diego. The announcement for attendees said:

“Wednesday’s Keynote session is sponsored by Genentech, and is open to Convention registrants with Convention Access and Convention Access & Partnering badges only. Seating is limited.”

Somehow, a reporter from a local newspaper, the Times of San Diego, managed to get in. Also, somehow, an attendee happened to phone-video the 50-minute interview that the BIO’s CEO did of Clinton, which took place during the hour-and-a-half period, 12-1:30, which was allotted to Clinton.

The Times of San Diego headlined that day, “Hillary Clinton Cheers Biotechers, Backing GMOs and Federal Help”, and gave an excellent summary of her statements, including of the interview. Here are highlights:

It was red meat for the biotech base. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a 65-minute appearance at the BIO International Convention on Wednesday, voiced support for genetically modified organisms and possible federal subsidies. …

“Maybe there’s a way of getting a representative group of actors at the table” to discuss how the federal government could help biotechs with “insurance against risk,” she said.

Without such subsidies, she said, “this is going to be an increasing challenge.” …

She said the debate about GMOs might be turned toward the biotech side if the benefits were better explained, noting that the “Frankensteinish” depictions could be fought with more positive spin.

“I stand in favor of using seeds and products that have a proven track record,” she said [at 29:00 in the video next posted here], citing drought-resistant seeds she backed as secretary of state. “There’s a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are.” [that too at 29:00] …

Minutes earlier, Gov. Jerry Brown made a rousing 3-minute pitch for companies to see California as biotech-friendly.

“You’ve come to the right place.” …

Brown had some competition for biotech boosterism in the form of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the longtime Clinton ally who pitched his own state as best for biotech. …

[Clinton was] Given a standing ovation at the start and end of her appearance.

In other words: As President, she would aim to sign into law a program to provide subsidies from U.S. taxpayers to Monsanto and other biotech firms, to assist their PR and lobbying organizations to eliminate what she says is “a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are” concerning genetically modified seeds and other GMOs.

In other words: she ignores the evidence that started to be published in scientific journals in 2012 showing that Monsanto and other GMO firms were selectively publishing studies that alleged to show their products to be safe, while selectively blocking publication of studies that — on the basis of better methodology — showed them to be unsafe. She wants U.S. taxpayers to assist GMO firms in their propaganda that’s based on their own flawed published studies, financed by the GMO industry, and that ignores the studies that they refuse to have published. She wants America’s consumers to help to finance their own being poisoning by lying companies, who rake in profits from poisoning them.

Her argument on this, at 27:00 to 30:00 in the video of the 50-minute interview of Clinton, starts by her citing the actual disinformation (that’s propagandized by the fossil-fuels industries, which actually back her Presidential campaign) that causes the American public to reject the view that humans have caused global warming.

At 27:38 in the video, she said:

“98% of scientists in the world agree that man has caused the problem” of global warming, and she alleged that the reason why there is substantial public resistance to GMOs is the same as the reason why there’s substantial public resistance to the reality that global warming exists and must be actively addressed:

Americans don’t know the science of the matter. She received several applauses from this pro-GMO audience, for making that false analogy. The reality, that it’s false, is that on 15 May 2013, the definitive meta-study, which examined the 11,944 published studies that had been done relating to the question of global warming and its causes, reported that “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” The meta-study was titled “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature”.

So, Clinton’s statement “98%” was only 0.9% off regarding the size of the scientific consensus. However, her implication that the public’s rejection of that actual 97.1% of experts’ findings on global warming, is at all analogous to the public’s rejection of the actually bogus finding by GMO industry ‘experts’ that GMOs are safe, is pure deception by her. The reality is the exact contrary: The fossil-fuels industries have financed the propaganda ‘discrediting’ the scientists’ consensus about global warming, much like the GMO industries have financed the deception of the public to think that ‘scientists’ ‘find’ that GMOs are safe. In fact, as was reported inScientific American, on 23 December 2013, “’Dark Money’ Funds Climate Change Denial Effort”, and the study they were summarizing, from the journal Climate Change, was titled “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations”. It found that:

“From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding CCCM [climate change counter-movement] organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions to CCCM organizations. Instead, funding has shifted to pass through [two] untraceable sources [both of which had been set up by the Kochs: Donors Trust, and Donors Capital Fund].”

On 23 April 2016, Politico headlined “Charles Koch: ‘It’s possible’ Clinton is preferable to a Republican for president”, but this isn’t the only indication that Hillary is merely pretending to be their enemy. On 24 February 2016, I headlined “Hillary Clinton’s Global-Burning Record” and summarized and linked to news reports such as the opening there: “On 17 July 2015, Paul Blumenthal and Kate Sheppard at Huffington Post bannered, ‘Hillary Clinton’s Biggest Campaign Bundlers Are Fossil Fuel Lobbyists’ and the sub-head was ‘Clinton’s top campaign financiers are linked to Big Oil, natural gas and the Keystone pipeline.’”

In other words: the same pro-GMO lobbyists who applaud Hillary for verbally endorsing the science that affirms global warming, applaud her for endorsing their own fake ‘science’ which asserts that GMOs have been proven safe. They just love her lie, which analogizes them to the authentic scientists who (97.1%) say that global warming exists and is caused by humans’ emissions of global-warming gases.

Also, she expressed the wish that: “the federal government could help biotechs with ‘insurance against risk,’ she said. Without such subsidies, she said, this is going to be an increasing challenge,” because otherwise, biotech companies might get bankrupted by lawsuits from consumers who might have become poisoned by their products. She wants the consuming public to bear the risk from those products — not the manufacturers of them to bear any of the risks that could result from those manufacturers’ rigged ‘safety’ ‘studies’ (a.k.a.: their propaganda).

In other words: the reason why Hillary Clinton won’t allow her 91 corporate speeches, for which she was paid $21,667,000, to be published, is the lying political cravenness of her pandering to those corporations there. Each group of lobbyists is happy to applaud her lying, regardless of whether her lies include insults against another group of lobbyists, to whom she might be delivering similar lies to butter them up at a different annual convention or etc.

In other words: she’s telling all of them collectively: You’re my type of people, and the public who despise you are merely misguided, but as President I’ll set them straight and they’ll even end up paying part of the bill to be ‘educated’ about these matters, by my Administration, and even part of the bill to pay corporations’ product-liability suits.

The reason why Clinton doesn’t want those speeches to be made public is that she doesn’t want the voters to know that she intends to use their money to propagandize to them for the benefit of those corporations, and also to protect those corporations from liability for harms their products cause the public.

This is called (by the propagandists) ‘capitalism’ and ‘democracy’. Mussolini, with pride, called it sometimes “fascism,” and sometimes “corporationism.” But whatever it’s called, it’s what she supports, and what she represents, to the people who are paying her. And even most of her own voters would find it repulsive, if they knew about it. So: she can’t let them know about it. And she doesn’t.

UPDATE: On 5 October 2016, fifty-six food-related lobbying organizations, such as the American Soybean Association and the International Dairy Foods Association, and including some universities that receive large income from biotech firms to produce ‘scientific studies’ so they can promote their products as being ‘proven safe’, wrote a letter to the heads and ranking members of the Appropriations Committee in both the House and Senate, opening,

“The undersigned organizations support the inclusion of $3 million within the Fiscal Year 2017 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act to better inform the public about the application of biotechnology to food and agricultural production. Regrettably, there is a tremendous amount of misinformation about agricultural biotechnology in the public domain. Dedicated educational resources will ensure key federal agencies responsible for the safety of our nation’s food supply – the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) – are able to more easily convey to the public science- and fact-based information about food.”

That was exactly what Hillary Clinton had proposed on 25 June 2014 to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (which was one of those 56 lobbying groups). As to whether the idea had originated with Clinton or with top executives in the biotech industry, one can, at the present time, only speculate. However, she was on record (privately) proposing it to the biotech industry more than two years before the biotech industry proposed it to Congress.

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.

Michael Welch for Global Research, Reporting from Columbus, Ohio.

Election Day has finally arrived here in the United States.

Ohio was the site of numerous and significant  irregularities in the 2004 election.

Tens of thousands of voters were purged from the polls, major disparities between exit polls and election results persisted, and clear indications of hacking of the vote processed by election machines which swung the result toward the Republican candidate George W Bush.

Ohio is considered a ‘battleground state’ and a bellwether state.

That is, since 1964, the Buckeye State has always backed the presidential candidate who would emerge victorious.

It seemed like a logical place for me to locate myself to try to get a close-up view of the US elections.

One of my local guides to this political safari is Bob Fitrakis.

He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and is a political science professor at Columbus State Community College, editor of the Columbus Free Press,  and the Green Party’s candidate for County Prosecutor in Franklin County. He has authored or co-authored several books including: Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election? Essential Documents  and  What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft And Fraud in the 2004 Election

Fitrakis was also one of four attorneys to file challenges to Ohio’s elections results.

Today, November 8, Prof. Fitrakis and a small collective of people is monitoring the election for irregularities. I met with him about two hours after the polls opened to record this interview.

–

Stay tuned for more Global Research election day coverage from Columbus, Ohio.

So we are on the eve of the 11th “Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes” (MIEoOL) since I was first eligible to vote in 1976.

This MIEoOL has me constantly shaking my head over the depths of corruption, scandal and abject mediocrity that both of the major candidates have sunken to. The “crap of the crop” has certainly risen to the top in POTUS2016 and I couldn’t be more ashamed to live in a country of 320 million that couldn’t find anyone with more on the ball than Woman (D) and Man (R).

Now, Clinton’s supporters would argue that she has a lot of experience and should be the one with her twitchy finger on the button of nuclear annihilation. Her “experience” is precisely my problem with her: She has risen to the top of a white male supremacist/capitalist nation by drenching herself in the blood of empire and the oppressive greed of Wall Street. Like being accused of being “racist” for not supporting Obama, the new smear is that one is a “sexist” for not supporting Clinton.

Is it really possible for someone like Clinton to be a feminist if she has no problem killing women and children in war? A liberal feminist…maybe…a liberation/radical feminist? Not even close!

 Image by Anthony Freda

Then, Trump supporters would argue that he is just a “regular” guy that loves America and will make her “great again.” Clinton and her minions will retort, “America has always been great,” and I say: “A state built on genocide and slavery that continues those policies hundreds of years later has NEVER been great.” Some of us on the left see Trump’s campaign as being neo-Fascist and are fear-mongering about Trump being too close to the mechanism of nuclear destruction; I see Trump as the perfect foil and guarantor of a Clinton victory. Like the late comedian George Carlin said, “It’s a big club, and we ain’t in it.”

This is not an essay to convince anyone of what member of the Twin Parties of War and Wall Street to vote for on Nov. 8th, but to be real about our “choices.”

Especially in the arena of POTUS politics, the voters don’t pick the candidates or the eventual winner: the establishment and billions of dollars do. In the end if you choose D or R, you are choosing to continue and participate in the vehicle of your own oppression and the subjugation and slaughter of billions of more people around the planet.

Bottom-line: Trump wants to deport Muslims, Clinton is happy to kill them; slimy Game Show Host vs. War Criminal.

Wow! In the words of the DNC in Philly, “USA!USA!USA!USA!” We’re number one in war and crappy elections.

No matter who “wins” on Tuesday night, the main thing to remember is that 99% of us are going to be Big Losers and the only way to for the people to win is to organize on a massive scale to oppose the policies of US empire and to join with the rest of the world in liberation struggles for freedom and equality.

First published by Global Research in March 2016

America is a divided nation.

Consistently wracked by a recurring series of ‘culture wars’ and a general dissatisfaction felt by the electorate about its political elite, it is a country beset by uncertainty about the future of its global economic and military pre-eminence. This general feeling of malaise; a dip in the form and the spirit of a people inherently convinced about the exceptional foundations and rationales underpinning their conception of nationhood is so profound as to have led some to conclude that the currents in contemporary America bear something of a resemblance to the Weimer era in Germany.

There are deep fissures in the eternally vexed question regarding race and the observance of what some feel is a stifling obeisance to the strictures of political correctitude. While it has for long remained split down the middle on the question of abortion there are misgivings among a significant segment of opinion over what is perceived to be the prioritisation of the agenda of the gay and lesbian lobby. As is the case with abortion, the issue of gun control succeeds in producing heated and often bitter debate.

The economy, consistently defined by an extraordinary level of national debt and the apparent permanent loss of manufacturing jobs to foreign destinations, forms a central part of popular discontent and dissent. However, there is little consensus as to how to set things right.

America of course operates as a pluralistic society and has historically spawned a range of influential social movements acting to transform its ethics and social policies towards what is perceived as being for the greater good. But the rise of a succession of populist activist groups; each strident in its complaints about the perceived failings in government and society has been striking: The Tea Party, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and American Border Control to name but a significant few.

Where the Black Lives Matter movement decries the relative expendability of the lives of American citizens of African-American extraction at the hands of trigger-happy law enforcement officers, the Tea Party ideology largely expounds on the supposed favouritism given to minorities in terms of opportunities for social and economic advancement. The mantra of wanting to “take back our country” is viewed by opponents not so much as being based on the idea of wishing to see government shorn of its powers as it is about wanting to halt the progress of minorities at a time when the White House is occupied by a black president.

While the Occupy Wall Street movement’s perception of the decline of America is rooted in the increasing disparities in wealth and income distribution in society as well as the malign influence of powerful corporate interests in the economic and political process, anti-immigration groups such as American Border Control posit the view that the country can never be put on the path of revival while there are what they claim to be hordes of Mexicans entering the United States illegally; bringing with them “crime, drugs and squalor.” For these groups, the very fabric of America as a nation with a majority European descended population and a particular set of mores is threatened by “immigration via the birth canal.”

The analogy made with the deepened social divisions during the Weimer Republic may not be totally misplaced, as indeed may be possible comparisons with the republican and conservative divide in pre-civil war Spain. As was the case with those traditionalists who in Spain of the 1930s looked on in askance at social innovations introduced by the Republican regime such as the legalisation of divorce, contraception and abortion, so too a large segment of present day Americans recoil at the perceived constricting tenets of ‘political correctness’ and the legalisation of gay marriage which along with other developments are viewed as the wholesale abrogation of traditional American values.

The polarized atmosphere of divisiveness and even outright hatred often on display in political wrangling and the general public discourse is clear to see. While most would agree to a general dissatisfaction with the state of affairs, there is no united consensus as how to tackle the root causes of the social and economic malaise.

In 1930s Germany and Spain, the proposed solutions were predicated on diametrically opposed rationales represented by the Left and Right of the conventional political spectrum. In both situations the resultant ‘revolutions’ led to the rise respectively of Hitler and Franco.

There is of course no suggestion of an imminent implosion in American society that would lead to an internal war –such a scenario is largely the concern of fiction in movies and in graphic comic book stories- albeit that Colin Woodard, a reporter for a newspaper in Maine, has perceptively argued the position of North America as being constituted of eleven separate stateless nations based on the dominant cultures of swathes of population concentrations in various regions.

Nonetheless, the rise on the one hand of the socialist Bernie Sanders in the Democrat Party and the populist Donald Trump in the Republican Party on the other speak towards a divide in terms of popular reactions to an unsatisfactory view of the prevailing system.

Those Americans attracted to Sanders’ message are angered by the licence given to profiteering corporations who outsource jobs outside of the United States. They hate the privileges conferred on beyond-the-reach-of-the-law bankers and the trends pointing to the concentration of wealth in the hands of an increasingly smaller percentage of the population. They are concerned about the concentration of mainstream media ownership in the hands of six corporations and are dismayed about student loans that are packaged with onerous interest rates.

But it is of course the campaign of billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump which has received the greatest amount of attention and also within whose populist agenda the deep cultural divide in America is laid bare.

Trump’s message has seen him become the leading candidate among those seeking the Republican Party nomination. Significantly, his campaign has also earned him the enmity of the political establishment; an entity encapsulated by the duopoly of the respective machineries of the Democrat and Republican Party Parties from which much of the electorate has increasingly become estranged.

That Trump has proved to be a magnet for popular discontent in America is clear enough.

An interesting array of persons and demographics has been energized into supporting him. On a personal level, some are impressed by his ‘no-nonsense’ talking style and ‘Alpha Male’ demeanour. So far as his capacity for executing the office of the presidency is concerned, some believe that a man for long enmeshed in the business world with success to go along with it could help cure America of its economic ills.

Trump some claim has surged ahead because he has had the temerity to challenge the status quo. The bland ‘business as usual’ form of electioneering that has for long constrained the discourse into a fixed set of parameters is gone. For others, Trump is a rabble-rouser; essentially a carnival barker who has turned over a rock that has revealed an ugly underbelly of intolerance and racism.

He has brought immigration to the fore in a way that otherwise would not have been the case. His criticism not only of illegal immigration but also of legal immigration to the United States has struck a chord among segments of the European-descended population who feel threatened by non-white immigration. For these people, the demographic shifts and changes portend towards a marked and irreversible change in America’s European-derived culture and mores.

For a man concerned with the preservation of the genetic purity of the white race which he continually asserts by their endeavours solely created the basis of America, the present discourse on the immigration issue is one that has captured the attention of the white nationalist David Duke.

For Duke, Trump’s intervention signifies a fundamental breach with the normally ‘timid’ and prescribed format of debate. For instance, Trump’s pledge to deport 12 million illegal immigrants marks a clear shift from the past; a past which according to Duke is littered with ostensibly tough-talking but ultimately insincere Republican candidates who inevitably capitulate by granting mass amnesties.

Duke has of course been made a point of discussion of the election campaign because he has applauded several of Trump’s stances while holding back from giving a formal endorsement. It is no surprise that this former member of a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan who later served as a legislator in his home state of Louisiana would become a figure of controversy.

Duke’s weltanschauung, which is predicated on the fundamental differences between racial groups, has as a central thesis the necessity of the neutralisation of Jewish power on both a national and global level. Trump’s strident views on immigration are extremely important to the likes of Duke who fear legal immigration –never mind immigration of the illegal sort- is irretrievably leading to the scenario of European-descended Americans becoming a minority population.

In this, Duke sees the hand of Jewish influence in engineering a shift toward a national policy of open immigration. Whereas Acts of Congress respectively in 1921, 1924 and 1952 had, he argues, sought to preserve a European majority, the Immigration Act of 1965 sponsored in both houses of Congress by Jewish figures such as Congressman Samuel Dickstein and Senator Jacob Javits ‘opened the gates’. The reason which he proffers to his followers is that of an “atavistic hatred” Jews have toward white European Christian culture which they blame for age-long persecutions.

Relegating whites to minority status would, he argues, serve Jewish interests because it enables them to supplant white Americans as the elite in American society and also puts a damper on the capacity for the revival of cohesive ethnic nationalist sentiments on the part of Christian whites from which Jews have historically borne negative consequences.

In the words of Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor of psychology and a guru of sorts for Duke and other white nationalists, “ethnic and religious pluralism serves external Jewish interests because Jews become just one of many ethnic groups…and it becomes difficult or impossible to develop unified, cohesive groups of Gentiles united in their opposition of Judaism.”

Duke’s obsession with the power allegedly wielded by members of the Jewish community in media, the economy and political influence has led him to praise some of Trump’s actions.

For instance, when Trump chided Hillary Clinton for being readily accepting of the necessity for Israel to build a wall to keep Muslims out while at the same time being dismissive of the right of America to do the same, Duke highlighted this as evidence of the hypocrisy of mainstream politicians who cravenly serve the interests of the Israel lobby at the expense of their own national interests.

Again, when in December of 2015 Trump went before the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Forum to tell them “I know that you don’t like me because I don’t want your money”, Duke was quick to interpret those comments as being profoundly revealing of the state of affairs in contemporary America. No political figure would have the courage to utter what he considers to be an ‘unmentionable truth;’ namely that of a preponderance of Jewish money in the electoral process.

He revels in the sorts of points of analysis as that given by Uri Avnery, a former member of the Knesset, who in his ‘Gush Shalom’ blog once accused casino magnate Sheldon Adelson of being like a figure “straight out of the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Avnery was alluding to an event which occurred in March of 2014.

As part of what several mainstream media outlets have referred to as the “Sheldon Adelson Primary”, Adelson summoned four Republican politicians hopeful of running for the party’s presidential nominations in order to make a decision as to which candidate he would offer financial backing. All four including Jeb Bush and Chris Christie were present or former serving state governors. What followed Avnery described as “a shameless exhibition” during which “the politicians grovelled before the casino lord.”

Thus it is no surprise that Duke enthusiastically repeats his claim that Hillary Clinton’s top seven backers are Jewish and is encouraged by Trump’s sneering reference to a previously undisclosed loan given to his rival Ted Cruz: “Goldman Sachs own him. Remember that!”

While he expresses reservations about Trump, he appears persuaded by the fact of widespread media hostility towards Trump along with the concerted efforts by the Republican establishment to discredit him as ample evidence of Trump’s potential as a president who will not kowtow to what he sees as prevailing Jewish interests and will act in a manner that would go a long way in re-asserting the interests of European-descended Americans.

The Trump campaign raises two key issues. The first relates to the culture associated with the operation of governance and the electoral process. The second is to do with the qualities of the candidate himself.

It is clear for anyone that the American political process is riddled with corruption and that what passes for a democracy is actually a system run under false pretences as a democracy.

A study by the political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University concluded that “majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.” The views of rich people have a much greater impact on policy decisions than those of middle-income and poor Americans.

It is effectively government serving the interests of oligarchs.

The law has paved the way for entrenching this state of affairs via successive Supreme Court decisions which relate to the funding of campaigns. The case of Buckley versus Valeo in 1976 arguably provided the basis through which politicians can be bought and controlled by billionaires and corporate interests. In striking own certain provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act (1974), it removed limits to the amount of money which could be spent on campaigns although limits were still affixed to the contributions of individuals

However, by overturning sections of the Campaign Reform Act (2002), the Citizens United versus Federal Electoral Commission case of 2010 went further by removing limits in expenditures made by non-profit and for-profit corporations. McCutcheon versus Federal Electoral Commission added to this by removing the biennial aggregate limit on individual contributions to national party and federal candidate committees.

The cumulative effect of these decisions –all of which invoked violations of the First Amendment as justification- has been to effectively remove restraints imposed on election spending.

Former President Jimmy Carter has bluntly stated what the implications are:

It violates the essence of what made America a great nation in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a major payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favours for themselves after the election is over. … At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.

The results are there to see.

The links between political figures and Wall Street have increasingly taken an insidious and pervasive form. This takes into account the relationships developed in-between election campaigns. Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party, for instance, has become wealthy from her links with the corporate world and particularly from her connections with banks.

Public financial disclosures show that she earned a total of $2,935,000 from 12 speeches which she gave before banking concerns between 2013 and 2015. While her standard fee is $225,000, Goldman Sachs once paid her $675,000 for a single speech and Deutsche Bank $485,000. In fact, Clinton has earned a staggering $21,677,000 for 92 speeches that she gave to private organisations over the same timescale.

It would be foolhardy in the extreme to think that her benefactors will not expect some form of dividend from their respective outlays.

It is important to note that there was never any halcyon era of the business of American politicking being free of corruption. The ‘pork barrel’ culture of elected politicians being disposed to return favours to moneyed interests is long established. As Huey Long, the legendary Louisiana governor and senator who ran the state as his personal fiefdom, once put it officeholders are “dime a dozen punks.”

It should be remembered that the 17^th Amendment to the United States constitution, which changed the method of selecting U.S. Senators from appointments agreed upon by members of state legislatures to one requiring direct elections by the electorate, was in part prompted by allegations of corruption in the selection of senators.

The rise of the big city bosses based on the wielding of near autocratic power and the dispensing of patronage such as for example existed with Frank Hague in Jersey City and the Daley dynasty in Chicago is well documented as indeed is the history associated with New York City’s Tammany Hall.

In the midst of this election campaign we witness the rise of Donald Trump bearing the mantle of an independent spirit whose wealth ostensibly inures him from the pressures faced by seasoned politicians to be ‘bought and paid for’ vassals of Wall Street as well as that of a down-to-earth outsider who is not of the establishment.

There are parallels between Trump and other political figures in American history that were populist in message and not the favoured candidate of the establishment of the party with which they were associated. Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 both come to mind. Where Goldwater tussled with Nelson Rockefeller, Reagan took on George Herbert Bush; each opponent being representative of the ‘blue blooded’ Republican establishment. Trump has even been compared to Huey Long who was plotting a path to the White House when he was cut down by an assassin’s bullet in 1937.

However, Trump’s candidature arguably offers very little hope for a revolutionary change for two key reasons. The first concerns the man and the policies he is attempting to sell to the American public, and the second pertains to the practical limitations facing an earnest candidate wishing to make changes within the prevailing system.

The tone of Trump’s campaign while apparently refreshing to a large segment has demonstrably attracted those among the masses who readily subscribe to inter-ethnic and inter-religious division. Simply put, Trump does not appear to be a ‘healer’. A candidate who arrogantly mocks a disabled person and who makes thinly veiled quips about the effect of a woman’s menstrual cycle on her supposed hostility to him is at a fundamental level unsuited to lead.

An indication of his shifty persona and generally unreliable disposition can be garnered from the amount of about turns that he has made in regard to his position on several key matters. He is on record as supporting a universal health care system which would be paid for by government but now claims that he will repeal Obama Care. Where Trump was once in favour of restrictions to gun ownership, under the election spotlight, he now pledges to repeal Obama’s tough gun control laws.

And this from Trump some years ago about illegal immigration:

It’s very tough to say, ‘You have to leave. Get out!’ How do you throw someone out who has lived in this country for twenty years? You just can’t throw everybody out.

Trump has of course gained both notoriety and support for pledging to deport twelve million illegal immigrants and to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

He now excoriates both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama where in the past he was fulsome in his praise for both; Clinton as being  “very, very capable” so far as inheriting the mantle of president and Obama as being a “strong and smart” leader. While Trump has always claimed allegiance to the Republican Party, he admitted that in many cases “I probably identify more as a Democrat.”

It is doubtful that Trump can perform an economic miracle by turning around the trends in the economy. He cannot for instance force Apple Inc. to manufacture goods in the United States and make them pay American workers at ‘developed country’ levels.

In this matter and others, Trump’s sums simply do not add up. He supported President Obama’s stimulus package and consistently supported a high level of government spending and other forms of interventionist measures including the use of eminent domain; that is, the compulsory purchase of private property for public use. Trump’s tune has changed. He favours an economic policy based on removing 75 million Americans from paying income tax. There would be a top income tax rate of 25% for individual and 15% for corporation. Death duties would be abolished.

Trump’s plan for making up for the inevitable shortfall in national revenues is to place a heavy tax on all foreign imported goods – an action which would likely kick start a global trade war and add over $30 trillion dollars to the debt of the United States.

He cannot bring about a genuinely substantive economic revival without a wholesale ‘root and branch’ reformation of the economic system. This is a system in which markets are rigged by the Federal Reserve and by the U.S. Treasury.

As Michael Hudson, a distinguished professor of economics, argues in his book Killing the Host, the whole of the financial system would need re-regulating. This would require a revolutionary tax policy geared towards preventing the financial sector from extracting economic surplus and capitalizing on debt obligations paying interest to that sector.

All Trump has offered thus far is a suggestion that the Federal Reserve ought to be audited and a truculent comment about the Reserve keeping the level of interest rates low so as to protect Obama from “a recession-slash-depression during his administration.”

He holds himself out as an anti-establishment reformer but from Trump there is no reference to a substantively constructed programme detailing how he would go about challenging the barons of Wall Street. He poses as a reformer without attacking power. There is no tangible sense of promise that he could wage the sort of battle with entrenched interests in the manner of previous presidents such as Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Jackson, weary of the powers accumulated by a powerful central bank -which he likened to a hydra-headed monster- and its “paper money”, abolished the Bank of America. Theodore Roosevelt attacked business monopolies via the Sherman Anti-Trust Act while his distant cousin was the instigator of the ‘New Deal’ a radical series of measures which included the institution of a social security system.

Trump’s wealth, while providing a credible image of a politician who cannot be bought, does not guarantee that he would be able to deliver on any radical policies. For one thing, an American president cannot go over the heads of both Houses of Congress and the Supreme Court which holds the final card so far as the settlement of core constitutional matters is concerned.

John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency backed by his father’s considerable wealth. But while he could, as a senator, take bold, independent stances such as his support for Algerian independence, as president, he had to make compromises with interest groups who supported the political party with which he was affiliated. As president, he earned the ire of the military industrial complex, barons of commerce, segments of the Intelligence community and high-ranking fascist-leaning army and air force generals in the Pentagon. He was almost certainly eliminated by a plot originated from elements from the aforementioned groups over discontent with his policies and fear of where he would take America.

Outside of economic and social policies, Trump painted a picture of prudence during a debate on foreign policy. While the other candidates appeared to be falling over themselves to present the image of being strong and decisive on Syria and the Ukraine, Trump said that he would endeavour to pursue a constructive working relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, his threat to “bomb the hell out of our enemies” exposes a poor grasp of the workings of international politics; not least a failure on his part to understand the lessons of America’s recent past. It contradicts the criticisms he has correctly levelled at Hillary Clinton for her part in the destruction of Libya.

It also suggests that Trump would go out of his way to appease the armaments industry and fall in line with the dictates of the military industrial complex. This important cog in the economic machinery of the United States, about which President Dwight Eisenhower issued dark warnings in his farewell address to the American people, operates on the basis of increasing defence expenditure and perpetuating the war industry by all available means. This has included facilitating the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in defiance of promises given by America’s leaders as a condition for allowing a reunified Germany to join N.A.T.O.

A President Trump who managed to limit or otherwise remove tax obligations domestically would more than ever need to preserve the United States dollar as the de facto global reserve currency. A necessary element of this state of affairs is the co-operation of the rulers of the oil rich Saudi state to which the United States is pledged to preserve for the consideration of the sale of oil in U.S. dollars.

The United States has served as an overseer of Saudi imperial designs in the Middle East including that regime’s part sponsorship of the lengthy and destructive war between the Saddam-era Iraq and Iran as well as the Saudi-backed insurrection against the Ba’athist regime in Syria. Further evidence of Trump as a warmonger can be garnered from his comments that Iran’s nuclear programme should be stopped by “any and all means necessary.”

But something which admittedly appears to work in Trump’s favour is the criticism he is receiving from the political establishment who the electorate hold in low esteem. This also applies to those paragons of the economic order.

For instance, when the economist Larry Summers alleged that Trump “is a serious threat to American democracy”, there are many who would keenly take Summers to task for his support of the present corrupt order. It was Summers after all, who helped deregulate the banking system which paved the way for the ‘casino banking’ culture that led to the economic crash of the late 2000s. Summers also played a key role as an overseer of the mass plunder of the Russian economy in the 1990s.

In this heated atmosphere littered with scornful reproach and blistering invective, the opportunity for calm and fruitful reflection is being lost.

It is clear that Americans need to re-think the nature of the deep-seated identity-politics and the highly partisan approach to issues which is imperiling the sanctity of its institutions and the conventions that govern them. The row related to the unprecedented decision of Republican leaders in Congress to arrange for a foreign leader, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, to give a speech before congress over the head of the serving president provides one example of this.

Where many Jewish Americans saw this as a necessary tactic to stymie President Obama’s then in progress attempt at reaching a deal with Iran over its nuclear energy programme, many African-Americans saw it as one of a series of insults directed at a black president.

The “You lie” interjection by the southern Republican Joe Wilson during a major speech to Congress by President Obama in 2009, according to former president Jimmy Carter, had exposed “an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”

But even if the action of enabling Netanyahu to speak before Congress without the consultation of the serving president in this instant was not predicated on the “intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama as a black man”, it clearly unveiled the power and leverage wielded by the Israel lobby over many United States legislators.

The actions of 47 Republican senators in sending a signed letter to the leaders of Iran warning them against reaching agreement with the Obama administration brought enough scrutiny to warrant the an accusation of treason.

The crucial point however is whatever the merits of the arguments for and against the deal with Iran, an important convention was circumvented and the office of the presidency was wilfully undermined by legislators who were beholden to an interest group and a gross level of partisanship.

The polarised views over issues related to the killings of Americans by law enforcement officials also exposes a divide based on race and political affinities at the expense of what should be a consensus view on the standards of policing and the even-handed operation of the criminal justice system.

While an increasing amount of cases such as the slayings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner brought forth uncomfortable statistics related to the killing of minorities by police and counter-arguments positing the statistics showing that armed white suspects were more likely to be killed than blacks in the same situation, lost in the emotional and uncompromisingly partisan discourse is the reality of an increasing militarisation of police forces in America.

Many white Americans, comforted by the fact that they are not profiled as criminal or terror suspects because they are neither black nor Muslim, appear aloof to this phenomenon despite the rise in apparently unwarranted shootings for instance of whites who call the police to investigate suspected crimes on their property. Age and respectability are no barriers to being on the receiving end of rough-handed treatment as the case last year of a retired four-star army general in Georgia demonstrated.

Meanwhile the Eric Garner case serves to illustrate how U.S. police officers have increasingly become unaccountable for actions of wrongful arrest and brutality including homicide. Taxpayers have had to fund millions of dollars in settlement of lawsuits.

In America, the issue of race is of course never far from the surface. “The problem of the Twentieth Century”, wrote W.E.B. Dubois in 1903 “is the problem of the colour line”.

It is also clearly a problem in this, the succeeding century.

The aforementioned Michael Brown case, as indeed also the one involving Trayvon Martin, was overshadowed by race. Each became a contest of accusations and counter-accusations based on perceptions of the racial attitudes of the police, and criminality in the black community. The likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were called out by whites concerned about their silence in cases where white victims had suffered at the hands of black criminals. This extended also to situations of so-called black-on-black violence.

The issue of race and criminal statistics are projected on to cases such as those involving Michael Brown, serving, from the perspective of many whites, as a justification for the killing of young black men. In other words, that U.S. Department of Justice figures consistently attributing a high level of crime to segments of the black population make it alright to gun down black suspects.

There are a number of caveats nonetheless which need to be kept in mind. For instance, so far as homicides are concerned, most whites –over 80%- are killed by other whites much in the manner that most blacks are killed by other blacks. It is worth noting the statistics issued focus on street crimes and not on organised crime and corporate crime.

If the Department of Justice began compiling statistics related to the ethnic origins of say corporate crime which became repeated like the mantra of black street crime, then it would arguably create a new ambit of racial sensitivities.

It is worth pausing to think of a situation where the media and the public discourse was focused on the ethnic origins of Wall Street operatives who are convicted of financial crimes. The issues of race and social class, needless to say, play a part in this. How else is it possible to explain the ‘too-big-to-fail’ rationale behind the bailout of corporations on Wall Street? Whereas Iceland allowed banks to fail and jailed criminally culpable bankers, in the United States, the bigwigs in the banking sector escaped prosecution for policies and actions which appeared to be criminal in both conception and execution.

For instance in 2006 and 2007, the Goldman Sachs Group offered over $40 billion in securities that were backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages. What the corporation failed to do was to inform potential buyers that it was also secretly betting on a sharp drop in housing prices which would result in the marked devaluation of those securities.

The excuse put forward by the regulatory authorities that many devices of market chicanery were not illegal at the times of their operation is unconvincing to many. It demonstrates an extraordinary level of descent in the standard of morality applied to the corporate world as indeed is the case in other spheres.

Those who helped plunge the United States and the world into an economic morass, destroying the livelihoods of many, shrinking their pension funds, saddling many with debts and in effect lowering the prospects of the succeeding generation are not categorised by race.

A worthwhile question for the American public to ponder is whether the construction of racial statistics related to the commission of economic crimes should be an important element of the public discourse as is the case with street crimes.

Ultimately, this may be unhelpful for the simple reason that it would serve to deflect attention from the underlying failures in the system. The aforementioned David Duke in relation to whom Trump took some time before disavowing is as fixated on the levels of black street crime statistics as he is on repeating the claim that Jewish organisations and Jewish individuals ‘control’ the electoral and wider political process when in fact, the system itself is open to being manipulated by the highest bidder.

The Koch brothers, David and Charles, who are worth a combined $86 billion provide a study of how any well-resourced group or individual can attempt to buy political influence in order to secure legislative enactment to their benefit rather than for the benefit of the wider society.

The Koch brothers, who have given over 60 million dollars over a 15 year period to groups which deny climate change, are the fossil fuel industry’s largest donors to the members of the congressional committee overseeing fuel and energy matters. In 2010, the Koch brothers and their employees donated over $300,000 to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee which was overseeing the Keystone XL pipeline proposal.

According to a report by the International Forum on Globalisation, the Koch Brothers would stand to make up to 100 billion dollars in profits if the pipeline is constructed. This would encompass the areas of exploration, construction and trading. Although the figure related to an expected profit margin is hotly disputed as is the extent of the involvement of the Koch Corporation in this proposed venture, it is worth reminding how Republican members of Congress attempted to use this project as a bargaining tool in the confrontation with President Obama over the budget in September 2013.

This is the daunting context within which any aspiring American president will be required to discharge his or her duties. It is doubtful that Donald Trump possesses the leadership qualities as well as the requisite policies which would serve as the panacea for America’s problems, for he appears to be a charlatan and a savvy peddler of populist propaganda.

In any case, it is worth reiterating the limitations of the office. The last president who seemed to act with a great measure of ‘independence’, that is, one fulfilling the ideal concept of a robust ‘father of the nation’ who as an elected official proceeded according to his own will in the belief that he was serving the interests of the mass of the electorate was probably Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Today, with a system so closely entwined in satisfying the interests of powerful minority elites, it would be difficult, if not near impossible for a president to effect change of the sort many Americans desire. A president, even one with a considerable amount of personal wealth, cannot hope to displace the entrenched interests of powerful lobby groups such as those representing the defence and armaments industry, the extractive industries, Israel, and, of course, Wall Street and the banking sector.

In several key ways, many who support Trump do so as a projection of their fears and their anger at the system: Anger at the economically debilitating aspects of free trade and the perceived overreach of ‘political correctness’ as well as the fear of immigration and Islamist terrorism.

But the Trump supporters who cheer on Trump’s promises in relation to strengthening laws to combat the perceived ‘Muslim menace’ at home and abroad appear not to be cognizant of the fact that they are sanctioning the entrenchment of an Orwellian-like police state apparatus that has markedly developed in the post-9/11 era. Many who rail against ‘political correctness’ have only succeeded in providing overt evidence of their racial and religious prejudices while those subscribing to his strategy for regaining jobs that have gone overseas merely display their naivety of the workings of the economic order.

It is doubtful that most can believe that he has the solutions which he claims he has. From those sharing the racialist worldview of David Duke to the neglected working man sensing a different political animal to the tried and failed political classes, supporting Trump is a leap into the dark.

It effectively amounts to a protest vote against the system.

It is the system and the prevailing mores of the political and business establishments that guide it which ought to be the primary concern of Americans. It is only when the system is cleansed of the rules enabling political ‘sugar daddies’ and corporate interests to buy elections and the rules allowing the rigging of the economic system are properly reformed that the election of a new president will be able to provide the basis for genuine change.

 Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

First published on October 10, 2016

As we move into this year’s presidential election, the tempo of dramatic world events and developments that are breaking daily is mind boggling.

Every single day we are seeing more outrageously desperate actions on the part of the globalists and their US government minions. Among the latest unfolding developments this week all fast tracking towards world war against Russia is NATO’s violation of international law deploying AWACS (Airborne Radar Warning and Control system) in Syria despite only Syria and Russia possessing the legal right to control the embattled country’s airspace.

With both US and Turkish boots on the ground in northern Syria and US led coalition airstrikes regularly invading the sovereign nation’s airspace, recently targeting Syrian soldiers and plans to kill more, along with former acting CIA director Mike Morell’s recent call to begin killing Russian soldiers, the latest warpath rant comes from Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley who is now threatening Russia (as well as China and Iran) with nuclear war. Spoken just like a true grade school bully on a playground, he boasts, “We will beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before!” This is the kind of moronic leadership that rises to the top of the Empire food chain? I’m afraid so.

The most likely next commander-in-chief is Hillary Clinton. She’s already made it very clear that any real or perceived cyberspace attack on America coming from anywhere in the world constitutes an act of war and a military response against the cyber-perpetrators’ country.

After already vowing to bomb Iran and with her constant accusations blaming Putin for everything gone wrong in her life, including exposing her DNC corruption scandal responsible for rigging her presidential election, she is also all but promising to launch World War III against nuclear powered Russia.

Incisive insider Paul Craig Roberts and even Putin have both said so. The neocon insanity that she represents is committed to perpetrating both suicidal and genocidal mass murder.

With a total of 7,100 US nuclear warheads as of August 2016 and an estimate reported two years ago of 2,150 operationally deployed nukes, America could destroy itself four times over while Russia’s 7,300 nuclear weapons would likely carry the same tremendous overkill power.

When we’re all dead, it hardly matters who has what?

As the Benghazi ringleader who gave the stand down order that sealed the fate of four murdered Americans would say, “What difference does it make?”

The sheer madness in control of our planet right now actually believes the elite can simply hunker down in their underground luxury bunkers, take a long nuclear winter’s nap and a few years later emerge like Rip Van Winkle unscathed in their grandiose fairy tale. Talk about madness!

Meanwhile, a whopping 40 million Russian citizens taking US threats very seriously are currently undergoing a WWIII practice drill in preparation for the real thing that the US megalomaniacs are bent on igniting. But unlike the US, Moscow is also taking care that at least12 million of its citizens in their capital will also safely submerge into a subterranean world when the SHTF.

Demonized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad succinctly summed up US foreign policy accurately this way:

Today the United States is waging wars with the only goal to cement its project of total control by launching attack on everyone who opposes its dominance.

Assad is reminding the world that the US Empire refuses to accept a balance of power sharing hegemonic interests with the two most powerful other nations on earth Russia and China.

And invariably just when the curtain is lifted exposing the US crime cabal government that’s created and to this day still supporting al Qaeda and ISIS terrorism around the world, the wag the dog propaganda frenzy goes into overdrive to falsely vilify Putin and Assad for actually being the two biggest fighters of terrorism on the planet.

But then peace and harmony is not what the New World Order agenda’s about.

The globalist puppet masters pulling Washington’s strings are simply setting the stage to destroy the West in an orchestrated West versus East showdown at the doomsday corral in order to obfuscate the collapse of their house of cards, theft-based, debt-based economy that will be sure to usher in their long plotted one world government tyranny.

Do Americans really want to place their lives in the hands of Hillary Clinton, a political liar who possesses the capability to push the nuke button that would end the world?

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at: http://empireexposed.blogspot.co

There’s nothing civil about Obama’s war on Syria, one of history’s great crimes – using ISIS and likeminded jihadist extremists as US death squads, raping and destroying a sovereign state threatening no others.

America wants another imperial trophy. Terrorists imported from scores of countries are aided by Pentagon special forces and US-led so-called coalition warplanes.

They’re terror-bombing vital infrastructure, government sites and civilian targets, operating illegally, not combating ISIS as officially proclaimed.

Washington’s orchestrated Raqqa offensive has nothing to do with liberating the city from ISIS control, likely intending to reposition its fighters elsewhere, perhaps in the battle for Aleppo.

The offensive’s aim is a likely scheme to divide Syria, transferring sovereignty from Damascus to northern territory, controlled by a US-installed puppet regime, maybe a Kurdish/Arab coalition if things go the way Washington plans.

It’s using terrorist fighters called “moderates” and Kurdish YPD forces, wanting an independent Kurdistan in northern Syria, perhaps a platform for incorporating Kurdish-populated Iraq and Turkey one day.

Last March, Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) officials met with Arabs and other northern Syria ethnic groups in northeastern Hasakeh province. They agreed on establishing area autonomy, short of declaring independence – likely acting with US support.

Turkey is adamantly opposed. So is Damascus, Syrian UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari at the time, saying “(b)etting on creating any kind of divisions among the Syrians will be a total failure.”

Damascus rejects the idea of a so-called Federation of Northern Syria run as an autonomous region. It has no constitutional legitimacy.

ISIS was created and remains supported by Washington. Claims of Pentagon and so-called “coalition” warplanes bombing them in areas around Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria are phony. Empty buildings and other targets are struck – civilians indiscriminately massacred in the process.

Media scoundrels propagate the myth of America’s led liberating struggle in both countries, while ignoring its terror-bombing responsible for mass slaughter of noncombatants in Syria and Iraq – part of its phony war on terror, a post-9/11 hoax.

A reported 30,000 US-backed fighters are involved in the so-called Wrath of Euphrates Raqqa offensive.

ISIS captured the city in 2013, establishing it as its Syrian headquarters. Maybe Washington intends relocating its fighters, wanting them used as imperial foot soldiers elsewhere in Syria.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new 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
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

GR Editor: US Special Forces are fighting against the ISIS which is supported covertly by the US.

They participate in the “Liberation of Mosul” against terrorist forces which are supported by Washington. There are also Special Forces within ISIS ranks. Mosul is being targeted, the terrorists are being evacuated.

*      *     *

The US special forces participating in the operation to “liberate Mosul” suffered first casualties.

Turkish Syrian Committee for Human Rights sources in Iraq reported that during a few days of fighting, US Special Operations Forces lost 16 killed and 27 wounded. As usual, official Washington doesn’t admit that its Special Forces are suffering heavy losses.

For the first time, the Pentagon confirmed the US special forces were directly taking part in the attack on Mosul on October 18. Then, Department of Defense said that the main task of US troopers was to coordinate air strikes and train Iraqi security forces.

However, photo and video footage published by leading news agencies as well as activists, suggest otherwise. Photos and videos showing the US special forces in Iraq, Syria, and in Raqqa which is controlled by ISIS, began to emerge in May 2016. In particular, it was published by AFP.

After the beginning of the offensive at Mosul, GoPro videos depicting US special forces’ actions in the first person appeared on the Internet.

It is notable that videos published before this October mostly show surprise attacks on militants’ command posts – the actual task of the US Special Forces.

In Mosul, the case is quite different. Recent American casualties prove the situation is turning grim for Washington.

Apparently, Washington realized that the Iraqi security forces and Kurds can’t cope with the task of liberating Mosul before the upcoming US presidential elections. That’s why the White House had to send 500 commandos to the front line of the infantry battle formations to ensure the operation is successful.

It seems that the conquest of Mosul is supposed to become the final success of the Obama administration and provide the advantage to Hillary Clinton. Until this goal isn’t achieved, politicians will continue to sacrifice the lives of the American soldiers.

The Syrian army captured air defence housing area between al-Deirkhabiyeh – al-Darusheh adjacent to Khan al-Sheeh in Western Ghouta and secured the road between Darushah and Buwaydiyah. Jaish al-Islam and Jabhat al-Nusra militants in Khan al-Sheeh remain the cut-off from any supplies and reinforcements. The storm of the town is expected in the nearest future.

The attack on Russia’s Mi-35 multi-role combat helicopter by ISIS near the city of Palmyra in the Syrian province of Homs was a bad idea for the ISIS terrorist group. Following the incident, the Russian Aerospace Forces’ attack helicopters, including the Mil Mi-24 and Mil Mi-28N, swarmed in the province, purging the terrorist group’s manpower and military equipment. Russian attack helicopters operate in the areas of Huwaysis village, Shaer gas field, Mustadira gas field and in the area of Arak.

The developments near the ancient city of Palmyra is barely covered by the mainstream media. However, successful operations of the Syrian army and the Russian military in the area are one of the factors preventing the ISIS terrorist group from active offensive operations across the country.

The Iranian Fars News Agency released a series of photos from the southern countryside of Aleppo city. The photos show the Liwa Fatemiyoun militia group, operating 152 mm towed artillery guns during the battle with Jaish al-Fatah militants. Liwa Fatemiyoun is an Afghani Shia milita group funded, trained, and equipped by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Reports say the group is embeded with Iranian military advisers. The total strength of the group in Syria is about 20,000 fighters.

On November 7, the Syrian army and its allies launched counter attacks on Jaish al-Fatah militants in Tal Rakhem, the 1070 Apartment Project and the al-Assda neighborhood. Clashes are ongoing.

The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced  on Sunday a military operation, called Angry Euphrates, to take control of the city of Raqqa from ISIS. The operation is supported by the US’ air force and speicla forces. The SDF says that some 30,000 fighters are deployed for the advance. The first proclaimed goal is to isolate Raqqa.

After the announcement, the Kurdish YPG that operates under the SDF brand took control of Jurah, Al-Wahib and Al Adriyah from ISIS and entered Laqtah. YPG fighters involved in the operation were embed with US troops.

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Author Catherine Shakdam writes in “The Sound Of Your Silence”:

“Today silence has become more than a war crime. Today silence has become more than just the manifestation of our egocentrism and selfishness. Today silence has enabled, empowered and shielded oppressors and tyrants.”

In From Mecca To The Plain of Karbala Walking with the Holy household of the Prophet the Imam recites Farwa ibn Musayk Muradi:

“If we have been victorious today it is not something new, because we have always gained victory and even if we are defeated, predominance and victory is ours; and truth is victorious in all circumstances, whether it wins or loses.”

These lines underscore the importance of truth-telling if we are to achieve victory over the lies and crimes of Empire.

Stated bluntly, Islam, correctly interpreted, is not the enemy.  We are.

It is known and documented, and has been for years, that the West and its allies support terrorism to destroy and control other countries and their (remaining) peoples.

It is known and documented that the terrorists who behead, and rape, and pillage their way through the Middle East and elsewhere are our proxies.  We pay the bills, and we orchestrate the carnage.

Prof Chossudovsky remarks in the preface to the author’s i-book, Syria’s War For Humanity

“Everybody in Syria knows that Washington is behind the terrorists, that they are financed by the US (at tax payers’ expense) and its allies, trained and recruited by America’s Middle East partners. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, have been financing and training the ISIS-Daesh, al Nusra terrorists on behalf of the United States. Israel is harboring the terrorists out of the occupied Golan Heights, NATO in liaison with the Turkish high command has since March 2011 been involved in coordinating the recruitment of the jihadist fighters dispatched to Syria.

Moreover, the ISIS-Daesh brigades in both Syria and Iraq are integrated by Western special forces and military advisers.

While all this is known to the Syrian people, Western public opinion is led to believe that the US is leading a ‘counter-terrorism campaign’ in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh), an entity created and supported by US intelligence.”

As NATO and its allies commit war crimes against non-belligerent Syria and Yemen, and Hillary Clinton promises war and more war, we need to break the silence.

Presumably, they too have been heavily propagandized, and they believe the lies laundered by our criminal mainstream media (msm).  But ignorance is no longer a legitimate excuse.

In the case of Syria, we need to demand that our misleaders take immediately attainable steps to achieve peace, as outlined by the United States peace Council (USPC):

• Stop bombing Syrian economic infrastructure in the name of fighting ISIS. 
• Stop injecting foreign fighters into Syria.
• Stop funding, organizing and arming the combatants in Syria.
• Lift all sanctions on Syria.
• Provide humanitarian aid to the Syrian people.
• Help the Syrian refugees settle wherever they want — including back in Syria.

None of the countries that we are threatening or attacking, including Russia, are real threats. General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, acknowledged that,

“It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.”

The NATO military build-up is unnecessary and dangerous, as is the criminal war on Syria.

As the author notes in Fake Threats and Engineered Fears,

“The ‘Russian threat’ is fake; there never was a ‘Syria threat’ (except that Syria insists on its sovereignty and territorial integrity); and the ‘terrorist threat’ is a hoax, because we support the terrorists.

The ‘humanitarian bombing’ strategy is also a hoax, because ISIS territory expands when the U.S illegally bombs Syria.

Basically, everything we’re hearing is fake. The government, and Soros et al.–funded “non- government organizations” (NGOs) are fake, not only because they aren’t “non-governmental”, but also because they’re embedded with the terrorist invaders.”

The pursuit of truth and just peace is an uphill battle.  The Pentagon’s “Law of War” manual, for example, views the control and manipulation of information as a (legitimate) “soft power” weapon, and the U.S Department of Defense (DOD) public relations/propaganda budget alone is reported to be about $600,000,000 per year.

But as responsible citizens, we need to reject the war lies, and insist on truth and a just peace.  Even if the truth “loses”, and warmongers are elected, it still “wins”, because it engaged the enemy, despite the odds.

In no surprise to anyone paying even marginal attention, the FBI’s clearing Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in its briefly reopened investigation — however, the time it took the agency to reach this conclusion is not only bereft of logic and reason, it constitutes the most hubristic of insults to the public’s intelligence.

In just 691,000 seconds from announcement to conclusion, FBI Director James Comey wants you to believe that agents thoroughly examined over 650,000 emails newly ‘discovered’ on Anthony Weiner’s computer — including any threads resulting, as well as all attachments — before deciding Clinton innocent of wrongdoing.

We, the people of this planet, are just not that stupid — nor are we even mildly amused by this farcical bullshit passed off as a credible investigation.

Seriously.

Indeed, the lightning pace of this putative second investigation not only boggles the mind, it forces uneasy questions concerning the true motivation and apparent exceeding necessity to ensure Hillary Clinton walks away scot-free amid rapidly mushrooming evidence of flagrant corruption and mendacious collusion.

Just a cursory comparison of two investigations shows such marked differences it would be impossible not to question legitimacy of the FBI’s findings.

In the summer of 2015, the FBI commenced its first probe into the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server during her tenure in office, after John Giacalone — then Director of the National Security Branch — met with Comey to voice concerns emanating from the Intelligence community about classified information possibly handled carelessly.

For nearly a full year — 365 days, or 31,536,000 seconds — a sizable task force of FBI agents pored over an enormous cache, first comprised of 30,000 emails, but later totaling 44,900 after additional documents not originally handed over by the Clinton camp to the State Department were discovered.

This means — rounding off the rough estimate of one year — the Bureau combed an average of just over 123 documents every day.

While that might seem to be manageable with a slew of investigators on the job, a basic comparison of the two probes proves the literal inanity of the reopened investigation.

Later in the day on October 28, Comey announced the commencement of the secondary probe — albeit to the consternation of current and former officials who felt his telling Congress broke a number of investigatory guidelines, including possibly influencing the outcome of the presidential race.

According to Comey, an additional 650,000 documents located on the computer of Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s now-disgraced and estranged husband Anthony Weiner deserved careful scrutiny for pertinence and relevance to the original investigation of the Democratic nominee.

Public and official speculation predicted a months- or years-long investigation, even with substantial manpower dedicated to the task.

But on Sunday, November 6, in yet another shocker of an announcement from the FBI director, Comey inexplicably declared nothing of relevance to the Clinton investigation — “no new conclusions” — had been revealed in its secondary probe.

This means — again rounding for brevity to eight days the total length of the investigation — FBI agents inspected some 81,250 documents each day.

Granted, both estimates have been averaged and roughened, but only for comparison’s sake — and that contrast doesn’t survive the scantiest litmus test of believability.

Not at all.

Before the naysayers jump in with a there’s no comparison deflection, consider the following points.

Although an algorithm or program combing those documents might indeed retrieve subjects of interest to investigators — keywords, germane subjects, accordant people’s names, and the like — in no way would such technological gatekeepers reveal subtle nuance as has been displayed in emails published by WikiLeaks from Hillary Clinton, campaign chair John Podesta, and the Democratic National Committee.

Such fine gradations of meaning, naturally found in the English language but also purposefully employed to throw off investigators and interlopers, could not possibly be revealed by artificial means — at least not that quickly and particularly not with currently available technologies.

Still not convinced?

Consider that if such technology did indeed exist to that discerning level of scrutiny in our heightened and overarching surveillance and police states, no criminal would ever roam free.

Law enforcement departments and the National Security Agency together have amassed astonishingly voluminous data sets on every person in this country, including through emails and online activities. A technology advanced enough to comb for subtleties in language would home in on criminal behavior and activity with incredible frequency.

And while NSA programs have been revealed to hunt for keywords, there are limits to its effectiveness — no terrorist plot has yet been halted in progress because the intelligence to discover it hasn’t yet solidified to that point.

Technology experts immediately weighed in claiming such technology does indeed exist, is frequently employed, and can do the job perfectly in a mere eight days — no worries.

But, as WikiLeaks rebutted in a number of tweets, it isn’t quite so simple.

Emails between Clinton, her campaign staff, the DNC, and other insiders have proven to be a literal trove of revealing details — including Hillary’s use of the name of aide Huma Abedin as a deflection, and President Obama’s use of a pseudonym to communicate on the private server in an attempt to thwart future investigators.

Programs and algorithms would have to be fed such information, but not all of those pseudonyms were known — and that represents only one such complication.

Even working around the clock, as Comey alleged the FBI did in its second probe, 82,000 documents daily isn’t even worth comparing to the 123 averaged each day in the initial investigation.

So, what are we to believe about the clearing of Hillary Clinton for a second time?

That’s up to you — to each of us — to draw a conclusion.

But to characterize that second investigation as anything other than a charade to placate an irate public would be criminal willful denial of conspicuous evidence — criminal willful denial that the utter bullshit the FBI just brazenly served the American people doesn’t somehow stink.

(updated with 6:06am data for Presidential and Senate; also added confidence intervals)

Here are my best estimates. These are the final snapshots. The Presidential estimates are based on the current snapshot except for the most probable single outcome map. There, for North Carolina, variance minimization was done to give a more stable snapshot; a longer baseline of 8 polls gives Clinton +1.0 ± 1.0%.

The Presidential and House races are a near-replica of 2012. Four Senate races are within one percentage point. Partisans in Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, and North Carolina may want to lawyer up for possible recount battles.

Tomorrow: I’ll put out a brief Geek’s Guide to the Election. Also, live blogging starting around 8:00 pm.

President: Hillary Clinton (D).

Most probable single outcome (shown on map below): Clinton 323 EV, Trump 215 EV.

Median: Clinton 307 EV, Trump 231 EV. Meta-Margin: 2.2%. One-sigma range: Clinton 281-326 EV.

Mode (see histogram at right): Clinton 308 EV, Trump 230 EV.

National popular vote: Clinton +4.0 ± 0.6%.

Senate

In this case, variance minimization was used to identify longer time windows with lower variance. This gives a more stable snapshot.

Mode (shown in table below): 51 Democratic/Independent seats, 49 Republican seats; most likely single outcome in the table below.

Median: 50 Democratic/Independent seats, 50 Republican seats. (average=50.4; 1-sigma range 49 to 51)

House

Generic Congressional ballot: Democratic +1%, about the same as 2012.

Cook Political Report-based expectation: 239 R, 196 D, an 8-seat gain for Democrats.

“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any except for the most elemental ones. The whole thinking of such voters is done in terms of emotion…(and the) dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost…All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre – the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” — H. L. Mencken – known as the “Sage of Baltimore”

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire

NOTE: This column was written the day before the dreaded Election Day of 2016 and submitted for publication to Global Research before any election results were announced. Because I had already done everything in my power over the past decades of my political activism to influence the vote of thinking folks, I intend to turn off the TV on election day and try not to pay any attention to any of the over-analyzed political commentary and election-season information overload until the morning after.

At this point I think – since it is too late in the season to take the day off and go fishing – that I might actually go – right after I vote – to some distracting daytime movie that my wife wouldn’t want to see anyway. Then, following my regular Tuesday night tennis match, I will come right home and go right to bed without getting myself all tied up in knots.

I realize that it is futile to try to change the political minds of folks who have already chosen to affiliate with anti-democratic folks who exhibit behaviors that are compatible with sociopaths, sexists, xenophobes, racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, anti-Semites, neo-fascists, pro-war/pro-violence Christian fundamentalists, aggressive militarists, climate change deniers, anti-science types and the varieties of demagogue-devotees who have already pledged their allegiance to certain candidates who refuse to be influenced by rational pro-democracy arguments.

“Donald Trump may be bad for the nation, but he’s good for CBS.”

I have long suspected that the major news outlets always try to make every national election season into a breathless and unnecessarily tight two-person horse race no matter if one of the candidates is totally unfit for the job. We certainly saw that happen in the two George W. Bush campaigns.

That strategy was revealed recently by the CEO of CBS when he blurted out to fellow corporate elites that “Trump may be bad for the nation, but he’s good for CBS.” He was actually speaking for every one of his Big Media competitors, for they all know how lucrative long political campaigns can be for their corporate bottom line. That may be the major reason that media lobbyists will never allow our elected and bribed representatives to legislate sensible and much shorter political campaigns.

Job #1 for all for-profit corporations is to maximize income for shareholders and executives, and the main goal for Big Media is to artificially increase campaign advertising income by being sure that no political race is a runaway. To me, that is seriously reckless, perhaps treasonous behavior that needs to be condemned, and this year I will refuse to subject myself to any unnecessary emotional stress enduring hours of TV speculation from the hundreds of talking heads. This year I will wait until the morning of November 9 to hear the results and ponder my strategies for any forthcoming apocalypse.

H. L. Mencken saw through the corrupted politics of his day and expressed his cynical opinions in his regular columns in the Baltimore Sun. His comment above was written soon after the Republicans and Democrats had decided on their 1920 candidates for president.

In that campaign, the pro-business Republican Party nominee Warren Harding (and his running mate Calvin Coolidge) were opposed by the Democratic Party nominee James Fox (whose running mate was Franklin Delano Roosevelt). The Harding/Coolidge ticket won in a landslide on November 2, 1920.

But there were other third parties in the running. Indeed, the American Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs (a prominent union organizer) garnered a million votes, despite being imprisoned at the time. During the campaign, Debs was in a federal prison serving a long sentence for sedition for criticizing the U.S. government, thus violating the 1917 Espionage Act. Responding to public outrage, Harding commuted Debs’ sentence soon after the election, but his U.S. citizenship and right to vote or run for office, which had been revoked at his 1918 sentencing, was only restored posthumously in 1976.

Debs wrote: “Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder and it is the working class who fights all the battles; the working class who makes the supreme sacrifices; the working class who freely sheds their blood and furnishes their corpse; and it is they who have never yet had a voice – in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. But it is not their duty but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches.”

The two-term Democratic Party US President Woodrow Wilson (1913 – 1921) had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for his heroic efforts in birthing the League of Nations after World War I (AKA “The War to End All Wars”). Wilson’s efforts concerning the League were vigorously opposed by the Republican Party, whose control of the Senate prevented the US from ever joining the League, thus dooming its efforts at preventing international conflicts, including future world wars.

Woodrow Wilson was rejected by his Democratic Party from running for a third term. During his second term American women were given the right to vote when the 19^th Amendment was passed and ratified.

The Resurgence of the KKK During the Republican Roaring 20s

The ultra-right-wing Ku Klux Klan and the related American eugenics movements peaked during the Republican administrations of Harding and Coolidge, both of whom, just like the modern GOP, urged a severely restrictive immigration policy that discriminated against war refugees.  Many political leaders thought that the US had become Europe’s “dumping ground” for “aliens” during WWI. Harding signed into law the Emergency Quota Act soon after taking office and Coolidge signed into law the equally restrictive Immigration Act of 1924.

President Coolidge signed the Revenue Act into law in 1926. That law further cut the size of the Federal government, reduced income taxes for the wealthy and cut into other sources of revenue, in spite of the evidence that the national economy was seriously troubled.

Corrupt Crony Capitalism and the Inevitable Crashes

The Republican-dominated Roaring 20s also featured the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 (pursued because fundamentalist Christians were opposed to the teaching of evolution in Tennessee’s public schools).  It also featured the scandalous, xenophobic Sacco and Vanzetti trial of 1927.

The GOP’s conservative, low tax and small government politics hyper-stimulated the economy and caused the Wall Street speculative boom and then the Crash of 1929, which provoked a world-wide depression that directly led to the rescue of the nearly bankrupted German Nazi Party, the triumph of Hitler, the Nazi concentration camps and World War II.

The infamous presidential campaign of 2016 has exposed many of the similarities between the American pro-business two party system and what happened during the evolution of European fascism. The fact that so many Americans are historically illiterate should be a concern of every serious voter. (For just one alarming example, the American Friendly Fascist-leaning Donald Trump has admitted that he never reads books, including, apparently, history books that could have taught him something about European fascism!)

The following 13 quotes are from the megalomaniacal, demagogic, sociopathic, fascist Adolf Hitler. Each one sounds familiar to American politics and therefore should concern every American (except for the closet NeoFascists and racists among us), particularly when we understand that Hitler was a right-wing pathological liar who was wildly cheered – even worshipped – by huge crowds of otherwise “Good Germans” who blindly wanted to disregard his lies and instead believe his promise that he would single-handedly make Germany great again – all the while secretly planning for the brutal conquest of the world via his huge military machine, his obedient and very willing executioners and his world-class assortment of lethal weapons. Read these quotes and weep – and then go vote

“The streets of our country are in turmoil! The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting! Communists are seeking to destroy our country! Russia is threatening us with her might! Our republic is in danger, yes, danger from within and without! WE NEED LAW AND ORDER!” — Original quote from Adolf Hitler (indistinguishable from the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan two generations later).

“It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.”

“What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think.”

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” – From Mein Kampf, 1923

“The fascist state must not forget that all means must serve the ends; it must not let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called “freedom of the press”…it must make sure that (the media) is placed in the service of the state.” – From Mein Kampf, 1923

“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord.”

“Today Christians stand at the head of our country.  We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.  We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press — in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past years.”

“I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany.” – On the Berlin March, 1936

“Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: ‘Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!’” Nuremberg Sept. 13, 1936

“If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us.” – Spoken at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on October 3^rd, 1937

“An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland.” — In proposing the creation of his homeland security group, the Gestapo

“We stand for the maintenance of private property … We shall protect free enterprise (capitalism) as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.”

“…in the Big Lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted…and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the Big Lie than the small lie…It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously…the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it…a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi “Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment”

“The people want wholesome dread. They want to fear something. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive.” — Ernst Rohm, good “friend” and ally of Hitler and chief of the SA, later to be betrayed and murdered on Hitler’s orders during the Night of the Long Knives, 1934

”Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who COUNT the votes decide everything.” — Joseph Stalin

“Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini

“It is not necessary to bury the truth.  It is sufficient merely to delay it until nobody cares.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

“(It isn’t) that US foreign policy is cruel because American leaders are cruel. It’s that our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers…do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to.” — William Blum, from Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.  Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other war…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — US President James Madison, Chief Architect of the Constitution

Finally, the lyrics of the song below seem pertinent in my experience in too often having had to cast defensive votes for the “least worst” candidate.

Election Night

By John Wesley Harding

I met you on election night
As we cried over our beers
Nothing you could do would cheer me up
We broke up later that year
How come you and I aren’t winners?
Why weren’t we born on the other side?
And it’s raining
It’s raining
On election night

You fight, you fight and nothing changes
And when it does the payback’s worse
We arrived here in a limo
We drove home in a hearse
And we are none the wiser
I guess we’re not so bright
So I’ll see you
Yes I’ll see you
Next election night

The balloons look so deflated
As they burst and float on down
It’s been four years we’ve waited
For those balloons to hit the ground
Looks like you backed a loser
Who thinks that life is black and white
But he’ll be back again
And we’ll be back again
Next election night.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, health, democracy, civility and longevity of the populace. Many of his columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn, http://www.globalresearch.ca/authors?query=Gary+Kohls+articles&by=&p=&page_id= or at https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

Among the House of Cards-infested cliffhangers that defined the «circus is in town» US election (to quote Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row), the key question in the lead up towards Election Day was why the FBI finally folded.

FBI Director James Comey, at the 11th hour, ended up delivering another letter to Congress, marveling how his team «has been working around the clock» studying no less than 650,000 emails on the laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the sex pervert estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s top aid Huma Abedin.

Comey finally concluded the FBI had not found anything to change its previous verdict regarding Hillary’s Subterranean Email Server. «Extreme carelessness», yes; but no criminal wrongdoing.

All this while among the twitter.com/wikileaks.

Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks, an explicit admission can be found in a November 10, 2008 internal review that the Clinton Foundation was breaking the law.

Moreover, The Big Picture had been quite clear all along; the Clinton Foundation as well as the Clinton Global Initiative were both operated as «political organizations» totally focused on boosting «pay to play».

A case could be made that the first Comey letter to Congress was a response to a FBI internal revolt. Agents that were part of the insurgency are not likely to quit the long game – even after the election. They have made sure that the real deal is with the Clinton Foundation, not Hillary’s emails.

So leaks are bound to continue. Even before the first Comey letter, FBI insurgents swore «there already is enough to indict». They insisted, «Comey has been trying to stall because he does not want to face the Clinton machine, as well as the rest of Washington D.C». They were sure «foreign powers are in possession of some of the documents we have analyzed, because they were hacked from the Clinton server».

The insurgents, for the sake of clarity, were insisting that the buck stopped with the Clinton Foundation, which sold «influence, intel, favors to anyone willing to pay». Obama was «tied in with the same people who donate to the Clinton Foundation». On that notorious, «secret» Bill Clinton meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch – an Obama asset – they maintained that Clinton «wanted Loretta Lynch to focus on the email server and shy away from prosecuting the foundation».

In a nutshell; in the Clinton Foundation dossier there’s allegedly enough information to bring the whole US government (USG) down.

And over Hillary, specifically, hangs an incendiary charge; SAPs (Special Access Programs) were found on her server.

The insurgents clarified how a «SAP is an intelligence program classified above top-secret. They are held on closed servers at secret locations. The only way to get one is if you are specifically read on to a program, have a need to know, then you must physically go to a location and pass through several layers of security to even look at the program. SAP is granted on a need to know basis, and Hillary did not have any need to know any of the programs on her server».

All that was still not enough to get an indictment out of the FBI. Well, certainly not before Election Day, considering that if the FBI went ahead it would be facing no less than the full might/wrath of the USG.

A New York source with solid business/financial connections among the Masters of the Universe came up with a quite cryptic answer when I posed him some of the questions raised above:

«I would not say the FBI revolt took place. Comey was ordered to do what he did before and he was ordered to do what he did after. The orders were just reversed and it is as a marionette with a ventriloquist. No one steps out of bounds».

But he also said, less than 24 hours before Election Day: «We think Trump will win and they are making everyone think that this is democracy in action». For emphasis, the source referred to the quite serious USC Dornsife /LA Times poll, which had Trump ahead by 5 points on the popular vote.

Here is a defense of the poll by one of his authors.

The Russians are hacking

As the FBI turnaround managed at best to enrage both campaigns, nothing was left to chance by the Deep State. What can be arguably construed as two major US terror proxies – «al-Qaeda» (which one? «Historic» al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? AQAP? AQIM? «Moderate» al-Nusra in Syria?) as well as ISIS/ISIL/Daesh – in conjunction with dodgy jihadist tracker SITE, went on full-time PsyWar mode with the intent of creating false flag pretexts.

US intel duly warned of «possible al-Qaeda attacks» on the eve of Election Day. Right on cue, Rita Katz, the head and 2001 co-founder of SITE, said these jihadi incitements were «an attempt to disrupt the election process and gain media attention».

There’s no evidence these threats are real. SITE after all never shies away from practicing disinformation. Katz in the past has briefed the White House, as well as Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security on terrorist financing and recruitment networks. A senior adviser to SITE is Bruce Hoffman, a former holder of the RAND Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency.

Couple the «al-Qaeda threat» with turbo-charged demonization of Russia – and we have the perfect excuse scenario in case anything happens not according to script (and the script rules Hillary Clinton as POTUS).

Team Obama duly spun that Russia not only was bent on mightily acting/hacking on Election Day, but would propel the disruption all across the West well into 2018. And Tom Graham, managing director of Kissinger Associates in New York and former adviser to George «Dubya» Bush on Russia, doubled down, insisting that more emails «may» be dumped (by insidious WikiLeaks) after Election Day.

This should all lead to a Hollywood ending though. May the «free world» be reassured; the noxious axis of Putin-Assange-al-Zawahiri-rogue FBI agents will be dismantled – to the glory of the Queen of the Perma-Smirk soon to be crowned Warmonger-in-Chief.

The outcome of the 2016 presidential election will show that the American political system – as we have known it – will apparently cease to exist.  Trump is nothing like those Republican pawns who, along with the puppets of the Democratic party, have spent the last 40 years erecting the facade of American democracy.  It really looks like he is ready to make good on the threat he made even prior to the Republican National Convention – to send millions of his supporters into the streets.

Today Trump represents an entirely new party made up of half of the American electorate, and they are ready for action.  And whatever the eventual political structure of this new model, this is what is shaping America’s present reality.  Moreover, this does not seem like such a unique situation.  It rather appears to be the final chapter of some ancient story, in which the convoluted plotlines finally take shape and find resolution.

The circumstances are increasingly reminiscent of 1860, when Lincoln’s election so enraged the South that those states began agitating for secession.  Trump is today symbolic of a very real American tradition that during the Civil War (1860-1865) ran headlong into American revolutionary liberalism for the first time.

Right up until World War I traditional American conservatism wore the guise of “isolationism.”  Prior to WWII it was known as “non-interventionism.”  Afterward, that movement attempted to use Sen. Joseph McCarthy to battle the left-liberal stranglehold.  And in the 1960s it became the primary target of the “counter-cultural revolution.”

Richard Nixon

Its last bastion was Richard Nixon, whose fall was the result of an unprecedented attack from the left-liberal press in 1974.  And this is perhaps the example against which we should compare the present-day Trump and his current fight.

And by the way, the crimes of Hillary Clinton, who has failed to protect state secrets and has repeatedly been caught lying under oath, clearly outweigh the notorious Watergate scandal that led to Nixon’s forced resignation under threat of impeachment.  But the liberal American media remains silent, as if nothing has happened.

By all indications it is clear that we are standing before a truly epochal moment.  But before turning to the future that might await us, let’s take a quick glance at the history of conflict between revolutionary liberalism and traditional white conservatism in the US.

***

Immediately after WWII, an attack on two fronts was launched by the party of “expansionism” (we’ll call it that).  The Soviet Union and Communism were designated the number one enemy.  Enemy number two (with less hype) was traditional American conservatism. The war against traditional “Americanism” was waged by several intellectual fringe groups simultaneously.

The country’s cultural and intellectual life was under the absolute control of a group known as the “New York Intellectuals.” Literary criticism as well as all other aspects of the nation’s literary life was in the hands of this small group of literary curators who had emerged from the milieu of a Trotskyist-communist magazine known as the Partisan Review (PR). No one could become a professional writer in the America of the 1950s and 1960s without being carefully screened by this sect.

The foundational tenets of American political philosophy and sociology were composed by militants from the Frankfurt School, which had been established during the interwar period in Weimar Germany and which moved to the US after the National Socialists took power. Here, retraining their sights from communist to liberal, they set out to design a “theory of totalitarianism” in addition to their concept of an “authoritarian personality” – both hostile to “democracy.”

Max Shachtman

The “New York Intellectuals” and representatives of the Frankfurt School became friends, and Hannah Arendt, for example, was an authoritative representative of both sects.  This is where future neocons (Norman Podhoretz, Eliot A. Cohen, and Irving Kristol) gained their experience.  The former leader of the Trotskyist Fourth International and godfather of the neocons, Max Shachtman, held a place of honor in the “family of intellectuals.”

The anthropological school of Franz Boas and Freudianism reigned over the worlds of psychology and sociology at that time.  The Boasian approach in psychology argued that genetic, national, and racial differences between individuals were of no importance (thus the concepts of “national culture” and “national community” were meaningless).

Psychoanalysis also became fashionable, which primarily aimed to supplant traditional church institutions and become a type of quasi-religion for the middle class.

The common denominator linking all these movements was anti-fascism.  Did something look fishy in this?  But the problem was that the traditional values of the nation, state, and family were all labeled “fascist.”  From this standpoint, any white Christian man aware of his cultural and national identity was potentially a “fascist.”

Kevin MacDonald, a professor of psychology at California State University, analyzed in detail the seizure of America’s cultural, political, and mental landscape by these “liberal sects” in his brilliant book The Culture of Critique, writing:

“The New York Intellectuals, for example, developed ties with elite universities, particularly Harvard, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and the University of California-Berkeley, while psychoanalysis and anthropology became well entrenched throughout academia.

“The moral and intellectual elite established by these movements dominated intellectual discourse during a critical period after World War II and leading into the countercultural revolution of the 1960s.”

It was precisely this intellectual milieu that spawned the countercultural revolution of the 1960s.

Riding the wave of these sentiments, the new Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965, encouraging this phenomenon and facilitating the integration of immigrants into US society. The architects of the law wanted to use the celebrated melting pot to “dilute” the “potentially fascist” descendants of European immigrants by making use of new ethno-cultural elements.

The 60s revolution opened the door to the American political establishment to representatives from both wings of the expansionist “party” – the neo-liberals and the neo-conservatives.

Besieged by the left-liberal press in 1974, Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment.  In the same year the US Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment (drafted by Richard Perle), which emerged as a symbol of the country’s “new political agenda” – economic war against the Soviet Union using sanctions and boycotts.

At that same time the “hippie generation” was joining the Democratic Party on the coattails of Senator George McGovern’s campaign.  And that was when Bill Clinton’s smiling countenance first emerged on the US political horizon.

And the future neo-conservatives (at that time still disciples of the Democratic hawk Henry “Scoop” Jackson) began to slowly edge in the direction of the Republicans.

«If there is any doubt about the power of your ideas, just look at the number of members of the Center that have been appointed to posts in this administration -especially in the Department of Defense- to dispel that doubt». Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, September 5, 2002

In 1976, Mr. Rumsfeld and his fellow neo-conservatives resurrected the Committee on the Present Danger, an inter-party club for political hawks whose goal became the launch of an all-out propaganda war against the USSR.

Former Trotskyists and followers of Max Shachtman (Kristol, Podhoretz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick) and advisers to Sen. Henry Jackson (Paul Wolfowitz, Perle, Elliott Abrams, Charles Horner, and Douglas Feith) joined Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and other “Christian” politicians with the intention of launching a “campaign to transform the world.”

This is where the neocons’  “nonpartisan ideology” originated.  And eventually today’s “inalterable US government” hatched from this egg. 

American politics began to acquire its current shape during the Reagan era.  In economics this was seen in the policy of neoliberalism (politics waged in the interests of big financial capital) and in foreign policy – in a strategy consisting of “holy war against the forces of evil.”  The Nixon-Kissinger tradition of foreign policy (which viewed the Soviet Union and China as a normal countries with which is essential to find common ground) was entirely abandoned.

The collapse of the USSR was a sign of the onset of the final phase of the “neocon revolution.”  At that point their protégé, Francis Fukuyama, announced the “end of history.”

***

As the years passed, the influence of the neo-conservatives (in politics) and neoliberals (in economics) only expanded.  Through all manner of committees, foundations, “think tanks,” etc., the students of Milton Friedman and Leo Strauss (from the departments of economics and political science at the University of Chicago) penetrated ever more deeply into the inner workings of the Washington power machine.  The apotheosis of this expansion was the presidency of George W. Bush, during which the neocons, having seized the primary instruments of power in the White House, were able to plunge the country into the folly of a war in the Middle East.

By the end of the Bush presidency this clique was the object of universal hatred throughout the US.  That’s why the middle-ground, innocuous figure of Barack Obama, a Democrat, was able to move into the White House for the next eight years.  The neocons stepped down from their central rostrums of power and returned to their “influential committees.”  It is likely that this election was intended to facilitate the triumphant return of the neoconservative-neoliberal paradigm all wrapped up in “new packaging.”  For various reasons, the decision was made to assign this role to Hillary Clinton.  But it seems that at the most critical moment the flimsy packaging ripped open …

What happened?  Why is this clique’s triumphant return to power erupting in massive scandal this time around?  Probably because we are living in an era during which much that was mysterious is suddenly becoming clear.  Probably because Trump’s “silent majority” suddenly saw before them someone they had been waiting for for a long time – a man ready to defend their interests. 

Perhaps also it is because the middle class is choking on its growing exasperation with the “elite caste” occupying its native country.  And it finally became clear to the sober-minded American patriots in law enforcement that the return to power of the people responsible for the current global chaos could be a big threat to the US and rest of the world.  Because, in the end, everyone has children and no one wants a new world war.

How will this new conservative revolt against the elite end?  Will Trump manage to “drain the swamp of Washington, DC” as he has promised, or he will end up as the system’s next victim?  Very soon we can finally get an answer to these questions.

As the corporatocracy tightens its grip on the masses – finding ever more ways to funnel wealth to the top – humanity responds in a number of ways, including the rising popularity of tiny houses.

These dwellings, typically defined as less than 500 square feet, are a way for people to break free of mortgages, taxes, utility bills and the general trappings of “stuff.” They’re especially attractive to millennials and retirees, or those seeking to live off-grid.

But government and corporations depend on rampant consumerism and people being connected to the grid.

Seeking actual freedom through minimalist living should seem like a natural fit for the American dream, but the reality is that many governments around the country either ban tiny homes or force them to be connected to the utility grid.

As of now, few cities allow stand-alone tiny houses. Most communities have minimum square footage requirements for single-family homes mandating that smaller dwellings be an “accessory” to a larger, traditional house. Many also have rules requiring that dwellings be hooked up to utilities, which is a problem for tiny-house enthusiasts who want to live off the grid by using alternative energy sources such as solar panels and rainwater catchment systems.

Some of the more recent examples of explicit bans include Etowah, TN and Wasilla, AK, which don’t allow homes less than 600 square feet and 700 square feet, respectively.

Boise, ID doesn’t allow homes less than a few hundred square feet, as Shaun Wheeler of Wheeler Homes found when he built a perfectly good and safe 310 sq. ft. home.

Lawmakers spout slippery slope fallacies, saying that allowing tiny homes will lead to decay and “unsightly little cabins plunked down next to traditional homes.” Using government force to stamp out societal change in response to financial factors is this councilman’s idea of conservatism.

Granted, some cities are actually encouraging tiny homes as a means of freedom or as a solution to homelessness, as in Detroit, MI. Some Los Angeles lawmakers don’t see it that way, calling tiny homes for the homeless “a threat in many ways to our public safety.”

Wasilla residents are baffled by the tiny home ban, which seems to run contrary to Alaska’s wild and free nature. Tundra Tiny Houses is leading a new market of small home construction using renewable energy, and now they’ll have to tell customers Wasilla is not an option, in addition to Anchorage to Eagle River.

A big priority for tiny home dwellers is their reduced environmental impact. Many are capable of producing all their own energy from solar and wind, collecting rainwater and reusing graywater. Not depending on utility inputs naturally makes a lot of sense, especially for a tiny home on wheels.

Even those who put their tiny home on a piece of land away from crowded spaces – with the intention of living off-grid through renewable inputs – are considered outlaws if they don’t hook to the utility grid.

This of course ensures that utility companies, which are big donors to political campaigns and profit immensely from government-enabled monopolies, will always get their cut from every household.

In January we reported that sunny Nevada essentially killed its solar industry by increasing their tax on solar customers by 40 percent, causing solar providers to leave the state. The only beneficiary was NV Energy, whose energy monopoly was protected.

Spur, TX was the first city to advertise being “tiny house friendly” as a “town that welcomes new pioneers” – proudly supporting “reducing costs and gaining freedom to operate according to your own plan, unfettered by onerous and unnecessary costs.”

To have this “freedom,” you must secure your properly permitted tiny home to an approved foundation and be connected to city utilities. The property must always be mowed and the prime responsibility is “of course, paying your taxes!”

“When cities require the same permitting for tiny houses on foundations as they do for traditional houses, it often doesn’t make financial sense to build tiny. “At that point it’s really more of a lifestyle choice than an economic choice,” said Nick Krautter, a real estate agent in Portland, Oregon, who abandoned plans for a tiny house development.”

23-year-old college graduate, Sarah Hastings, built a 190-square-foot home on three acres of farmland in Hadley, MA, complete with a garden next to it. But the town found she was not in compliance with zoning ordinances, and now her home is in storage.

Hastings proposed a change to the town’s laws to allow for her tiny home, but the measure was vote down “because some residents were afraid the town would be overrun with them.” There will be no minimalist, environmentally friendly living in Hadley.

Clearly, the emergence of tiny homes is being met with fear, and the resulting banishment of freedom, by too many towns and cities across America that can’t quite fathom this shift in the way people think about living.

It’s one thing to be concerned about safety issues, but the imposition of minimum square footage requirements and mandatory connections to city utilities is mindless authoritarianism.

Let’s hope places like Fresno, CA and Rockledge, FL, which are specifically allowing tiny homes on wheels, can help their more “traditional” counterparts embrace the future.

Due to the pressures of popular demand for relevance in education, we have lost sight of the purpose for which true education exists. I would like to make a plea for irrelevant education, one that does not begin with a presumption of what is relevant – the thing most needful, as Strauss would put it – and what is not.

Genuine education does not prepare us merely to exercise what Kant calls “the private use of reason,” where one essentially has to resolve a problem that is already given and defined and, in so being, is simply a matter of applying the appropriate expertise. If this were the sole or true aim of education, then indeed one may be justified in demanding that education remain clearly relevant – that it be geared to and entirely focused on producing the adequate expertise, so that reason can be put to proper use.

What may be overlooked here is what Kant calls “the public use of reason”: reason that does not simply solve the problems it is given, but asks further questions, such as how did this problem arise, how are we defining it, is our definition – our conceptualization of the problem – perhaps part of the problem itself. To prepare the mind to engage in the public use of reason, it is insufficient to fashion experts, i.e. technicians and specialists. Rather, the public use of reason requires that we question radically the very frame of reference in which we are operating.

An education that must constantly demonstrate its relevance, usefulness (or functionality) is an education that is fundamentally not free. Being unable to freely follow where thought leads us is, in a sense, no education at all.  We are witnessing a tendency thoroughly consistent with the kind of American anti-intellectualism that has only become further emboldened and entrenched during this election year, courtesy of know-nothing Trumpism.

For genuine social critique to be possible, education cannot be enslaved to a prescribed set of assumptions about what is important – what is significant or relevant, and what is not. Instead, the capacity for pure theory must be fostered. Theoretical speculation is, in itself, an activity and a potent one, that enables us to set aside our habitual frame of reference and radically reassess the coordinates of the psychosocial status quo. We should not feel guilty for championing pure theory – theory may be the thing we need most.

Perhaps an education can only become significant when we are first prepared to bracket our assumptions about what an education should provide. The push to make higher education accountable to the practical needs of students is understandable, and up to a point not reasonably debatable. But beyond a certain point, it is arguably harmful to students and their education.

Indeed, it precisely robs them of education, which must always remain free and unfettered. The goal of all higher education is a liberal mind (and this, in contrast not to conservative, but to enslaved). And a liberal mind is not constantly bound to put its knowledge to “work” but is free to pursue and enjoy knowledge for its own sake. An education that is consumed with questions of practical applicability, with so-called “real world” significance, is certainly not a liberal education. A stunted education will likely produce a stunted mind, where instrumental rationality comes to eclipse the whole of reason: reason as a moral, critical, aesthetic, and speculative imperative.

Of course, the movement to strictly make higher education relevant invariably puts philosophy on the defensive. For example, Stephen Hawking’s recent claim that “philosophy is dead” is a rather remarkable one. Let us consider it for a moment and take a dose of good old-fashioned British empiricism, in the light of which, Hawking’s claim is false.

In fact, there are more philosophy departments, philosophy journals, and more people writing and doing philosophy than ever before. So, empirically, Hawking’s statement is absurd, but he is a very smart fellow and he must have known that; it thus must follow that he meant something else. Perhaps what he was saying is something like: “Philosophy ought to be dead.” But notice, this is a very different claim, for it is not descriptive like “philosophy is dead,” one which we can falsify by simply looking at the world and saying, “Oh, philosophy is not dead at all.” The claim “philosophy ought to be dead” is not empirical, but  essentially normative.

But here, already, Hawking has a difficulty. Is he making this claim within philosophy, or outside of it; are we to suppose it is a scientific claim? Obviously, it is not. So the claim must be a philosophical one: in fact there is no avoiding philosophy. The idea that all knowledge is scientific knowledge (scientism) is not itself a scientific claim, and it can never be. It is also a philosophical one of sorts: the claim that philosophy should die by suicide. And in a sense, is this not what we are witnessing in higher education – a kind of death by suicide?

Education is suffocating itself with the oppressive and pervading insistence on relevance and applicability. A sure sign that the winds of change are blowing in the right direction would be if students began to demand more irrelevant education, an education which does not possess utility, but which broadens the mind, instills the sense of education as a life-long pursuit, and produces the kind of independent thinking that makes possible the public use of reason. In the final analysis, it appears that for the sake of relevance itself, we must be ready to bracket the question of relevance altogether – to set it aside. Otherwise, we run the risk of being blind to the very thing that (in the end) we really needed most.

That is my plea. It is not that relevance of education is unimportant or insignificant. My point is that the very question about what is truly relevant –what is the thing most needful — is precisely what a liberal sets herself out to discover through education. And if we approach education as though we are already in possession of the answers, then genuine education has been arrested, even before it has begun.

My appeal is for the protection and nourishment of the right to irrelevant education. Oscar Wilde once said: “All art is quite useless.” We might similarly say that true education is quite useless and, for that very reason, indispensable.

Dr. Sam Ben-Meir teaches philosophy at Eastern International College. His current research focuses on environmental and business ethics.
[email protected]                             Web: www.alonben-meir.com

To counter the despair and fear generated by the American presidential campaign (and associated global chaos and wars), this essay presents a positive, constructive reaction to what is occurring.  The essay seeks to explain why the current state of affairs, as depressing and frightening as it may seem, may be viewed as an excellent learning opportunity that, if seized, can accelerate Social Progress and facilitate creation of Social Beauty (the foundation of which could be creation of collaborative, independent, national Public Economies, each based on creative versions of economic altruism—a topic for discussion in a future essay).

Exemplary of the current despair and fear is an email message I recently received from a young patient (mid-thirties) who lives in Eastern Europe: “I hope that your president (whether Clinton or Trump) will do not much harm to our planet and its people.”  She is scared and depressed by the American presidential campaign and deeply worried about what is happening in the world as a whole. She feels anger and frustration—particularly when considering how difficult it is to make sense out of what is happening, and how little control she feels over what seems so out of control and so difficult to remedy.

As with this patient, the current U.S. presidential campaign, and the associated chaos and wars going on in so many countries of the world, have left most Americans and most aware global citizens similarly frightened, worried, depressed, angry, frustrated, confused, disillusioned, and discouraged—and I am talking about people other than those in the Middle East, north Africa, and elsewhere who have directly suffered from the chaos and war (those who have been killed, maimed, or displaced). The indecency (past and present) of both Trump¹ and Clinton², the beguiling lies both have told, the pathologic projection each has exhibited, the fears and hatred each has stirred, the confusion each has created, the depth and breadth of their mis-education, their failure to present adequate solutions, and the threat to the world that each represents, have left people feeling frightened, hopeless and helpless, and have caused people to even question their own decency and their own ability to make sense out of life and find meaning in it.  People feel belittled, betrayed, and bewildered.  Furthering the frustration and despair, has been the absence of a clear vision of how so much Social Suffering could be transformed into Social Beauty.  Most seem to have accepted the depressing (but untrue) notion that such transformation is impossible.  (In fact, when I mention the term “Social Beauty” to people, the usual reaction is the question, “What is that?”  The same question is asked when I mention “Public Economy.”  Sadly, the terms “Social Beauty” and “Public Economy” are not in the American vocabulary.  What does that tell us?)

This essay is intended to remind readers that just because Trump and Clinton have exhibited so much sleaze and indecency does not mean that we, too, are indecent and sleazy.  Their hateful behavior need not make us hate ourselves, or others, and need not undermine confidence in our own Goodness and our own ability to bring remedy to Social Suffering.  Just because they have exhibited the worst aspects of Human Nature, does not mean that Human Nature is bad.  Human Nature is comprised of capacity for both good and bad—and we can certainly create opportunities that give practice to the Human capacity for Goodness, allowing it to prevail.  Just because Trump and Clinton seem likely to exacerbate, rather than resolve current national and global crises, does not mean that we cannot find just and kind solution. In fact, one theme of this essay is that both Trump and Clinton, precisely because they represent such horrible Caricatures of What’s Wrong, are providing us with an excellent opportunity to learn and to transform Social Suffering into Social Beauty.  We can seize that opportunity.

Before going further, please consider the following historical analogy, regarding how “Instructive Caricatures of What’s Wrong” have accelerated Social Progress in the past:  One could argue that the three people who did the most to accelerate Civil Rights advances during the 1960s were Martin Luther King (of course), George Wallace, and Lester Maddox (the racist governors of Alabama and Georgia, respectively, who insisted on blocking little black girls from attending “whites only” schools)—Dr. King, because of his exemplary social conscience and leadership; Wallace and Maddox because they represented highly Instructive Caricatures of What’s Wrong.  Wallace and Maddox were gross caricatures of horrible racism.  Their racism was so blatant and so obvious, that segregation, which had been continually and successfully defended and accepted by politicians for decades, very quickly became obviously indefensible and totally “socially unacceptable,” once the behaviors of Wallace and Maddox were witnessed on television.

Lynching, which had occurred frequently for decades, also suddenly stopped (or at least became rare, at least in the literal sense), because Wallace and Maddox had so effectively exposed how awful and obviously unacceptable it was.  The racist attitudes and actions caricatured by Wallace and Maddox were highly instructive.  Little progress in Civil Rights had been made, for decades, until Wallace and Maddox became Instructive Caricatures of What’s Wrong.  Their behavior helped Dr. King to drive home his message.  After these caricatures had quickly precipitated social change, an appropriate question became, “What took us so long?”

Fast forwarding to Trump, Clinton, and the current global crises: The good news is that because both Trump and Clinton, in their own different ways, represent such gross Caricatures of What is Wrong with American thinking and behavior,^{1, 2, 3} their caricatures will be more instructive (to all of the world’s people) than have more bland, deceptive, and cleverly masked representatives of American exceptionalism, mis-education, and mis-behavior.   Grotesque caricatures (if we can survive them, and we will!) raise social consciousness and social understanding faster and more accurately than do “kinder and gentler,” more palatable representatives of the status quo.  So, the good news is that either one (Trump or Clinton) will make it more obvious than ever before “what’s wrong” and what we can do to fix it.

There is a medical analogy here:  How have physicians learned about normal human physiology and how beautifully it works? Much of that learning has occurred (or at least been reinforced) by studying diseases.  Diseases, particularly extreme versions of diseases, are “instructive caricatures” of things gone wrong.  By studying those diseases, we can figure out how human physiology works normally and optimally (and most beautifully).  Often, the most severe versions of disease (the greatest caricatures of what’s wrong) teach us more quickly and definitively than do subtle versions of disease (some of which even go unrecognized, undiagnosed, and unaddressed).  Similarly, Trumps and Clintons provide better learning opportunities than do “kinder, gentler” (but just as harmful) versions of mis-education and misbehavior (like Obama)—and, thereby, advance knowledge, understanding, and Social Progress more quickly. Kinder, gentler versions of mis-guided behavior actually delay Social Progress.

Physicians are physicians because they deeply care about learning from and treating diseases.  They don’t ignore, deny, or run away from disease “because it is too depressing, too discouraging, or too stressful”; they run towards disease and eagerly embrace the challenges of diagnosing, finding cause, and creating remedy.  They view presence of disease as opportunities to make things better, not as depressing experiences to avoid.  Likewise, it would be good if all people cared deeply to understand and treat caricatures like Trump¹, Clinton², and current US geopolitical policy³—to figure out what is wrong and determine how societies could work and think optimally and most beautifully, individually and together. Trump¹ and Clinton², and the USA itself³ are caricatures of diseased thinking and Social Illness.  Unwittingly, because they are instructive caricatures of American mis-education and misbehavior, they are presenting us with an unprecedented opportunity to advance Social Progress and create Social Beauty. If we take advantage of this opportunity, if we all become Social Clinicians, the world can become a much better place, even rapidly so.  If we ignore this opportunity, if we run away from this chance to diagnose Social Illness, seek its causes, and create remedy—then, disease will worsen and the world’s people and the earth itself will succumb—either quickly (via nuclear disaster), or more slowly (via neglect).

The most positive and helpful response, therefore, to Trump, Clinton, and current USA foreign policy, is not to allow ourselves to become depressed and despondent, not to run from these problems, not to frantically vote out of fear and hysteria; but, rather, for all of us to become enthusiastic Social Clinicians—committed to bringing the nation’s and the world’s problems before the Social Clinic, where Social Suffering can be rigorously examined, diagnosed, understood, and treated; where work can be done to create Social Beauty.  The positive response to Trump, Clinton, and the USA is to view them for what they are—Instructive Caricatures of What’s Wrong—that teach us, give us new clarity, and give us new opportunity to make things better, to create Social Beauty and Social Justice, to reverse the Social Suffering of so many of the world’s people.  In that sense, this is an exciting time, not a time for fear, hysteria, anger, despondency, self-doubt, resignation, and acceptance of the status quo.

There is another medical analogy here:  The first steps in a physician’s problem solving approach are to take a complete, detailed, accurate History and recognize the patterns within it.  Taking an adequate History is time consuming and requires great effort.  Physicians need to learn what questions are most important to ask, and they need to learn what diseases are associated with various patterns.  Above all, the physician needs to care enough to dig for all of the necessary details, and needs to be given the time to do so.   The same is true for a Social Clinician.  The first and most important steps in a Social Clinician’s problem solving approach are to take a complete, detailed, accurate History and recognize the patterns within it.

It is difficult to know who will be granted the American Presidency.  We will be able to survive either one—but, only if we bother, individually and collectively, to take a complete History, recognize patterns, see these caricatures for what they are, and use their caricatured mis-education and misbehavior as “teaching moments” to facilitate and expedite true social learning and Social Progress; and only if we rigorously and anticipatorily evaluate and challenge their policies and actions every step of the way, always promptly holding them accountable.  Since they both represent caricatures (Trump more obviously than Clinton), they both provide a better “teaching opportunity” than has Obama and others before him (except for GW).

So, don’t let Trump¹ and Clinton² demoralize you, undermine your sense of self-worth, and snuff out your hopes for Humanity and Mother Earth.  Recognize them as Instructive Caricatures of What’s Wrong—caricatures who can serve to reveal the causes of Social Illness, elevate discussion, and accelerate Social Progress.  Yes, both are dangerous, in their own different ways, as well as in similar ways (both believe in American Exceptionalism, e.g.).  But, don’t be overly frightened.  All diseases are dangerous and strike some fear.  But, don’t run away from disease.  Those who are suffering the most need you to run towards it.  With knowledge, discipline, focus, practice, hard work, deep empathy, high spirit, resolve, and appropriately bold risk-taking—diseases can be conquered.  Physicians and nurses have demonstrated that.   Similarly, all of us can become Social Clinicians, participate in the Social Clinic, and contribute to the transformation of Social Suffering into Social Beauty.  (See bullet points listed at the end of footnote # 3.)  That Transformation will likely require creation of collaborative, independent, national Public Economies, starting with thorough public discussion of this notion—but, further specific discussion of how to work towards creation of Social Beauty is a subject for a future essay.

Footnotes:^{1, 2, 3, 4}

Both Trump and Clinton represent horribly flawed candidates—each in different ways.  Neither is fit for public office.  Neither deserves our votes.

¹Trump appears to be arrogant, egotistical, narcissistic, undisciplined, impulsive, boorish, and lewd. He has been a predatory merchant who also appears to be a sexual predator, a racist, a pathological liar, a con-man, and prone to fascist behaviors. He is either ignorant or ignorant (or both) of national and world history—particularly of our nation’s long and continued history of exploiting and abusing people all over the world.³  His views on human rights, civil rights, women’s rights, health care, guns, economics, immigration, and climate change reflect gross mis-education, at best. His statements and actions are full of obvious contradictions. He threatens to reverse social progress and dangerously increase social unrest, hatred, and incivility within the USA. He is a clear and present danger to American society, particularly to minority groups.

The only possible good things about Trump (if we can trust any of the following) are that he is not afraid to speak truth to power, he is not afraid to shake things up, he is willing to expose much of what is wrong with the current Establishment, he has awakened (or at least frightened) an apathetic American public, he dares to state that getting along with Russia “could be a good thing,” he questions why the USA is supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria, he has been critical of the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and he questions the money we spend on NATO, he has been critical of TPP. There is also a remote possibility (quite unlikely and not to be trusted) that he has recently evolved into a better person, actually has a bigger heart than has been apparent, now truly cares about suffering people, and that most of his misbehavior, mis-guided thinking, and horrifying rhetoric are products and remnants of mis-education and mis-culture, rather than absence of compassion or intelligence.

Trump has presented himself as the populist, anti-establishment candidate who threatens to up-end the status quo.  But, because he is so untrustworthy, it is difficult to know whether his anti-establishment rhetoric is a true reflection of what he believes and plans; or whether his rhetoric is all a ploy, with plans (once in power) to execute the Establishment’s plans exactly as told and rewarded by the Establishment and with greater force, injustice, and fascism than we have seen them executed to date.

It is conceivable that the “Trump phenomenon” has been a ploy all along—a deliberate trick played on the American public, with Trump in on the trick from the beginning. It is conceivable that the Establishment (Big Banks/Big Finance/Big Transnational Corporations) decided several years ago that Hillary Clinton was the person they needed to succeed Obama to execute their national and global agenda.  But, they knew that Clinton was too unlikeable, had too much baggage, and might lose the election because too many people who usually vote Democrat would not feel inspired to actually come out to vote for her.  They also recognized that in order for Clinton to win, she needed to have an obvious “greater evil” as an opponent.  Both the Establishment and the Democratic National Committee saw value in using Bernie Sanders as a means of getting out the Democratic vote, particularly the votes of young people—with both the DNC and Bernie having no intention of Bernie ever actually becoming the Democrat nominee. The other way to get Clinton elected would be to create a very dangerous buffoon as her Republican opponent—a boogieman that would frighten the electorate into coming out, en mass, to vote for Clinton as the “lesser of two evils.

Trump was the perfect person to play the boogieman role.  He had the ability to mobilize a large number of people who would be attracted to an angry, defiant, supra-confident, intolerant, racist, nativist, anti-establishment, anti-climate change, anti-immigrant, law and order message—thereby seeming to become a legitimate threat to become elected.  Those who would appropriately view Trump’s outrageous attitudes and horrific policies as an existential, even fascist, threat to American civil society and to the world would then be frightened into concluding that they had a moral and civic obligation to vote for Clinton (despite all flaws) and that anyone who either votes for a third party candidate or doesn’t vote at all would be irresponsibly contributing to a Trump victory and, thereby, Trump fascism.  It is conceivable that Trump agreed to play the role of outrageous boogieman (in return for later favors).  Part of the plan would be to have the mainstream media boost Trump by excessively covering every aspect of his campaign, to the exclusion of giving much air-time to the other Republican candidates and to the exclusion of covering the most important failings of Clinton/Obama policies and actions (American geopolitical policy, national and global economic issues, Clinton Foundation corruption, e.g.).

If this has been the plan, it has worked wonderfully to “get out the vote” for Clinton (as the “lesser of two evils”); it has served to distract attention from any critical analysis of Clinton/Obama foreign policy economic policy, and her illegal activities; and, by frightening people into potentially one of the highest turnouts ever, it may well give Hillary Clinton not only victory, but a false “mandate” to execute the Establishment’s agenda.   Of course, as with Obama, a Clinton administration will throw a few “progressive” bones to the American public to keep them happy and quiet and to give the illusion of a compassionate and progressive Clinton administration, while the Establishment/Clinton administration goes about its way, unchallenged, to further  its larger financial and geopolitical agenda.

One possible hooker in the above imagined plan is the possibility (doubtful) that somewhere along the way Trump decided to renege on his promise to play the role of a fascist buffoon who, secretly, had no intention of ever actually being elected and would dutifully fade away during the last weeks of the campaign.  Perhaps, the huge adoring crowds and the growing feasibility of actually getting elected made him change his mind. Perhaps he is now in it for real; and the very real possibility of a Trump victory has triggered an hysterical drive to push people (emotionally terrorizing, really) to vote for Clinton, in order to “save Humanity” and the earth from Trump fascism—a drive that amounts to emotional blackmail.

It is impossible to know what Trump’s real intentions have been, or whether they have changed.  Perhaps we will never know.   Personally, I find it difficult to imagine that a person who truly wishes to become President would make such enormous sweeping promises that cannot possibly be kept—and would be so sloppy with his rhetoric. But, then, maybe this is a manifestation of his megalomania and other flaws.

²Clinton is particularly disturbing because of her horrible geopolitical policy decisions and actions:  She orchestrated the brutal murder of Gaddafi and the total destruction of Libya, both of which were unwarranted, unwise, and illegal.  Predictably, Libya became a failed state, over-run by ruthless Wahhabist terrorists, with millions of people suffering as a result—and she publicly laughed about this accomplishment afterwards (“We came, we saw, he died—ha, ha, ha”).

She similarly orchestrated a brutal regime change in Ukraine, deliberately placing fascist thugs in power, who then carried out a reign of terror on the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, with thousands of people being killed or maimed as a result—then, she blamed all of the carnage on “Russian invasion of Ukraine and Crimea,” an accusation that is absolutely untrue.

Clinton/Obama policies and actions in Syria have represented a deliberate, US-orchestrated, proxy war that has cowardly employed ruthless mercenary Wahhabist terrorists to bring about regime change, because Assad was not cooperating with US plans in the region.  The USA, with Clinton and Obama’s full knowledge, has recruited, trained, armed, paid, and directed Wahhabist terrorists to topple Assad.  This is the same reckless strategy (proudly concocted by President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski) that the USA employed in Afghanistan in 1979, when the CIA worked with Osama Bin Laden to recruit, train, arm, and fund the Wahhabist Mujahideen to deliberately draw the Soviet Union into a protracted Afghan-Soviet War—a war that lasted more than 9 years and resulted in 850,000-2,000,000 innocent Afghan civilians being killed.  In Brzezinski’s publicly stated opinion, that death toll was “worth it,” particularly since American soldiers were not asked to do the killing.

Despite knowing full well that Saudia Arabia and Qatar were financing and arming ISIS, Clinton and Obama continued to ship huge amounts of arms and money to these countries, knowing that it was ending up in the hands of ISIS and Al Quaeda.  The USA has deliberately aided and abetted not just the terrorists that the US government falsely and misleadingly calls the “moderate opposition,” but all terrorist groups in Syria.   Clinton/Obama policies in Syria have resulted in millions of innocent Syrian people being either killed, maimed, or displaced. US actions in Syria have violated International Law and represent heinous war crimes.  And, when Russia, at the request of the Syrian government, intervened to stop Wahhabist terrorism in Syria, the USA objected, continued to support the terrorists, and has demonized Russia and Russia’s anti-terrorism efforts. Clinton’s plans for Syria are more hawkish than Obama’s and reveal that she learned absolutely nothing from her support for the War in Iraq and her decision to destroy Libya. In fact, she has recklessly expressed a willingness to militarily confront Iran, and she also seems determined to bring about regime change in Russia.  Obama was willing to put at least some restraints on his killing.  Clinton will be far less restrained, much to the delight of the Big Bank/Big Finance/Big Transnational/Neocons-Neoliberals for whom she will work.

In 2009, while Secretary of State, Clinton orchestrated regime change in Honduras, ousting the democratically elected President Zelaya, replacing him with a brutal regime whose death squads murdered Berta Caceres, a principled indigenous environmental activist who was placed on a “hitlist” distributed to US-trained “special forces units.” Berta was trying to protect the Aguan River from the ravages of US-supported (and Clinton-supported) corporate mining and hydroelectric projects.

During her husband’s Presidency, Bill, along with and Mrs. Clinton’s friend, Madeleine Albright, imposed economic sanctions on Iraq (preventing availability of medicine, hospital supplies, and food) that resulted in the deaths of at least 500,000 people, many of them innocent women and children—a sacrifice that Ms. Albright (in keeping with the Brzezinski doctrine) publicly stated “was worth it.”  (To whom was it worth it, Ms. Albright, and who were you to decide?)  Now the same kind of sanctions are harming millions of innocent women and children in Syria and Yemen.  In Yemen, for example, thousands of children are starving to death, due to the combination of US-supported economic sanctions and US-supported Saudi bombing.  The Obama administration not only supports that bombing, but, while Clinton was Secretary of State, Saudi Arabia received an arms deal worth more than $80 billion.

The Clintons’ so-called “humanitarian interventions” in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which they and Samantha Power justified by their “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, were anything but humanitarian. Those interventions represented war crimes.  Then, there is the Clinton’s role in all of the chaos, death, and destruction created in Sudan, Somalia, and other north African countries.  And, there is Mrs. Clinton’s strong support for and total silence about Israeli atrocities in Gaza, where innocent women and children are being killed, maimed, and starved—without a word of criticism from Clinton and without any effort on her part to initiate public discussion of these atrocities.  There is more, regarding Clinton patterns, but we will stop here.

Like Trump, Clinton is either ignorant or ignorant (probably more the latter) of national and global history.  Despite her shameless claims to the contrary, she is willingly beholden to Wall Street/Big Finance. She appears to be committed to ruthlessly doing whatever is necessary to achieve the neo-conservative/neo-liberal goal of a uni-polar world totally dominated by predatory Transnational Corporations (even killing thousands of innocent women and children, if necessary, as Mrs. Albright’s policies did in Iraq and Obama’s policies are now doing in Syria and Yemen). Guided by her gross mis-education and quest for power and wealth, she is now dangerously and erroneously demonizing and deliberately antagonizing Putin and Russia.  She has irresponsibly called Putin “a Hitler.” Astonishingly, in the third Presidential Debate, she claimed that the most important issue threatening the USA is Russian interference in the American Presidential election—a claim for which there is no evidence.  If she becomes President, there is high risk that her reckless thinking will take the world to the brink of World War III, if not over the brink.

Clinton is a carefully disciplined fraud, a pathological liar, a disingenuous empathizer, and a heartless war criminal.  She is a clear and present danger to world peace. The only good thing about Clinton is that, compared to Trump, she would do more for the human rights, women’s rights, minority rights, and health care rights of Americans (though not for the rest of the world’s people)—not because she has genuine compassion, but because she realizes that it is “good politics” to do so.  Likewise, she realizes that it is good politics to state concern about climate change—but, then she fully supports fracking and fully supports Big Capitalism, the latter being one of the biggest contributors to global warming.  She claims to care about economic justice, but then supports TPP.  She will certainly be more effective (than Trump) at saving American Capitalism and American global dominance, thereby delaying their collapse and temporarily propping up the American economy—but this is a negative, in my opinion, because it is tantamount to maintaining a disease state, rather than curing the disease. Clinton is the pro-Establishment candidate, who will seek to maintain the status quo (which is awful) and will do so with greater force, zeal, and ruthlessness than has Obama, whose main contribution has been a pathetic modicum of self-serving restraint (designed primarily to protect his “legacy”).

³Sadly, Trump and Clinton are not alone in their mis-education and mis-behavior.  All of the American Presidents, since at least 1900, have caused great harm to the world’s people and great damage to the earth itself.  The most racist, arrogant, fascist, ignorant, ignorant, and dangerous notion of all is the American belief that the USA is “the exceptional and indispensable nation;” and that the USA’s wealth has primarily been due to unique American industriousness, ingenuity, competence, and the goodness of our foreign policy.  Nothing could be farther from the truth!!

America’s exceptional wealth and power has primarily been due to more than a century of exceptionally brutal global exploitation of the world’s people and resources—to the great harm of both—starting with the Philippines in 1898.  Yes, there have been some “trickle down” benefits to many, in terms of an increase in material “standard of living.”   But, even those improvements in material well-being (including all of the spectacular scientific and technological advances generated by the USA) could have been achieved and distributed (even faster and better) by other countries, other peoples, and other economic and social models, if only they had been given a chance.  Not only have other countries and peoples not been given a proper chance to create their own existences, they have been deliberately sabotaged by American orchestrated chaos, regime change, and war (e.g. Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Mali, most of central America, and most of South America, to name just a few recent examples).  The chaos and wars have been deliberately designed to prevent other peoples, countries, social systems, and economies from successfully competing with American supremacy (which pretty much amounts to White Supremacy).  The USA has not just built itself up; it has deliberately torn other people down and kept them from rising, so that no one else has a chance to threaten the USA’s insistence on its supremacy and its economic model.  Such a strategy is not only shameful and racist, it is enormously cowardly.

Even Barack “I’m pretty good at killing people (an actual quote regarding his use of drones)” Obama proudly and publicly believes in “American exceptionalism” and America as the “indispensable nation,” and, astonishingly, believes Hillary Clinton is the “best prepared and most competent presidential candidate during our life-time.” These preposterous comments reflect profound mis-education on his part, at best.  Unlike physicians, Obama apparently has not learned the importance of taking a complete History as a first step in problem solving.  One would think that the first responsibility of a nation’s President (who is essentially the Physician-in-Chief, or, better, the Social Clinician-in-Chief), when addressing the nation’s problems, would be to take a complete History of the USA’s geo-political activities over the past 100 years, looking for patterns within it.  Has Obama (or for that matter, the Clintons, the Bushes, Trump, or the citizens who have voted for, or plan to vote for, these people) ever bothered to take such a History?  Certainly, a Commander-in-Chief should be obligated to take a complete History and look for patterns before ordering prescription—otherwise, unnecessary military prescriptions may be written, resulting in preventable, wrongful deaths.  If a physician fails to take a complete History and fails to accurately recognize a pattern and a single patient suffers as a result, that physician may be sued for malpractice, and may face jail time if the failures are egregiously negligent. But, have the Bushes, Clintons, and Obama ever been held accountable for their failure to take a complete History, for their failure to recognize obvious patterns, and for their prescriptions of lethal military solutions that have wrongly killed, maimed, or displaced millions of innocent people.  No.  Instead, we are being emotionally blackmailed (by Obama, himself) to not only vote for Clinton, but to give her a mandate to continue his military prescriptions in the Middle East with even greater force.

A carefully obtained History reveals that the USA (specifically, its corporate and government leadership) is very far from “exceptional,” very far from “indispensable,” and has not been “a force for good” in the world.  Clinton claims that “America is great because it is good.” I agree that most American people, like the vast majority of the world’s people, are good.  But, history clearly reveals that the USA has become powerful and wealthy, not because of altruism and goodness, but because of its leaders’ ruthless greed and heartless exploitation of the billions of “unpeople” living in the rest of the world (dispensable people, I suppose).  The economic model Clinton champions actually up-regulates Human capacity for selfishness and unkindness and down-regulates Human capacity for Goodness.  (Please learn the history of US geopolitical interventions in the countries listed in the first of the bullets at the end of footnote #3—not the propagandized narratives, but the narratives that fit patterns, connect dots, and make common sense.)

The world will be a better place, if the USA is held accountable (for once).  If any country deserves to have economic sanctions placed on it, it is the USA⁴.  If any leaders deserve to be brought before a world court for crimes against Humanity, it is the leaders of the USA (including both Clintons, both Bushes, Obama, and even Carter/Brzezinski and Kissinger before them). If any country should have its armed forces stripped to a minimum (for defense only), it is the USA.  If any country should be disallowed from having military bases outside of their own country, it is the USA.  A Trump or Clinton Presidency, because they are such caricatures of wrong-thinking, mis-education, and mis-behavior, will make this much more obvious than has the deceptive Obama presidency.  Frankly, a Trump presidency would be more instructive/educational than a Clinton presidency (because Clinton is more disciplined in hiding her true nature and the true nature of American thinking and plans for Supremacy).  Yes, Trump would be risky, but Clinton is just as risky—they are just risky in different ways. Trump clearly poses a greater threat to domestic tranquility and civility (within the U.S.), but Clinton poses a greater risk globally (or is at least a more proven threat to people outside of the USA).

Incidentally, this distinction between threat to American citizens and threat to the rest of the world is important, because there is an unfortunate tendency for Americans to selfishly focus on the former and be insouciant regarding the latter. For example, Trump’s reckless and prejudiced rhetoric about Muslims, as well as his potential anti-Muslim actions if elected President, clearly pose a horrible threat to the civil liberties, emotional comfort, and lives of the 3.3 million Muslims living in the USA.  Clinton, in contrast, strongly encourages tolerance, support, and protection for the US Muslim population.

But, on the other hand, the actual actions of Clinton (and her husband, and Obama) in the Middle East-North Africa (ME-NA) has already carelessly resulted in the killing, maiming, and displacement of many millions of Muslims in that region (including innocent women and children).  Clinton (along with her husband, Mrs. Albright, the Bushes, and Obama) has already demonstrated her disregard for the lives of the 317,000,000 Muslims who live in the ME-NA. Moreover, Clinton’s hawkish rhetoric and likely policies regarding the ME-NA suggest that even more Middle East Muslims will be killed under a Clinton administration than have been killed under the Obama administration—particularly if she acts on her threats to Iran.  Apparently, in Clinton’s mind, the lives of American Muslims matter, but the lives of Muslims in the ME-NA do not.

Trump, in contrast, has at least questioned the US wars in the Middle East, and has indicated a resolve to “annihilate” ISIS (even working with Russia and Iran to do so), while Clinton and Obama (astonishingly) have supported and armed ISIS and other Wahhabist terrorists. It is impossible to know at this point, but there seems to be at least a possibility that fewer Middle East Muslims will be killed, maimed, and displaced under a Trump administration, than under a Clinton administration. Unlike Clinton, Trump has not killed any Middle East Muslims, at least not yet.

So, for those of us who care deeply about the world’s Muslims (which should be all of us!), we need to compare the clear threat that Trump poses to the 3.3 million American Muslims, but less clearly poses to the 317,000,000 Muslims living in the ME-NA, with the threat that Clinton clearly poses to the 317,000,000 Muslims in the ME-NA, while she protects American Muslims.  Muslims, whether they live in the USA or elsewhere in the world, should not be subjected to either a Trump or a Clinton administration. Under a Trump presidency, the civil rights, emotional health, and physical health of 3.3 million American Muslims are clearly at risk, while the risk Trump poses to the 317,000,000 Muslims in the ME-NA is less clear.  Under a Clinton administration, the 3.3 million American Muslims will have protection, but the 317,000,000 Muslims in the ME-NA will clearly be at great risk.  Doing the math, it is likely that more Muslims will be killed, maimed, and displaced under a Clinton administration than a Trump administration. So, which is the greater threat to Muslims—Trump, or Clinton?  Those who are focused on only American Muslims will say Trump is the greater threat and will desperately want Clinton to be elected.  Those concerned about Muslims currently living in the ME-NA will realize that Clinton is the greater proven threat, with the level of a Trump threat being less clear.

The people who have suffered the most from Bush/Clinton/Obama foreign policy have been the 317,000,000 Muslims in the ME-NA.  Therefore, from a triage perspective, they, by definition, are the ones whose needs should be top priority.  Clinton’s policies will likely only worsen suffering in the ME-NA —less restraint than Obama, more endless war, endless terrorism, endless chaos, more innocent Muslims being killed, maimed, and displaced.  Do the 317,000,000 Muslims in the ME-NA want to see a landslide Clinton victory?  Or, would they rather take their chances with a less predictable Trump, who has at least questioned US foreign policy in that region.  Which candidate’s policies do they fear the most? Have Clinton, Trump, or the American people bothered to ask the 317,000,000 Muslims in the ME-NA which of these candidates’ policies they would prefer?  Or, do their lives not matter? (Incidentally, when I suggest asking the 317 million people, I do not mean just asking people from the wealthy and privileged classes in these countries—the less than 5 %, many of whom have benefitted from complicity with American foreign and economic policy.  And, I do not mean primarily asking people whose views have primarily been influenced by pro-American propaganda.  I mean asking people whose views have been shaped by what they and their families have actually experienced.)

Moreover, one of the most fundamental tenets of Islam is forbiddance of Usury—and, yet, Clinton is the preferred candidate of the Big Banks/Big Finance, who epitomize the most vulgar versions of Usury, and Clinton is determined to carry out their global agenda.  Do the 317 million want a landslide victory for a champion of vulgar Usury?  Have we asked them? Do we not realize that American policies, unfortunately, have profound adverse effects on the world as a whole?

The more general point here is that evaluation of who (in the final analysis, after taking everything into account) represents the “lesser of two evils” should consider not just who would most adversely affect the American population, but also who would have the most adverse effect on non-American populations. Unfortunately, the non-Americans have no vote.

Clinton will probably “win” the election—one way or another.  But, a surprise Trump victory is possible.

Personally, I was initially tempted to not vote at all, because: I think an embarrassingly low turn-out of eligible voters would make the most effective statement; I refuse to give my consent to a Trump or Clinton presidency; I refuse to be an accomplice to their crimes and policies; and, because I believe we have ample capacity to control and rise above either one, as awful as both are.  Since it looks as though an embarrassingly low turn-out is not going to happen (because the American public has been successfully tricked and frightened into flocking, almost hysterically, to vote for the “lesser of two evils”), I will probably vote for Jill Stein, whose policies and attitudes are clearly wiser and kinder than any of the other candidates.

Contrary to the claim of Clinton supporters, a vote for Stein will not be a “wasted vote.”  A vote for Stein will help her and the Green party to achieve the meaningful milestone of 5% of the vote count—a percentage that, importantly, will qualify the Green party for future federal campaign funding.

Contrary to the emotionally black-mailing and emotionally shaming claim of Clinton supporters, a vote for Stein is not an irresponsible “vote for Trump” (as Obama has claimed) and, thereby, a “vote for fascism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and global warming.” If Trump should happen to win, it will not be the fault of those who voted for Stein.  His victory will be due to the abject failure of Clinton supporters, long ago, to insist on a better Democratic Party candidate—a failure that is directly tied to the failure of American citizens to bother to study the History of American geo-political policy, and the failure of American citizens to serve as geo-politically informed Social Clinicians.  A Trump victory will also be the fault of the mainstream media who have drawn excessive and undue attention to Trump, thereby greatly contributing to the “Trump phenomenon.”  They could have ignored him, just like they completely ignored Jill Stein.  The immensity of the “Trump phenomenon” could not have been created without the enormous emphasis the mainstream media has placed on Trump.   And, of course, a Trump victory will be the fault of all those people who voted for Trump, many of whom, however, were driven to Trump because they were fed up with the duplicity, corruption, hypocrisy, and arrogance of people like Clinton, not to mention the adverse effects of her trade policies on their lives.  So, if Trump wins, don’t blame those who voted for Stein.

The first rule for physicians and Social Clinicians is to take a complete, detailed, accurate History.  The vast majority of Americans have not done so.  Most Americans know very little of the geo-political History alluded to in this essay.  Most, for example, have never heard of what the USA did (and why) to Mosaddeq (Iran 1953), or to Arbenz (Guatemala, 1954), or to Lumumba (Congo, 1961), or to Sukarno (Indonesia 1965-66), or to innocent people in Korea (1950-53).  And, most have never heard of Brzezinski’s 1979 plan to employ ruthless mercenary Wahhabist terrorists to achieve American geopolitical goals in Afghanistan—the strategy that has been used recurrently ever since, most recently throughout the Middle East-North Africa, currently in Syria.  We are now seeing the horrible consequences of America’s failure to bother to take a geo-political History and recognize the obvious patterns within it.  That failure is the real cause of the current depressing American presidential campaign and the associated chaos and wars in the world.

If Clinton wins and her policies result in even more millions of people in the Middle East-North Africa being either killed, maimed, or displaced, and/or her policies provoke a war with Russia and/or China—it will not be the fault of those who voted for Stein.  That wrongful death and suffering will mostly be the fault of Clinton, but it will also, in part, be the fault of those who voted for Clinton and frightened or shamed others into voting for Clinton, and that fault, again, will be due to a failure to bother to take a complete History and look for the patterns within it.

Clinton supporters anticipate and fear utter disaster, if Trump is elected—an acceleration of xenophobia, racism, misogyny, fascism, and a marked decline in civility, not to mention economic turmoil and worsening climate change, among other concerns. Trump supporters anticipate disastrous consequences of a Clinton victory—more war, worse war, more money wasted on war, more predatory global corporate capitalism, more lies, more scandals, more hypocrisy.  But, we can prevent Trump-induced disasters, if he is elected; and we can prevent Clinton-induced disasters, if she is elected.  We are not powerless to prevent either set of disasters.  We need not be gripped by fear and panic.  On the contrary, we, The Public, have great power, if we choose to draw upon that power and use it wisely.

More specifically, to counter the diseased thinking and prevent the ill-behavior of either a Trump or Clinton presidency, and to protect ourselves and others (nationally and globally) from them, we can become Social Clinicians and can do the following:

• Take a complete, detailed, truthful History of American geo-political interventions (deliberate destabilizations, orchestrated chaos, coups/regime change, assassinations, covert wars, and overt wars ) conducted since 1898: e.g. in the Philippines (1898), Korea (1950-53), Iran (1953),  Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959),  Congo (1961), Indonesia (1965-66), Viet Nam (1954-75), Chile (1973), Argentina (1976-83), Afghanistan (1979-89), Iraq-Iran (1980-88), El Salvador (1980-92), Nicaragua (1986-87),  Egypt (1986-16), Yugoslavia (1991-2001), Rwanda (1994), Venezuela (1999-16), Sudan (1998-16), Iraq (2003), Afghanistan (2003-16), Honduras (2009), Libya (2011), Syria (2011-16), Ukraine (2014), and Yemen (2016).
• Learn from the above History: Bring that History to the Social Clinic, where it can be rigorously and objectively examined. Look for patterns of diseased thinking and mis-behavior; seek the cause(s) of that thinking and behavior.  Have those interventions squared with the claim that the USA has been an “exceptional” nation and a “force for good in the world?”
• Expose the above past and ongoing History and patterns: by organizing mass public exposure to and discussion of this History and these patterns; by insisting that the mainstream media (CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, major newspapers, and Hollywood) honestly relate this History; by organizing public forums to present and discuss this History; and by insisting that this History be taught and discussed in schools and universities; by mobilizing the arts and artists to creatively reveal this History.
• Critical examination and mass discussion of the History can lead to formulation of best solutions, including approaches designed to prevent future problems.  For example, the Social Clinic could recommend that an alternative to Capitalism would be an economic model based on the concept of Public Economy.  The Social Clinicians could propose creation of a network of collaborative, independent, national Public Economies as an alternative to the Clinton-supported uni-polar global corporatist model that is based on vulgar usury and exploitation and leads to environmental disaster, gross inequality, war, and fascism.
• In the Social Clinic, we can promptly and critically examine all policies and actions of a Trump or Clinton administration to quickly stop the threats they pose. An informed and proactive Court of Public Opinion can promptly identify and rectify incipient violations of Human Rights, Human Dignity, and the rights of the Environment before they get implemented.  But, in order to be informed and proactive, we need to take a complete History, learn how to recognize patterns within it, and we must be vigilant.
• If we do the above, we can not only prevent Trump or Clinton from advancing too far along their wrong paths, we can educate and transform them (possibly), as we all evolve in a healthy direction.  The caricatured tendencies of Trump or Clinton (the teaching moments their thinking and proposed actions create) can actually serve to accelerate social learning and advance discussion of alternative economic and social models, thereby advancing Social Progress.
• If we do the above, we need not fear a Trump presidency or a Clinton presidency.
• If we do not do the above, if we do not study and learn from our History, if we run away from disease (“because it is too depressing,” “too stressful,” “too frustrating to even talk about”), then we have lots to fear, and we will be accomplices to further Social Illness (or worse).

Summary:

If we care enough and channel that caring into wise action, we will be able to prevent either flawed candidate from creating the disasters they threaten to create. We will be able to survive either candidate (Trump or Clinton)—but, only if we know our History and promptly use their caricatured mis-education and mis-policies as “teaching moments” to facilitate and expedite true social learning and Social Progress; only if we rigorously and proactively evaluate and challenge their policies and actions and promptly  hold them accountable; and only if we believe in our capacity to develop and discuss alternative plans for creation of Social Beauty.  Mass public re-education and mass public discussion will be necessary.  The focus of mass public discussion will need to be on new ideas such as “development of a Public Economy,” “economic altruism,” and creation of “collaborative, independent, national Public Economies.”  Creation of Social Beauty will depend on such discussions. Our two “Caricatures for President” are giving us urgent reason and new opportunity to have those discussions.  Not only can we survive either caricature, we can use them as catalysts to transform global Social Suffering into global Social Beauty. And, afterwards, we will ask, “What took us so long?”

⁴I would hope (and I strongly believe) that economic sanctions placed on the USA would be humane and would not mimic the inhumane economic sanctions the USA has recklessly placed on other countries (Cuba, Iraq, Syria, e.g.).  Those inhumane sanctions deliberately targeted and hurt women and children, by blocking delivery of essential medicines, hospital supplies, and food to those countries.  Humane sanctions would only target: American transnational corporations that have abused people and the environment; the American weapons manufacturers who have irresponsibly sold horrible weapons all over the world, including to terrorists; the American Military, with its more than 1400 bases in more than 120 countries; and disingenuous American government-sponsored NGOs that have wreaked havoc in scores of other countries (e.g. by clandestinely paying thugs to foment unrest, designed to bring about false “color revolutions” and regime change).

I would hope (and I strongly believe) that other countries (Russia, China, Iran, e.g.) would not deliberately and vindictively harm the citizens of a sanctioned USA that has been appropriately stripped of its military might.  Unlike the USA, which has thought nothing of brutally demolishing and occupying weakened countries, recklessly turning them into failed states, and killing, maiming, or displacing millions of innocent people in the process, I feel confident that other countries would not be so cruel to the American people.  Russia will not invade or occupy the USA.  China will not invade or occupy the USA.  Iran will not invade or occupy the USA. Throughout the past 60 years, the country that has invaded and occupied the most countries, started and conducted the most wars, and caused the greatest number of people to suffer—has been the USA.  Russia, China, and Iran do not want war.  They want peace—though they will vigorously defend themselves if attacked.  Although Russia, China, and Iran have good reason to be upset with the American government (and its corporate puppet-masters) they do not have animosity towards the American people as a whole.

I am reminded of when, in 2006, I was a guest participant in a week long Cuban Rheumatology Conference in Havana.  In a farewell speech at the end of the Conference, I thanked my fellow rheumatologists for inviting and taking such good care of me, and I apologized for all the harm the USA government had done to Cuba since 1959—the blockade, the failed military invasion, the killing of Che Guevara, the 70 plus attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, and the many other heinous efforts to sabotage the Cuban social effort.   The vice-chairman of the Conference came up, tenderly put his arm around my shoulder, and with a kind smile explained: “We fully understand that because American anti-Cuba propaganda is so powerful, it has been almost impossible for the American people to appreciate Cuba—so, we do not blame the American people; you do not need to apologize.”  Similarly, Russia, China, and Iran will have no intention to harm the American people of an appropriately sanctioned and disciplined America.  They just want the American government to be held accountable and stop its exploitation of the world and its people.

But, my advice to the American people is that, in return for the just-mentioned kindness and forgiveness, the American people have a responsibility to wake up, learn the History of American geo-political behavior, see through the propaganda of the Neocon/Neoliberal-controlled US government, and participate in the Social Clinic with an open, creative mind and an altruistic spirit.  That is the way to Peace for the American people, that is a contribution the American people can make towards world peace, that is the way Americans can apologize to the billions of people who have been hurt by the American Century of American exploitation of the world’s people and resources, that is the way to protect the nation and the world from Trump or Clinton, and that is the way to help transform Global Social Suffering into Social Beauty.

This year’s presidential contest have been marked by an escalation in social tensions involving both national and class issues.

These divisions within the United States are manifested in the polling data which have revealed a sharply split electorate. Although most polls are showing a narrow victory for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, others indicate that wealthy real estate magnate Donald Trump is very close behind or in the lead.

The Clinton campaign has been negatively impacted by several factors. Hillary was not the choice of large segments of the Democratic Party constituency as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders nearly won the primary process.

As keen observers of the primary elections noted that it was the New York elections which marked the beginning of the reversal of the momentum that Sanders had generated largely through independents, youth, students and a growing percentage of African American voters. Democratic Party state conventions were marked by acrimony over the apportionment of delegates.

This degree of internal strife was carried over into the National Democratic Convention where the Chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz was forced to resign due to revelations from Wikileaks showing there was a conspiracy to deny Sanders the nomination. Delegates engaged in protests within the halls of the Convention in Philadelphia, some walked out of the proceedings or were expelled. Outside in the streets there were demonstrations in support of Sanders. Others called for the Sanders delegates to support Third party candidates such as Jill Stein for the Greens.

Obviously there is limited enthusiasm for the Clinton campaign. Polls have shown that both Trump and Clinton are two of the most unpopular and untrusted candidates in U.S. history to gain the nominations of their parties. Although Trump who has drawn large crowds to his rallies as did Sanders during the primary, many Republican stalwarts have rejected his candidacy saying his rhetoric attacking immigrants, Muslims and women will inevitably hurt the party in other races for the congress and senate as well as damage their ability to gain votes among these sectors of the population.

A daily tracking poll released its results on November 7, just twenty-four hours before the final chance to cast a ballot. This polling data says its results compiled by “Rasmussen Reports final White House Watch survey shows Democrat Hillary Clinton with a two-point lead over Republican Donald Trump with less than 24 hours to go until Election Day. Among early voters, Clinton has a double-digit lead. The latest national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows Clinton with 45% support to Trump’s 43%. Libertarian Gary Johnson picks up four percent (4%) of the vote, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets two percent (2%). Three percent (3%) still like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) remain undecided. On Friday, Trump and Clinton were tied at 44% apiece. The two major party candidates were tied most days last week. This survey has a margin of error of +/- 2.5%.”

Racism and the Trump Factor 

Many African Americans and other nationally oppressed people believe that Donald Trump is a racist. Trump claims that there are African Americans who support his candidacy but polling data suggests otherwise.

Moreover, the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan, the Crusader, carried a front page editorial with an image of Trump. The paper utilized the campaign slogan of the Republican nominee, “Make America Great Again”, as the title of the editorial.

According to Fortune magazine on November 2, “In the last week of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump got lavish praise from a newspaper — but it’s not one any major-party presidential candidate would want. The Ku Klux Klan’s official newspaper embraced Donald Trump. The latest issue of The Crusader didn’t specifically urge readers to vote for the Republican nominee, but it got very close. It used Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign slogan as its headline for an editorial praising the Trump catchphrase and the Republican presidential candidate himself. The newspaper bills itself as ‘The Premier Voice of the White Resistance.’”

In response to the apparent endorsement, Fortune goes on to note that “In a statement, the Trump campaign called the newspaper ‘repulsive.’ It said its ‘views do not represent the tens of millions of Americans who are uniting behind our campaign.’ Trump has been criticized in the campaign for refusing to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and disavow the endorsement of David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper to ‘unequivocally condemn’ Duke, Trump claimed ignorance. ‘Just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, okay?’ Tapper repeatedly pressed Trump to disavow Duke and the KKK, and Trump declined. Later Trump claimed that he had trouble hearing the question.”

Meanwhile in Greenville, Mississippi, a 111-year-old African American Baptist church was firebombed and graffiti saying “Vote Trump” was marked on the side of the damaged building.

The state of Mississippi has a long history of racist violence against African people from the period of antebellum slavery through the white resistance to Reconstruction after the Civil War into the modern era of Civil Rights and Black political power.

On November 2, Reuters press agency reported in relationship to the attack that “Greenville Fire Chief Ruben Brown Sr. told a news conference on Wednesday afternoon that investigators had determined the fire at Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church was ‘intentionally set.’ ‘Samples and evidence have been collected from inside the church and are being analyzed to determine the accelerant or ignition source,’ Brown said. Earlier in the day he said no one was injured in the Tuesday evening blaze, but the church was extensively damaged. ‘We’re investigating this as a hate crime,’ Greenville Police Chief Delando Wilson told a news conference early on Wednesday. ‘We feel that the quote on the church is intimidating.”

This same article goes on to quote Wilson saying the fire “tries to push your beliefs on someone else, and this is a predominantly Black church and no one has a right to try to influence the way someone votes in this election. ‘ Wilson told the Wall Street Journal that police on Wednesday evening were interviewing a ‘person of interest’ in connection with the fire but the individual had not been charged.”

Outcomes of the Elections Will Foster Further Unrest 

Irrespective of who wins the poll on November 8 it will not resolve the ongoing social and racial tensions in the U.S. Neither candidate has been seriously questioned by corporate journalists in regard to their specific policy proposals related to concrete conditions facing the majority of people inside the country.

If Trump wins the racist, misogynist forces will be emboldened to engage in further attacks against African Americans, women, Muslims and immigrants. Trump has already suggested that if he does not prevail it would mean that the elections were rigged in favor of Clinton.

At the same time if Clinton wins by a narrow majority of the popular vote and through gaining more electoral votes, the right-wing will also be compelled to escalate their attacks against the oppressed, Democratic Party voters, and others they have designated as “the enemy.”

Consequently, a serious discussion among progressive constituencies in the U.S. will be in order beginning on November 9. The masses of working people and the nationally oppressed must recognize that both the Democrats and Republicans represent Wall Street and the Pentagon.

Efforts aimed at building a genuine people’s movement are required. This is the task of those who are serious about making fundamental change and transforming the racist capitalist system.

The Russian Defense Ministry has slammed a recent Human Rights Watch report that calls the alleged October 26 bombing of a school in Syria’s Idlib province a possible “war crime,” stating it is nothing more than another information attack.

Recalling the 2004 elections. Prof. Michael Keefer’s January 2005 analysis at the outset of GWB’s Second term. Original article published in January 2005

So who ever thought the 2004 U.S. presidential election had the remotest chance of being honest and democratic?

Not, one might guess, the electronic voting security experts like Ken Thompson, Roy Saltman, Rebecca Mercuri, Bruce Schneier, Doug Jones, Victoria Collier, Aviel Rubin, Lynn Landes, and Bev Harris, who have for years been warning that the new voting technology coming into use in the United States offers unprecedented opportunities for electoral fraud.[1]

Probably not Osama bin Laden, who made his much-anticipated Jack-in-the-Box video appearance three days before polling day: wearing a gold-lamé hospital gown in front of a blank shower curtain, and with a nose that looked to have been quite recently punched flat, he landed some anti-Bush shots that Rush Limbaugh and the other ring-tailed roarers of the American right were happy to interpret as a last-minute endorsement of John Kerry.[2]

And certainly not Republican Congressional Representative Peter King, who made an equally notable video statement on the afternoon of November 2nd, long before the polls closed, in the course of a White House function that seemed to have put him into a celebratory mood. “It’s already over,” he told the interviewer. “The election’s over. We won.” Asked how he knew at that early hour, King replied: “It’s all over but the counting. And we’ll take care of the counting.”[3]

One of the people who took care of the counting–and who was responsible as well for some of the most decisive crookedness of the election, and the most flagrant illegalities of the post-election cover-up–is J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State.

To give the man his due, Blackwell is at once more discreet and more grotesquely Orwellian than the tipsy Congressman King. Rather than flaunting his election-stealing prowess, he has preferred to boast in a Washington Times op-ed that while the election in Ohio was not in all respects perfect (“a seven-hour wait” outside polling stations, he acknowledges, “is clearly unacceptable”), it was nonetheless “perfectly inspiring–a testament to the strength and power of our democratic system, the commitment of American voters to have their voices heard and the integrity of the process that encouraged participation and demanded fairness.”[4]

Prior to the election, this versatile ironist was reported to be “coming out strong” in support of the proposal to ban same-sex marriage: in late October, Blackwell made an appearance with Pastor Rod Parsley, president of “The Center for Moral Clarity,” in the course of which he edified “an energized crowd” in the “Cathedral of Praise” by telling them that the notion of same-sex couples “even defies barnyard logic […] the barnyard knows better.”[5]

But Blackwell’s talent–and his affliction–goes beyond irony or hypocrisy into a more permanent state of inversion that one might think of as resembling the punishment reported by the poet Dante for religiously inflected fraud.[6] In another speech in the same week of October–the context this time being his refusal to obey a federal court order requiring him to comply with the Help America Vote Act–Blackwell compared himself, in his willingness to endure the unlikely punishment of imprisonment, to Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and the Apostle Paul. A spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party’s Voter Protection Program offered the appropriate rejoinder: “Many civil rights leaders went to jail to defend the right to vote. If this official wants to go to jail to thwart it, that would be unfortunate.”[7]

The talented Mr. Blackwell has garnered praise for having launched “The Ohio Center for Civic Character: A Citizen Education Initiative of the Ohio Secretary of State.” The Center’s goal, “a revolution of character-building in our great state,” is to be achieved by providing “today’s generation of leaders” with “a shared vocabulary of character-building ethics” which Blackwell calls “Uncommon Sense.”[8] It may come as no surprise that one of his most recent public appearances prior to the Bush inauguration was a lecture, delivered on January 12th, 2005 to an exclusive audience at the Scioto Country Club in rural southern Ohio, on the subject of “Ethics in Leadership.”[9]

Like the unsavoury Katherine Harris, who was Florida Secretary of State in 2000 and simultaneously state Chair of the Florida Bush-Cheney campaign, Kenneth Blackwell occupied a strategic double position as Co-Chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign and Secretary of State in what analysts correctly anticipated would be the key swing state of the 2004 election. From this position, a growing body of evidence shows, he was able to oversee a partisan and racist pre-election purging of the electoral rolls,[10] a clearly partisan reduction of the number of voting precincts in counties won by Gore in 2000 (a move that helped suppress the 2004 Democratic turnout),[11] a partisan and racist misallocation of voting machines (which effectively disenfranchised tens of thousands of African-American voters),[12] a partisan and racist system of polling-place challenges (which together with electoral roll purges obliged many scores of thousands of African-Americans to vote with ‘second-class-citizen’ provisional ballots),[13] and a fraudulent pre-programming of touch-screen voting machines that produced a systematic ‘flipping’ of Democratic votes into Bush’s tally or the trash can.[14]

In a nation that enforced its own laws, the misallocation of voting machines–a clear violation of the equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution–would alone have sufficed to invalidate the Ohio election.

Having overseen one of the more flagrantly corrupt elections in recent American history, Blackwell and his Republican machine proceeded to “take care of the counting”–which involved a partisan and racist dismissal of scores of thousands of African-American ballots as “spoiled,”[15] a flagrantly illegal “lock-down” of the vote-tallying process in Warren County on the transparently false grounds of a supposed terrorist threat,[16] massive electronic vote-tabulation fraud in this and other south-western Ohio counties,[17] and marginally less flagrant but evidently systematic forms of ‘ghost-voting’ and vote theft elsewhere in the state.[18]

Blackwell then saw to it (with the active assistance of partisan Republican judges, and the passive assistance of a strangely supine Democratic Party) that no even partial recount–let alone anything resembling a voting-machine or vote-tabulator audit–could get under way prior to the selection of Ohio’s Republican electors to the Electoral College.[19]

He also did his utmost to block public access to election data, ordering the Boards of Election in all eighty-eight Ohio counties to prevent public inspection of poll books until after certification of the vote, which he delayed until December 6th.[20] On December 10th, his Election Administrator, Pat Wolfe, intervened to prevent analysis of poll-book data by ordering, on Blackwell’s authority, a renewed “lock-down” of voting records in Greene County and the entire state. (According to Ohio Revised Code Title XXXV Elections, Sec. 3503.26, such records are to be open to the public; Ohio Revised Code Sec. 3599.42 explicitly declares that any violation of Title XXXV “constitutes a prima facie case of election fraud….”)[21]

Bizarrely enough, on the night following the statement to election observers in Greene County that all voter records in the State of Ohio were “locked down” and “not considered public records,” the Greene County offices were left unlocked: when the same election observers returned at 10:15 on the morning of Saturday, December 11th, they found the building open, a light on in the office (which had not been on when it was closed on the evening of the 10th), and all of the poll books and voting machines unsecured.[22]

When at last the Green and Libertarian parties’ lawyers were able to obtain a recount, Blackwell presided over one that was fully as corrupt as the election had been. Sample hand recounts were to be carried out in each county, involving randomly-selected precincts constituting at least three percent of the vote; any disagreements between the sample recount and the official tally were supposed to prompt a full county-wide hand recount. According to Green Party observers, however, a substantial proportion of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties broke the law by not selecting their hand-recount precincts randomly.[23] There is evidence, most crucially, that Triad Governmental Systems, the private corporation responsible for servicing the vote-tabulation machines in about half of the state, tampered with selected machines in counties across Ohio immediately before the recount in order to ensure that the sample recount tallies would conform with the official vote tallies.[24] (Triad’s technicians knew which machines to tamper with because, it would appear, Board of Election officials, in open violation of the law, told them which precincts had been pre-selected.)

Despite this widespread tampering, there were discrepancies in at least six counties between the sample hand recounts and the official tallies–and yet the Board of Elections refused to conduct full county-wide hand recounts.[25] As David Swanson writes,

Only one county conducted a full hand recount, which resulted in 6 percent more votes than in the original vote. Those extra votes were evenly split between Kerry and Bush, but–even assuming that one county’s votes have now been properly counted–how do we know where votes in the other 87 counties would fall? Should an extra several percent of them show up, and should they be weighted toward Kerry, the election would not have yet been what the media keeps telling us it is: over.[26]

Although required by law as Secretary of State to investigate electoral irregularities, Blackwell consistently refused to do so. He refused to respond to a formal letter from John Conyers and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus itemizing a host of alleged improprieties and asking what he had done to correct or investigate them. He also refused to testify in lawsuits against him arising from the election and its aftermath–in the expectation, no doubt, that any cases not declared moot once George W. Bush was safely reconfirmed as president by the votes of the Electoral College and of Congress would be dealt with by higher courts dominated by Republican judges.

Katherine Harris’s reward for her work in throwing the 2000 Florida election to Bush was a safe seat in Congress. Kenneth Blackwell has named his prize: he wants to be Governor of Ohio. In a post-election fundraising letter soliciting funds for his governorship campaign, he takes credit for delivering Ohio to George W. Bush–and thus, since Ohio decided the national outcome, for ensuring his second term as president:

I have no doubt the strong campaign we helped the President run in Ohio–coupled with a similar effort I helped deliver for State Issue One (the Marriage Protection Amendment)–can easily be credited with turning out record numbers of conservatives and evangelicals on Election Day. [….] And, I draw great satisfaction in hearing liberal members of the media credit the Marriage Protection Amendment as [the] single most important factor that drove President Bush over the top in Ohio

In the same letter, true to the general inversion of his world view, Blackwell takes credit for his success in preventing electoral fraud:

I have never shied away from the giving the liberals fits. And I’m sure that with all the potential voter-fraud we prevented during this last election, they will be looking to get even with me in my next political campaign. [….] As Secretary of State, I have been sued almost 30 times since this summer because I stood up for the rights of voters like you and against liberal trial lawyers and activist judges who wanted to give this election to Senator Kerry. [….] When the ACLU and the other members of the radical left worked to stop me from cracking down and prohibiting outrageous ways to commit voter fraud, I fought back and won. [27]

But what precisely does it mean to say that lawyers and judges who sought to protect the rights of minority voters from Blackwell’s manifold vote-suppression tactics would have ‘given’ the election to Kerry? This sounds rather like a coded acknowledgment of a Republican truth that was, notoriously, voiced openly in July 2004 by a Republican state representative in nearby Michigan: “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote”–for Ohio, substitute the Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, or Toledo vote–“we’re going to have a tough time in this election cycle.”[28]

* * *

The Ohio recount of the presidential vote was declared officially terminated on December 28th, a day that in the Roman Catholic calendar of saints commemorates the Slaughter of the Innocents. With a derisory alteration of the official count (Kerry received an additional 734 votes, and Bush 449), George W. Bush retained a certified victory margin in Ohio of 118,755 votes–still large enough to look decisive, though well down from the lead of over 136,000 he was credited with in the first official tallies. As Bob Fitrakis, Steven Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman have remarked, the end came

amidst bitter dispute over official certification of impossible voter turnout numbers, over the refusal of Ohio’s Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice to recuse himself from crucial court challenges involving his own re-election campaign, over the Republican Secretary of State’s refusal to testify under subpoena, over apparent tampering with tabulation machines, over more than 100,000 provisional and machine-rejected ballots left uncounted, over major discrepancies in certified vote counts and turnout ratios, and over a wide range of unresolved disputes that continue to leave the true outcome of Ohio’s presidential vote in serious doubt. [29]

The end to the post-election process as a whole came on January 6th, 2005, when the United States House of Representatives and Senate, the assembled Congress of the American republic, voted to ratify the votes cast by the Electoral College–an act which formally made George W. Bush President for the next four years.

What is normally a purely ceremonial state occasion was interrupted, this year, by the brief irruption of a more authentic form of human dignity. Ohio Democratic Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, supported by California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, rose to challenge the Ohio results, thereby forcing the Senate and House of Representatives to separate in order to conduct, in Tubbs-Jones’ words, “a formal and legitimate debate about election irregularities,” and to engage, if only for the two hours prescribed for such a debate, with the arguments of those Democratic representatives and senators whose sense of ethics and of duty had led them to join what Boxer called “the fight for electoral justice.”[30]

As Mark Weisbrot wrote in an article published by the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, Republican lawmakers responded to Senator Boxer, and to Representative Tubbs-Jones and her colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, “with howls of derision.”[31] Some engaged in ad hominem tactics, labeling the objections “base” and “outrageous” (David Hobson, R-Ohio), and calling the objectors “aspiring fantasy authors” of “wild conspiracy theories,” whose behaviour exemplified “their party’s primary strategy to obstruct, to divide, to destroy” (Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio). Others denounced the debate itself as “a travesty” (Senator Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania), a “squandering [of the Senate’s] time” by people “who persist in beating a dead horse” (Senator George Voinovich, R-Ohio); or, more gravely, as an exercise that “in the midst of a global war on terrorism […] clearly emboldens those who would in fact undermine the prospect of democracy” (David Dreier (R-California), and “an assault against the institutions of our representative democracy” by the “X-Files wing” of the Democratic Party (Tom DeLay, R-Texas).

Out of this sound and fury there emerged the dim outline of a theory of Democracy-as-Confidence-Trick–according to which criticism must be silenced because, as House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) put it,

Every time we attack the process, we cast that doubt on that fabric of democracy that is so important. People do have to have confidence that the process works in a proper way. They don’t need to believe that it is absolutely perfect because after all it’s the greatest democracy in the history of the world. And it’s run by people who step forward and make a system work in ways that nobody would believe until they see it […].

Take away the pseudo-democratic pieties, and what’s left as sub-text is a simpler message. In the laconic formulation of Ric Keller (R-Florida): “Get over it.”[32]

An overwhelming majority in Congress was anxious to do just that. Ohio’s Electoral College votes, together with those from all the other states, were ratified by votes of 267 to 31 in the House of Representatives, and 74 to 1 in the Senate.

What, exactly, were these large majorities agreeing to “get over”? Residual stirrings of anger–or possibly, on the Republican side, of conscience–over the fact that for the second time in a row a presidential election has been marked by appalling levels of corruption and fraud?

Ah, but while Al Gore won the popular vote nationwide in the 2000 election by some 540,000 votes–and would, it seems, have won Florida too, had the Supreme Court not intervened to stop the vote count, by as many as 23,000 votes[33]–aren’t things different this time? Ohio this time may have been a mess–no one’s “absolutely perfect,” even in “the greatest democracy in the history of the world”–but didn’t George W. Bush win the nationwide popular vote in November 2004 by several million votes?

Do you really think so? How interesting. How–let me borrow a term from the lexicon of George W. Bush’s newly confirmed Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales–how “quaint.”

 * * *

Ohio was the swing state of swing states on November 2nd, 2004, the one whose twenty Electoral College votes decided the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. It is therefore a matter of some significance that the testimonial evidence of corruption in the Ohio election is corroborated by statistical evidence which shows the election in this state–and nationwide–to have been not just corrupt, but stolen.

The evidence in both categories is massively complex. But thanks to the no less massive analytical labours over the past two months of citizen pro-democracy activists, of social scientists, of mathematicians and statisticians, of computer programmers, and of alternative-media investigative journalists, it can nonetheless be conveniently summarized.

You want smoking guns? Here they are, starting with the evidence that John F. Kerry, and not George W. Bush, won the state of Ohio.

1. Uncounted punch-card and provisional ballots.

Well over 13,000 Ohio provisional ballots were never counted, and 92,672 regular punch-card ballots were set aside by vote-counting machines as indicating no choice for president. Thus, even after Ohio’s supposed recount, a total of over 106,000 ballots remained uncounted–though there was “no legal reason for not inspecting and counting each of these ballots.”[34] But there seems to have been a very good political reason for not doing so: the uncounted ballots came disproportionately from places like the cities of Cincinnati, Cleveland and Akron, all of which voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats.

2. Fraud through default settings on touch-screen voting machines.

Some 15 percent of Ohio’s votes were cast using the new touch-screen voting machines. In the city of Youngstown, in Mahoning County, there were repeated complaints about what election observers referred to as “vote flipping” by the ES&S Ivotronic touch-screen machines used there. This “flipping” phenomenon, also widely observed in other states, typically appeared to poll watchers “like a mere computer glitch, no different than a super market checkout machine that records an incorrect price for lettuce.”[35]

But what was happening, in the vast majority of cases, was no “glitch.” As Dom Stasi notes, “The laws of probability demand that multiple random errors trend toward even distribution, but only if they are truly errors.”[36] Yet in all of the published accounts of vote flipping, the “errors” consistently favoured Bush: voters who were trying to vote for Kerry found their votes being given to Bush, transferred to third-party candidates, or simply erased.[37] The Chairman of the Mahoning County Board of Elections is reported to have stated that “20 to 30 machines […] needed to be recalibrated during the voting process.”[38] He is not quoted as saying that any action was taken, or could be taken, to compensate for the machines’ one-way errors–and there is evidence that many other machines were left uncorrected.

It is clearly not the case, as one Youngstown poll worker claimed, that the repeated anomalies were due to the machines being “temperamental.” A supermarket checkout machine doesn’t charge ten dollars for a tin of sardines because it’s having a bad hair day: it does so because that’s what it has been (perhaps mistakenly) programmed to charge. Similarly, ES&S machines flipped votes from Kerry to Bush because, as Richard Hayes Phillips proposes, they had been given “preselected default settings” that made them do so. And if they flipped votes in an apparently “temperamental” manner, ‘acting up’ only for every fourth or fifth or tenth voter, that would be a sign, not of electronic hissy fits, but of their having been programmed to move at preset intervals to the default setting.

One of the six machines in Youngstown’s precinct 5G appears to have had a default setting for no vote at all. It may have been single-handedly responsible for the fact that nearly 14 percent of the ballots cast in this precinct (where the votes were running in Kerry’s favour in a ratio of 12 to 1) were “undervotes,” that is, votes cast with no preference for president.[39] Elsewhere, the subtler effect of many machines moving at intervals to their default settings would have been a gently tidal lifting of the Republican vote tallies by thousands of stolen votes.[40]

3. ‘Ghost’ absentee voters in Trumbull County.

What appears to be a similar effect of widely diffused fraud came to light in Trumbull County when Dr. Werner Lange undertook the labour of inspecting 106 of the county’s precinct poll books. Among the absentee votes listed in these books he found a total of 580 apparent ‘ghost’ votes–that is, “absentee votes for which there were no absentee voters identified.” In other words, there were on average 5.5 faked absentee votes in each of the precinct books he checked. The number may not seem significant, but this level of faked absentee votes, if it turned out to have been reproduced across the state of Ohio, would have resulted in a total of over 62,000 faked votes.[41]

Just how widespread this particular form of cheating was we may never know, since it appears that in many counties the electoral data is now being destroyed.

Lange’s evidence has been challenged by Russ Baker, who in a study financed by “the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute” describes himself as “an old-style investigative reporter.” The ‘investigation’ in this instance didn’t go beyond accepting the explanation of a Trumbull County official “that the poll books Lange looked at had been printed before absentee voting ended–including those who voted in the final days before the election at the Board’s offices. The books would–according to practice–be updated to include everyone.”[42]

But the investigator, bless his gum shoes, seems not to have understood what is at issue. Lange writes that his study “would have been completed weeks earlier if Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell […] had not unlawfully ordered all 88 boards of elections to prevent public inspection of poll books until after the certification of the vote.” In other words, much if not all of his inspection of poll books was carried out after the official certification of the Ohio vote on December 6^th–and thus more than a month after election day. When, if not at the time their votes were recorded, does Baker imagine that the identities of absentee voters would be recorded in the poll books?

4. Implausible voter turnout figures.

In Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus, voter turnout figures in the 125 precincts won by Bush were on average nearly 10 percent higher than in the 346 precincts won by Kerry: the median turnout in Bush precincts was 60.56 percent; in Kerry precincts it was 50.78 percent.[43] Though the wide turnout differences here and in Ohio’s other largely urban counties may be ascribed in large part to Kenneth Blackwell’s vote-suppression tactics, including the partisan misallocation of voting machines, they have also raised suspicions that large numbers of Kerry votes went unrecorded. These suspicions are strengthened by the certified reports from pro-Kerry Cleveland, in Cuyahoga County, of precincts with turnouts of as few as 22.31 percent (precinct 6B), 21.43 percent (13O), 20.07 percent (13F), 14.59 percent (13D), and 7.85 percent (6C) of the registered voters.[44] Thousands of people in these precincts lined up for many hours in the rain in order, it would appear, not to vote.

Meanwhile, in pro-Bush Perry County, the voting records certified by Secretary of State Blackwell included two precincts with reported turnouts of 124.4 and 124.0 percent of the registered voters, while in pro-Bush Miami County, there were precincts whose certified turnouts, if not physically impossible, were only slightly less improbable.[45] These and other instances of implausibly high turnouts in precincts won by Bush, and implausibly low turnouts in precincts won by Kerry, are strongly suggestive of widespread tampering with the vote-tabulation processes.

Similarly anomalous patterns of differences in voter turnout have been detected by Richard Hayes Phillips in Lucas County, which includes the city of Toledo. In this case, the story has a piquant twist: thieves broke into Lucas County Democratic Headquarters on the night of October 12th, and stole computers containing all of the party’s local organizing and get-out-the-vote plans. It comes as no surprise that vote-tabulation manipulations in Toledo–and election-day vote-suppression efforts as well–appear to have been particularly well-focused.[46]

5. Vote-tabulation fraud in Miami County.

The fact that Miami County reported two successive sets of returns on election night attracted suspicion from the start. The county’s initial figures, with 100 percent of the precincts reporting, seemed improbably low, with 31,620 votes cast–only about three-quarters as many as in the 2000 election. But the second total, when it came in late on election night, seemed improbably high–50,235 votes cast altogether–as well as being peculiarly tidy in two respects: John Kerry’s share of the vote remained, to one-hundredth of one percent, exactly what it had been in the first set of returns (33.92 percent); and George W. Bush was shown to have won the county by exactly 16,000 votes.

The final certified figures (which include 1,542 provisional ballots added to the total) provided further surprises. In a county whose population had increased by only 1.38 percent since 2000, the number of votes cast rose by a whopping 20.86 percent. Bush’s margin of victory over Kerry in the county was larger by 7.3 percent than his margin of victory over Gore had been in 2000, meaning either that the county swung strongly in Bush’s favour, or else that he succeeded in capturing an overwhelming proportion–well over 90 percent–of the nearly 9,000 additional voters.

A third possibility also presents itself: namely, that a substantial number of the people who voted for George Bush in Miami County in 2004 do not in fact exist.

Richard Hayes Phillips proposes that the Miami County returns are riddled with fraud–sometimes rather sloppy fraud, as when the precincts of Concord South and Concord South West reported voter turnouts of 94.27 and 98.55 percent respectively, while in adjoining Concord South East the turnout amounted to only 56.55 percent of registered voters.[47] (The Concord South West turnout figure means, by the way, that only ten registered voters failed to vote–though more than that number of voters in the precinct have signed affidavits testifying that they did not vote.)[48]

6. Vote-tabulation fraud in Warren, Butler, Clermont (and other) Counties.

There is strong evidence of large-scale vote-tabulation fraud in these three contiguous and traditionally Republican counties in southwestern Ohio. The comparisons between the 2000 and 2004 figures that Richard Hayes Phillips provides are instructive. In Warren County,

the population increased by 14.75%, the number of registered voters increased by 29.66%, voter turnout increased by 33.55%, Bush’s point spread increased from 42.24% to 44.58%, and Bush’s victory margin increased from 29,176 votes to 41,124 votes. In Clermont County[…], the population increased by 4.39%, the number of registered voters increased by 10.20%, voter turnout increased by 24.86%, Bush’s point spread increased from 37.50% to 41.69%, and Bush’s victory margin increased from 26,202 votes to 36,376 votes. In Butler County[…], the population increased by 3.12%, the number of registered voters increased by 10.06%, voter turnout increased by 18.18%, Bush’s point spread increased from 29.40% to 32.52%, and Bush’s victory margin increased from 40,197 votes to 52,550 votes.[49]

These figures are vehemently to be suspected, not least because of the election-night “lock-down” of the Warren County administrative building–an event which may suggest that the team responsible for ensuring that Bush’s Ohio vote tallies added up to a convincing victory was at work behind those locked doors, and didn’t want their earnest meditations to be disturbed by election observers, journalists, or ‘terrorists’ of any kind.

At the precinct level, dubious figures throughout these three counties cry out for detailed investigation. For example, in Butler County’s St. Clair Township, where voter turnout rose by 8.27 percent, Kerry received exactly 10.00 percent fewer votes than Gore had in 2000; while in two precincts of Liberty Township (which accounted for a quarter of the purported increase in Bush’s margin of victory in Butler County, the numbers of registered voters are said to have risen since 2000 from 660 to 1,834 (an increase of 177.9 percent) and from 596 to 1,451 (an increase of 143.5 percent).

A more distinct marker of fraud is the fact that in all three counties C. Ellen Connally, a comparatively little-known African-American municipal judge from Cleveland who was running as a Democrat for the position of Chief Justice against a well-funded Republican incumbent, Thomas Moyer, received significantly more votes than did the Kerry-Edwards ticket–in Butler County, 5,347 more, and in Clermont County, 4,146 more votes. As Congressman John Conyers and his colleagues emphasized in their letter of December 2nd to Secretary of State Blackwell, this is a bizarre anomaly:

Have you examined how an underfunded Democratic State Supreme Court candidate could receive so many more votes in Butler County than the Kerry-Edwards ticket? If so, could you provide us with the results of your examination? Is there any precedent in Ohio for a downballot candidate receiving on a percentage or absolute basis so many more votes than the presidential candidate of the same party in this or any other presidential election? Please let us know if any other County in Ohio registered such a disparity on a percentage or absolute basis. [50]

Blackwell, needless to say, did not respond to these questions. But as Conyers and his researchers went on to discover for themselves, the obscure Judge Connally did in fact out-poll the Democratic presidential candidate in seven other Ohio counties: Auglaize, Brown, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, and Putnam Counties.[51]

If this “disparity” of Connally out-polling Kerry is a sign that Kerry votes were being discarded or switched to Bush through vote-tabulation fraud in Butler, Clermont and Warren Counties, then it is also a marker of electoral fraud in these other counties as well.

7. Doing the sums: one analyst’s estimate.

After conducting precinct-by-precinct analyses of statistical anomalies in the election results “in fifteen Ohio counties accounting for 62% of the registered voters in the state,” Richard Hayes Phillips determined that, on a conservative estimate, “the reported margin of victory for George W. Bush in the State of Ohio is inflated by 101,020 votes.” This estimate, in addition to being conservative, is also incomplete. Phillips remarks that “These studies were conducted under time constraints and with such evidence as Ohio officials were willing to provide. Even in the counties that I have analyzed, I have examined only certain aspects of a well-orchestrated and multi-faceted plan to undermine democracy in Ohio.” Emphasizing, in conclusion, that he has yet to analyze the data from seventy-three of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties, Phillips implies that the manifold forms of electoral fraud and vote suppression identified were sufficient to divert to Bush what would have been, in a clean election, a clear Kerry victory.[52]

8. Cuyahoga County: other kinds of fraud.

In moving on to evidence beyond that which Richard Hayes Phillips took into account, I need first to explain one very large-scale false alarm. The election results published by Cuyahoga County (which includes the city of Cleveland) led a number of commentators in November 2004–myself among them–to believe that there had been massive ‘ghost-voting’ fraud in the suburbs of Cleveland.[53] But the official lists showing twenty-nine communities with voter turnout figures of more than 100 percent (and hence some 93,000 ‘ghost votes’ in the county) turned out to result from a bizarrely structured software program that grouped communities in the same congressional, house and state senate districts, and added the total number of absentee ballots within the combined districts to the voter turnout figures for each community in these districts-though not to the vote totals for candidates or issues.[54]

This programming oddity worked, the County’s website idiotically declared, in “even-numbered years.” What its intended function might have been is hard to say. It could have been a piece of innocent stupidity, or the residue of an abandoned ghost-voting scheme–or even a Karl Rovian fool-catcher, designed to set the blogosphere alight with easily extinguished flames.

But other, more subtle, forms of electoral corruption now appear to have been detected in the Cuyahoga County returns.

As may have been observed, the statistically-informed analyses of Richard Hayes Phillips are open to the objection that some of his judgments are, in the end, no more than subjective. Many of the anomalies he swings at are, without question, home-run pitches: the voter turnout figures in Concord, Miami County, for example, amount to a fast ball over the plate that Phillips hits over the back fence. In other instances, as in Warren County and the adjoining counties of southwestern Ohio, his analyses are corroborated by evidence like the Judge Connally disparity. There may be further cases, though, in which a skeptical reader might well ask for firmer evidence of fraud than one analyst’s “professional judgment.” Two recently published studies of the Cuyahoga County data appear to offer methods of analysis that could be usefully applied to the election returns from other Ohio counties–and, quite possibly, from other states as well. The first establishes the likelihood that what observers thought to be mere incompetence in the conduct of the election in Cleveland was actually a deliberately designed feature intended to throw large numbers of votes from Kerry to Bush; the second, if its “reverse-engineering” programming analysis can be confirmed, would show that a significant number of the official precinct vote-tallies in this county–and perhaps in many others–were fraudulently generated by a hacker.

James Q. Jacobs’ still ongoing work with the Cuyahoga County data reveals a significant connection between two apparently disparate features of the election: the fact that odd and wholly implausible clumps of votes in certain precincts went to third-party candidates in a manner that some observers have thought must point to computer hacking; and the fact, noted with frustration by many voters and election-day observers, that in many instances the same polling place was used for two or more voting precincts, and that because of inadequate or nonexistent precinct labeling, significant numbers of voters found themselves in the wrong line-ups.

Jacobs demonstrates a connection between the two: the anomalous third-party votes arose from the fact that the punch-card ballots given to voters in adjoining precincts listed the presidential candidates in different sequences. What he calls “precinct cross-voting” led to many ballots being counted by machines that were coded to attribute punch-marks in a manner differing from the printed sequence of candidates’ names on the ballots. As Jacobs’ detailed and statistically sophisticated analysis shows, the result was a steady diversion of votes from Kerry, the candidate favoured by an overwhelming majority of Cleveland voters, to Bush and to third-party candidates.[55] What at first seems no more than spectacularly incompetent election design appears, on reflection, more likely to have been intended to produce exactly this effect.

But if the clumps of third-party votes seem not to have been the result of hackers moving votes about and leaving some of them parked with third-party candidates, that doesn’t mean that hacking was not taking place. Another analysis that may have wide potential applicability has been published at the Democratic Underground website by a computer programmer who claims to have special expertise in the reverse-engineering of calculations, and who goes by the blogger cognomen of ’59sunburst.’ (Because this analysis has been anonymously published–and because, moreover, I have been unable to activate the author’s link to a field of supporting data–I present it with due reservations, in the hope that those possessing programming expertise may be able to critically assess its validity.)

Finding it curious that in 46 Cuyahoga County precincts George Bush received the same number of votes in 2004 as in 2000, while only in 12 precincts did John Kerry receive the same number of votes that Al Gore did in 2000, ’59sunburst’ speculated that Bush’s 2000 numbers in each precinct might somehow have been used “as a benchmark for altering the results of 2004”–with a putative hacker’s goal being to ensure that Bush’s 2000 level of support was either maintained or enhanced. ’59sunburst’ was able to develop a quite simple mathematical formula which made it possible “to calculate Kerry’s and Bush’s 2004 totals for over 400 precincts using Bush’s 2000 numbers and a randomizing factor”; this formula, s/he claims, works both for the preliminary results published on November 8th and the final results published by Cuyahoga County’s Board of Elections on November 30th.

After demonstrating, with figures from Cleveland precinct 1M, how the formula generates Bush’s and Kerry’s 2004 vote tallies for both the November 8th and the November 30th reports out of the Bush 2000 vote count and the number of votes cast in 2004, ’59sunburst’ anticipates the obvious objection: If you throw the right randomizing factor into such a calculation, “you can make anything come out the way you want it to.”

True–but it appears that someone was indeed making things come out the way he wanted to on election night. For, as it happens, Cleveland precinct 1N–the very next one on the list–requires the very same “randomizing factor” as precinct 1M (Factor: 0.0618) for the formula to work. The same phenomenon recurs repeatedly with other pairs (or triplets) of consecutively listed precincts: Cleveland 6G and 6H (Factor: 0.005), Cleveland 10D and 10E (Factor: 0.024), Cleveland Heights 3C and 3D (Factor: 0.0267), East Cleveland 2E and 2F (Factor: 0.0263), East Cleveland 2H and 3A (Factor: 0.0241), East Cleveland 3B, 3C, and 3D (Factor: 0.0158), and so on.[56]

If the “randomizing factor” numbers were different in each precinct, or only randomly coincided, there would be no reason to suspect a hacker’s presence. What gives the game away is the reappearance of the same numbers in successive precincts–an obvious economizing of effort on the part of a hacker whose sticky fingerprints on the Cuyahoga County returns are made visible by that very fact. The effects of this hacking appear to have been substantial: in the first pair of precincts discussed by ’59sunburst’ alone, Bush’s tally rose from 2 votes in 2000 to 23 in 2004 (precinct 1M), and from 2 votes in 2000 to 32 in 2004 (precinct 1N).

8. The Ohio exit poll.

The November 2nd exit poll showed with some clarity the scale of the Republican Party’s electoral fraud in Ohio. When I gathered the Ohio exit poll data from CNN’s website at 7:32 p.m. EST on election day, women voters (53 percent of the total) were reported as favouring Kerry over Bush by 53 percent to 47 percent, while male voters (47 percent of the total) preferred Kerry over Bush by 51 percent to 49 percent. The exit poll thus showed Kerry winning Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percent, with 52.1 percent of the vote to Bush’s 47.9 percent.[57]

According to the official vote tally, however, George W. Bush carried Ohio with 51 percent of the vote to John Kerry’s 48.5 percent–with a winning margin, that is, of 2.5 percent. (Subsequent adjustments to the tally as absentee and provisional ballots were counted cut the margin of victory from 2.5 to 2 percent.)

But do exit polls mean anything at all? According to the collective wisdom of political pundits in the U.S. corporate media, the Ohio exit poll–like the national exit poll, which showed John Kerry, not George W. Bush, winning the popular vote nationwide by a margin of 2.56 percent[58]–must simply have been wrong. Set aside the fact that professionally conducted exit polls have been repeatedly shown to have a high degree of accuracy (significantly higher than that of any other kind of polling). Set aside the fact that the 2004 polls were conducted with elaborate professional care by one of the most highly respected pollsters in the business. Set aside as well the very peculiar fact that all of the divergences between exit polls and vote tallies in the swing states in the 2004 election favoured George W. Bush–often by amounts far outside the statistical margins of error–and the further fact that none of the (frankly implausible) explanations put forward to deal with this statistical anomaly have been supported by the smallest shred of evidence.[59]

Perhaps we should also avoid any mention of the high-toned denunciations of electoral fraud delivered by George W. Bush, Colin Powell, and Republican Senators Richard Lugar and John McCain following the second-round presidential election in Ukraine on November 21st, 2004. For what was the key evidence adduced in this chorus of denunciations? And why were these Republican statesmen threatening Ukraine with diplomatic isolation and economic penalties if the election results were allowed to stand? Because there was a wide divergence in Ukraine between the exit polls, which gave Viktor Yushchenko a commanding lead, and the official vote tally, according to which the election was narrowly won by his pro-Russian rival, Viktor Yanukovich.

Those who have not yet wholly averted their eyes from the matter might want to note that the divergence between the second-round vote tally in Ukraine and what seems to be the more trustworthy of the second-round Ukrainian exit polls was 6.2 percent.[60] By an odd coincidence, the divergence between the exit poll result and the final vote tally in Ohio was exactly the same: 6.2 percent.

* * *

If George W. Bush didn’t win the vote tally in Ohio–and the evidence that he didn’t is cumulatively overwhelming–then he didn’t properly win the Electoral College vote either.

And the popular vote? For the sake of completeness, and of decency, let’s briefly lay to rest the idea that some tattered shreds of democratic legitimacy can be reclaimed for Bush’s presidency through the pretense that he must, after all, have won the popular vote on November 2nd.

I am not going to rehearse here any part of the rapidly accumulating body of analyses that shows Republican electoral fraud to have been carried out in many other states from coast to coast with much the same energy and inventiveness as in Ohio.[61] For as the mathematician who posts his analyses of exit poll data at the Democratic Underground site under the name ‘TruthIsAll’ has intimated, and as Dr. Steven F. Freeman has shown in a major new study which he has kindly shared with me in draft form, there is a simpler way of showing that, in the big picture, the numbers which underlie Bush’s supposed victory in the popular vote simply don’t add up.[62]

In comparison to the election of 2000, there were two dramatic changes in 2004: an increase of some 14 percent in the total number of votes cast (which rose from 105,405,000 in 2000 to 120,255,000 in 2004), and a significant decline in the proportion of votes cast for third-party candidates (which sank from 3,949,000 in 2000 to 1,170,000 in 2004). According to the national exit poll data made available by CNN on the evening of November 2nd, 83 percent of those who voted in 2004 had also voted in 2000. This means, in slightly different terms, that nearly 100 million people who voted in 2000, or close to 95 percent of the 2000 voters, also cast ballots in 2004.[63] In the 2004 exit poll, 13,047 randomly selected respondents stated that they had voted as follows:

Al Gore, remember, won the popular vote in 2000 by almost 544,000 votes (50,999,897 votes to George Bush’s 50,456,002). Assuming that the 8 percent of Gore voters who migrated to Bush’s camp in 2004 more or less cancel out the 10 percent of Bush-2000 voters who swung to Kerry, one can take the base number of supporters for Bush and Kerry in 2004 as amounting to 95 percent of the Republican and Democratic presidential vote tallies in 2000–or, in round numbers, 48.4 million votes for Kerry and 47.9 million votes for Bush.

If 95 percent of the 3,949,000 who voted for third-party candidates in 2000 also voted in 2004, then given that 64 percent of these people voted for Kerry and 17 percent for Bush, that, in round numbers, would add 2.3 million votes to Kerry’s expected total and 600,000 to Bush’s, raising them to 50.7 million for Kerry and 48.5 million for Bush.

Add in the 20.2 million new voters, 57 percent of whose ballots, according to the exit poll, went to Kerry, and 41 percent to Bush. That means 11.5 million additional votes for Kerry, and 8.3 million additional votes for Bush. The final expected total comes out to 62.2 million votes for Kerry, and 56.8 million expected votes for Bush.

Compare these numbers to the official results: 61,194,773 votes (or 51 percent of the total votes cast) for George W. Bush, and 57,890,314 (or 48 percent) for John Kerry. The discrepancies are striking: Bush appears to have received 4.4 million more votes than he should have, and Kerry 4.3 million fewer than he should have.

The magic–as Congressman Peter King, whom I quoted at the outset, evidently understood–is in the counting. As a large and growing body of evidence makes clear, the official tallies of the 2004 presidential election are to an unprecedented degree distorted by fraud, much of it carried out through widespread and systematic tampering with electronic vote-tabulation machines.

There is, of course, another magic as well, whose secrets reside in all the manifold ways of not counting. In December 2000, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, a leading expert in issues of electronic voting-technology security, together with Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, estimated that at least two million of the ballots cast in that year’s presidential election never got counted. In the words of the journalists who reported this estimate: “That would disenfranchise a city the size of Houston.”[64] How large a city has been disenfranchised this time round, if in Ohio alone 106,000 ballots went uncounted?

And finally, there is the shabbiest magic of all–the magic of the corporate-media hacks and think-tank trolls, whose collective mission it is to conjure away the most glaring evidence, normalize the abnormal, and twist or bludgeon critical thinking into conformity.

* * *

What this adds up to, I have suggested in my title, is the death of American democracy. A strange death, because so many Americans, for good reasons and for bad, refuse to acknowledge that it has taken place.

The good reasons–those of the many thousand pro-democracy activists who remain fiercely attached to the rights and freedoms that are theirs by inheritance and struggle, who have uncovered through patient study the details of the theft, and who are seeking through firm public action to reassert the dignity and reclaim the stolen voices of those many hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens deliberately abjected and silenced by fraud–these one must honour. One can honour as well the activists’ wit and their defiant good humour–evident, for example, in the placards carried in a demonstration in Denver on November 11th (Remembrance Day, in this country):

Dude, Where Did My Vote Go?

Vote Free or Die Bold

Correct Electile Dysfunction

Corporations Cannot Run Elections

The Computer Ate My Vote!

The Fox is Guarding the Voting Coop

I Do Not Concede.[65]

But let’s be realistic about what it means when, with the willing complicity of all the major outlets of the corporate media, a single corporatist party controls the executive functions of the central government, including all of the security apparatus of a thoroughly militarized state, both houses of the legislature, and the judiciary–and what it means when this same party, having acquired executive power in 2000 through electoral fraud and a judicial coup d’état, and having confirmed its control of the legislature through the corrupt midterm elections of 2002, then provides a convincing demonstration in 2004 of its power to turn what should have been a landslide electoral defeat into a dubious but effectively unassailable victory.

It might be suggested that the leader himself, in his inverted Orwellian manner, gave fair warning of what the public could anticipate in his second presidential election. One of the most rightly celebrated of all ‘Bushisms’ was delivered in September 2002 to an audience in Nashville, Tennessee: “There’s an old saying in Tennessee–I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee–that says, fool me once, shame on–shame on you. Fool me–you can’t get fooled again.”[66] Really? Why on earth not?

* * *

For now at least, the forms of a democratic republic remain in place–as, in a parallel way, the residual forms of the Roman Republic remained in place well after its devolution into a militarized imperial autocracy.

One of the early emperors, Tiberius, got sadistic pleasure out of writing deferential letters to the Roman Senate, humbly requesting the terrorized senators’ direction and advice. (It is not recorded, though others of his missives had a similarly noxious effect, that he ever went so far as to have the envelopes dusted–did the Romans use envelopes?–with weaponized anthrax.)[67]

Tiberius’s successor, known to history by the fond nickname, Caligula, given him by the Roman legionaries, likewise held the Senate in high esteem: he is said to have planned to have his horse–or was it his donkey?–elected to that august body.[68]

Notes

1 For writings by these and other critics of electronic voting technologies, see Michael Keefer, “Evidence of Fraud in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election: A Reader,” Centre for Research on Globalization (5 December 2004), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE412A.html

2 For an incisive analysis of the Bin Laden tape, see Michel Chossudovsky, “‘Intelligence Asset’ bin Laden supports Bush Re-election,” Centre for Research on Globalization (31 October 2004), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO410B.html

3 King’s remarks, recorded in Alex Pelosi’s new film Diary of a Political Tourist, are quoted by Thom Hartmann in “Restoring Trust in the Vote,” Common Dreams News Center (15 November 2004), http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1115-htm

4 J. Kenneth Blackwell, “How Ohio pulled it off,” The Washington Times (17 November 2004), http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20041116-085742-1497r.htm

5 “Blackwell Compares Gay Couples, Farm Animals,” WTOL11: Toledo’s News Leader (20 October 2004), http://www.wtol.com/global/story.asp?s=2457596

6 See Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XIX.

7 Gregory Korte and Jim Siegel, “Defiant Blackwell Rips Judge,” Cincinnati Enquirer (22 October 2004), http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/22/loc_blackwell22.html

8 For further details see Blackwell’s website, http://www.sos.oh.us/sos/occc/index.html

9 Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman, “Ohio GOP election officials ducking subpoenas as Kerry enters stolen vote fray,” The Free Press(28 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1046

10 For evidence of the practice of purging voter rolls, see Greg Palast, “Electoral Fraud, Ethnic Cleansing of Voter Rolls, An Election Spoiled Rotten,” TomPaine.com (1 November 2004), available at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/PAL411A.html , and Greg Moses, “The One-Two Punch of Racism: Whitewashing the Voter Fraud Issue,” The Free Press (10 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/977 . This and other forms of Jim Crow electoral manipulation are analyzed in a report by the Democratic Investigative Staff, House Committee on the Judiciary, How to Make One Million Votes Disappear: Electoral Sleight of Hand in the 2000 Presidential Election. A Fifty-State Report Prepared for Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member, House Committee on the Judiciary (Washington, D.C.: U.S. House of Representatives, 20 August 2001, available at http://www.electionreport.pdf). Substantial evidence of the Ohio Republican Party’s illegal practice of “caging” (sending registered letters to newly registered minority and urban voters, and then challenging those whose letters are returned as undeliverable–often because they refuse to sign for mail from the Republicans) is presented in the Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff, Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio (Washington, D.C.: U.S. House of Representatives, 5 January 2005, available at http://www.house.gov/conyers ), pp. 40-43. I would recommend analysis of the following Cleveland precincts, where the astonishingly low numbers of registered voters in the Cuyahoga County electoral returns creates suspicion of purging: 5U (30 registered voters), 6E (21 voters), 6X (83 voters), 13Y (56 voters), 13Z (53 voters), 14C (13 voters), 14D (7 voters), 16C (51 voters), 18B (58 voters), and 19A (19 voters).

11 David S. Bernstein, “Questioning Ohio: No controversy this time? Think again,” The Boston Phoenix (12-18 November 2004), http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi-page/documents/04256171.asp

12 Free Press Staff, “Franklin County, Ohio voting machine assignments, and other information,” The Free Press (20 November 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/900 ; Bob Fitrakis, “How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush,” The Free Press (22 November 2004), http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/995 ; Richard Hayes Phillips, “Stealing votes in Columbus,” The Free Press (23 November 2004), http://www/freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/914 Phillips, “Another Stolen Election: Favoritism in the Suburbs,” Lyric Poetry Website (26 November 2004), http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/suburbs.htm

13 See Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Detailed Findings A.5: “Targeting Minority and Urban Voters for Legal Challenges,” pp. 43-47; and Richard Hayes Phillips, “Provisional ballots in Cuyahoga County,” The Free Press (24 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1034

14 Phillips, “Default settings in Mahoning County,” The Free Press (23 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1018

15 See Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Detailed Findings B.3.a: “Spoiled Ballots–Hanging Chads Again?”, pp. 70-72; and Richard Hayes Phillips, “Uncounted votes in Montgomery County,” The Free Press (10 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/980 ; “Uncounted votes in Hamilton County,” The Free Press (24 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1036; and “Uncounted votes in Summit County,” The Free Press (24 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1035

16 Erica Solvig, “Warren’s vote tally walled off: Alone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security,” Cincinnati Enquirer (5 November 2004), http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/05/loc_warrenvote05.html ; Solvig, “No changes in final Warren Co. vote count, Emails released Monday show lockdown pre-planned,” Cincinnati Enquirer (16 November 2004), http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041116/NEWS01/411160355/1056/news01

17 Richard Hayes Phillips, “Election results in southwestern Ohio,” The Free Press (21 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1012 ; Phillips, “Hacking the vote in Miami County,” The Free Press (25 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1038

18 Registration and vote tally irregularities in Perry County were noted by Congressional Representative John Conyers in a letter to Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell dated 2 December 2004, available at http://www.house.gov/conyers ; many further irregularities are itemized in Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Detailed Findings B: Election Day.

19 See Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Detailed Findings C.2: “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied–Recounts were Delayed Because of a Late Declaration of Results,” pp. 79-81.

20 See “The Case for Fraud in Ohio Election 2004 (V.B: Restricting Citizen Access to Election Records),” Bloomington Peace Action Coalition, http://www.bpac.info

21 Ray Beckerman, “Blackwell Locks Down Ohio Voting Records,” Yurica Report: News Intelligence Analysis (10 December 2004), http://www.yuricareport.com/2004%20Election%20Fraud/BlackwellLocksDownOhioVotingRecords.html

22 Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Detailed Findings C.4: “Greene County–Long Waits, the Unlocked Lockdown, and Discarded Ballots,” pp. 87-91.

23 According to Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Detailed Findings, C.5.a: “Irregularities in Selecting the Initial 3% Hand Count,” pp. 92-93, the samples were not selected randomly in Allen, Clermont, Cuyahoga, Morrow, Hocking, Medina and Vinton Counties; in Summit County the selection was random, but conducted without any recount witnesses present. According to a lawsuit filed on December 30th by the Green and Libertarian parties, the selection of sample precincts was non-random in 17 counties (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._presidential_election_controversy_and_irregularities ). David Swanson claims, in “The Media and the Ohio Recount: Missing in Action,” Counterpunch (3 January 2005), http://www.counterpunch.org/swanson01032005.html , that “86 of 88 counties broke the law and did not select RANDOMLY which precincts they would recount.”

24 William Rivers Pitt, “Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed,” Truthout (15 December 2004), http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604Z.shtml ; this item reprints other texts, including a key affidavit and Tom Zeller’s article “Lawmaker Seeks Inquiry into Ohio Vote,” The New York Times (15 December 2004). Further details of Triad’s alleged tampering are available in two letters from Congressional Representative John Conyers to Triad officials, available at http://www.house.gov/conyers , and also in Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Detailed Findings, C.3: “Triad GSI–Using a ‘Cheat Sheet to Cheat the Voters in Hocking and Other Counties,” pp. 81-87. The December 30th lawsuit filed by the Green and Libertarian parties lists five counties in which tabulating-machine tampering was carried out by Triad, and one in which the tampering was carried out by a Diebold technician.

25 The December 30th lawsuit filed by the Green and Libertarian parties lists six counties in which, despite sample-recount discrepancies, the Board of Elections refused to conduct full recounts. Two flagrant cases of impropriety in the recount are narrated in Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, C.5.b: “Irregularities in Applying the Full Hand-Count Requirement”:

“In Monroe County, the 3% hand-count failed to match the machine count twice. Subsequent runs on that machine matched neither each other nor the hand count. The Monroe County Board of Elections summoned a repairman from Triad to bring a new machine and the recount was suspended and reconvened for the following day. On the following day, a new machine was present at the Board of Elections office and the old machine was gone. The Board conducted a test run followed by the 3% hand-counted ballots. The results matched this time and the Board conducted the remainder of the recount by machine.”

“In Fairfield County, the hand recount of the 3% test sample did not match the machine count, even after two attempts. The Board suspended the recount and stated that Secretary Blackwell recommended that the recount should begin again ‘from scratch.’ The Green recount observers were then told that it was 4:00 PM, the building was closed, and all had to leave. The Republican recount observers, however, were allowed to stay in a conference room for an additional ten minutes or so for a private discussion. When the Board reconvened a few days later, it announced that it would be conducting a machine count of the county’s votes. When a Green Party observer objected, she was told by the Board that she was not allowed to speak.”

26 Swanson, “The Media and the Ohio Recount.”

27 “Text of Fundraising Letter from Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell,” available as an appendix to Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman, “The ‘Crime of November 2’: The human side of how Bush stole Ohio, and why Congress must investigate rather than ratify the Electoral College (Part Two of Two),” The Free Press (5 January 2005), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1067

28 Melvin Butch Hollowell and Len Niehoff, “Local Comment: To even consider suppressing the vote shames a democracy,” Detroit Free Press (27 July 2004), http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/eholl27_20040727.htm . For a mainstream account of election-day vote suppression in Ohio, see Michael Powell and Peter Slevin, “Several Factors Contributed to ‘Lost’ Voters in Ohio,” The Washington Post (15 December 2004): A1, available at Yurica Report: News Intelligence Analysis, http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/Factors%20ContributedToLostVotersInOhio.html . For a very useful listing of materials relating to vote suppression and electoral fraud, see Election 2004, http://shadowbox.i8.com/stolen.htm

29 Fitrakis, Rosenfeld, and Wassermann, “Ohio’s official recount ends amidst new evidence of fraud, theft and judicial contempt mirrored in New Mexico,” The Free Press (31 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1057

30 “Contesting Ohio Electoral Votes: Transcript of Press Conference: Senator Barbara Boxer and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones,” Federal News Service (6 January 2005), available from the Centre for Research on Globalization (9 January 2005), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BOX501A.html

31 Mark Weisbrot, “Ohio Election Problems Highlight Urgent Need for Reform,” Knight Ridder Newspapers (8 January 2005), available at Common Dreams News Center (9 January 2005), http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0108-26.htm

32 Quotations are from Brian Dominick and Ariella Cohen, “Electoral Vote Challenge Meets Venomous Response in Congress,” The New Standard (8 January 2005), available at Znet, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=6979 ; Alan Fram, “Congress Formally OKs Bush Election,” Yahoo! News (6 January 2005), http://www.story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&c=5&u=/ap/20050106/ap_on_go_co/electoral_vote ; from “History in the Making: Dems Force Debate on Ohio Voting Irregularities,” Democracy Now! (7 January 2005), http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/07/1621240 ; and the C-Span broadcast of the House debate, available at rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/wh010605_house.rm

33 That Gore would have won is clear: see Robert Parry, “So Bush Did Steal the White House,” Consortium News (22 November 2001), http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/112101a.html ; the figure of 23,000 votes is from Daniel Lazare, The Velvet Coup: The Constitution, The Supreme Court, and the Decline of American Democracy (London and New York: Verso, 2001), p. 4.

34 Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman, “Ten preliminary reasons why the Bush vote does not compute…,” The Free Press (3 January 2005), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1065

35 Robert Lockwood Mills, “The greatest story never told,” The Free Press (20 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1006

36 Dom Stasi, “Moral victory: Religious exploitation, and the new American creed,” Online Journal (23 December 2004), http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/122304Stasi/122304stasi.html

37 According to staff writers of The Nashua Advocate, over 97 percent of the vote-flipping incidents reported to the non-partisan Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) favoured Bush: see “News: Election 2004: Who’s Reading the Words of ‘Internet Muckrakers’? Diebold, For a Start…,” The Nashua Advocate (14 January 2005), http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/01/news-election-2004-whos-reading-words.html

38 Richard Hayes Phillips, “Default settings in Mahoning County,” The Free Press (23 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1018

39 Phillips, “Default settings.”

40 For evidence of the election-swinging potential of this form of fraud, see Anthony di Franco at al., “Small Vote Manipulations Can Swing Elections,” Communications of the ACM 47: 10 (October 2004): 43-45, available at http://www.wheresthepaper.org/p43_di_franco.pdf

41 Dr. Werner Lange, “More Votes than Voters in Ohio: Absentee Vote Inflated, Certified Vote in Doubt,” Democrats.com/unity (12 December 2004), http://democrats.com/ohio-absentee

42 Russ Baker, “Election 2004: Stolen or Lost,” TomPaine.com (7 January 2005), http://www.tompaine.com/articles/election_2004_stolen_or_lost.php

43 Fitrakis, Rosenfeld and Wasserman, “Ten preliminary reasons.”

44 These are the certified figures, from Cuyahoga County General Election: Official Results Report, which is no longer available on the web; the data can now be obtained from James Q. Jacobs’ website (see note 55 below). The figures first released after the election, before there had been a partial counting of provisional ballots, were still more shocking: 7.1 percent (Cleveland 6C), 13.05 percent (13D), 19.6 percent (13F), 21.01 percent (13O), and 21.8 percent (6B). Cleveland precinct 10L was initially reported as having a 24.72 percent turnout–a figure which rose in the certified results to a 56.21 percent turnout. Perhaps by some accident all of the provisional and absentee ballots cast in this precinct were counted.

45 Fitrakis, Rosenfeld and Wasserman, “Ten preliminary reasons.”

46 Richard Hayes Phillips, “Rigging the vote in Lucas County,” The Free Press (10 December, revised 24 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/979 ; and “Another third rate burglary,” The Free Press (25 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1037

47 Richard Hayes Phillips, “Hacking the vote in Miami County,” The Free Press (25 December 2004), http://www.freepress,org/departments/display/19/2004/1038

48 See Fitrakis, Rosenfeld and Wasserman, “Ten preliminary reasons.”

49 Richard Hayes Phillips, “Election results in Southwestern Ohio,” The Free Press (21 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1012

50 The letter is quoted in Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, B.1, pp. 54-55 note 240.

51 Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, B.1, p. 54 note 238.

52 Richard Hayes Phillips, “Estimated Vote Count in Ohio,” The Free Press (5 January 2005), http://www.freepress.org/departments.display/19/2005/1071

53 See Teed Rockwell, “93,136 EXTRA Votes Found in ONE Ohio County,” Rense.com (19 November 2004), http://www.rense.com/general59/one.htm ; and paragraph 20 in the second part of my essay “Election Fraud in America,” Centre for Research on Globalization (30 November 2004), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411D.html . Katherine Yurica republished Rockwell’s essay, with Editor’s Notes dated 21 November and 12 December 2004 blaming Cuyahoga County for “obfuscating the election results” and describing the essay as part of the “historical record of what transpired: i.e. Cuyahoga County published false information and then apparently corrected it.” See Yurica Report: News Intelligence Analysis, http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04

54 The matter was explained, with ascending degrees of clarity and competence, by Manuel Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating, “Latest Conspiracy Theory–Kerry Won–Hits the Ether,” The Washington Post (11 November 2004): A2; David Knox, “Turnout turns out to be glitch,” Akron Beacon Journal (10 November 2004), http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/10143328.htm?1c ; and “Cuyahoga County Precincts-Revised!” Americans for America, http://pages.ivillage.com/americans4america/id20.html

55 James Q. Jacobs, “Precinct Cross-Voting and Ballot Order in the Ohio 2004 Presidential Race,” 2004 Ohio Election–Analysis, Summary, Charts, and Spreadsheets (14 January 2004), http://www.jqjacobs.net/bush/xls/ohio.html

56 ’59sunburst,’ “Cuyahoga Cty–2000 Bush Tallies Used to Fake 2000 Tallies?” Democratic Underground (27 December 2004), http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=197869

57 It is important to distinguish between these exit poll figures and the altered Ohio figures which were posted by CNN at 1:41 a.m. EST on November 3rd; these showed women voters splitting 50-50 in their preferences for Kerry and Bush, and men supporting Bush over Kerry by 52 to 49 percent. One must also distinguish, in the national exit poll, between the figures available at 9:00 p.m. EST on November 2nd, which show Kerry leading by nearly 3 percent, and the revised figures posted at 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3rd, which showed a 5 percent swing to Bush. Richard Morin’s claim that the later national figures were based on “later interviewing” that found Bush in the lead (“New Woes Surface in Use of Estimates,” The Washington Post [4 November 2004]: A29) is demonstrably incorrect. As was immediately apparent from comparison of respondent numbers and percentage preferences, and as has since been acknowledged by the pollsters, these later figures were conflated with the vote tally percentages. See Michael Keefer, “Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam,” Centre for Research on Globalization (5 November 2004), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html ; see also “The Case for Fraud in Ohio Election 2004 (IX.A: Irregular/Impossible Changes in Exit Polls over time on Election Night),” Bloomington Peace Action Coalition, http://www.bpac.info

58 See ‘TruthIsAll,’ “BEST EVIDENCE: WP/Mitofsky/NEP (13,047 Random; MOE 1%): 547 million to 1,” Democratic Underground (7 January 2005), http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203×261825

59 For authoritative studies of the 2004 exit polls, see Steven F. Freeman, Ph.D., “The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy,” Research Report from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Division, School of Arts & Sciences Center for Organizational Dynamics (29 December 2004), available at http://www.matrixmasters.com/blog/usnewsarchive/2005_01_01_newsarchive.html ; Ron Baiman, “The United States of Ukraine? Exit Polls Leave Little Doubt that in a Free and Fair Election John Kerry Would Have Won Both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote,” The Free Press (19 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/997 and Jonathan D. Simon, J.D., and Ron P. Baiman, Ph.D., “The 2004 Presidential Election: Who Won the Popular Vote? An Examination of the Comparative Validity of Exit Poll and Vote Count Data,” The Free Press (28 December 2004), http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1054 . Other significant articles include Jonathan Simon, “47 State Exit Poll Analysis Confirms Swing Anomaly,” Scoop (11 November 2004), http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00142.htm ; Alastair Thompson, “Complete US Exit Poll Data Confirms New Suspicions,” Scoop (17 November 2004), http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm#f1note ; John Allen Paulos, “Final Tallies Minus Exit Polls=A Statistical Mystery!” The Philadelphia Inquirer (24 November 2004), available at http://www.math.temple.edu/%7Epaulos/exit.html ; ‘TruthIsAll,’ “Breaking: Washington Post Declares Kerry Won,” Democratic Underground (4 January 2005), http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss.duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=229251&mesg_id=229251 ; and Mark Blumenthal, “Exits: Were They Really ‘Wrong’?” Mystery Pollster (14 December 2004), http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/12/exits_were_the_.html The most lucid brief analysis of the weighting of exit polls that I have seen is in a sequence of postings by ‘Fly by night’ to a discussion thread initiated by ‘TruthIsAll,’ “I learned something about exit polls today,” Democratic Underground(17 January 2005), http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=288785

60 For an initial comparison between the U.S. and Ukrainian elections, see Michael Keefer, “Election Fraud in America,” Centre for Research in Globalization(30 November 2004), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411D.html ; also published as “The Stolen U.S. Presidential Election: A Comparative Analysis,” Autonomy & Solidarity, http://www.auto_sol.tao.ca .

61 For a small reminder of the wholesale rottenness of the election in Florida, see Bev Harris, “Vote Fraud–Volusia County On Lockdown,” Scoop (18 November 2004), http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00246.htm ; and Thom Hartmann, “‘Stinking Evidence’ of Possible Fraud in Florida,” Scoop (19 November 2004), http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00258.htm . And for a sample of the action on the west coast, see the excellent recent study by Paul R. Lehto, J.D., and Jeffrey Hoffman, Ph.D., “Evidence of Election Irregularities in Snohomish County, Washington General Election, 2004,” VotersUnite.Org (6 January 2005), http://www.votersunite.org/info/SnohomishElectionFraudInvestigation.pdf

62 Dr. Freeman’s new article, “Hypotheses for Explaining the Exit Poll-Official Count Discrepancy in the 2004 US Presidential Election,” should be published in the near future. The vote-tally figures given here, all of which are available from the Wikipedia site, are presented by Freeman in a somewhat more fully elaborated form.

63 On demographic grounds one would expect that over a four-year period more than five percent of the voters active in 2000 would have moved on to cast their ballots in a better world. A demographically-inflected estimate would increase the number of new voters in 2004–but since this would also increase Kerry’s numbers at the expense of Bush’s, I will hold to the exit-poll figure.

64 Los Angeles Times Staff Writers, “A ‘modern’ democracy that can’t count votes. Special Report: What happened in Florida is the rule and not the exception. A coast-to-coast study by The Times finds a shoddy system that can only be trusted when the election isn’t close,” Los Angeles Times (11 December 2000), http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/11/latimes.votecount

65 The Denver Voice, http://denvervoice.org/protest_rally_11-20-04.htm

66 Jacob Weisberg, “The Complete Bushisms,” Slate, http://slate.msn.com/id/76886

67 What may seem a particularly sour joke is perhaps no joke at all. The identity of the person who carried out terrorist anthrax-letter attacks in the United States in September and October 2001 remains unknown. However, the attacks were clearly intended to intimidate the Democratic opposition and the media: they targeted two leading Democratic members of the U.S. Senate, Senator Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), as well as major media outlets. Moreover, the anthrax was of the Ames strain, and came from a U.S. defence-biowarfare source; and there is strong evidence to indicate that FBI investigation of the anthrax attacks has been blocked as a result of high-level political interference. See Barbara Hatch Rosenberg (Chair, Federation of American Scientists Working Group on Biological Weapons), “Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks,” available at http://www.911review.org/Wget/www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm ; Patrick Martin, “Who is stonewalling the US anthrax investigation?” World Socialist Web Site (20 July 2002), http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/anth-j20.shtml ; and Steve Moore, “Why the FBI Cannot Catch the Anthrax Killer,” Centre for Research on Globalization (16 April 2003), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOO304B.html

68 The name Caligula means “Little Boot.” The Roman historian Suetonius reports that Caligula had planned to make his horse Incitatus a Consul (the highest position in the government of the Roman Republic); this would have entailed conferring senatorial rank upon the horse. See Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves, revised Michael Grant (London: Penguin, 2000), IV. 55, p. 156.

Global Research Contributing Editor Michael Keefer, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Guelph, Ont. He is a former president of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English; his writings include Lunar Perspectives: Field Notes from the Culture Wars (Anansi).

US Presidential Election: Deeply Flawed Candidates. Who Will Win and Who Deserves to Win?

By David Morgan, November 06 2016

It has been widely commented that the two main contenders in the US presidential race are both deeply flawed candidates, even that they are both unfit to hold high office. Whoever next takes up residence in the White House will become the most powerful person in the world at the conclusion of this coming week’s voting and the fate of all the peoples of the world will be in his or her hands. It’s a frightening prospect in itself that one individual can exercise so much power.

No, Hillary Clinton is not less Evil than Trump: “One has Funny Hair, the Other Wears Trouser-suits”

By Jonathan Cook, November 07 2016

Given that both Donald Trump and Clinton represent big money – and big money only – Clinton’s supporters have been forced to find another stick. And that has been the “lesser evil” argument. There is nothing new about this argument. It had been around for decades, and has been corralling progressives into voting for Democratic presidents who have still advanced US neoconservative policy goals abroad and neoliberal ones at home. So is it true that Clinton is the lesser-evil candidate? To answer that question, we need to examine those “policy differences” with Trump.

The Never-ending Clinton-Trump Race is Coming to a Close. Then What?

By DonkeyHotey and Klaus Marre, November 07 2016

Finally! That is the prevailing thought as this presidential election is headed for the finish line. Wanting this race to be over is certainly one of the reasons why a record number of Americans have voted early. But will it be? Sure, we will (likely) know by Wednesday who the next president will be, but, in this election, that will not provide closure. The country is still deeply divided and neither candidate appears to be in a position to heal that rift.

A More Dangerous World is Probably Coming After the US Election

By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, November 07 2016

The level of irrationality, confusion and negative energy is the most astonishing signal emanating out of the US presidential election.  It is a strong indication that, whatever the result, we should be prepared for an escalation in the already serious tensions dominating our world.

FBI Director James Comey: Hillary Should Not Face Criminal Charges. But Who Conducted the Investigation? FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Whose Wife Received $467,500

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 07 2016

Hillary had bought out the police chief in charge of investigating her alleged wrongdoings. Needless to say Andrew McCabe was NOT the object of a police investigation. If he had things may have turned out differently.

The FBI Can’t Actually Investigate a Candidate Such as Hillary Clinton

By Eric Zuesse, November 05 2016

The power above the FBI is the US Attorney General, and, above that person, the US President. That’s whom the FBI actually serves — not the US public. This is the reason why the FBI is having such internal tensions and dissensions over the investigation of Hillary Clinton: Not only is she the current President’s ardently preferred and designated successor but the top leadership of the FBI have terms-in-office that do not end with the installation of the next President; and these people will therefore be serving, quite possibly, the very same person whom they are now ‘investigating’.

A Brexit-Style Revolution in the USA? The Real Differences between Clinton and Trump

By Takis Fotopoulos, November 06 2016

There is no doubt that the forthcoming US Presidential elections are perhaps the most controversial ones in the US history. This has nothing of course to do with the various personal ‘scandals’ supposedly marring the two candidates, i.e. the emails scandal vs. the sexual utterances that are incompatible with the political correctness imposed by the ideology of globalization. These are obvious diversions created by the system itself in order to disorient the American victims of globalization from the real issues of these elections.

Whose Finger on the Nuclear Button? Hillary or Donald? Election 2016 And The Growing Global Nuclear Threat

By Michael Klare, November 07 2016

With passions running high on both sides in this year’s election and rising fears about Donald Trump’s impulsive nature and Hillary Clinton’s hawkish one, it’s hardly surprising that the “nuclear button” question has surfaced repeatedly throughout the campaign.  In one of the more pointed exchanges of the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton declared that Donald Trump lacked the mental composure for the job.  “A man who can be provoked by a tweet,” she commented, “should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes.”  Donald Trump has reciprocated by charging that Clinton is too prone to intervene abroad. “You’re going to end up in World War III over Syria,” he told reporters in Florida last month.

American Irrationalism. Something is Terribly Wrong

By Chris Hedges, November 06 2016

There are millions of Americans who know that something is terribly wrong. A light has gone out. They see this in their own suffering and hopelessness and the suffering and hopelessness of their neighbors. But they lack, because of the contamination of our political, cultural and intellectual discourse, the words and ideas to make sense of what is happening around them. They are bereft of a vision. Austerity, globalization, unfettered capitalism, an expansion of the extraction of fossil fuels, and war are not the prices to be paid for progress and the advance of civilization. They are part of the savage and deadly exploitation by corporate capitalism and imperialism.

For the twenty fifth consecutive year, the UN General Assembly expressed its condemnation of the economic, trade and financial blockade imposed by Washington on Cuba for more than half a century.  The obsolete sanctions – which date back to the Cold War – are immoral, affecting the most vulnerable sectors of civil society, illegal due to their retroactive and extraterritorial scope and constitute the principal  obstacle to the island developing[1].

Out of the 193 countries at the Annual Meeting of the UN General Assembly, 191 urged the United States to put an end to the punishment inflicted on the Cuban people which impacts every sector of society.  For the first time since 1992, the year the resolution demanding the elimination of measures of economic reprisal imposed since 1960, was initially presented, Washington decided to abstain from voting. Thus it recognized the failure of its policy of hostility vis-à-vis the Cubans as well as the reality that it had been isolated on the international scene. Israel which has always chosen to follow the US vote has also chosen to abstain[2].

During her address, Samantha Power, the US representative to the United Nations announced the White House’s decision not to reject the text of the resolution as it had done in previous years:

“For more than 50 years, the US has applied a policy aimed at isolating the Cuban government. For more than a quarter of a century, the members of the United Nations had voted in favour of the resolution […] which condemns the US embargo. […] Instead of isolating Cuba, […] our policy has isolated the United States, even within the United Nations. Today, the United States will opt to abstain from voting. This represents another modest step to put an end  to the US embargo once and for all[3]”.

This historic vote forms part of the package of measures adopted by Barack Obama since dialogue with Havana resumed on 17 December 2014. Since this date, the White House has proceeded to liberate three Cuban political prisoners and has taken Cuba off the list of countries supporting terrorism.  It has also announced repeatedly – six times in total – a sparce lifting of economic sanctions even if their scope is very limited. Thus for two years, the “Democratic” administration has resumed diplomatic relations with Cuba, proceeded to reopen an embassy at Havana, established direct commercial flights between the two countries, broadened the categories (12 in total) of US citizens authorized to go to Cuba and agreed  for certain US investments in the island, especially in the telecommunications sector. Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba in March 2016 has sanctified this new era for US – Cuban relations.

The most recent measures were announced on 14 October 2016, that is, two weeks before the vote in the United Nations. These measures permitted, inter alia, US citizens authorized to travel to Cuba to bring back rum and Cuban tobacco, free of quantitative restrictions. However, Washington still forbids the classic importation of these products on the US market.  Similarly, in March 2016 Barack Obama had announced that henceforth Cuba could use the dollar for international transactions. More than six months after this announcement, Havana has still not been able to carry out trade in US currency, as international banks fear they would be sanctioned by the US Treasury Department[4].

The Cuban government, through its spokesman Bruno Rodríguez, Minister of Foreign Affairs, has welcomed Barack Obama’s gesture. Nonetheless, he was forced to recall that economic sanctions were still in force:

“The economic, trade and financial blockade continues. This causes damages to the Cuban people and constitutes an obstacle for the country’s development. […] There is no Cuban family nor a sector in the country that has not suffered from its ramifications: at the level of health, food, services, price of products, salaries and retirement. […]  Due to its strictly extraterritorial character, it also directly affects all UN  Member[5]”.

No administration will have stuck its neck as far out as the Obama administration to normalize US-Cuba relations. That said, as his final mandate reaches its end, the US President has not exercised his prerogative as head of state to dismantle the network of economic sanctions against Cuba. In actual fact, the White House, could, for example, be able to re-establish bilateral trade between US and Cuban businesses, authorize US investments in Cuba and authorize Cuba to acquire non-food products on loan on the US market. The sectors subject to a Congressional decision are relatively narrow and can be overturned by the Executive.

From the time they were initially imposed more than half a century ago, the economic sanctions have cost the Cuban economy 125 billion dollars and constitute the principal obstacle to the development of the Island. They constitute a serious violation of international law and outrage the international community which once again has expressed its opposition to the coercive measures imposed on the Cuban people. Lifting them is indispensable to normalizing relations between Cuba and the United States.

Article in French :

Condamnation unanime des sanctions économiques des Etats-Unis contre Cuba, October 31, 2016 (published on Global Research’s French language website: mondialisation.ca

Translated by Anoosha Boralessa 

Ph.D. in Latin-American and Iberian Studies at Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, Salim Lamrani is the Maître de conférences at Université de La Réunion, a journalist and expert in Cuba-US relations.

His new book is Fidel Castro, héros des déshérités, Paris, Ed Estrella, 2016. Preface by Ignacio Ramonet.

Contact : [email protected] ; [email protected]

Page Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/SalimLamraniOfficiel

When the Chicago Cubs closed out a thrilling 8-7 victory over the Cleveland Indians in extra innings of Game 7 of the World Series on Tuesday night, they became World Champions for the first time since 1908. Their win disproved not only the Curse of the Billy Goat, but the notion that privately owned sports teams need to have publicly funded stadiums to survive and be competitive.

Since the gates of the Cubs’ beloved Wrigley Field (then Weeghman Park) opened to the public in 1914, owners of professional sports teams across the United States have bilked taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars by demanding that the public bear a portion of – or, in many cases, the entire financial burden of constructing baseball, football, basketball, and hockey stadiums. Once completed, the owners – rather than the taxpayers – reap the rewards of admission, stadium concessions, and even parking fees. The taxpayers are rewarded for their largesse with highly inflated ticket prices and reduced access to new venues, which generally have much smaller seating capacities.

By now, the fact that stadiums are a terrible investment is as widely accepted as climate change. Not only do they not generate enough tax revenue to offset the expenditure of taxpayer funds, but the true cost to the public almost always exceeds the sticker price, and can be understated by as much as 40 percent.

Yet despite the long, documented history of stadiums saddling the public with a crushing burden of debt while delivering spectacular increases in the value of franchises to owners, those who control teams keep finding that they are able to dupe feckless politicians and a gullible public into supporting transfers from the public coffers into their own pockets.

Their ability to continually achieve these scams relies on a convincing propaganda campaign. There are several main arguments that comprise the narrative: that current stadiums are old and falling apart and must be replaced in the near future; that fans demand state-of-the-art facilities with the most modern amenities; and that without luxury boxes and corporate suites new stadiums could provide, the team will never be able to generate enough revenue to compete and win. When those arguments fail to do the trick, the owners resort to threatening to move to another city.

The first argument is always easy to disregard, as any engineering inspection will attest. Wrigley Field has lasted more than 100 years and there appears to be no reason it couldn’t last another 100 more. In almost every case ownership makes similar claims about other stadiums, they are unable to provide evidence to back them up, because none exists.

Any true baseball fan will understand the second argument is also bunk. Personally, the least important part about watching a game in person to me is the comfort and amenities. I want to sit as close to the field as possible, and that’s pretty much it. I can have comfort and amenities from my own couch the 363 days a year I don’t go to watch a game in person.

The Cubs championship demonstrates that success and suite revenue are not correlated. Having a rabid fan base that packs the stands every night (the Cubs ranked 5th in the league in attendance in 2016) and, more importantly in this day in age, watch on TV each night will generate more than enough revenue to put a winning team on the field. Fewer suites only means fewer profits that will be put into the owner’s investment portfolio, rather than put into the operations of the team.

The Cubs owners understand that true baseball fans value the charm of a historic stadium more than the allure of a shiny new one they have no emotional connection to. Fans would rather sit in the same seats they sat in years ago with their father than have a little more leg room. So after the Ricketts family (who recently donated $1 million to Donald Trump) bought the team in 2009, they aimed to renovate rather than replace.

They did attempt to seek taxpayer funds to pay for the $500 million worth of renovations. When they were met with a chilly reception, they tried to use what leverage they had by threatening to move the team. But Chicago officials understood that this was nothing more than empty posturing and ownership never thought seriously for a single second about going anywhere else.

Lo and behold, when public officials held their ground the Cubs ownership committed to paying for the entire project with private money. Predictably, it has neither sent them to the poor house nor impaired their ability to field a competitive team.

As Chicago officials and Cubs fans watched 5 million people gather Friday for the 7th largest gathering in human history, perhaps they wondered why they needed owners at all. The Cubs, like all sports teams, could be considered a public good that should belong to the community that sustains them. Rather than be operated by, and for the benefit of, a private individual, they could be managed in the interests of the millions of fans and residents of their city based on their input.

Sports teams are generally cash cows that pay for themselves and produce millions of dollars worth of surplus. The Green Bay Packers, who are owned by nearly 400,000 shareholders that operate the franchise democratically, are self-sustainable and have never run into financial trouble, much less ruin.

It’s unlikely that any cities will move to take control of their teams from their parasitic owners. But one can at least hope that the Cubs World Series will serve as a strong counterargument to the fatuous propaganda that sports owners have come to rely on as they continue to siphon billions of dollars from the public to themselves without contributing anything of value.

Together with more than 100 organizations around the world in our #KeepItOn campaign, Access Now is fighting to keep internet shutdowns from becoming the new norm.  Today, we’re participating in a talk at the Brookings Institution about how this dangerous, rights-harming practice impacts local economies (connect to the live webcast here).

Another way we’re fighting shutdowns is by documenting the justifications governments use to carry out shutdowns and impose blanket restrictions on platforms for expression. Orders to block, throttle, or disrupt communications networks almost always fail to comply with local law. They also face growing international condemnation as an interference with human rights that’s not justified even in times of conflict.

Here’s a look at what governments say, versus how internet shutdowns truly affect people.

1.) National security

What the government says: It’s for “national security”

National security may be the most frequently cited justification for internet shutdowns globally. It’s also the broadest and most vague. In Pakistan, the government has made localized mobile network shutdowns justified on these grounds a standard practice, cutting people off from the network during Islamic holidays such as the day of Ashura, while citing concern about terrorist attacks. Orders for the shutdowns are meant to cover a relatively small area, but it usually becomes necessary to “shut down a wider area than specified, to ensure there is no ‘spillover’ of service,” according to the Institute for Human Rights and Business. This means that the majority of mobile internet users in Pakistan are often affected. State authorities have also cut off the internet for “security” during a wrestling event and Independence Day celebrations. In Turkey, during the coup d’etatattempt in July 2016, social media sites were throttled.

What really happens

Shutdowns imposed in the name of “national security” have the opposite effect on the people cut off from communications platforms and online resources. People don’t feel “secure” or safe when they can’t figure out what’s going on, can’t get access to important news or reach emergency services, and can’t check in on their loved ones.

2.) Elections

What the government says: It’s to fight election “fraud” or stop the spread of “misinformation”

Shutting down the internet or otherwise controlling the free flow of information online during an election period is a profound violation of human rights and a threat to democratic processes and government legitimacy.

Fighting shutdowns during elections is part of Access Now’s DNA. When the government ordered a disruption in Iran during the2009 elections, it convinced a small group of activists and technologists to found our organization. Sadly, Iran is far from alone in this practice. In 2010, Myanmar repeatedly shut down the internet in the months surrounding its first elections in 20 years. In October of last year in India, the government used local elections to justify a day-long shutdown in Garo Hills region.

Worryingly, there has been a series of shutdowns during or around elections over the past two years in countries in East and West  Africa, with governments disrupting the internet, cutting access to social media, or carrying out full blackouts in Chad,Togo, the DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, and Uganda. Citizens are fighting back. In Uganda, when the government blocked Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp on election day, people circumvented the blocks using VPNs and other circumvention technologies, making the government’s crackdown on free expression less effective. Yet as a result, we estimate that the mobile banking sector — a popular form of exchanging money — lost $23 million per day over a weekend.

At Access Now, we’re continuing to fight this trend through the #KeepitOn campaign, and we’re starting to see progress in Africa. Civil society won a hugely important victory when the president of Ghana told voters that the government has no intention of shutting down social media on election day, even though the police had been openly considering it.

What really happens

Shutdowns prevent journalists, election monitors, and ordinary citizens from reporting fraud or irregularities at polling places. Opposition candidates and parties cannot communicate with supporters or expose and document illegal activity.

3.) Protests

What the government says: It’s to keep citizens “safe” or “restore order”

Governments that want to quell dissent or stop protests use internet shutdowns as an extreme form of censorship, often while claiming that they are working to restore order or keep people safe. Many governments did not learn from Egypt’s experience in 2011, when its internet blackout drove more people into the streets. Countries that have used shutdowns to control information during protests include:

Bahrain, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Libya, Mali,  Myanmar, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, the United States, and Venezuela.

From A to Z, these countries are blocking services or conducting full network shutdowns, with rationales such as “stopping the rumors” (in India) to the classic “ensuring public safety.”

What really happens

A violent protest might theoretically justify extraordinary security measures, but imposing internet blackouts when people are protesting doesn’t increase safety. It stops important information from reaching citizens — like how to find areas of safety or contact emergency services. It also prevents people from documenting human rights violations such as the disproportionate use of force by the police or military.

4.) School exams

What the government says: It’s to stop cheating on exams

An increasingly popular form of shutdown is one aimed at stopping students from cheating on exams. The first one that we’re aware of happened two years ago in Uzbekistan during university entrance exams. At the time, the government did not admit that school exams were the reason for the shutdown, instead citing “urgent maintenance work on telecommunications networks.”

After that, in June 2015, Iraq shut down the internet for national exams, and did so again one year later. This year, a full-blown trend emerged, with governments in India, Algeria, Ethiopia, and Iraq each turning off communications networks during national exams.

What really happens

This type of shutdown is a clearly disproportionate practice, impacting the free expression rights of millions of people to stop cheating by a few students — who might nevertheless develop other ways to cheat.

5.) Visits by government officials

What the government says: It’s to keep the dignitaries safe.

Governments sometimes see a national security risk when government officials or foreign political leaders are visiting, and use the risk to justify shutting down the internet. One of the earliest examples we’re aware of took place three years ago in Pakistan when the government ordered a disruption during the visit of the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

More recently, authorities in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir blocked mobile internet during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the Kashmir Valley. The people of Kashmir have experienced more shutdowns than those living in any other state in India, but this may have been the first time justification was tied to a high-profile visitor.

Similarly, in the Philippines, the only shutdown we recorded took place last year during a visit by Pope Francis. It was supposed to be a targeted disruption of the area along the Pope’s travel route, but other areas were impacted to prevent spillover of signals. And in May, the Vietnamese government blocked Facebook when U.S. President Obama visited.

What really happens

Disruptions like these interfere with our right to receive and impart information, a right that is not suspended when dignitaries visit. And the rationale is questionable. In Vietnam, for instance, did the government impose a shutdown for “national security,” or to censor news about the protests that were happening at the time?

How we can fight back

As these examples show, countries use a variety of rationales for internet shutdowns, and depend upon different laws to legally justify those reasons. In some cases, what makes the difference for whether an internet shutdown will be implemented is the licensing requirements between a government and a telecommunications company. These requirements can create “excessive intermediary liability,” where a company is compelled to comply with shutdown orders even when they are extralegal. Yet push-back remains possible, through industry-led coalitions like the Global Network Initiative, and by appealing to national parliaments and other institutions.

A key victory on the international front came when the United Nations passed a resolution in June 2016 that specifically condemns internet shutdowns. This demonstrates the growing global consensus that internet shutdowns are a human rights violation that cannot be justified even in times of conflict. It is now up to us to help establish new norms and laws that disallow shutdowns regardless of rationale, with the support of civil society, industry, academia, and individual internet users from all around the world.

As we note above, there are now more than 100 organizations that back our #KeepItOn campaign to fight internet shutdowns. You can pitch in by joining our pledge here and, if you represent an organization, you can sign up at

https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton.

And if you personally experience a shutdown or hear about one, you can report it by emailing us at [email protected].

The chugging train of fear continues to drone away on the eve of what has been considered one of the most important elections in generations. Mind you, this was the sort of stuff spouted during the campaigns of 2008, when a disgusted electorate washed a mouth contaminated by George W. Bush’s years with Barack Obama’s honeyed promises.

Eight years after that wash, and other antidotes and options are being sought in the supermarket of populism.  It is precisely this sort of enthusiastic shopping that terrifies and torments, notably various groups who see a Trump presidency as the demon incarnate.

This take is particularly strong regarding the Muslim-American community.  With a persistent fear that Islamic fundamentalism will take root in US soil with weed-like tenacity, Trump’s messages strike an appealing note.  It is the rise of Trump that prompts such touchy headlines as that of Al Jazeera: “American Muslims brace for the worst after US election.”

Instances of planned attacks and foiled plots against Muslim communities abound.  The FBI revealed last month that it had frustrated the efforts of a Kansas militia to eliminate a Somali Muslim mosque and community centre by way of detonation in Garden City.

Researchers such as Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Centre insist that disparate groups are coalescing in Trump’s America, and not in a good way for various, fearful minorities.  “In the aftermath of September 11, white nationalist groups teamed up with organised anti-Muslim groups, creating a dangerous and threatening alliance against members of the American Muslim community.”

Not all of this should be laid at the feet of Trump malignancy; in the United States, visions of utopia and promised land rhetoric have mingled with crude realities and hatreds long before The Donald held sway.  In typically crude businesslike fashion, he has marketised such fear.

The suspicions in some communities towards Islam’s endeavours are simply cognate realities that have found form in other countries, suggesting that the US, despite its melting pot credentials, is not immune.

Insecure, macho and pricelessly juvenile (the mix is standard), militia groups have also promised to protect a vision of the US that pre-dates Trump.  What matters here is the logic of repair that Trump has appropriated: the system is broken, and these are your patriotic handymen charging to the rescue.

Georgia Force III%, sounding more like a name given to an industrial solvent, is one such example.  In this case, it is a militia outfit led by Chris Hill.  Having given himself the rather longwinded title of Security Force Commander, Hill claimed that, “We have to be prepared to protect the country from all enemies foreign and domestic.”  A loss of “control” on various “fronts” had put American “liberties” and “freedoms” at risk.[1] His solution?  Conducing armed manoeuvres in the woods.

The language of vote rigging has also found a home in discussions about the credibility of the electoral system itself.  While the arguments have merit in so far as they go to the core of how democracy is defined, the critique offered by many of Trump’s supporters is scatty.  In order to avoid rigging, a form of intimidation via excessive scrutiny, for instance, has been suggested.

In other instances, it has seen a surge of Republican volunteers wishing to serve as poll watchers.  Given the shoddiness in the management of some polling stations across this vast country, the concerns are not without merit. In a narrow election result, missing or miscounted ballots can prove a costly thing to the losing side.

What concerns such individuals as former US attorney general Alberto Gonzales, remembered for having a hand in the debates on torture during the Bush administration years, is the overly enthusiastic nature of the private response. “I would depend on the state and local officials to make sure of the integrity of the vote within particular precincts.”[2]

It is exactly such statements, said without irony, that make the private efforts of overly zealous citizens so potent. Officialdom, with rules it supposedly follows yet breaks, is to be mistrusted. The Democratic Party, in various quarters, has insisted on its own reading of those rules, with the Ohio Democrats claiming in a lawsuit that their Republican counterparts in the state, along with the Trump campaign and Stop the Steal, have effectively suppressed minorities in urban areas from going to the polls. A sense of paranoia across the entire spectrum abounds.

What is clear is that such fears do have a habit of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.  The threats of armed militias to carry arms to polling stations ostensibly to prevent rigging revives images more akin to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe than the United States: to make sure a result is fair is merely code to make sure the result is fair to us.

This election campaign has shown that a lack of noble spirit and generosity can get you elected in efforts of sheer disgust.  The only uncertainly as the queues gather is to what extent disgust and fear translates into votes. Not even a smug Nate Silver would be able to predict that.

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

Notes

Tomorrow Americans get the chance to vote for a system – resource-hungry, war-peddling corporate capitalism – in two iterations: one has funny hair and a permatan, the other wears lipstick and trouser-suits.

Presidente del Senado de 2011 a 2014, Jean-Pierre Bel fue el primer socialista en ocupar este cargo en la Cámara alta del Parlamento bajo la V República.

Su implicación política se remonta a su más temprana edad ya que, procedente de una familia de resistentes comunistas del Sur de Francia, Jean-Pierre Bel se involucró en las redes de solidaridad con la oposición española en lucha contra la dictadura de Francisco Franco. Pagó un precio elevado.

Buen conocedor de América Latina y particularmente de Cuba, ha sido nombrado Enviado personal del Presidente de la República para esta región del mundo. Jean-Pierre Bel ha contribuido ampliamente al acercamiento entre Francia y Cuba, haciendo de París el socio privilegiado de la isla en Europa.

Durante estas conversaciones sostenidas en la Presidencia de la República, en el espléndido hotel Marigny, Jean-Pierre Bel saluda el restablecimiento de un diálogo histórico entre Washington y La Habana. Evoca también la cuestión de las sanciones económicas que constituyen el principal obstáculo a la normalización de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. El expresidente Bel analiza también el viaje de François Hollande a Cuba así como la visita de Estado de Raúl Castro a Francia, y hace un balance de las relaciones actuales entre ambos países. Este intercambio aborda finalmente los lazos entre la isla del Caribe y la Unión Europea y termina con una reflexión sobre la figura de Fidel Castro y la importancia simbólica de Cuba.

Salim Lamrani: Señor Bel, el 17 de diciembre de 2014, Cuba y Estados Unidos implementaron un proceso de acercamiento histórico tras más de medio siglo de confrontación. ¿Cómo analiza esta nueva etapa?

Jean-Pierre Bel: El anuncio sorprendió a muchos observadores. Conviene reconocer que era inesperado, salvo, desde luego, para los actores directamente implicados en las negociaciones. Los discursos de ambos presidentes, Barack Obama en Washington y Raúl Castro en La Habana, retransmitidos simultáneamente en los noticieros del mundo entero, constituyen un acontecimiento trascendente. Si la palabra “histórico” tiene algún sentido, se aplica particularmente para ese momento.

Estados Unidos ha comprendido finalmente que si quería restablecer lazos con América Latina era imprescindible cambiar de actitud hacia Cuba y adoptar un nuevo enfoque. Los estadounidenses, en el fondo, se han dado cuenta de su aislamiento en el mundo, no sólo en América Latine sino también en Europa.

En efecto, Francia tiene ahora estrechas relaciones con Cuba. Creo que fui el primer alto responsable político en viajar a La Habana en visita oficial. Fue en enero de 2013 cuando era entonces presidente del Senado. Era la primera visita desde la de Claude Chesson, ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de François Mitterrand, en 1983. Imagínese el tiempo necesario para reanudar lazos sólidos con este país. Desde entonces, hubo otros viajes importantes. Laurent Fabius, entonces canciller, realizó una visita a Cuba en mayo de 2014. Entonces, Estados Unidos, frente a una realidad diferente, ha tenido que volver a evaluar su posición.

Barack Obama pronunció un bello discurso y rindió homenaje a quienes denuncian el embargo estadounidense desde hace muchos años. Hoy día, en términos de perspectiva política, la situación es completamente distinta.

SL: A pesar del acercamiento entre Washington y La Habana, las sanciones económicas siguen vigentes contra Cuba. ¿Cuál es su punto de vista al respecto?

JPB: Las sanciones contra Cuba constituyen un escándalo. Era el caso ayer y es el caso hoy día. Washington se dignó a sacar a Cuba de la lista de los países patrocinadores del terrorismo. Es un paso positivo. Espero que Estados Unidos no juegue un doble juego y que ponga fin definitivamente a esta política hostil.

Hasta hoy Barack Obama no ha podido conseguir del Congreso que levante las sanciones contra Cuba. Esta situación es incomprensible en una época en que todas las partes hacen esfuerzos para resolver un diferendo que dura desde hace más de medio siglo y cuando los cubanos se han mostrado tan receptivos.

Me siento indignado cuando veo las consecuencias de las sanciones económicas sobre este país, sobre la vida de los cubanos de la isla, sobre los cubanos que viven en todas partes del mundo y que padecen medidas de retorsión por la aplicación extraterritorial de las distintas leyes adoptadas contra Cuba. Incluso he visto que organismos bancarios podían prohibir la compra de un libro sobre Fidel Castro en Quebec. Yo podría multiplicar los ejemplos que ilustran el carácter injusto de estas sanciones. Estados Unidos, si desea presentarse como un país que respeta los derechos humanos, debería acabar con esto.

Imaginar que se va a derrocar a un gobierno haciendo padecer hambre a un pueblo es a la vez inmoral, estúpido y completamente ineficaz.

SL: Las sanciones económicas también afectaron a los intereses franceses.

JPB: BNP-Paribas fue sancionada injustamente aunque respetó escrupulosamente la ley francesa, la legislación europea y el derecho internacional. Otra empresa, Pernod-Ricard, que está presente en Cuba desde hace décadas, ha tenido que enfrentar numerosas dificultades por la aplicación extraterritorial de las sanciones económicas.

SL: En mayo de 2015, el presidente de la República François Hollande realizó un viaje histórico a Cuba. ¿Qué representa esta visita y qué mensaje llevó a la isla?

JPB: El viaje de François Hollande a Cuba es la expresión de su gran interés por América Latina. El presidente de la República siempre ha tenido una conexión muy fuerte con este continente. Así, a principios de los años 1980, François Mitterrand le encargó de subsanar las cuentas de la Casa de América Latina de París. Desde este periodo, el presidente siempre ha seguido con mucha atención la evolución de esta región del mundo.

François Hollande insistió en el hecho de que había que tejer lazos sólidos con América Latina. Tenemos relaciones históricas y culturales desde hace mucho tiempo con América Latina y particularmente con Cuba. Este viaje a La Habana traduce la voluntad del presidente de la República de reforzar los lazos bilaterales entre nuestros dos países.

SL: Esta visita marcó un giro en las relaciones entre Cuba y Europa.

JPB: Con el viaje a Cuba, François Hollando indicó el camino a seguir a los demás dirigentes europeos, quienes también realizaron visitas oficiales a La Habana. Sólo los papas Juan Pablo II y Benedicto XVI habían viajado a Cuba antes que presidente de la República. François Hollande es el primer jefe de Estado europeo en ir a Cuba en visita oficial desde Alfonso XIII, o sea desde hace más de un siglo.

Una fuerte amistad nos une a Cuba y somos felices de ver que las autoridades de la isla consideran a Francia como el interlocutor privilegiado. Este viaje concretiza de alguna manera la voluntad de presidente François Hollande de dar un nuevo impulso a las relaciones entre Francia y América Latina.

Los países de América Latina, todos, progresistas o conservadores, han considerado el viaje de François Hollande a Cuba como la ilustración del nuevo interés de Francia por este continente. Para los latinoamericanos, Cuba es considerada como un país que encarna la voluntad de independencia, de soberanía y de resistencia de los pueblos del Sur. Hay una verdadera admiración de los dirigentes latinoamericanos por el pueblo cubano y ello supera las orientaciones ideológicas.

SL: En febrero de 2016, con el viaje de Raúl Castro, por primera vez, un presidente cubano realizó una visita de Estado a Francia. ¿Qué simboliza este acontecimiento para las relaciones entre París y La Habana?

JPB: El viaje de François Hollande constituyó sin duda alguna un acontecimiento histórico. Del mismo modo, la visita del Presidente Raúl Castro tiene gran trascendencia. Fidel Castro vino varias veces a Francia pero nunca en visita oficial. Si la memoria no me falla, su último viaje tuvo lugar cuando los funerales de François Mitterrand.

Hace unos años, un viaje de Raúl Castro era poco probable. Hoy simboliza las nuevas relaciones entre nuestras dos naciones. Ver al presidente cubano responder favorablemente a una invitación de François Hollande constituye un acontecimiento que marcará la historia de nuestras relaciones bilaterales. Conviene recordar que Raúl Castro fue recibido en visita de Estado, es decir el más alto nivel de acogida que pueda reservarse a un dirigente extranjero.

SL: ¿Cuál fue el mensaje de Raúl Castro?

JPB: El presidente Raúl Castro recordó que Cuba era una nación en plena evolución que deseaba vivir con más prosperidad pues su pueblo lo merece. El sistema económico cubano se está abriendo más a las realidades del mundo de hoy. Hay, de acuerdo, un restablecimiento de las relaciones con Estados Unidos, pero Cuba aspira a reforzar sus lazos con Europa y, en primer lugar, con Francia. Somos un interlocutor privilegiado pues los cubanos confían en nosotros. Desde el viaje de François Hollande nuestras relaciones bilaterales son excelentes.

SL: Francia desempeñó un papel importante en la resolución de la deuda cubana con el Club de París.

JPB: Francia brindó todo su apoyo para la resolución equitativa del problema de la deuda cubana con los acreedores del Club de París. Un francés, Bruno Bézard, que era Director general del Tesoro, dirigía esta institución. Desplegamos todos nuestros esfuerzos para buscar una solución. Pocos creían en las posibilidades de éxito de estas negociaciones con La Habana pues muchos países son miembros del Club de París. Y no sólo naciones europeas, Japón y Australia también tienen una representación allí. No obstante hubo una fuerte voluntad por parte de Francia para lograr un acuerdo. Los cubanos apreciaron en su justo valor la implicación determinada del presidente de la República y nuestra perseverancia fue recompensada ya que se consiguió un acuerdo satisfactorio para todas las partes.

A título personal estoy muy satisfecho, pues hemos convertido una parte de la deuda de Francia en inversión y cooperación en Cuba. Los fondos se destinarán a acciones de desarrollo.

SL: De hecho la Agencia Francesa de Desarrollo abrirá pronto oficinas en La Habana.

JPB: Ello traduce la voluntad de François Hollande de reforzar los lazos de cooperación con Cuba. La Agencia Francesa de Desarrollo es una herramienta de cooperación de Francia a nivel internacional. El equipo ya está instalado en la capital cubana y ha lanzado el proceso de identificación de los proyectos que vamos a apoyar con la cooperación de nuestros amigos cubanos, sea a nivel técnico o de financiamiento. De esta manera contribuiremos al desarrollo de Cuba.

SL: ¿En qué sectores piensa Francia involucrarse en Cuba?

JPB: Francia no tiene una política arrogante con Cuba. No tenemos la pretensión de decirles a los cubanos lo que tienen que hacer. Nuestras relaciones se basan en el respeto mutuo, la igualdad soberana y la reciprocidad. Tenemos un papel de acompañamiento basado en una voluntad cubana.

Así, a nivel de las infraestructuras, Francia puede aportar una ayuda a Cuba. El sector energético es también una prioridad. La situación política y económica en Venezuela tiene un impacto importante en la economía cubana. También hay posibilidades de desarrollar muchos otros proyectos, sea en el campo fotovoltaico o en el tratamiento de las aguas servidas en ciudades como La Habana. En el sector del turismo, Francia también puede aportar su contribución ayudando a Cuba a dominar mejor su desarrollo en este campo.

SL: Cuba ha expresado su voluntad de desarrollar sus relaciones económicas y comerciales con el resto del mundo.

JPB: Cuba desea diversificar sus socios económicos y comerciales para evitar una dependencia como fue el caso durante cerca de treinta años con la Unión Soviética. Cuando cayó el Muro de Berlín y siguió el desmoronamiento del bloque del Este, la situación en Cuba fue terrible. La gente sufrió mucho en el Periodo Especial a principios de los años 1990.

Hoy los cubanos tienen la voluntad de tejer lazos con varios socios en el mundo y cuentan con nosotros para ayudarlos a conservar su independencia de Estados Unidos. Con su presencia en Cuba, Francia contribuirá a limitar la dependencia de la isla de las demás grandes potencias.

SL: Cuba y Francia han hecho del desarrollo sostenible una prioridad.

JPB: En cuanto a las cuestiones medioambientales, preconizamos como Cuba el desarrollo de un crecimiento verde. Cuba tiene una gran conciencia de los temas vinculados a la preservación del planeta. Fidel Castro siempre ha mostrado una sensibilidad hacia estas problemáticas. Desde siempre, en las escuelas cubanas, se ha explicado hasta qué punto la tierra es un bien común y precioso. Hay que reconocer a Fidel Castro esta conciencia anticipadora. Es un precursor en este campo. Recuerdo que durante nuestro encuentro, en compañía del presidente François Hollande, insistió mucho en este tema. Ello muestra que no sólo ha conservado conciencia y lucidez sino también las mismas preocupaciones por las cuestiones vitales.

SL: ¿Qué papel desempeñó Cuba en la COP 21?

JPB: La Habana desempeñó un papel fundamental para el éxito de la COP 21. Cuba tiene amplia conciencia de los efectos desastrosos del cambio climático sobre los países del Sur. Raúl Castro informó al presidente Hollande de que Cuba brindaría su concurso para que la COP 21 fuera un éxito y cumplió su palabra desempeñando un papel de facilitador con países de América Latina. Estas naciones tenían preguntas legítimas, como la responsabilidad de los países desarrollados en la explotación a ultranza de la naturaleza. Pero todos entendieron que esta Cumbre representaba la última oportunidad contra el cambio climático.

SL: Pasemos a otro tema. Cienfuegos fue fundada por franceses. ¿Cuándo abriremos una antena de la Alianza Francesa en esta ciudad?

JPB: Es una excelente idea y le propongo que se la someta al presidente de la Alianza Francesa. Antes de llamarse Cienfuegos, esta localidad se llamaba Bordeaux-ville. Está cercana a Trinidad. Tenemos las más bellas Alianzas Francesas en Cuba, en Santiago pero sobre todo en la capital. Las autoridades cubanas nos han entregado la sede del palacio Gómez de La Habana y es un lugar maravilloso. Cada año, cerca de 10.000 jóvenes cubanos aprenden el francés y es algo extraordinario. Sería fabuloso, en efecto, que la ciudad más francesa de Cuba, se beneficiara de una Alianza.

SL: Hablemos ahora de las relaciones entre Cuba y la Unión Europea. La Posición Común, en vigor desde 1996, constituye hoy el principal obstáculo a la normalización de las relaciones entre Bruselas y La Habana. ¿Cuál es su opinión al respecto?

JPB: Desde hace unos años hay conversaciones bilaterales y creo que se han eliminado muchas de las medidas adoptadas contra Cuba. Para Francia, esta Posición Común ya no tiene sentido. Fue adoptada por iniciativa de José María Aznar en su tiempo por razones muy ideológicas. Los europeos no midieron el alcance de semejante decisión y delegaron el tema a los españoles. Fue un error.

Votamos cada año contra el embargo estadounidense en la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas. Debemos ser lógicos y proceder a la abrogación de la Posición Común. Francia aboga en este sentido y lo saben muy bien nuestros amigos cubanos.

SL: ¿Qué mirada tiene sobre Fidel Castro?

JPB: Conocí a Fidel Castro durante la visita oficial del presidente de la República. Lo sigo desde mi más temprana edad por mi pasión por la historia de América Latina y el Caribe.

Fidel tiene una parte de luz, de sol y una parte de sombra. Eso pasa con cualquier persona. En cierta época de la historia yo habría emitido una opinión más severa sobre Fidel Castro. Por otra parte, Cuba ha estado confrontada a inmensas dificultades. Conozco Cuba y a las mujeres y hombres de este país. Hay un profundo respeto en la población por Fidel Castro. La única crítica que surge regularmente tiene que ver con su edad, el peso de su generación en la Cuba de hoy. Pero creo que sobre este punto es como nosotros, y es imposible luchar contra les leyes de la naturaleza.

El juicio de la historia se hará más tarde y entonces será tiempo de hacer un balance de su vida. Por mi parte sé que se trata de un hombre de una gran inteligencia que ha devuelto una verdadera dignidad a su país y a su pueblo. Es, en la continuidad de José Martí, el apóstol de la independencia y la soberanía cubanas. Cuando nos reunimos con él me impactó su lucidez. Es un hombre que se acerca al fin de su vida y que tiene una mirada apaciguada sobre su acción y sobre el mundo.

SL: ¿Qué representa Cuba para usted?

JPB: Para mí Cuba es el símbolo de la valentía de un pueblo que ha sabido resistir frente a fuerzas inmensamente más poderosas. Esta capacidad y esta valentía son las de las mujeres y los hombres de Cuba y de quienes han sabido federarlos y unirlos. Todo ello suscita cierta admiración. Yo amo este país porque cuando uno ama la historia, cuando uno ama la política, cuando uno ama la cultura, cuando uno ama la música, sólo puede amar a Cuba.

Doctor en Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos de la Universidad Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV, Salim Lamrani es profesor titular de la Universidad de La Reunión y periodista, especialista de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. Su último libro se titula Cuba, ¡palabra a la defensa!, Hondarribia, Editorial Hiru, 2016.

http://www.tiendaeditorialhiru.com/informe/336-cuba-palabra-a-la-defensa.html

Contacto: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Página Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SalimLamraniOfficiel

Otra vez, la comunidad internacional rechazó las sanciones económicas que estrangulan al pueblo cubano.

Por vigesimoquinto año consecutivo, la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas expresó su condena del bloqueo económico, comercial y financiero que Washington impone a Cuba desde hace más de medio siglo. Las sanciones obsoletas –se remontan a la Guerra Fría–, inmorales –afectan a las categorías más vulnerables de la población civil– e ilegales –por su alcance retroactivo y extraterritorial– constituyen el principal obstáculo al desarrollo de la isla.[1]

De los 193 países presentes en el encuentro anual, 191 exhortaron a Estados Unidos a poner fin al castigo infligido a la población cubana y que afecta a todos los sectores de la sociedad. Por primera vez desde 1992, año de la presentación inicial por Cuba de la resolución que exige la eliminación de las medidas de retorsión económica impuestas desde 1960, Washington decidió abstenerse durante el voto, reconociendo así el fracaso de su política de hostilidad hacia los cubanos así como la realidad de su aislamiento en la escena internacional. Israel, que siempre siguió el voto de Estados Unidos, también optó por la abstención[2].

Samantha Power, representante de Estados Unidos en las Naciones Unidas, anunció durante su alocución la decisión de la Casa Blanca de no rechazar el texto de resolución como los años anteriores:

“Durante más de 50 años, Estados Unidos ha aplicado una política destinada a aislar al Gobierno de Cuba. Desde hace más de un cuarto de siglo, los miembros de las Naciones Unidas han votado de modo unánime a favor de la resolución […] que condena el embargo de Estados Unidos. […] En vez de aislar a Cuba, […] nuestra política ha aislado a Estados Unidos, incluso en el seno de las Naciones Unidas. Hoy, Estados Unidas optará por la abstención. Es otro paso modesto y esperamos que habrá otros muchos para poner fin al embargo americano”.[3]

Esta votación histórica se enmarca en la continuidad de las medidas que ha adoptado Barack Obama desde el restablecimiento del diálogo con La Habana el 17 de diciembre de 2014. Desde esa fecha, la Casa Blanca procedió a la liberación de tres presos políticos cubanos y retiró a Cuba de la lista de países patrocinadores del terrorismo. También anunció varias veces –seis en total– parsimoniosas reducciones de las sanciones económicas, aunque su alcance sigue siendo muy limitado. Así, desde hace dos años, la administración demócrata reanudó las relaciones diplomáticas con Cuba, procedió a la reapertura de una embajada en La Habana, restableció los vuelos comerciales directos entre ambos países, amplió las categorías (12 en total) de ciudadanos estadounidenses autorizados a viajar a Cuba y dio su acuerdo para algunas inversiones estadounidenses en la isla, particularmente en el campo de las telecomunicaciones. La visita histórica de Barack Obama a Cuba en marzo de 2016 consagró esta nueva era para las relaciones entre La Habana y Washington.

Las últimas medidas se anunciaron el 14 de octubre de 2016, o sea dos semanas antes de la votación en las Naciones Unidas, y permiten, entre otros, a los ciudadanos estadounidenses autorizados a viajar a Cuba que traigan ron y tabaco cubanos sin límite de cantidad. No obstante, Washington prohíbe todavía la importación clásica de estos mismos productos en el mercado estadounidense. Del mismo modo, Barack Obama anunció en marzo de 2016 que en adelante Cuba podría usar el dólar para sus transacciones internacionales. Más de seis meses después de este anuncio, La Habana todavía no ha podido realizar intercambios en moneda estadounidense, por el temor de los bancos internacionales de ser sancionados por el Departamento del Tesoro de Estados Unidos.[4]

El Gobierno cubano, mediante su ministro de Relaciones Exteriores Bruno Rodríguez, saludó el gesto de Barack Obama. No obstante, recordó que las sanciones económicas aún seguían vigentes:

“Sin embargo, el bloqueo económico, comercial y financiero persiste, provoca daños al pueblo cubano y obstaculiza el desarrollo económico del país. […] No hay familia cubana ni sector en el país que no sufra sus efectos: en la salud, la educación, la alimentación, en los servicios, los precios de los productos, en los salarios y las pensiones. […] Por su marcado carácter extraterritorial, el bloqueo también afecta directamente a todos los Estados miembros de las Naciones Unidas”.[5]

Ninguna administración ha ido tan lejos en la normalización de las relaciones con Cuba como la de Barack Obama. No obstante, mientras que su último mandato llega a su fin, el presidente de Estados Unidos no ha usado sus prerrogativas como jefe del poder ejecutivo para desmantelar la red de sanciones económicas contra Cuba. En efecto, la Casa Blanca podría por ejemplo restablecer el comercio bilateral entre las empresas estadounidenses y cubanas, autorizar las inversiones estadounidenses en Cuba y permitir que Cuba adquiera productos no alimenticios a crédito en el mercado de Estados Unidos. Los sectores que dependen de una decisión del Congreso son limitados y pueden ser esquivados por el poder ejecutivo.

Desde su imposición desde hace más de medio siglo, las sanciones económicas han costado 125.000 millones de dólares a la economía cubana y constituyen el principal obstáculo al desarrollo de la isla. Representan una grave violación del Derecho Internacional y suscitan el oprobio de la comunidad internacional que expresó otra vez su oposición a las medidas de coerción impuestas a la población civil. Su levantamiento es indispensable a la normalización de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos.

 Salim Lamrani

Université de La Réunion

Doctor en Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos de la Universidad Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV, Salim Lamrani es profesor titular de la Universidad de La Reunión y periodista, especialista de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. Su último libro se titula Cuba, ¡palabra a la defensa!, Hondarribia, Editorial Hiru, 2016.

http://www.tiendaeditorialhiru.com/informe/336-cuba-palabra-a-la-defensa.html

Contacto: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Página Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SalimLamraniOfficiel

El pasado viernes 28 de octubre, el Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Disputas entre Inversionistas Extranjeros y Estado (más conocido por sus siglas CIADI o en inglés ICSID) dio a conocer su decisión provisional con relación a la supuesta expropriación de varios terrenos ubicados cerca del Parque Nacional Las Baulas, Guanacaste, en Costa Rica en el caso Spence International Investments, LLC, Berkowitz, et Al (Demandantes) c. Costa Rica (Demandada), Caso CIADI No. UNCT/13/2. En su decisión, el tribunal arbitral del CIADI descarta 18 terrenos del examen y se reserva la posibilidad de declararse competente para los 8 restantes (ver texto completo de la decisión provisional del tribunal del CIADI en inglés y en español).

Esta primera decisión del CIADI no hace sino establecer una primera etapa procesal y reservar la eventual declaratoria de competencia del CIADI para 8 de los 26 terrenos inicialmente objeto de la demanda para otro momento procesal. El procedimiento continúa para estos 8 terrenos y la próxima decisión del CIADI resolverá, luego de oir a ambas partes (y examinar documentación aportada por ambas), si es o no competente. Algunos titulares de medios de prensa tales como “Costa Rica gana demanda sobre propiedades expropiadas para desarrollar Parque Nacional Marino las Baulas” utilizado en Elpais.cr, o bien “Costa Rica gana litigio por expropiación de parque Las Baulas en juicio al amparo del TLC” publicado en La Nación son incorrectos y arrojan una lectura errada de la decisión, cuyo texto está disponible de manera integral en el sitio oficial del CIADI. La agencia china de noticias Xinhua se hizo igualmente eco de este pretendido “gane” de Costa Rica en el título escogido por sus corresponsales (ver nota).

Sobre el término de “expropiación” usado por los demandantes y por algunos medios de prensa y analistas, es muy probable que algunos de estos terrenos no fueron “expropiados” (término usado cuando un terreno privado pasa a ser propiedad estatal) en la medida en que el Estado siempre permaneció como titular y propietario de estos según la legislación en vigor. La limitación de uso de suelo de un terreno a veces suele ser considerada ante el CIADI como equivalente a una expropiación. Se debe advertir al lector que, ante el CIADI así como ante otros órganos arbitrales, varios términos suelen usarse de manera impropia: por ejemplo, el rechazo de un Estudio de Impacto Ambiental (EIA) a una minera canadiense por parte de las autoridades de Costa Rica en el 2005 dió lugar a una demanda ante el CIADI por parte de la empresa Vanessa Ventures aduciendo una “nacionalización” de su proyecto minero. Notemos que esta demanda fue retirada por la empresa canadiense en octubre del 2005, sin que a la fecha de hoy se tenga mayor claridad sobre las “negociaciones” a las que se refirieron sus abogados al notificar el retiro de la demanda a la Secretaría del CIADI, en una carta con copia al entonces Ministro de Comercio Exterior, Manuel González Sánz y al entonces Embajador Tomás Dueñas Leiva (Nota 1).

En Guanacaste, así como en algunas otras partes de Costa Rica, inversionistas nacionales y extranjeros son a veces llevados a comprar terrenos que, por su ubicación, no pueden sino pertenecer al Estado (en su totalidad o de forma parcial); también se puede tratar de terrenos colindantes con la playa que cuentan con una serie de limitaciones con relación al uso de suelo, según la legislación vigente. Paralelamente a ello, presiones políticas dentro de las entidades públicas del Estado costarricense tendientes a favorecer a un determinado proyecto y a hacer a un lado la legislación ambiental vigente, culminan con actos administrativos del mismo Estado contradictorios con su propia reglamentación. Recordemos que en el 2007, la Secretaría Técnica Nacional del Ambiente (SETENA) fue “intervenida” por el titular de la cartera de Competitividad, para aplicar un ” bisturí ” a dicha entidad técnica ambiental (ver nota de El Financiero de noviembre del 2007). En un estudio que tuvimos la oportunidad de realizar para el Estado de la Nación sobre la extraña tendencia del Estado de desacatar sentencias ordenadas por sus propios tribunales en materia de recurso hídrico, se citaba a uno de los integrantes de la Comisión Plenaria de la SETENA de aquella época, quién afirmó públicamente a un medio de prensa uiversitario lo siguiente: “Entonces en nombre de la inversión extranjera ha habido presiones para que aceleremos los análisis, para que en esa “competitividad” saquemos proyectos con cierta premura, y con esto corremos el riesgo de que no se hagan los análisis debidamente, y por estas presiones creo que ahí pudimos haber tenido debilidades (sic.)” (p.18, nota 58).

Durante esta misma época en la que se promocionó una muy publicitada “Paz con la Naturaleza” (2006-2010), merece también mención un caso llevado al conocimiento del juez constitucional: el del Proyecto turístico Punta Cacique, declarado “de conveniencia nacional e interés público” por el Poder Ejecutivo. El juez constitucional, en el 2009, pareció aceptar la idea (a todas luces original) de galardonar proyectos privados con esta calidad con base en los estudios técnicos presentados por las entidades recurridas (Nota 2). Una decisión del tribunal contencioso administrativo (TCA) de noviembre del 2010 relacionada con un proyecto minero galardonado de igual forma por el Ejecutivo permitiría apreciar la seriedad de los estudios técnicos antes referidos (y la facilidad con la que la Sala Constitucional se deja a veces convencer).Remitimos al lector al texto completo de la decisión del TCA sobre el proyecto minero ubicado en Las Crucitas: por ejemplo en el punto IXX se lee que ” Como se ve, el ex Ministro Dobles Mora aportó, para ser presentado ante la Sala Constitucional (que fue inducida a error sobre el punto), un documento aparentemente científico en el que se expone como viable la intercepción del acuífero inferior, en el que se utiliza equivocadamente la noción de profundidad y una medida en metros bajo el nivel del suelo, cuando lo correcto científicamente, según lo narró el propio profesional que elaboró el documento (en lo cual coincide con el criterio expuesto por la geóloga Ana Sofía Huapaya Rodríguez-Parra y por el geólogo José Francisco Castro Muñoz), era indicar la elevación en metros sobre el nivel del mar “.

Con relación al Parque Marino Las Baulas, en este número de la Revista Ambientico dedicado a la problemática de este parque nacional, uno de los articulistas expresa que: “… en el área de playa Grande, donde se ubica prácticamente la totalidad del Parque Baulas, la Universidad de Costa Rica estableció lo que luego confirmó el Servicio Nacional de Riego y Avenamiento (Senara): la vulnerabilidad extrema del acuífero costero, lo que implica, conforme a la “Matriz de criterios de uso según la vulnerabilidad a la contaminación de acuíferos para la protección del recurso hídrico”, que el uso recomendado del suelo es únicamente la conservación absoluta. Ante esta realidad, y para evitar las consecuencias de la aplicación de esta herramienta de planificación y protección del agua subterránea, la Junta Directiva de Senara publicó –el último día hábil del año pasado- un aviso en un periódico de circulación nacional en el que niega la aplicación de tal Matriz al territorio nacional. Ante esto, la Sala Constitucional, como máximo fiscalizador de los abusos del poder, ordenó a dicha Junta el mantener los criterios de protección de aguas subterráneas que dicha Matriz contiene. A esta fecha, en Senara, pasando por encima de lo dicho por la Sala y al mejor estilo de las dictaduras modernas, está en ejecución una iniciativa de modificación de las reglas de protección de las aguas subterráneas. Por su parte, los peritos valuadores del Ministerio de Hacienda y los nombrados por los Tribunales de Justicia se niegan a considerar estos elementos condicionantes del uso del suelo que, me atrevo a afirmar, cambiarían radicalmente la conclusión económica de sus valuaciones y permitirían obtener, con menor esfuerzo, los fondos para la expropiación de la totalidad del territorio” (p. 6)

En este otro número especial de la Revista Ambientico dedicado de igual formal al Parque Marino de las Baulas, uno de los articulistas concluye su análisis indicando que: “Los antecedentes demuestran que el control, el seguimiento y la aplicación de planes de prevención ambiental en el país no son el fuerte de las autoridades y que más se actúa para corregir que para prevenir, de manera que si se continúa aplicando criterios errados para evaluar la importancia del Parque y si se permite el desarrollo a costa de impactar los ecosistemas naturales y la biodiversidad, estaremos en el preámbulo de una tendencia peligrosa, donde lo que la ciencia y la técnica no permiten cambiar la conveniencia política si lo hará” (p. 6).

LOS PRINCIPALES ALEGATOS DE CADA UNA DE LAS PARTES ANTE EL CIADI EN EL CASO “BAULAS 2”

A diferencia de un nacional descontento con el actuar del Estado (y que solamente puede optar por recurrir a tribunales nacionales), un propietario extranjero tiene a su disposición la posibilidad de demandar a Costa Rica ante un ente internacional como el CIADI. Para los especialistas en la materia, el caso de estos 26 terrenos aledaños al Parque Las Baulas es denominado “Baulas 2”. En efecto, en el 2012, Costa Rica fue condenada por el CIADI a pagar más de 4 millones de US$ a una pareja alemana por una demanda planteada en el 2008 referente a un terreno ubicado cerca de este mismo Parque Nacional, a raíz de diversas limitaciones para desarrollar un complejo eco-turístico. La demanda se amparó en el Tratado Bilateral de Inversiones (TBI) entre Costa Rica y Alemania, el cual contiene una cláusula muy favorable para el inversionista extranjero, al igual que los TBI de Costa Rica con Suiza, Paises Bajos y España, entre otros.

En esta segunda demanda, los inversionistas norteamericanos, invocando la letra del TLC entre Estados Unidos y Centroamérica (CAFTA-DR), alegaron ante los tres árbitros del CIADI la privación ilícita de sus inversiones inmobiliarias residenciales en 26 terrenos adyacentes a dos playas ubicadas en el Cantón de Santa Cruz, Guanacaste: Playa Grande y Playa Ventanas, localizadas ambas en la costa del Océano Pacífico. Según se lee en la decisión provisional del CIADI, “La cuestión objeto de debate consiste en determinar si, al momento de su compra, los terrenos se ubicaban total o parcialmente dentro del Parque Nacional Las Baulas (“el Parque”), establecido en aras de proteger no sólo la tortuga marina baula, sino también otras especies y recursos naturales, y si las Demandantes tenían conocimiento de las consecuencias expropiatorias de que las propiedades se encontraran dentro de los límites del Parque o deberían haberlo tenido. No es objeto de debate que las privaciones invocadas surgen del desarrollo del Parque. Las Demandantes no cuestionan el derecho soberano de Costa Rica de expropiar tierras por causa de un propósito público. Sin embargo, primero, alegan que Costa Rica no “proporcion[ó] una indemnización pronta y adecuada por sus expropiaciones de facto y de jure”, contrariamente al Artículo 10.7 del CAFTA3 . [Traducción del Tribunal] Segundo, argumentan que Costa Rica no brindó “acceso a los medios administrativos y/o judiciales necesarios para la revisión inmediata de su expropiación de facto de ciertos segmentos de los lotes” en cuestión“.

Por su parte, se lee que para Costa Rica, según se desprende del mismo texto de la decisión del CIADI: “7. Costa Rica se opone a la jurisdicción del Tribunal sobre la base del fundamento de que las Demandantes no iniciaron el procedimiento dentro del plazo de prescripción de tres años del CAFTA en virtud del Artículo 10.18.1 del CAFTA y/o de que las presuntas violaciones tuvieron lugar con anterioridad a la entrada en vigor del CAFTA entre Costa Rica y los Estados Unidos el 1 de enero de 2009. No se presentó solicitud de bifurcación alguna, y las cuestiones jurisdiccionales se plantearon junto con las cuestiones de fondo. 8. En materia de fondo, Costa Rica alega que las Demandantes “tenían conocimiento de que sus propiedades, o algunas de sus partes, estaban sujetas a expropiación, tal como disponía la ley que creaba el Parque, o deberían haberlo tenido” y que, en la medida en que alguna propiedad haya sido expropiada, “no se ha tratado de una expropiación sin indemnización”. [Traducción del Tribunal] Asimismo, Costa Rica rechaza la alegación de las Demandantes de que “no ha garantizado el debido proceso legal, mucho menos de manera de alcanzar el nivel de violación de la disposición de trato justo y equitativo [del CAFTA]”. [Traducción del Tribunal]”

Figura con ubicación del Parque Nacional Las Baulas, extraída de artículo de prensa de La Nación sobre esta decisión del CIADI, y titulado (de forma errónea) “Costa Rica gana litigio por expropiación de parque Las Baulas en juicio al amparo del TLC” 

DECISIÓN PROVISIONAL DADA A CONOCER POR EL CIADI

En su decisión provisional, los tres arbitros establecen, por unanimidad, que:

“1. El Tribunal concluye que carece de jurisdicción para entender en las reclamaciones de las Demandantes respecto de los Lotes B1, A39, C71, C96, SPG3, V30, V31, V32, V33, V38, V39, V40, V46, V47, V59, V61a, V61b y V61c.

2. El Tribunal concluye que carece de jurisdicción para entender en las reclamaciones de las Demandantes respecto de los Lotes A40, B3, B8, SPG1 y SPG2 salvo en cuanto a las alegaciones de las Demandantes de que, por vía de referencia a las sentencias pertinentes y aplicables de los tribunales costarricenses, el cálculo de la indemnización respecto de los Lotes B3, B8, A40, SPG1 y SPG2 constituye un supuesto de arbitrariedad manifiesta y/o injusticia evidente contrario al Artículo 10.5 del CAFTA.

3. El Tribunal concluye que las Partes deberían tener la oportunidad de ser escuchadas respecto de la cuestión que consiste en determinar si el Tribunal goza de jurisdicción para entender en las alegaciones por parte de las Demandantes de violación del Artículo 10.5 del CAFTA por vía de referencia a las sentencias pertinentes y aplicables de los tribunales costarricenses dictadas con posterioridad al día 10 de junio de 2013 en cuanto a los Lotes B5, B6 y B7.

4. Las actuaciones aplicables a los procedimientos adicionales se reservan a la decisión oportuna del Tribunal, previa consulta a las Partes”.

(ver texto completo de la decisión provisional del tribunal del CIADI en inglés y en español).

EL PRECEDENTE DEL CASO “BAULAS 1”

En el caso “Baulas 1” o caso Unglaube contra Costa Rica (ARB /09/1 y ARB 09/20), el reclamo de dos ciudadanos alemanes (Marion y Reinhard Unglaube) se basó en el hecho que, al verse imposibilitados de desarrollar en Playa Grande un proyecto de condominios de turismo ecológico debido a las restricciones de uso de suelo y limitaciones de carácter ambiental existentes, se les debía reconocer una indemnización, en particular en relación a los 75 m. de franja marítima. La finca fue adquirida por una sociedad panameña en 1987 de la que eran socios los esposos Unglaube, y los inversionistas alemanes consideraron ser objeto de una expropiación, reclamando el pago de una indemnización por parte de Costa Rica evaluada en 5.190.000 US$. En su decisión del 16 de mayo del 2012, el CIADI condenó a Costa Rica a pagar 3.100.000 US$, así como intereses sumando en total 4.085.900 US$ (ver nota de prensa de La Nación).

Es de notar que se lee en un informe de la Contraloria General de la República (CGR) del año 2010 ( ver texto del Informe DFOE DFOE-PGAA-IF-3-2010 con fecha del 26 de febrero del 2010, p. 25) que: “Los valores asignados por la ATP a los terrenos que se encuentran dentro de los límites del Parque Nacional Marino Baulas, muestran un incremento significativo en los precios asignados a 31 propiedades que fueron valoradas en el año 2008, en contraste con el costo determinado a 24 terrenos de características semejantes, cuyos valores fueron estimados durante el período comprendido entre los años 2005 y 2007. Al respecto, se tiene que el valor por metro cuadrado de un terreno con un área aproximada de 1000 m 2 alcanzó en el año 2005 un monto promedio de ₡20.315,12/m2, mientras que en el año 2008 el valor para dicho terreno asciende a ₡187.354,55/m 2, lo cual representa un aumento del 822%“. A raiz de este informe de la CGR, parte del proceso de expropiación fue suspendido por autoridades a cargo del ambiente (SINAC). No se ha oido, a la fecha, de alguna investigación interna ni de sanciones a funcionarios del Ministerio de Hacienda responsables de esta extraña manera de evaluar terrenos en esa zona.

Esta inusual sobrevaloración del precio del metro cuadrado del mismo Estado contraviene con indicaciones sobre restricciones al uso de suelo de todo tipo, varias de ellas debido a la presencia de un acuífero muy vulnerable en la zona aledaña al Parque Nacional de Las Baulas. Precisamente, en la página 31 de este mismo informe de la CGR del año 2010, se indica que. “Empero, es menester resaltar que la condición de vulnerabilidad de los terrenos del PNMB, no obedece a eventos ocurridos después de la fecha de las valoraciones efectuadas por la ATP, sino que se trata de circunstancias inherentes a esa zona, las cuales, si bien fueron retomadas por el SENARA en el oficio de previa cita, ya habían sido señaladas por esa misma entidad en documentos emitidos en años anteriores, como por ejemplo, en el estudio denominado “Evaluación del potencial y demanda hídrica subterránea en el acuífero costero Huacas – Tamarindo, Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, Costa Rica”, de mayo de 2003, así como en el oficio No. ASUB-476-06 del 23 de Noviembre de 2006. Asimismo, se debe indicar que se conoce de informes emitidos por la Escuela de Geología de la Universidad de Costa Rica y de la “Comisión Baulas”, de la Iniciativa Paz con la Naturaleza, los cuales también han concluido en señalamientos categóricos acerca de la situación de vulnerabilidad en la zona del PNMB. Así las cosas, no resulta aceptable lo indicado por el Área de Valoraciones de la DGT, siendo que desde el año 2003 se tienen estudios acerca de la vulnerabilidad de la zona, aunado a que las condiciones restrictivas que predominan en ese sector ya habían sido, en alguna medida, identificadas por los propios peritos de la ATP, al haber catalogado el uso del suelo como de categoría 7, sin que las variables respectivas se tomaran posteriormente en cuenta como parte de las estimaciones realizadas“.

En un artículo en francés publicado en el 2009 por el jurista costarricense Edgar Fernández Fernández, titulado “Conflits d’usage des espaces naturels au Costa Rica” se lee, a propósito del Parque Marino de Las Baulas, que los diputados de la Asamblea Legislativa también se mostraron extremadamente sensibles a los intentos de algunos propietarios de evitar la adquisición por parte del Estado de sus terrenos. Nos situamos antes de la sobrevaloración detectada en el 2010 por la CGR, pero que puede explicar en parte lo que ocurriría luego con el valor del metro cuadrado en esa precisa zona de la costa Pacífica:”Dans le cas spécifique du Parc national marin Las Baulas de Guanacaste, les propriétaires ont essayé par tous les moyens d’éviter l’acquisition publique, car ils craignent de ne pas pouvoir obtenir de l’Etat le même prix qu’ils recevraient s’ils vendaient leurs terrains sur le marché à des personnes désirant construire des maisons de vacances à quelques pas de la mer. La discussion s´est donc vite réduite à la question concernant le prix des terrains : les projets de loi présentés se fondent sur l’argument selon lequel l’Etat n’a pas les moyens financiers pour payer les prix exorbitants qu’il faudrait payer aux propriétaires de terrains dans le parc, et ce malgré le fait qu’aucune procédure d’expropriation en cours n’a encore arrêté un prix pour l’un des terrains concernés. Parmi les trois projets de loi présentés pour exclure les terrains privés du Parc, ceux présentés en 2008 n’ont pas été approuvés par l’Assemblée législative, tandis que celui présenté en 2009 s’annonce comme un projet décisif pour le futur des parcs nationaux au Costa Rica compte tenu du dangereux précédent qu’il pourrait ainsi créer“(p.9).

En uno de los diversos peritajes aportados por Costa Rica a los árbitros del CIADI en este caso de “Baulas 2”, el jurista costarricense Aldo Milano, especialista en derecho administrativo, precisa que la actuación del SINAC no debiera de ser cuestionada, desde la perspectiva del derecho público costarricense: “La decisión del SINAC de suspender algunos procedimientos administrativos durante el desarrollo de la investigación o auditoría que dió lugar al informe DFOE-PGAA-IF-3-2010 es legítima, y puede inlcuso deducirse de ese informe vinculante a título de acto implícito” (ver texto completo de este peritaje aportado por Costa Rica, punto 63, p. 21). Por su parte, una funcionaria de la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR), Gloria Solano Martínez, emitió ante los árbitros del CIADI un documento en el que defiende la legalidad de los actos de la PGR cuestionados por los demandantes (ver documento).

Con relación al tema más específico del valor de estos terrenos, resulta oportuno señalar que con en cuanto a los montos que adeuda Costa Rica de manera general por la creación de Parques Nacionales, se lee en este reportaje de junio del 2016 del Semanario Universidad que: “La mayoría de ese monto corresponde al pago de propiedad privada dentro del Parque Nacional Marino Las Baulas, donde el Sinac estima que debe pagar ¢859.000 millones por 305 hectáreas (aunque el Plan de Manejo del Parque señala que solo hay 242,38 hectáreas por comprar)“.

Finalmente, vale la penar recordar que el caso Unglaube que se planteo en el 2008 ante el CIADI fue uno de muchos terrenos en la zona que no fueron elevados en su momento a conocimiento del CIADI. En esta nota del año 2009 sobre el reclamo inicial de los Unglaube ante el CIADI contra Costa Rica, se lee que: “As reported previously by ITN, a year ago Mr. Unglaube’s wife filed a similar arbitration against Costa Rica, which is also pending at ICSID. The two own 50% shares in the company Uni Rana which owns the hotel complex at Playa Grande. Mrs. Unglaube’s arbitration alleges similar breaches of the Costa Rica-Germany Bilateral Investment Treaty, in relation to property she owns in the area including her 50% share in the hotel complex. Last year, counsel for Mrs. Unglaube told ITN that she was not the only investor to have been affected by restrictions on property development in the area around the marine park. More than 50 other properties are alleged to have been affected; however it is unknown how many of these are foreign owned“.

DE OTRAS DEMANDAS PENDIENTES CONTRA COSTA RICA ANTE EL CIADI

Además de esta nueva demanda relacionada a terrenos cercanos al Parque Nacional Las Baulas, Costa Rica enfrenta en la actualidad otros cuatro procedimientos ante el CIADI que se mencionarán muy brevemente a continuación:

1. la demanda interpuesta por la minera canadiense Infinito Gold por 94 millones de US$ en el 2014 (ver ficha técnica), amparada en el TBI Costa Rica-Canadá; 2. la demanda presentada por Cervin Investissements et Alii (subsidiaria de Gas Z) por 30 millones de US$ en el 2013 (ver ficha técnica), usando como base de competencia el TBI Costa Rica-Suiza; 3. la demanda presentada por Supervisión y Control SA (subsidiaria de RITEVE) en el 2012 por 262 millones de US$ (ver ficha técnica), recurriendo al TBI COsta Rica-España; y 4. la demanda presentada por David Aven y otros en el 2014 por un proyecto residencial en Playa Esterillos frenado por las autoridades, en la que se reclama un monto de 70 millones de US$ (ver ficha técnica), utilizando esta vez el CAFTA-DR. Varios de estos casos encuentran su origen en actos administrativos adoptados por el aparato estatal costarricense en el período 2006-2010 (Nota 3). Al momento de redactar estas líneas (28 de octubre del 2016), después de Venezuela (con 26) y de Argentina (con 18), Costa Rica es el Estado de América Latina con más demandas pendientes de resolución ante el CIADI, seguido luego por Perú (4), México y Panamá (3), y Ecuador (2).

A nivel global, de los 217 casos pendientes registrados, España en la actualidad es el Estado con mayor cantidad de demandas en espera de ser resueltas: supera a Venezuela, acumulando un total de 27 demandas (ver recuadro oficial del CIADI). En su gran mayoría, estas demandas se originan en recortes al presupuesto estatal decididos en el 2015 en materia de ayudas estatales a proyectos de energías renovables. Como detalle un tanto curioso en la región centroamericana, de las tres demanas que enfrenta Panamá en estos momentos, una fue presentada por quién hoy ostenta el cargo de Presidente de la Asamblea Legislativa de Costa Rica (caso Alvarez y Marín Corporación S.A. y otros c. Panamá, ver ficha técnica).

Como otro detalle un tanto inusual, al uso de términos improprios antes señalado por parte de algunos demandantes ante el CIADI, el caso David Aven y otros contra Costa Rica dió recientemente lugar a una contestación de los demandantes en los que se aprecia una serie de improperios dignos de citar por parte de los abogados contratados por los inversionistas extranjeros: “Quitando toda la alharaca del Escrito de defensa del Demandado, es incuestionable que los Demandantes obtuvieron de los diversos organismos competentes de Costa Rica todos los permisos relevantes para realizar este proyecto, y que dichos permisos fueron retirados poco después de iniciarse el proceso de construcción del proyecto. Los Demandantes están muy lejos de ser los necios irresponsables descritos en el Escrito de defensa: adoptaron todas las medidas para asegurarse de disponer todo lo necesario para el proyecto y, minuciosos y prudentes como son, contrataron a los mejores expertos para desarrollar el proyecto. 8. En su desesperación por evitar la responsabilidad por las demandas presentadas en este arbitraje, esencialmente el Demandado alega que estaba facultado para retirar los permisos sobre la base de que (a) el emplazamiento de Las Olas es ecológicamente importante y sensible debido a la presencia de humedales y bosques, y de que (b) los Demandantes omitieron cumplir sus obligaciones para con las leyes de Costa Rica. Analizándolos, la totalidad de los argumentos del Demandado son erróneos, y claramente erróneos. Los Demandantes han evaluado todos los puntos alegados por el Demandado y pueden afirmar que ninguno de ellos resiste una comprobación objetiva” (escrito de contestación, 5 de Agosto del 2016, p. 4, texto integral disponible aquí)

LOS GASTOS QUE ASUME UN ESTADO ANTE UNA DEMANDA DEL CIADI

A finales del año 2010, se pudo escuchar en la Asamblea Legislativa (ver acta del 23/11/2010, p. 32, intervención del Diputado José María Villalta ) que dentro del presupuesto nacional de Costa Rica, un aumento significativo respondía a necesidades urgentes de los servicios jurídicos del Ministerio de Comercio Exterior (COMEX): “Cuarenta y nueve coma tres por ciento creció la partida de Servicios jurídicos del Cómex, y dicen que son recursos necesarios para atender —oigan bien, señoras y señores— los procesos de arbitrajes internacionales que nuestro país debe afrontar en el marco de los diferentes tratados comerciales y de inversión vigentes, y se incluye un presupuesto —oigan bien, es que esto es importante— de mil trescientos cuarenta y cuatro millones solo para el pago de asesorías en casos comerciales para enfrentar procesos de arbitraje ante el Ciadi, el Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Diferencia relativas a Inversiones, siendo que actualmente hay tres casos, nada más tres casos, mil trescientos millones, tres casos ante el Ciadi, que es este organismo de arbitraje internacional que administra el Banco Mundial, donde se ha disparado el rubro para atender estos arbitrajes. Y se incluyen ciento cincuenta y siete millones para contratar asesores externos, abogados, porque estos juicios se llevan afuera, se dan fuera del territorio costarricense“.

En un artículo del Semanario Universidad del 2013, se indicó que para COMEX, “Independientemente de que este arbitraje prospere o no, el proceso de defensa le costará al país entre 1 y 1.5 millones de dólares, informó la oficina de prensa del Comex“. En una comparecencia realizada en setiembre del 2014, el actual titular del Comercio Exterior externó que: “Lo que sucede es que los procesos arbitrales tienen muchas etapas, para el 2015 sumamos cinco casos, antes los teníamos en etapas iniciales. Esta situación nos genera un aumento en lo que es la contratación de servicios jurídicos en un 100%” (ver nota de la Extra).

Estas y otras aseveraciones sobre montos invitan a la reflexión, en la medida en que para especialistas en materia de arbitraje de inversiones, cada demanda ante el CIADI significa para el erario público de un Estado un gasto de unos 8 millones de US$ para asegurar su defensa ante los árbitros del CIADI (el cual incluye, además de los honorarios de firmas de abogados, estudios, peritajes, viajes y per diem en Washington, gastos secretariales, traducciones, certificaciones, elaboración de mapas, salarios de funcionarios dedicados a tiempo completo o parcial a coordinar dicha defensa, etc…). Una demanda ante el CIADI dura, si no hay incidentes procesales mayores que atrasen el procedimiento, cuatro años como mínimo. En esta nota de CRHoy del 2014, se lee que: “El abogado especialista en derecho internacional Juan José Obando afirmó que los montos pagados por el Gobierno son bajos para parámetros internacionales. El experto mencionó que un estudio de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Comercio y Desarrollo (Unctad) determinó en $8 millones el costo de la defensa legal por un caso“. No obstante, en el largo caso Pacific Rim que enfrentó El Salvador en el CIADI (demanda inicialmente planteada por 314 millones de US$ por una empresa minera canadiense, ahora en manos de un consorcio minero australiano), se leyó recientemente que el monto en honorarios de abogados superaba los 12 millones de US$ (ver nota de prensa titulada “Arbitraje con Pacific Rim ha costado al Estado $12.6 millones”). En otro extenso caso de la empresa minera canadiense Crystallex contra Venezuela, cuya decisión se dio a conocer en abril del 2016 (ver texto del fallo en su versión española), Venezuela reconoció haber gastado en honorarios de abogados la suma de 14.322.826 US$ (punto 950 del fallo), mientras que la empresa minera indicó haber gastado 30.493.635 US$ (punto 949 del fallo). . En el caso de una demanda presentada ante el CIADI en el 2004 por la minera canadiense Vanessa Ventures contra Venezuela por 1.045 millones de US$ debido a la suspensión del proyecto minero Las Cristinas en 1999, se determinó (ver párrafo 235 del fallo del CIADI a favor de Venezuela con fecha de diciembre del 2012, texto en español) que Venezuela y la empresa gastaron ambos 20 millones de US$ en su defensa. Por estas (y por algunas otras razones) es que se puede tener algunas reservas con relación a los módicos montos de Costa Rica dados a conocer en documentos oficiales recientes sobre el costo que representan estas demandas que enfrenta ante el CIADI (Nota 4).

Una reciente tesis de grado de la Facultad de Derecho de la UCR (ver texto completo) titulada “El formato de defensa utilizado por Costa Rica en conflictos dirimidos ante el CIADI” señala algunas diferencias en los montos correspondientes a las contrataciones de firmas de abogados norteamericanas: “En los casos de Marion y Reinhard Hans Unglaube, expedientes 2008CD-001500- 79600 y 000204-79600, se contrató también a Sidley Austin LLP por la suma de $850.000,00 y $260.000,00, que podrían tomarse como precio unitario equivalente a la suma de ¢555.000.000 ya que la contratación del caso de Reinhard se realizó a través de un addendum en el cual se modificó el contrato original con Marion Unglaube.  En el caso Quadrant Pacific Growth Fund L.P. and Canasco Holdings Inc., expediente 2008CD-001500-79600, se contrató por tercera vez a Sidley Austin LLP por la suma de $750.000 equivalente a la suma de ¢375.000.000.  En el caso de Supervisión y Control S.A., expediente 2012CD-000006-79600, se contrató a la firma Arnold & Porter LLP, por la suma de $1.399.000,00, equivalente a la suma de ¢699.500.000.  Por último, en el caso de Cervin Investissements S.A. and Rhone Investissements S.A., expediente 2013CD-000018-79600, se contrató a la firma Baker Botts (UK)LLP por la suma de $1.250.000,00 equivalente a la suma de ¢625.000.000” (pp.141-142).

 

A MODO DE CONCLUSIÓN

Tuvimos la oportunidad de analizar la solicitud de Costa Rica de poner fin al procedimiento ante el CIADI en el 2015 con relación a la demanda de la minera Infinito Gold (ver artículo publicado en el OPALC): se trata de una gestión que no surtió mayores efectos ya que el procedimiento se mantuvo por decisión del los árbitros. En el caso de la demanda presentada por una subisidiaria de RITEVE contra Costa Rica en el año 2012, las afirmaciones del Ejecutivo son dignas de mencionar: se pudo leer en el Diario La Extra (edición del 16/06/2012) que el viceministro del MOPT, Rodrigo Rivera, «explicó que para el Estado era más barato permitirle a Riteve quedarse operando 10 años más y de esta manera asegurarse no tener que pagar los $280 millones si perdía el arbitraje»: el contrato de concesión por 10 años más fue reconducido por Costa Rica en el 2012, y la demanda se mantiene pendiente de resolución en el registro oficial del CIADI al 2016.

Nicolas Boeglin

Nota 1: Cuando la empresa antecesora a cargo del proyecto minero en Las Crucitas, Vanessa Ventures, demandó a Costa Rica en el año 2005 (debido a la no aprobación del estudio de impacto ambiental por parte de la SETENA) lo hizo por un monto de 276 millones de US$(ver  nota de La Nación). En una carta con fecha del 3 de octubre del 2005 (ver  texto completo), la empresa minera retiró formalmente su demanda aduciendo estar en negociaciones con el gobierno de Costa Rica de la época. Al haber la SETENA dos meses después (diciembre del 2005) aprobado el Estudio de Impacto Ambiental que había rechazado anteriormente, la expresión “reasonably optimistic” mencionada por la empresa en esta carta de octubre del 2005 adquiere particular significado. A la fecha, se desconoce quiénes en nombre del Estado “negociaron” con la empresa en el 2005 y cuál fue el objeto de dichas negociaciones.

Nota 2: En la decisión del 2009 en la que rechaza un recurso de inconstitucionalidad contra el Decreto que declara de conveniencia nacional dicho proyecto, el juez constitucional precisa que: ” En esa virtud, la Sala no puede levantarse como un contralor de legalidad, y venir a determinar la procedencia, veracidad y legalidad del contenido de los estudios técnicos agregados al expediente, ni tampoco, señalarle a las autoridades accionadas, cuáles eran los análisis o la investigación más adecuada para sostener la viabilidad de este tipo de declaratorias, pues eso tendría como consecuencia el que esta sede se inmiscuyera e interviniera en el seno de sus prerrogativas, y sobre todo, de su especialidad. Asimismo, se verificó que con la puesta en práctica de esta normativa, no se van a entorpecer las funciones que por ley le corresponden a las entidades municipales, o a los órganos que velan por la salud y el ambiente, pues la petición de permisos ante los trabajos que en ese proyecto se efectúen, deben contar con las autorizaciones correspondientes – ver artículo 3 del Decreto -. Agréguese a lo dicho que, como la consecuencia inmediata del reclamo del recurrente, derivó en la tan mencionada falta de fundamentación del acto, ello también es un tema que, si a bien lo tiene el petente, puede reclamar haciendo uso de los remedios ordinarios que existen al respecto“.

Nota 3: Con relación a declarar de interés nacional proyectos privados, remitimos al lector a estas conclusiones de un foro académico realizado en la UCR en el 2009 titulado “Técnicas para evadir la legislación ambiental: el caso del MINAET“: ver nota del Semanario Universidad.

Nota 4: Se lee en la solicitud de modificación presupuestaria para el 2013 presentada por el Ministerio de Hacienda de Costa Rica (ver texto) que: “Al Ministerio de Comercio Exterior se le asignan recursos para atender aspectos relacionados con la defensa de los intereses comerciales del Estado, por un monto de ¢332,4 millones para el Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Diferencias Relativas a Inversión (CIADI), para la atención de los siguientes casos:  Supervisión y Control S.A. vs República de Costa Rica (Caso CIADI No. ARB/12/4).  Cervin Investissements S.A. y Rhone Investissements S.A. vs República de Costa Rica (Caso CIADI No. ARB/13/2) y,  Spence Internacional Investments y Berkowitz vs República de Costa Rica, referente a la expropiación de las propiedades ubicadas en el Parque Nacional Marino Las Baulas en Playa Grande, Guanacaste” (p. 21).

 

This important article was first published by Global Research in November 2004 in relation to the 2004 presidential race.

A ‘president’ who takes office through fraud and usurpation can make no legitimate claim to exercise the stolen power of his office.

Imagine the sensation that would have ensued if a United States Senator had declared, less than three weeks after the 2004 U.S. presidential election, that “It is now apparent that a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or co-operation of governmental authorities.” The story would have made banner headlines around the world.

As a matter of fact, on November 22, 2004, BBC News attributed these very words to Republican Senator Richard Lugar. However, Lugar was speaking in his capacity as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee—and he was referring, not to the U.S. presidential election of November 2, but to the Ukrainian presidential election of November 21, 2004.

The primary evidence for Lugar’s charge of electoral fraud is a striking divergence between exit poll data and official vote tallies. As it happens, wide divergences of just this kind have also been a feature of two other important recent elections: the Venezuelan recall referendum over President Chávez’s mandate held on August 15, as well as the U.S. presidential election of November 2. In all three cases there is substantial evidence of fraud—though the dishonesty appears to be very differently distributed. In brief: the Venezuelan election was clean and the exit poll flagrantly dishonest; the Ukrainian vote tallies and exit polling seem both to have been in various ways corrupted; the American election, despite the Bush Republicans’ pose as international arbiters of integrity, was manifestly stolen, while the U.S. exit polling was professionally conducted (and though it was subsequently tampered with, accurate results had in the mean time been made public).

Hugo Chávez’s landslide victory in August was a surprise only to the hostile U.S. corporate press, which had represented the Venezuelan election campaign as a dead heat: the last opinion poll prior to the referendum in fact showed Chávez leading by a wide margin, with 50 percent of registered voters to the opposition’s 38 percent. In the official tally, Chávez won 58.26 percent of the votes, while 41.74 percent were cast against him. International observers, including the Organization of American States and the Carter Center, declared that the election had been fair: in ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s words, “any allegations of fraud are completely unwarranted” (see Rosnick).

But on election day the leading New York polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland disgraced itself by releasing (before the polls closed, and hence in violation of Venezuelan law) a purportedly authoritative exit poll, with a claimed margin of error “under +/-1%,” according to which Chávez had been defeated, gaining a mere 41 percent of the vote to the opposition’s 59 percent. The exit polling, it emerged, had been conducted—though not in Chavista neighbourhoods, where the pollsters did not venture (Gindin [15 Aug. 2004])—by an opposition group named Súmate, which had been formed to agitate for a recall referendum, and whose leadership had been implicated in the 2002 anti-Chávez coup. Súmate appears to have been largely funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has been aptly described as “the CIA’s ‘civilian arm’” (Chossudovsky [28 Nov. 2004]), and by the CIA itself (see “Súmate”); in the period leading up to the election, Venezuelan opposition groups like Súmate received altogether more than $20 million from the U.S., including over $3 million funneled through the NED (see www.venezuelafoia ). As had been understood prior to the event (see Stinard [10 Aug. 2004]), fraudulent exit polling was part of a concerted U.S.-backed project of delegitimizing and destabilizing the government of a geopolitically important oil-producing nation. Had the election been less of a landslide, and had it not been conducted with what appears to have been scrupulous correctness, the plan might have succeeded.

Ukraine is likewise recognized as a country of pivotal geopolitical importance (see Aslund [12 May 2004], Chin [26 Nov. 2004], and Oliker); it is a key element in the U.S.’s Silk Road Strategy for domination of central Asia (see Chossudovsky, War and Globalization, pp. 65-75). Here the election results were much closer, and have been more vigorously contested. Viktor Yanukovych, the candidate favoured by Ukraine’s Russian neighbours, was declared the winner, with 49.4 percent of the vote to the Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko’s 46.7 percent. But Yushchenko and his party—supported by a growing chorus of Western commentators and governments—have cried foul.

While the Ukrainian exit poll figures publicized in the Western media do support claims of electoral fraud, the exit polls themselves are not above suspicion. The most widely disseminated claim has been that an authoritative exit poll showed Yushchenko to have won the election with a 6 percent lead; Yanukovych’s governing party would thus have stolen the election, fraudulently swinging the vote by 8.7 percent. According to better-informed reports, however, two distinct exit polls were conducted. One of these, organized by the right-wing U.S. think-tank Freedom House and the U.S. Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute (NDI), and carried out by the Kyiv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (see Vasovic), perhaps as part of a group calling itself the Exit Pollconsortium (see Kubiniec), found that Yushchenko won 54 percent of the vote to Yanukovych’s 43 percent. (It may be this poll that is referred to by the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Public Opinion and Democracy in its claim that “an exit poll conducted by independent research firms” showed Yushchenko to have won by 54 to 42 percent.) The other national exit poll, based on interviews rather than questionnaires, was conducted by Sotsis Company and the Social Monitoring Center, and gave Yushchenko 49.4 percent of the vote to Yanukovych’s 45.9 percent.

It is not my purpose to attempt an unraveling of the complexities of the Ukrainian election. The British Helsinki Human Rights Group has challenged the validity of the exit polls, claiming that in at least one city the exit pollsters were open Yushchenko supporters, and did not observe proper methodological protocols (see “Ukraine: 2nd Round”). While Western observers have reported major irregularities in the government’s conduct of the election, Michel Chossudovsky and Ian Traynor have on the other hand adduced strong evidence of interventions in the Ukrainian electoral process by U.S. governmental and quasi-governmental agencies that resemble the same agencies’ interventions in Serbia, Georgia, Belarus, and Venezuela. The voter turnout figures of 96 percent recorded in Yanukovych strongholds in eastern Ukraine are strongly indicative of fraud; so likewise may be “the 90% pro-Yushchenko results declared in western Ukraine,” where the British Helsinki Group observed that Yushchenko’s opposition party “exercised disproportionate control over the electoral process in many places.” I would like merely to suggest that the interview-based exit poll which gave Yushchenko a 3.5 percent lead over Yanukovych—and hence indicated an irregular swing of 6.2 percent in the latter’s favour—is more likely to have been properly conducted than the exit poll which was organized by Freedom House and the NDI, and which may well have been marked by Súmate-type improprieties.

Let us turn to the American presidential election, where the same kind of data has encouraged similar suspicions—though thanks to the soothing ministrations of the U.S. corporate media, with nothing resembling the massive public outcry in Ukraine. George W. Bush was hailed the winner on November 2, with 51 percent of the vote to John Kerry’s 48 percent. But there are good reasons to be skeptical of the official vote tallies. The last wave of national exit polls published on the evening of November 2—polls which appear to have been duly weighted to correct for sampling imbalances—showed Kerry, not Bush, leading by 51 to 48 percent (see ‘Mystery Pollster’). A divergence of 6 percent between weighted exit polls and the official numbers is a strong indicator of electoral fraud.

At the decisive point, moreover, the divergence between the exit poll results and the vote tally was wider still (see S. Freeman [21 Nov. 2004]). Prior to the election, political analysts identified Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as the three key swing states: the candidate who carried these states, or a majority of them, would win the election.

Bush won Florida, with 52.1 percent of the vote to Kerry’s 47.1 percent. (This tally, by the way, diverges by 4.9 percent in Bush’s favour from the state exit poll, which gave Bush a paper-thin 0.1 percent lead.) Kerry won Pennsylvania, with 50.8 percent of the vote to Bush’s 48.6 percent. (Here again the vote tally differs in Bush’s favour from the exit poll results—this time by 6.5 percent.)

That left Ohio as the deciding state, the one on which the national election results depended. George W. Bush won Ohio, according to the official vote tally, with 51 percent of the vote to John Kerry’s 48.5 percent. The divergence in this case between the vote tally and the exit poll, which showed Kerry as winning by 52.1 percent to Bush’s 47.9 percent, is fully 6.7 percent.

Is it possible that these three divergences in Bush’s favour between exit polls and vote tallies could have occurred by chance? I wouldn’t bet on it. Dr. Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Organizational Dynamics has calculated that the odds against these statistical anomalies occurring by chance are 662,000 to 1 (S. Freeman [21 Nov. 2004]).

Or are exit polls perhaps just not as reliable as people think? Dr. Freeman has an answer to this question as well. In the last three national elections in Germany, the differential between the exit polls and the vote tallies was, on average, 0.27 percent; and in the last three elections to the European Parliament, the differential in Germany was 0.44 percent (S. Freeman [21 Nov. 2004]). Professionally conducted exit polls are highly accurate—which is why they have been used (in some cases more honestly than in Venezuela and Ukraine) as a measure of electoral integrity in places where improprieties have been anticipated. The U.S. exit polls were conducted by Mitofsky International, a survey research company founded by Warren J. Mitofsky, who as the company’s website proclaims “created the Exit Poll research model” and “has directed exit polls and quick counts since 1967 for almost 3,000 electoral contests. He has the distinction of conducting the first national presidential exit polls in the United States, Russia, Mexico and the Philippines. His record for accuracy is well known” (see “National Election Pool”).

The fact that Mitofsky International systematically altered the U.S. presidential exit poll data early on the morning of November 3, contaminating the exit poll figures by conflating them with the vote tally percentages, has quite rightly become a matter of controversy (see Keefer [5 Nov. 2004], and Olbermann, “Zogby Vs. Mitofsky”). But there seems no reason to doubt that the Mitofsky exit poll data made available by the CNN website on the evening of November 2 was professionally gathered.

Mightn’t one propose, as a last resort, that Bush’s election-winning divergence of 6.7 percent between the Ohio exit poll results and the Ohio vote tally was, at any rate, somewhat less scandalous than the 13.7 percent swing Yanukovych’s party was blamed for by the Freedom House-NDI exit poll? (Ignore, if you like, the lesser 6.2 percent swing indicated by the Sotsis and Social Monitoring exit poll—which, if accurate, shows the Freedom House-NDI poll to be skewed in Yushchenko’s favour by fully 7.5 percent.) But if stealing elections is like knocking off banks, the fact that one practitioner can dynamite the vault of the central bank and get away with it, while his less fortunate compeer draws unwanted attention by blowing out all of the windows of the neighbourhood Savings-and-Loan, doesn’t make the former any less a bank robber than the latter.

The parallels between the Ukrainian and the U.S. presidential elections extend beyond the exit poll divergences. Ballot-box stuffers appear to have achieved a 96 percent turnout in parts of eastern Ukraine, with turnout figures in some areas exceeding 100 percent. There is evidence of similar indiscretions on the part of Bush’s electoral fraud teams. Twenty-nine precincts in a single Ohio county reported more votes cast than there are registered voters—to a cumulative total of over 93,000 votes (see Rockwell). And in six Florida counties the total number of votes reported to have been cast exceeded by wide margins the total number of registered voters (see Newberry). Senator John McCain, manifesting the same stunning lack of irony as other Republican spokesmen, has weighed in on the issue: “IRI [the International Republican Institute] found that in a number of polling stations, the percentage of votes certified by the Central Election Commission exceeded 100% of total votes. This is simply disgraceful” (see “McCain”). McCain is of course referring to eastern Ukraine; when it comes to Florida or Ohio, he keeps his eyes wide shut.

The question of advance indications of electoral fraud offers a final point of comparison. In the United States, as in Ukraine (where international observers described the polls and vote-counts in previous elections as deeply flawed), electoral fraud was widely anticipated prior to the 2004 presidential election. As the materials itemized in the first three sections of this Reading List make clear, the electronic voting technologies in use in the U.S. were widely denounced by electronic security experts months and even years in advance, as permitting, indeed facilitating, electoral fraud; there is clear evidence that the 2000 election and the 2002 mid-term elections were marked by large-scale fraud on the part of the Bush Republicans; and U.S. computer scientists and informed analysts warned insistently that fraud on an unprecedented scale was likely to occur in this year’s election.

How has it been possible for the massive ironies arising out of the similarities between the elections in the U.S. and Ukraine to pass unobserved in the corporate media? Have the media been simple-mindedly buttering their bread on both sides? If so, it is a habit that makes for messy eating. On November 20, an article in The Washington Post informed those who might question the U.S. election that “Exit Polls Can’t Always Predict Winners, So Don’t Expect Them To” (Morin). Two days later, The Washington Post carried breaking news of the early election results from Ukraine—and quoted a purported election-stealer who holds exactly the same opinion of exit polls: “‘These polls don’t work,’ said Gennady Korzh, a spokesman for Yanukovych. ‘We will win by 3 to 5 percent. And remember, if Americans believed exit polls, and not the actual count, John Kerry would be president’” (see Finn).

Key Issues and Evidence of Electoral Fraud in the US

Mainstream media assessments of the integrity of the 2004 U.S. presidential election have tended to focus on particular and local problems—computer errors or ‘glitches’ for the most part—that came to light on the day of the election or shortly afterwards. Naturally enough, the fact that these problems were noticed, and in some cases corrected, works if anything to enhance public confidence in the integrity of the electoral system.

The stance of the mainstream media is inadequate in at least two respects. First, some of the ‘problems’ were not mere accidents, but open and flagrant violations of democratic principles. Prominent among these was the election-night ‘lockdown’ of the Warren County, Ohio administrative building, on wholly spurious grounds of a ‘terrorist threat’: as a result, the public, the press, and the local legal counsel for the Kerry-Edwards campaign were prevented from witnessing the vote count (see Solvig & Horn, and Olbermann [8 Nov. 2004]). This maneuver generated widespread outrage: Warren County’s Republicans may perhaps have ‘misoverestimated’ the degree to which previous conveniently timed ‘terror alerts’ and Osama bin Laden’s late-October Jack-in-the-Box act had tamed the electorate.

But more importantly, while ‘problems’ and ‘glitches’ have commonly been covered by the corporate media as local issues, they can be recognized as belonging to a larger pattern. As James Paterson’s compelling analysis of The Theft of the 2004 US Election makes clear, Republican intentions were evident well before the election. And as Joseph Cannon has remarked, “An individual problem can be dismissed as a glitch. But when error after error after error favors Bush and not a single ‘accident’ favors Kerry, we’ve left glitch-land.”

There is widespread evidence, which goes well beyond any mere accumulation of local problems, that “glitch-land” is indeed far behind us. The landscape to which the 2004 U.S. presidential election belongs includes the murky swamps of Tammany Hall-style election-fixing—and the still more sinister morasses of ‘Jim Crow’ as well.

It has been reported that Republican-controlled counties in Ohio and elsewhere sought to reduce the African-American vote by deliberately curtailing the numbers of polling stations and voting machines in working-class precincts: large numbers of would-be voters were effectively disenfranchised by line-ups that were many hours long (see Fitrakis [7, 16, 22 Nov. 2004]). The Republican Party’s purging of African Americans from voters’ lists gained the 2000 election for George W. Bush (see Conyers [21 Aug. 2001]); as informed observers had anticipated (Palast [1 Nov. 2004], King & Palast), this shameful illegality was repeated in 2004 on a wider scale. Large-scale polling-station challenges were used to further slow the voting, and to turn the new provisional ballots into a mechanism for effectively disenfranchising minority voters. In the swing state of Ohio this year, it appears that fully 155,000 voters—most of them African-Americans—were obliged as a result of polling-station challenges to cast provisional ballots (see Palast [12 Nov. 2004], Solnit). Although it is becoming clear that the great majority of these citizens were legally entitled to vote (see Williams), the likelihood that their votes will be fairly counted, or that Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell will permit them to be included in the official tally, remains slender. The effect of this Jim Crow mechanism appears to be compounded by racially-biased judgments of ballot spoilage. As Greg Palast reports, 54 percent of all ballots judged ‘spoiled’ in the 2000 election in Florida were cast by African-American voters, and similarly scandalous percentages are expected in key states this time round. Nor have African Americans been the sole victims of these tactics: it appears that in New Mexico, where Hispanics’ ballots are five times more likely to be laid aside as ‘spoiled’ than those of white voters, 13,000 Hispanics were effectively disenfranchised by means of provisional ballots (Palast [12 Nov. 2004]). Bush won New Mexico by less than half that number of votes.

But it is the co-presence of other forms of corruption, in addition to all these, that establishes the difference between an election dirtied by illegalities, and one that was not merely soiled and distorted by fraud but actually stolen. The evidence presented within the texts listed here suggests with gathering strength that the Karl Rovian maneuvers alluded to above were supplemented on November 2, 2004 by less conspicuous—and yet decisive—manipulations of the machines that recorded and tabulated the votes.

How precisely this apparent manipulation may have been carried out in different jurisdictions—by rigging machines in advance to mis-record or delete votes, by configuring proprietary software so as to allow ‘back-door’ access for unrestrained vote-tampering, or by hacking into the notoriously insecure vote-tabulation systems—remains as yet undetermined. However, the evidence has been coming to light with surprising rapidity.

As observers and analysts noted at once, troubling discrepancies were apparent between the exit poll results published by CNN on the evening of November 2 and the official vote tallies (see DeHart, Dodge, S. Freeman, Otter, and Simon). No less disturbing, as I observed in my article on the subject, is the fact that the exit poll data was systematically tampered with early on November 3 to make the figures conform to the vote tallies. At 1:41 a.m. EST on November 3, for example, the Ohio exit poll was altered: Kerry, who had previously been shown as leading Bush by 4 percent in that state, was now represented in the revised exit poll as trailing him by 2.5 percent. And yet the number of respondents in the poll had increased from 1,963 to only 2,020. An additional 57 respondents—a 2.8 percent increase—had somehow produced a 6.5 percent swing from Kerry to Bush. At 1:01 a.m. EST on November 3, the Florida exit poll was likewise altered: Kerry, who had previously been shown in a near dead heat with Bush, now trailed him by 4 percent. In this case, the number of respondents rose only from 2,846 to 2,862. A mere 16 respondents—0.55 percent of the total—produced a 4 percent swing to Bush.

However, the key exit-poll issue remains the divergence between the November 2 exit polls and the vote tallies. Steven Freeman concluded, in the first draft of his judicious study of the November 2 exit poll data, that “Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a premature conclusion, but the election’s unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media, academia, polling agencies, and the public to investigate” (S. Freeman [11 Nov, 2004]).

Other evidence points toward a strengthening, indeed to a substantial confirmation of this “unavoidable hypothesis” of systematic fraud. Some of this evidence has been emerging from the swing state of North Carolina, and from the two key swing states of Florida and Ohio—either one of which, had John Kerry won it, would have made him the acknowledged President-elect.

In North Carolina, the tell-tale marks of electronic electoral fraud have been brought to light by an analyst who publishes at the Democratic Undergroundsite under the name of ‘ignatzmouse’. (“Ignatz,” remember, is the name of the mouse who in the Krazy Kat cartoons smacks the unhappy cat with the inevitable brick. That pesky mouse is once again on target.)

What gives the game away in the North Carolina election data is the disparity within the presidential and senatorial vote-counts between the so-called “absentee” votes—a category that apparently includes the early voting data as well as votes cast by citizens living abroad and military personnel—and the polling-day votes cast on November 2.

In the race for Governor, 30 percent of the votes cast for the Republican and the Democratic candidate alike were absentee votes; the other 70 percent were cast on November 2. The Democrat won with 55.6 percent of both the absentee and the polling-day votes. In most of the other statewide races in the North Carolina election there were similarly close correlations between absentee and polling-day votes. For example, Democrats won the post of Lieutenant Governor, with 55.7 percent of absentee and 55.5 percent of polling-day votes; the post of Secretary of State, with 58 percent of absentee and 57 percent of polling-day votes; and the post of Attorney General, with 56.7 percent of absentee and 55.2 percent of polling-day votes. In three other statewide races, and in the voting for three constitutional amendments, the correlation between absentee and polling-day votes remains very close (though tight races for three other positions in the state administration were won by Republicans with polling-day swings in favour of the Republican candidates of 4.2, 5.2, and 5.4 percent respectively).

Given the close correlations between absentee and polling-day votes in ten of the thirteen statewide races, the senate result looks suspicious: the Democrat’s narrow lead in the absentee voting became a clear defeat on November 2, with a 6.4 percent swing in the polling-day votes to the Republican. And the presidential results look more seriously implausible. In the absentee votes, Kerry trailed by 6 percent, a result that ‘ignatzmouse’ remarks “is consistent with the pre-election polls and most importantly with the exit polls of November 2^nd.” But in the election day voting, there was a further swing of fully 9 percent to Bush. Bush led in the absentee votes (30 percent of the total) by 52.9 percent to Kerry’s 46.9 percent; but on polling day he took 57.3 percent of the remaining votes, while Kerry received 42.3 percent. In the absence of any other explanation, these figures point to electronic fraud—and, more precisely, to “a ‘date-specific’ alteration in the software, a hack, or a specific [software] activation just prior to the election.”

The Florida evidence is, if anything, more flagrant. On November 18, Professor Michael Hout of the University of California at Berkeley released a statistical study indicating that electronic voting technology had produced a very substantial distortion of the presidential vote tally in Florida. According to the analyses conducted by Hout and his team, irregularities associated with electronic voting machines accounted for at least 130,000 votes in Bush’s lead over Kerry in Florida—and possibly twice that much. (The uncertainty stems from the fact that the machines may have awarded Bush “ghost votes” which increased his tally without reducing Kerry’s, or they may have misattributed Kerry votes as Bush votes. As Hout explains, the disparities “amount to 130,000 votes if we assume a ‘ghost vote’ mechanism and twice that—260,000 votes—if we assume that a vote misattributed to one candidate should have been counted for the other.”)

Hout’s results have not gone unchallenged (see Strashny); obviously enough, the validity of statistical analyses depends on the extent to which all possible causal factors have been accounted for. But other data indicates that the ‘haunting’ of Florida’s electronic voting tabulators was if anything more serious than Hout and his associates believe. As I have already noted, in six Florida counties the number of votes purportedly cast exceeded the number of registered voters—by a cumulative total of 188,885 (see Newberry). These are apparently “ghost votes,” and unless we’re willing to assume a level of electoral participation resembling those claimed by totalitarian states like Ceaucescu’s Romania or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a significant percentage of the other votes cast in these counties must also represent the electoral choice not of human beings but of Republican hackers.

Further evidence which may help to identify the agents involved in Florida’s electronic voting fraud has in fact begun to emerge. Brandon Adams, for example, has noted striking divergences among Florida voters according to the makes and models of the voting machines they used in different counties; and a heavy hacking of vote-tabulation systems used in conjunction with the older optical-scan voting machines is now well-established (see Paterson).

Moreover, statistically-based work is being complemented by acquisitions of direct material evidence. In Volusia County, one of Florida’s six most seriously ‘haunted’ counties, where 19,306 more votes were cast than there are registered voters, Bev Harris’s BlackBoxVoting team caught county election officials red-handed on November 16 in the act of trashing original polling-place tapes which BlackBoxVoting had asked for in a Freedom of Information request. In addition to filming the behaviour of county officials, her team was able to establish that some copies of the tapes that officials had prepared to give them in response to the Freedom of Information Act request had been falsified in favour of George W. Bush—in one precinct alone by hundreds of votes (see Harris [18 Nov. 2004], Hartmann [19 Nov. 2004]). The Volusia County materials provide proof, moreover, that the GEMS central vote-tabulation system, which was supposedly “stand-alone” and non-networked, was remotely accessed during the election (Harris [24 Nov. 2004]).

Ohio, remember, was the deciding state. John Kerry conceded the election after calculating that the some 155,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio would not suffice—even if they were properly counted, and even if, as expected, they were very largely cast by Kerry supporters—to overturn the tallied results, according to which Bush had won the state by 136,483 votes.

However, the exit poll data indicates that it was Kerry who won the state, and by a comfortable margin. Once again, there is substantial evidence of electronic electoral fraud. Teed Rockwell found, after careful study of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website, that twenty-nine precincts in this county “reported votes cast IN EXCESS of the number of registered voters—at least 93,136 extra votes total.” The same website he studied (http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/results/currentresults1.htm#top ) also repays further study, for Rockwell’s tallying of ‘ghost votes’ is in fact conservative. To cite just one example, Brook Park City is listed as having 14,491 registered voters, of whom it is claimed that fully 14,458 exercised their civic duty and cast ballots—for a turn-out rate of 99.4 percent. I leave it to the curious to discover how many of these high-minded but possibly nonexistent citizens supported their incumbent President.

Those who want to pursue the questions of vote fraud and suppression in Ohio may also want to consult the studies carried out by Richard Philips, whose work, together with the data available on the websites of Cuyahoga and other counties, provides depressing evidence of successful vote suppression in urban precincts. (It has been estimated that vote suppression tactics may have cost Kerry 45,000 votes across the whole state of Ohio [see Bernstein].)

The Green Party and Libertarian Party presidential candidates, belatedly followed by the Kerry/Edwards campaign, have called for a recount in Ohio. But if Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Blackwell permits no more than a recount, without a rigorous audit of the electronic voting machines and tabulators as well, the numbers for a reversal of the election results are probably not there. On the optimistic assumption that a fair count of the 155,000 provisional ballots would result in 10 percent of them being disqualified and 70 percent of the remainder being validated as Kerry votes, those ballots might reduce Bush’s lead in Ohio by as much as 55,800 votes. However, it seems unlikely that a recount, including a re-examination of the more than 96,000 Ohio votes (most of them cast on old punch-card machines) that were discarded as spoiled, would turn up the almost 81,000 additional Kerry votes that would still be needed.

Together with the principle that every duly cast vote must be counted, advocates for democracy need to assert another complementary principle: the principle that votes cast not in polling booths, but in the hard drives of voting-tabulation machines; and not by citizens, but rather by ghosts summoned into existence by Republican hackers’ nimble fingers, have no business getting counted, and should be removed from the tally.

The effect of turning a ‘Ghostbuster’ computer-auditing team like Bev Harris’s BlackBoxVoting organization loose on the Ohio results, to carry out a serious audit of any polling precinct and computer-log data that hasn’t already been quietly destroyed, might well be startling. For while a simple recount would probably leave Kerry trailing by several tens of thousands of votes, a thorough computer-audit ‘exorcism’ of the vote tallies, should such a thing ever be permitted, might well lead to a reversal of the national election results.

Whatever the finally certified results may be, a larger informing context should not be forgotten. The regime of George W. Bush has made no secret of its scorn for the American Constitution and Bill of Rights, its hostility to any notion of international law, its contemptuous dismissal of the decent opinion of humankind both at home and abroad, its contempt, in the most inclusive sense, for truth.

Bush has claimed that the 2004 election gave him “capital”—which he now will not hesitate to spend. An early instance of this expenditure has been the assault on the city of Fallujah, and a compounding of the manifold war crimes of which Bush and those who serve him are already guilty.

But what is this “capital”? As the evidence is revealing with growing clarity, the 2004 presidential election was not in fact a victory for Bush, but rather the occasion for an insolent usurpation.

A ‘president’ who takes office through fraud and usurpation can make no legitimate claim to exercise the stolen power of his office.

As the knowledge of his offence becomes ever more widely disseminated, he may yet come, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “[to] feel his title / Hang loose upon him, like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish thief.”

BACKGROUND

A Reuters report, November 4th, contains the available information regarding the million-dollar payment, which was made in 2011, when the active effort began to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria. This previously unreported payment, which was intended to go through the Clinton Foundation, was made by Qatar, which, along with Saudi Arabia, are the main sources of funding to the jihadists who are trying to overthrow and replace Assad, the man who is blocking those two countries from building oil and gas pipelines through Syria into Europe. Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia are owned by their country’s royal family, who also own the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, and those royals want to pipeline their oil and gas into Europe and displace the other oil-and-gas giant, Russia, in the world’s largest energy-market: the EU.

This previously unreported payment was made to him and his wife Hillary’s, and his daughter Chelsea’s, Clinton Foundation, but neither Qatar nor any of the Clintons, nor the Obama Administration, is answering any questions about it, as a consequence of which a reasonable assumption is that it was an outright bribe — especially because in the Haiti hurricane matter and many others, moneys that were paid into the Clinton Foundation did not, in fact, go to benefit the alleged charitable beneficiaries, in that case Haitians. (Haitians therefore especially detest the Clintons.) In all of the Clinton Foundation’s operations, the firms that are controlled by the world’s top aristocrats — not only in Saudi Arabia and Qatar but elsewhere, receive the funding. Whether those recipients actually spend the money as advertised is generally not tracked.

The stated purpose of this particular million-dollar payment was to achieve a private meeting with Bill Clinton. The stated reason for the payment was to honor him on his 65th birthday. Bill Clinton is the person whom international aristocrats most seek to have private meetings with in order to discuss U.S. foreign policies, because there is no record kept of what is being said at those confidential meetings, and because his representations of Hillary Clinton are known to be the most trustworthy, the most “bankable” — it’s considered to be as good as if they were meeting with her in private.

Neither the Clintons nor Qatar are answering questions about this matter, not even whether the requested private meeting with the Secretary of State’s husband ever, in fact, occurred.

THE PAYMENT

Here are highlights from the original Reuters report on this matter:

On Friday, November 4th, Reuters headlined “Clinton’s charity confirms Qatar’s $1 million gift while she was at State Dept”, and reported:

Clinton Foundation officials last month declined to confirm the Qatar donation. In response to additional questions, a foundation spokesman, Brian Cookstra, this week said that it accepted the $1 million gift from Qatar, but this did not amount to a “material increase” in the Gulf country’s support for the charity [that’s the phrase in the law that requires it to be made public]. Cookstra declined to say whether Qatari officials received their requested meeting with Bill Clinton.

Officials at Qatar’s embassy in Washington and in its Council of Ministers in the capital, Doha, declined to discuss the donation.

The State Department has said it has no record of the foundation submitting the Qatar gift for review, and that it was incumbent on the foundation to notify the department about donations that needed attention. A department spokeswoman did not respond to additional questions about the donation.

According to the foundation’s website, which lists donors in broad categories by cumulative amounts donated, Qatar’s government has directly given a total of between $1 million and $5 million over the years. …

Foundation officials told Reuters last year that they did not always comply with central provisions of the agreement with President Barack Obama’s administration. …

The foundation has declined to describe what sort of increase in funding by a foreign government would have triggered notification of the State Department for review. ,,,

The State Department said it has no record of being asked by the foundation to review any increases in support by a foreign government.

Spokesmen for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Bill Clinton did not respond to emailed questions about the donation.

Here is the passage from the wikileaked email, dated in 2012, in which Amitabh Desai, the Clinton Foundation’s director of foreign policy, writes to other senior Clinton Foundation officials, requesting a private meeting of Qatar’s U.S. Ambassador with “wjc” William Jefferson Clinton:

– Would like to see WJC “for five minutes” in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011.

– Qatar would welcome our suggestions for investments in Haiti – particularly on education and health. They have allocated most of their $20 million but are happy to consider projects we suggest. I’m collecting input from CF Haiti team.

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.

Finally! That is the prevailing thought as this presidential election is headed for the finish line. Wanting this race to be over is certainly one of the reasons why a record number of Americans have voted early. But will it be?

Sure, we will (likely) know by Wednesday who the next president will be, but, in this election, that will not provide closure. The country is still deeply divided and neither candidate appears to be in a position to heal that rift.

If Hillary Clinton wins by a small margin, which is still the most likely scenario three days before the election, then Donald Trump has already suggested that he will claim the vote was rigged. If the Republican nominee manages to turn things around, possibly because the polls were as wrong as they were in UK’s Brexit referendum earlier this year, then Democrats will be the ones questioning the legitimacy of the results.

That will bring more divisiveness, more anger, and more distrust.

And there are reasons to distrust the system, although not necessarily the reasons Trump suggests. The system is rigged to benefit a very small number of people at the expense of a shrinking middle class. Yet the election is showing that the current model is unsustainable.

The primaries have already demonstrated  how frustrated and angry voters are with the establishment. In Trump and Bernie Sanders, we nearly got a matchup of two populist candidates — even though both of them were actually part of the establishment.

Americans are also fed up with the two-party system. And they should be. The United States is still a country of abundance — just not when it comes to the number of candidates who can represent them in government. It might be wishful thinking, but if the GOP breaks up into a Tea Party and a moderate wing, wouldn’t it be nice if a more progressive party were to split from the Democrats. All of a sudden there would at least be some choice and the parties would actually have to compete for voters other than those few independents in swing states.

The last year in particular has also highlighted that US institutions are failing. The GOP-led Congress is not even pretending to do its job anymore, and Republicans are already talking about impeaching Clinton and blocking any of her Supreme Court nominees if she wins. In other words, the obstruction will get worse.

The country is in trouble, no matter who wins, and neither of these candidates will change that. In fact, it is more likely that they will make things worse. One of the most surprising aspects of this election season is that there has not been more violence. We hope that this will still be the case on Wednesday and beyond.

Note

The cartoon above was created by DonkeyHotey for WhoWhatWhy from these images:

Huma Abedin caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), Abedin body (US Department of Homeland Security / Flickr), Hillary Clinton caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), Clinton body (bill mulder / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), Vladimir Putin caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), Putin body (Douglas Muth / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), Donald Trump caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), Trump body (Isabell Schulz / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), donkey (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), elephant (joaquin uy / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), Air Force One (Department of Defense), bombs (US Air Force), blue bags (Mark Hillary / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), laptop bag (Joseph North / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), duffle bag (US Army), saddle bag (Henri Bergius / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), trunk (Dennis Jarvis / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), sign (Elvert Barnes  / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), pepe (Lwilson262 / Wikimedia – CC BY-SA 4.0) and barrier (olle svensson / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0).

Hillary, like many sociopaths, uses a form of abuse known as ‘gaslighting.’ The word originates from a 1944 film, “Gaslight” starring Ingrid Bergman in which she is tormented by her husband who is trying to make her doubt her own memories. She is made to feel confused and mistaken. She questions her sanity and her ability to remember things correctly.

This is the same tactic Hillary uses. She will lie to our faces and inject ridiculous narratives designed to replace the facts that we know. For example, Russia is to blame for hacking her—forget that this was disproven. She wants us to forget her server was illegal and she and the DNC rigged the primaries against Bernie. The focus moves to boogeyman Russia, whom she complains is backing Trump. Such a lie comes from left field and can be so ridiculous that it’s disconcerting. It knocks people off their center as they began to consider such outrageousness. That’s gas lighting.

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The reliability of all of these reports can reasonably be questioned, but here they are:

On October 14th, NBC News bannered “CIA Prepping for Possible Cyber Strike Against Russia”, and reported that,

“The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News. … The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation.”

On October 30th, “Super Station 95” reported an “Update” saying that “a trusted source” said:

It appears the United States is going to engage in battle in Syria. SuperStation95 just received this communication from a trusted source:

I just landed back in the US from Diego Garcia. War is brewing. The island has more aircraft and refueling tankers than I have seen since 2005.

Docks were full and 30 ships were moored off shore.This is a huge buildup.

B1s and B2s and b52s in abundance. Never seen them all at one place. It seems stupid to bunch them up at one facility.

Our layover was only supposed to be for 4 hours but the flight crews were so backed up we stayed overnight. The hotel was full and we bunked in a tent. We have never had to do that before.

AF security is everywhere and they were assey. (Acting like strict, suspicious assholes)

Just a heads up, keep your eyes open. I know that I am not giving away in classified information, the Russians have a satellite dedicated to watching this island.

Also, the navy had 2 subs at the docks at once. I have never seen more than 1 there.

B52s have new paint jobs — all flat black. Whats up with that?

On top of all this, huge numbers of in-flight refueling tankers are also on the island.  More than enough to supply air operations to/from the Middle East, non-stop.

This is a very bad development.  The US would never stage this much hardware at Diego Garcia unless they were planning a full-out, prolonged, military action.

Based upon my military experience as a contractor who has visited Diego Garcia every 6 months for 11 years, we are going to war.

On November 3rd, NBC News headlined “Exclusive: White House Readies to Fight Election Day Cyber Mayhem”, and reported

“Officials are alert for any attempts to create Election Day chaos, and say steps are being taken to prepare for worst-case scenarios, including a cyber-attack that shuts down part of the power grid or the internet. But what is more likely, multiple U.S. officials say, is a lower-level effort by hackers from Russia or elsewhere to peddle misinformation by manipulating Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.” This news-report included a video of Andrea Mitchell, headlined “Is Russia a third party in the 2016 race?”

If the United States government, on or after Election Day, says that Russia had done something of this nature, then the U.S. ‘response’ to the alleged ‘cyber-attack from Russia’ would presumably be one or more of “the exact measures the CIA was considering,” as NBC reported on October 14th, and World War III could then start with a cyber-war that could escalate to serious consequences, such as deactivating a power-grid in one or both of the countries, and, subsequently, a direct military invasion, of one by the other.

But how would the U.S. public ever be able to come to know whether that alleged Russian provocation actually existed and wasn’t instead provoked intentionally by the U.S. government in order to provide a pretext for the U.S. to invade Russia? (After all, we’ve been pouring troops and weapons onto and near Russia’s borders for months now — and how would the U.S. respond to a provocation in which Russia surrounded our border with nukes?)

On November 2nd, ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ an anonymous retired Green Beret, headlined “Something Big Is Underway On All Fronts: ‘Within The Next Few Weeks The Future Of The United States Will Be Decided’,” and he reported that:

As of this writing, the increased U.S. troop presence in Eastern Europe includes a battalion-sized element of American troops being emplaced in the Suwalki Gap, Polish territory that borders Lithuania in a 60-mile stretch of corridor.  The Russian Defense Ministry announced that 600 Russian and Belarussian airborne troops conducted training exercises in Brest, on the Belorussian-Polish border only a few miles from where the U.S. forces are deploying in Poland. This on the heels of Britain deploying 800 men, tanks, and jets to Estonia, along with pledges of Challenger 2 tanks, APC’s (Armored Personnel Carriers), and drones. Two companies of French and Danish Soldiers will join the British in the deployment to Estonia.

For the first time since 1945, Norway has violated its treaty with Russia (then the Soviet Union) not to station foreign troops on its soil. A company of U.S. Marines will soon be stationed for a 6-month deployment in Norway. The situation is heating up in Ukraine, according to a report on fort-russ.com entitled Ukraine Moves Massive Force up to Lugansk Frontline, published October 28, 2016. The report reveals the Ukrainian Army is deploying 3,500 soldiers and 200 armored vehicles of the 15th Motorized Infantry Brigade to Krasny Oktyabr in the district of Lugansk in Eastern Ukraine. For the first time in history, Romanian airspace is being patrolled by the RAF (Royal Air Force) of Britain.

His report closes:

“The next war will be initiated by an EMP [Electro-Magnetic Pulse] device detonated above the continental United States followed by a limited nuclear exchange and then conventional warfare. … Obama is the joker, setting the stage for the transfer of power. That transfer is not going to occur with the losing candidate (in either case) going gently into that good night. The stage is set for a war to begin. The stage is set for a false flag operation to take down our grid. The stage is set to steal the election for Clinton or declare it null and void. Within the next few weeks, the future of the United States will be decided…with or without the consent of the governed.”

If it’s not true, then why is the U.S. engaging in these preparations? Russia has never attacked America. The Cold War was supposed to have ended. The U.S. government obviously thinks it now is actually hotter than ever, and so, apparently, we place the jihadists on the back burner; we’ve got a much bigger war to wage, and we’ll know soon whether it starts soon after the ‘election’.

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.

With the image that the Canadian government fosters, for both domestic and foreign affairs, and that “nine out of 10 Canadians think this country is a force for good”, it is a serious reflection that Canada has an efficient and effective propaganda system. Yet the proof of this image propagation is strongly defined in Yves Engler’s latest critique of Canadian “values” – and certainly not the undefined “values” used by all politicians – A Propaganda System – How Canada’s government, corporations, media and academia sell war and exploitation.

As Engler puts it in his introduction “The idea of a benevolent Canadian foreign policy…is well grounded in structures of propaganda.” And as how the emphasis is to “sell war and exploitation,” Engler indicates that there are many avenues of “marketing” Canada’s image, but “it is the military that has Canada’s largest PR machine” as it “aggressively protects its image and promotes its worldview.”

He begins quite naturally discussing “Canada’s largest PR machine – The Military.” The presentation of material covers a broad spectrum of influences, revealing the intertwined roles of the military with the government, academia, and the media (writ large). It shows how there is a large structure of think tanks and university courses and programs supported by the Department of National Defence (DND).

In subsequent chapters these ideas are given more definition. The following chapter “Military Institutes and Think Tanks” describes various formal organizations nominally outside of government and how they influence popular opinion and perceptions, as well as swaying politicians into line with military constructs.

Money obviously plays a large role in this. Perhaps the largest myth overall, and one frequently heard from our dominant ally the U.S. is that of the military as a necessity for an “organization of our total economy, our industrial base, towards a single objective – the defence of this country.” While that single objective has not been fully realized, corporations working within the military framework offer a high percentage of the remaining living wage positions in industrial Canada.

Yet it goes further, reminiscent of Thomas Friedman’s infamous remark about the U.S. economy and trade and commerce protected by the “hidden fist of the military,” as the DND and the Molson Foundation “advocated increased military spending to defend free trade.” Say what…??? Can the authors of this and similar statements not realize how fully contradictory the idea of military control and free trade are? It’s almost mind numbing in its arrogance based on wilful ignorance.

The next Chapter focuses on “The Academic Connection” and outlines the many links between the government, the military in particular, and many of the “think tanks” that provide propaganda cover for foreign policy initiatives. Its initial focus is on the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto, being “Canada’s most influential global studies program…the brainchild of a mining [magnate] with a significant personal stake in a particular foreign policy.” That foreign policy covers many regions of the world and the program’s policies are designed to stifle resistance to the damages created by the mining interests, and the interests of Israel in relation to the Palestinians.

“Arms Lengths Institutions” continues with exposing other supposedly independent operations. Part of the emphasis is on how aid is used for appearances of doing good but “may be used to induce the underdeveloped countries to accept the international status quo.” Part of this are the IMF’s ‘structural adjustment programs’. Another part is the failed doctrine of “right to protect” “used by the powerful against the weak” as Canada has done in Yugoslavia, Libya, Haiti, Syria/Iraq and Afghanistan. For the latter the idea of supporting Afghan women “used feminism to justify imperialism.” Looking at Afghanistan now, it is obvious that too many lives and a lot of money were wasted in a bogus ‘humanitarian’ war.

Many different areas are covered in the chapter “Owning the media,” ranging from the overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti to the corrupt use of aid to the Palestinian Authority on to Cambodia, East Timor, the global mining community, and General Motors (and the power of advertising and sponsorship). Following from the latter Engler discusses the huge influence from U.S. media, how journalists are embedded with the armed forces, and the structural biases of the media to report only the mainstream spin and ignore items that do not fit the government point of view. He ends with a quote from Chomsky and Herman writing about “manufactured consent” the idea that filters are applied that support “elite domination of the media and the marginalization of dissidents.”

In effect, if someone in media has made it into the mainstream, they are working willingly with these filters believing they are being objective, or as often promoted, using the idea of ‘balanced’ reporting.

The last two chapters are the most powerful as they bring together the ideas of propaganda from throughout the work and demonstrate how they have worked through the various wars that Canada has promoted over the course of its history. The lies, distortions, omissions, and fabrications are used by the government and the media; this ”dynamic propaganda system is prepared to obfuscate, suppress and lie during war.” It could be added, in consideration of current events in Syria and Ukraine, to demonize the ‘other’, to create an evil ‘other’, an evil enemy that the government can use to focus the ignorance of the population on.

Engler’s A Propaganda System is a dense read in that it is fully referenced and puts forth many connections in a short space. It serves as a great inventory of Canadian propaganda misdeeds, a valuable compendium and resource book for anyone examining global foreign affairs in relation to Canada. In essence, it is an examination of Canada’s ‘deep state’ – the people and the institutions that truly have the power to decide on both domestic and foreign policies. Combined with his previous volumes on the harmful nature of Canada’s foreign policies, Engler has developed a strong, well referenced library of powerful information useful for and informed and critical examination of Canada and its role in the world.

Coming into San Francisco, and a note of spellbinding terror can be sensed. Donald Trump haunts the political landscape with a menace that has become a caricature of terror before the fact. Even conservative bodies like the Hoover Institute run comments of angst such as those of one of its senior fellows, Victor Davis Hanson. For Hanson, Trump offers the United States of the twenty-first century a remedy drawn out from the indignation of the 1930s: “nationalism, crude bombast, mytho-history, and sloganeering.”

British historian and Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson, writing in the 2016 summer edition of the Hoover Digest, found much of this historical comparison amusing at best. “Welcome to Weimar America,” he quipped.

Theorists such as Danielle Allen (“Watching Donald Trump’s rise, I now understand… exactly how Hitler could have come to power in Germany”) and Robert Kagan (“the most successful demagogue-charlatan in the history of US politics”) add to the furnace of panic.

A better historical analogy, suggests Ferguson, is not the 1930s with the calamities of the Great Depression, but the deflationary period that followed the crash of 1873. “This,” he reminds us, “was an age of industrialization, globalization and mass migration.” William Jennings Bryan’s dislike of economic elites, while not exactly Trumpesque, offered better parallels.

In truth there is very little precedent for this election, and playing around with analogies can rapidly become a naval gazing exercise to be derided. But as the US presidential elections come into their last, exhausted leg, a dominant tone characterises it: panic.

Panic that a catastrophe is about to descend on the United States; a panic that relations with other countries, long held important, will be junked glibly and casually. Panic that social structure of the country will be rented to extinction, replaced by an ever meaner regime of finance and business rationales mad about the bottom line.

The panic of Trump finding some measure of momentum in the polls led Ross Douhat to write in the New York Times in May that panic was far from necessary – “low watt anxiety” perhaps, rather than “total catastrophe” would prevail.

The species of panic is one nurtured in the womb of populism. The product of that populism is often the demagogue whose interest reminds and hectors, a candidate who promises the earth when only meagre soil can be delivered.

The demagogue promises, as Trump does, jobs that will never be recovered. He promises an undeliverable security regime. He promises the electorate to salve wounds and recover nostalgia. His variant of cynicism is to use the spectacle of historical disaster against his opponents, who attempt to deny that the United States is an internally bleeding entity. The response from his opponents is to ignore that disaster and suggest that there is only one catastrophe waiting to happen: in the form of Trump himself.

Systems deemed rotten with dysfunction tend to encourage radical responses and promises. These are then rubbished by the high brows and the well moneyed as matters of great risk – to change such a system, however deficient, would be far more dangerous than letting it be.

In the words of James Taranto, “The entire reason that Trump is so popular is that the public sees the system as broken and also sees no standard/normal way to fix it. When things are broken, and trending in the wrong direction, that’s exactly the time you want to introduce risk” (Wall Street Journal, Aug 9).

The panic set in within the GOP itself, spreading across the broader establishment. The Republican fruit salad of lunacy that provided such figures of fun as Ben Carson yielded more and more ground before the business, personalised argot of abuse and self-help of Trump. Much of it also made the discussion of policy irrelevant. Everyone was turning up to the party to feel good – or in this case, flamingly mad.

From that perspective, attacks on Trump for being the great risk have failed to find their mark. They fail to explain how Hillary Clinton could be the very answer to a system. With no means to deodorise their own monster, the Democrats are left hoping for a result that keeps Trump out rather than an uplifting victory that heals in providing solutions. What Trump offers is a vessel to allow a country to expectorate, catharsis through vomit. This is the politics of sentiment and nostalgia, and it is not one that Clinton has been able to play well. The only real solution is inducing panic.

Of even greater interest will be what happens after the November 8 election. There is much to wade through till that point, most of it a scream of hypotheticals and terrors. Even before the result is in, no result is going to be satisfactory. The armed and the senseless are readying themselves for whomever finds themselves with the trophy, and a tainted one it shall be.

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

The level of irrationality, confusion and negative energy is the most astonishing signal emanating out of the US presidential election.  It is a strong indication that, whatever the result, we should be prepared for an escalation in the already serious tensions dominating our world.

It is probably the first time, since the crisis of Weimar Germany, that such phenomena have appeared in the centre of the world, in its strongest country.

80% of the population of the USA do not trust and do not appreciate either of the two candidates. The strongest argument for voting Trump is not so much what he says as opposition to Clinton being elected. And the main argument for voting Clinton is not to have Trump elected!

The other day, as I was struggling to finish this article, I sent mails to some good friends in the USA, very critical, experienced and serious observers, telling them that I am a little confused by what I am reading about their elections and asking them for their opinion on the foreign policy Trump will really follow if elected.

From the answers I received, I realized that they too are not at all sure about what is at stake here and what the future course of the United States will be. One of them, a well-known economist with quite radical ideas, answered in this way: “YOU’RE confused? Ha ha ha. Nobody has a clue! Trump is such a narcissist that he may easily be manipulated. His intuitive policy is to pull BACK from war. At least a blind choice is better than Hillary’s push for war, definitely. But who knows?” Really, who knows?

Another one, also a leftist and a seasoned student of international realities, who had written an angry article last summer, protesting, in very strong terms about the kinds of attacks the US mainstream media have launched against the Republican nominee, was more sober than in his article: “Νothing is worse than Clinton. Trump will rely on the Republicans in Congress for foreign policy, which makes him very dangerous. If he breaks with the party elites he will mend ties with Russia and Syria, but it is a big if. If he sticks to a protectionist trade policy he will face problems with China and the West coast. Nothing positive will result from these elections”.

The simile of a political life

In his Republic Plato describes a cave inside which a group of prisoners is able to see only the shadows of beings and of their movements. But nowadays, to follow world politics, including US elections, one sometimes has the impression of looking merely at the shadows of the shadows! The real game is very far away from the scene of the drama between Clinton and Trump, and we are kept in the dark concerning the real object of the competition. Are different strategic lines really behind it, and if so which ones? At one level they seem to exist. At another, some conspiracy theorists would argue that, at a deeper strategic level, all this is about the same “establishment of the establishment” proposing different products to different sections of its clientele. Who knows? as my friend put it.

During the previous eight years the strategic image was quite clear, at least for those who wanted to see it. On the one hand we had President Obama and people like Brzezinski. Obama was elected on the basis of opposition to imperial overextension and a crazy program of wars in the Middle East which many people inside the US and international establishment, large sections of public opinion, the US Armed Forces, etc. believed to be extremist, dangerous and not corresponding to any US interest.

On the other hand we had Clinton and the neocons (strongly supported by Netanyahu, who was also opposed by forces inside his own establishment). This camp pushed for escalation in the Middle East (and Ukraine), in order to complete the program announced long ago by the most extremist forces of the international establishment, around the project for a “new American century”. Obama resisted these plans, albeit in a not always consistent and often unspoken way. He was reluctant to stop the wars in Libya and probably did not understand, until it was too late, what was at stake in Ukraine. His political alternative to the “extremely extremist”, but nevertheless more coherent, project of the forces behind neocons, such as “political Islam” or Erdogan, proved to be very weak. And you cannot have a very serious policy when Clinton and Nuland are following other  agendas than the President, nobody in the Administration is really sure what the CIA is doing, and senior military people rely on  Seymour Hersh to put a brake on extremism!

Obama is rightly criticized for Afghanistan, Libya and other things, but we should remember that the President of the United States opposed the extremists, and he could not do it otherwise, in the general context of pursuit of American imperial politics. History will credit him (and Russian intervention) for stopping military intervention in Syria and sealing a nuclear agreement with Iran. Under his presidency, international neocons had to use mainly the services of Sarkozy in Paris and Cameron in London to launch the war which destroyed  Libya. Clinton was helpful in this connection.

The fact that the President of the United States was unable to close Guantanamo for instance, something he obviously wished to do, says a lot about the kind of forces that all but hijacked US state after the collapse of the USSR. And about their strength: a veritable state within the state.

Deception, virtual realities and conspiracies

Bear in mind that we have been living internationally, especially since the supposed end of the Cold War, in a historic era of deception and virtual realities. And it could not be otherwise. The infinitesimal minorities of power, money and knowledge ruling our world cannot announce their program and the future they are preparing for us. If they did, they would provoke a revolution. They are also unable at this time to launch head-on confrontation with societies and nations. Conspiracies have existed throughout history, but now they are tending to become the norm. There is no more effective weapon than the kind of smart (and evil) power that enables you influence your own opponent and lead him into choices that will seal his defeat. Classic political, social and geopolitical analysis is still the key to understanding social and international phenomena, but it must be supplemented by a deep and not always straightforward understanding of the real strategies in play.

Look how many incredible things have happened in a period of  30 years and are continuing to happen. The leader of the Soviet Union and “world communism” himself destroyed his own country and system, in a way the most powerful foreign army could not dream of. In Iraq Sunnis who so bravely resisted the US invasion were provided with a Wahhabi ISIS leadership arranged by the CIA and other allied services laboratories. In Greece the (verbally) most radical of the European “radical Left” parties is now following a policy most neoliberals would regard as extremist. And in the USA we are following a presidential campaign which is merely the distorted reflection, the tip of the iceberg, of huge battles going on behind the scenes, among the main centres of Imperial Power such as  Wall Street, the CIA, the army, the lobbies, etc.

Not many sensible people would disagree with some of the ideas put forward by Trump on foreign policy, especially in relation to US-Russia relations and Syria, in his latest interview with Reuters. But does he mean them? Can we believe that he will do what he says? Is he speaking the truth or he is just performing a manoeuvre that Professor James Petras predicted as early as June , when he wrote that “Trump’s electoral victory will hinge on his capacity to cover-up his neo-liberal turn and focus voters’ attention on Clinton’s militaristic, Wall Street, conspiratorial and anti-working class politics” (http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=2086)

Trump has said too many contradictory things on various subjects, from Cuba to Korea and from Islam to Ukraine (which he visited after Maidan) for it to be easy for the uninitiated to know what star he will really follow if elected. He is a very intelligent man and everything he says can be read two ways. (For instance, he said he will not automatically defend the Baltics, which is music to Russian ears, but he explained that US allies have to do more for NATO defenses if they are to count on the US. The probability of Russia invading Baltics is near zero. The second part of the equation, the increase in military spending by NATO allies is what really remains from such declarations).

Generals do not win the same battles a second time: in order to win one must change tactics, always bearing in mind that war remains to a great extent a continuation of politics by other means. Clinton appears much more than Trump the war candidate. But let us remember that Clinton will be, politically,  a very weak president, if elected. Trump will be much stronger if elected “against the Establishment”.  His rise embodies the anger of the  popular and middle strata in the USA. The million dollar question is: in which direction will he channel their anger?

After all, globalization is not only, or not as much, about subjugating and destroying nations, as nationalists claim. It is doing that, and nationalists are right to protest and oppose it. But, behind its amorphous surface and ideology there also lies the domination of some nations by others and, also, the domination of the strategically coherent wing of finance over everybody. As the decade of the 30s should have taught us, domination can be effected not only by crushing nations but also by exploiting their nationalism. Some smart unorthodox generals of globalization, such as the member of the steering committee of Bildeberg Peter Thiel, are drawing up their own plans on how to use Trump and the deep protest of the American demos to the service of the forces they provoked it, the classic example how such a turn around can be achieved, remaining again German history of the 20th century (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/21/peter-thiel-republican-convention-speech)

People in the USA, but also around the globe, are so fed up with the policies of the Western establishment, especially the US and the banking establishment and, also, so discouraged at their own capacity to stop these policies, that they are ready to believe blindly and follow uncritically any politician, of the Left or of the Right, promising a radical change, taking at face value whatever they say. As the tragic European experience of the 20th Century amply proves, this can be the road to disaster.

Isolationism, Interventionism, Militarism

Many people believe for instance that the election of Mr. Trump will lead to a sort of withdrawal of America from world affairs. This would be a very positive evolution, given the role America is playing in the world. But if Trump really wants to get America back, then why he is proposing an increase in military spending and why is he saying that America must be militarily stronger than any other power? What is the meaning of his slogan “America First”? Who will be the second, the third, the fourth, or the 100th in this hierarchy? By what means and through what policies, other than intervention, he will be able to deliver this result?

In fact, no one should give much credit to what US politicians say about the role of USA in the world. It is much wiser to see what they do.

President Wilson, for instance, proclaimed in 1917 that Americans would never become involved in the European slaughter. Two months later the United States intervened military in the First World War, sealing the defeat of Germany and initiating their own domination of Europe for a century! (*)

Ask any political scientist worldwide about the US Democrats and Republicans. You will invariably get the answer that Democrats are the interventionists, Republicans the isolationists. But how is it then to be explained that it was the Republican George Bush Jr. that invaded Iraq, inaugurating a “strategy of chaos” and jeopardizing peace around the globe?

Are political scientists stupid? Of course not. They simply don’t want to face the constant reality of US imperial policy since the Monroe doctrine was proclaimed in 1902. They don’t have any desire to uncover the deep roots of this phenomenon in the economic structure of the USA, the role of its multinationals, etc. This is why they prefer to focus on important but still secondary factors such as the personalities of presidents or the ideology of the two parties. The same is true of many politicians around the globe, who prefer not to look straight into the eyes of the monster and, instead, try to accommodate its existence, one way or another.

The phenomenon of US imperialism is not the result of the particular character of one president or another. It is deeply rooted in the economic structure of the USA and in the relationship they build with the outside world.

The USA was built as an empire during the 20th century. Only a very deep social, economic and cultural transformation could change the character and the role of this country.

If one wants to make predictions about future US policies, it is better to look at the military programs of the United States than to study various declarations and ideologies. US militarism emerged in a big way in 1914, first as a means of supplying Europeans with what they needed to kill each other and, after 1917, Americans with what they needed to dominate the world. It has been developing unabated since that time, even after the post-World War II enemy, the Soviet superpower, decided to commit suicide! The United States spend on weapons as much as all other countries together. They have troops and bases in more than 50 countries around the globe. They have renounced to the ABM treaty, which was the cornerstone of the arms control system during the Cold War. (And it was the Americans who insisted on, and finally secured, the agreement of the Soviets for this treaty).

Only the emergence of a big popular peace movement such as the one existing in the West in the past can stop the descent to war that is rooted in the very structure of the prevailing economic and social system. And such a movement can have a chance only if combined with efforts to defend the achievements of Western societies after 1945 and to create a better order than the existing one.

More and more forces around the globe are emerging to resist the terrible aspects: social, ecological, military-geopolitical, of an emerging “totalitarian Empire of globalization”. But they still lack an alternative vision.

(*) Another classic example of “isolationist” talk preparing an interventionist policy is Yugoslavia. In 1990, as the USSR was collapsing, nobody seemed to need the USA in the Balkans. All the peninsula was looking to Europe for its future and, at the same time, it had strong economic, cultural and military ties with Russia. When Germany, Austria and the Vatican encouraged the war in Yugoslavia, Washington kept a distance, letting the Germans do the dirty job with the Serbs and provoke a lot of dissatisfaction with their own partners, especially the French, British, Greeks. From time to time US politicians were even saying that they would leave the Balkans, that they were not interested in Europe. Of course they had no intention of leaving, otherwise they would not at the same time have built one of their greatest military bases abroad in FYROM. Every time the Americans said they were leaving a kind of panic came over  European capitals. Berlin had inaugurated the destruction of Yugoslavia, but it could not finish the job. The war in Yugolsavia was meant in Berlin as a way of reaffirming the new international role of a reunited Germany. In the end Europeans were begging Americans to come back.

When Germany was sufficiently exposed and Europe had failed miserably, the Americans stepped in with NATO airplanes and Holbrook diplomacy to finish the job in two phases (the Dayton agreement and the Kosovo War). They sealed the defeat of Serbia, the exclusion of Russia (which failed to protect its Serbian brothers) and the end of any ambition of an autonomous European foreign and defense policy for the foreseeable future. Nobody needed them in 1990, but in 2000 they were again fully dominating the strategic landscape in the Balkans,  a region of capital importance for any future war with Russia and also a possible energy transit road  (by the way, what happened inYugoslavia has many similarities with the debt war against Greece and the Germany/IMF role).

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos is a journalist and writer. He has worked as advisor on Arms Control and East-West relations in the office of Greek PM Andreas Papandreou (1985-88) and as the chief correspondent of Athens News Agency in Moscow (1989-99)

This isn’t the first time that the United States has faced a potential constitutional crisis or charges that the presidential race is being rigged under the influence of a foreign power.

Rumors of conspiracy and war were already rampant at the end of the eighteenth century. The “enemy” then was France. Some warned ominously that Napoleon’s troops were moving on Florida and Louisiana. By April 1798 Congress had voted funds to arm merchant ships and fortify the harbors. In May it instructed US warships to capture any French vessel caught in American waters.

Public fears were on the rise and the pressure for action was intense. John Adams’ wife Abigail supported a declaration of war and criticized Congress for acting too slowly. But the President and Congress decided instead to focus on enemies at home.

As the summer temperature soared past 90 degrees in Philadelphia, lawmakers went further than even Adams hoped, passing the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts. Adams called them emergency wartime measures. After all, there were more than 25,000 French immigrants in the country! And most of them were survivors of the slave uprising in Haiti on the island of Santo Domingo. Obvious security threats, right?

As historian David McCullough notes, there were French newspapers in Philadelphia as well as French schools, booksellers, boardinghouses and restaurants. “The French, it seemed, were everywhere,” he writes, “and who was to measure the threat they posed in the event of war with France?”

The Alien Act was a Trumpian initiative aimed directly at immigrants, increasing the period of residency to qualify for citizenship and giving the President the power to deport any foreigner he considered dangerous. But the more consequential law turned out to be the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to stir people up or write anything critical of the government, Congress, or the President. Editor Noah Webster backed the idea, declaring it time to stop other newspaper editors from libeling public figures. Even George Washington commented privately that some publications deserved punishment for their attacks. War was the pretext, but a little censorship sounded reasonable to many leaders. We’ve heard similar calls from the GOP candidate.

Officially, the purpose of the Sedition Act was to crack down on illegal actions that tended to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government. Rather than a foreign spy, however, the first target was Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, an opposition editor in Philadelphia arrested for libeling Adams. In daily attacks he had belittled Adams as “President by three votes,” mocking his weight and describing him as a British tool. But Bache was never convicted, instead dying of yellow fever before he could stand trial.

Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon was equally high on Adams’ list. After the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, he had demanded a roll call vote to see “who are friends and enemies of the Constitution.” Jefferson agreed, calling the repressive new laws an unconstitutional “reign of terror.” But what triggered President Adams into action was a letter to the editor. Responding to an attack in the Federalist Vermont Journal, Lyon wrote the US should stay out of war with France. The Adams administration, he went on, had forgotten the welfare of the people “in an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation and selfish avarice.”

There was also a comment about Lyon’s foot and the seat of the president’s pants.

That was enough for Adams and his allies. Lyon was placed on trial, in Vermont, in front of a judge who had run against him for Congress, convicted of bringing the President and government into contempt, fined $1,000, sentenced to four months, and marched in chains through the streets of Vergennes to jail. The sentence was imposed in October 1799, just a month before he was up for re-election.

But Adams and the Federalists had made a tactical error. They had targeted a hero, a popular figure who had come to the colonies as an indentured servant, fought the British with Ethan Allen, and married one of Allen’s cousins. As a result Vermont voters defied the President and re-elected him anyway. Despite Lyon’s occasionally extreme behavior the arrest had made him even more popular, an early example of the state’s outspoken, contrarian, and sometimes defiantly independent streak.

The next year, for the only time in US history, the President – John Adams – ran against the Vice President – Thomas Jefferson. Since Matthew Lyon’s trial for sedition, eleven more people had been convicted under Adams’ law. But that didn’t stop the Anti-Federalist press from calling him a monarchist, an old man too impressed with the British. Some claimed he was insane.

The attacks on Jefferson were equally harsh, from weakling and French intriguer to libertine and unrepentant atheist who mocked Christian faith. But the criticism of Adams came from both Anti-Federalist republicans, who considered him a warmonger, and Federalists, who said he was too cowardly to confront the French.

The race turned out to be closer than anyone expected. Adams did well enough in New England, but lost in New York, the West and South. The outcome in New York was largely the result of Aaron Burr’s influence in New York City. Counting up electoral votes from the nation’s 16 states, Jefferson had 73 to 65 for Adams and 63 for Charles Pinckney, a Federalist stalwart from South Carolina. But Burr also had 73 votes, which created a tie. That meant the choice went to the House of Representatives. It could happen again.

Burr’s refusal to step aside and clear the way for Jefferson fueled suspicions that he was privately bargaining with the Federalists. Alexander Hamilton distrusted both men but opted for the current Vice President. “Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself,” he charged, “thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement…Jefferson is in my view less dangerous than Burr.”

In the end, the tie-breaking vote was cast by Lyon, the same person whom Adams had targeted with sedition charges. Lyon respected Burr as a New York power broker, but he was philosophically allied with Jefferson. It thus surprised few when he picked the Virginian over Boston’s first citizen to be the next president. Burr became vice president and Adams became a one-term President

In 1801, the former president was still bitter — and still blaming immigrants. “Is there no pride in American bosoms?” Adams wrote. “Can their hearts endure that (James) Callendar, (William) Duane, (Thomas) Cooper and Lyon should be the most influential men in the country, all foreigners and all degraded characters?” All four had been charged with sedition.

Adams called them “foreign liars.” He also charged, a bit oddly at the time, that there were “no Americans in America.” It all sounds too familiar.

Greg Guma is the author of The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution.

Once upon a time, when choosing a new president, a factor for many voters was the perennial question: “Whose finger do you want on the nuclear button?” Of all the responsibilities of America’s top executive, none may be more momentous than deciding whether, and under what circumstances, to activate the “nuclear codes” — the secret alphanumeric messages that would inform missile officers in silos and submarines that the fearful moment had finally arrived to launch their intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) toward a foreign adversary, igniting a thermonuclear war.

Did Russia invade Iraq and kill one million people? Does Russia have a greater percentage of its population behind bars than any other country in the world? Did Russia occupy Haiti after kidnapping its president? Are Russian police allowed to shoot children to death without fear of repercussion? Is Russia entering its 20^th year of a terror war against the people of Somalia? All of these crimes take place in or at the direction of the United States. Yet the full force of propaganda and influence on world opinion is directed against Russia, which whatever its shortcomings cannot hold a candle to America in violating human rights.

The dangers presented by a Hillary Clinton presidency cannot be overstated. She and the war party have been steadily working towards a goal that defies logic and risks all life on earth. Regime change is once again their modus operandi and they hope to make it a reality against Russia.

Nearly every claim of Russian evil doing is a lie, a ruse meant to put Americans in a fighting mood and lose their fear of nuclear conflagration. It isn’t clear if Clinton and the rest of the would-be warriors actually realize they are risking mushroom clouds. Perhaps they believe that Vladimir Putin will be easily pushed around when all evidence points to the contrary.

The unproven allegations of interference in the presidential election and casting blame on Russia as the sole cause of suffering in Syria are meant to desensitize the public. It is an age old ploy which makes war not just acceptable but deemed a necessity. The usual suspects are helping out eagerly. The corporate media, led by newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, are front and center in pushing tales of Russian villainy. Human Rights Watch and other organizations who care nothing about abuses committed by the United States and its allies are also playing their usual role of choosing the next regime change victim.

Russia lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council in part because of American pressure and public relations assistance from the human rights industrial complex. The UNHRC is now chaired by Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that funds the jihadist terrorist groups who caused 500,000 Syrian deaths. The Saudis are causing dislocation, death and starvation in Yemen, too, but they are American allies, so there is little opposition to their misdeeds.

The openly bigoted Donald Trump has been the perfect foil for Hillary Clinton. That is why she and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership preferred him as their rival. He made the case for the discredited lesser evilism argument and his sensible statements about avoiding enmity with Russia made him even more useful.

The United States and its allies are the cause of Syria’s destruction. Their effort to overthrow president Assad created a humanitarian disaster complete with ISIS and al Nusra fighters who love to chop off heads for entertainment. Far from being the cause of the catastrophe Russia left its ally to fight alone for four years. They even made overtures to negotiate Assad’s fate with the United States. All attempts to stop the fighting were rejected by the U.S. and NATO and sealed the fate of the Syrian people. The people of east Aleppo are being shelled by American allies but one wouldn’t know that by reading what passes for journalism in newspapers and on television. The American role in the slaughter is barely mentioned or is excused as an effort to protect the civilian population. The bloodshed was made in the U.S. and could end if this government wanted it to.

The anti-Russian propaganda effort has worked to perfection. NATO is massing troops on Russia’s borders in a clear provocation yet Putin is labeled the bad guy. He is said to be menacing the countries that join in threatening his nation. The United States makes phony claims of Russian war crimes despite having blood on its hands. The latest Human Rights Watch canards about prosecuting Assad come straight from the White House and State Department and have nothing to do with concern for Syrians living in their fifth year of hell.

There is no lesser evil between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. She is fully supported by the war party in her desire for a more “muscular” foreign policy. That bizarre term means death and starvation for millions more people if Clinton wins in a landslide. She must be denied a victory of that magnitude and any opportunity to claim a mandate. Peace loving people must give their votes to the Green Party ticket of Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka. They are alone in rejecting the premise of an imperialist country and its endless wars.

The United States is the most dangerous country in the world. If it has a reckless and war loving president the threat becomes existential. That is the prospect we face with a Hillary Clinton presidency. If the role of villain is cast on the world stage she is the star of the show.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

It was 1:30 a.m. and CBS still wasn’t ready to call Ohio’s 20 electoral votes, or the presidential election, for George W. Bush. In Washington, Karl Rove was already declaring victory. But unlike 2000, when Al Gore almost conceded before it was clear that Florida deserved a recount, the Democrats were not rolling over this time.

For a while in November 2004, it looked like the counting could go on for weeks. As expected, Bush had swept the southern and mountain states, while John Kerry carried most of the two coasts. The President was leading in the popular vote, but neither candidate could claim the required electoral college majority.

As it emerged that Ohio might be the new Florida, ABC’s Cokie Roberts complained, “This could be the worst of all possible worlds.” She meant the prospect of extended litigation. Bush was ahead, but the Democrat were challenging Republican tactics and holding out for the counting of provisional ballots, a process that could take at least a week. Republican operatives called the tactic “bizarre, absurd, and ludicrous.” This year they may copy it.

Commenting on the high 2004 turnout, George Will offered a disquieting Vietnam analogy. “When we have high turnout we tend to be an unhappy country,” he argued, then adding that 1968 “was one of the worst years in US history. It ran up turnout, but I don’t think we want to do that constantly.”

State ballot initiatives were also influential, mainly bringing out social conservatives who tended to back Bush. Items calling for the rejection of same-sex marriage passed convincingly in 11 states; of these, nine went for Bush. In this sense, 2016 will be very different. The marriage debate is basically over, but five states will vote on recreational marijuana; another four will choose whether to permit its medical use. Four states are also voting to raise the minimum wage, and three will decide on background checks for gun buyers.

Still, one dynamic has stayed very much the same. It remains a closely divided electorate. As Chris Matthews put it in 2004, “It’s an election between north and south that will be decided by the Midwest.”

Using CNN’s new high-tech wall of graphics, Jeff Greenfield posed various scenarios, including the possibility of a 269-269 tie. That prospect, an irresistible storyline that has emerged again this year, lingered into the night. Would the House of Representatives end up choosing the President? And if someone like that happened now, who would the GOP-dominated House choose?

As the night wore on, speculation began to pass for fact. Shortly after 1 a.m., MSNBC announced that Bush was only one electoral vote shy of victory, while Kerry would have to win every remaining state to reach a tie. Actually, Bush had substantially fewer electors tied up at that point. The desire for an exciting story had eclipsed pre-election promises of caution.

By dawn the next morning, Bush actually had 254 electoral votes to Kerry’s 252. That left Iowa and New Mexico, two states where Bush was clinging to a slim lead, and Ohio, where the likelihood of a Kerry victory looked slim. Kerry conceded by early afternoon. If something similar happens this time, no one expects either candidate to say uncle.

Whatever the outcome, there will be deep suspicions and lingering claims of fraud and manipulation. That certainly happened in 2004, when claims of cyber-warfare surfaced after the vote. The difference now is Trump, who will use any opening or legal option to block defeat and challenge the legitimacy of the election.

On the eve of arguably the most important election in US history, most Americans don’t understand the stakes involved.

One issue dwarfs all others in importance – possible humanity threatening nuclear war under Hillary v. Trump’s sense enough to shun the unthinkable. One or the other will become America’s 45th president.

Sadly, it won’t be Jill Stein, an anti-war, anti-corporate predation, ecosane true progressive, her agenda promising governance of, by and for everyone equitably.

She’s the only presidential candidate warning about the risk of Hillary starting nuclear war with Russia. She doesn’t sleep well at night, she said, thinking about the ominous possibility.

Hillary represents an unparalleled menace to world peace, stability and security. In the 1990s, she partnered with husband Bill in raping Yugoslavia, along with maintaining criminal sanctions on Iraq, responsible for killing 5,000 children under aged five monthly – genocide by any standard.

She supported all US post-9/11 wars of choice, entirely against countries threatening no one – as Secretary of State, orchestrating devastating aggression on Libya and Syria, both countries mired in endless violence, chaos and immiseration of their people.

Her anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Iran militancy risks thermonuclear war no one can win, threatening everyone everywhere.

Consider the enormous risk of a third Hillary and Bill Clinton co-presidency, she in the lead role with her finger on the nuclear trigger as US military commander-in-chief, an emotionally unstable neocon lunatic able to squeeze it at her discretion – unconstrained by Congress, public sentiment or international and constitutional law.

US voters on November 8 should focus on the most vital issue of our time. Should they trust a presidential aspirant assuring endless imperial wars, a possible thermonuclear one, threatening life on earth?

Trump believes partnering with Russia to defeat the scourge of ISIS makes sense – not waging war on a nuclear super-power like America, assuring losers, not winners and utter devastation on both countries.

Who do you prefer leading America – a lunatic fringe war goddess or a billionaire more interested in profits than mass destruction.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new 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
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

 On the morning of November 4th, 2016, Brazilian military and civilian police used violent force to storm Brazil’s, Landless Workers Movement‘s (MST) Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF) in Guararema, outside of Sao Paulo in Brazil. According to several witnesses, the police stormed their way into the facility by forcing their way through the main gate shooting live bullets, and threatening people.

As a founding member of Via Campesina, the MST has worldwide recognition as an important peasant social movement, with a commitment to the protection of rural communities and workers and the struggle for land reform. The Florestan Fernandes school has been committed to building social consciousness and popular unity for over 10 years. Hundreds of students are currently studying at the ENFF which is administered by the MST to provide political and socioeconomic education to working class youth and adults from around the world.

Criminalization of Social Protest

The act is clearly a violent action taken by the current illegitimate government to intimidate the MST and their allies, who stand in clear opposition to the administration of Michel Temer, who led the parliamentary coup against elected president Dilma Rousseff and took control of the government in August of this year. The attack is part of a broader policy of criminalization of social protest and attacks against the MST.

The campaign of terror against the MST has already left its mark on two other states in Brazil: Parana and Mato Grosso do Sul, where civil police arrested members of the MST calling them members of criminal organizations, despite the Supreme Court of Brazil recognizing the MST as a legitimate organization.

We the undersigned organizations and social movements condemn this violent act against the ENFF and the MST, which stands in stark contrast to the democratic and constitutional rights Brazilians have fought to secure. To organize against an oppressive system is not a crime, it is a responsibility. We express our total solidarity with the MST and demand the appropriate investigations be launched to bring the responsible to justice. We also ask the international community to join us in solidarity with the largest social movement in the Americas. •

América Latina al Día
Circulo Bolivariano Louis Riel
Common Frontiers
DeColonize Now
Idle No More
Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network
Solidarity Halifax
Socialist Project
Students united in representation of Latin America
The Dawn News – International Newsletter of Popular Struggles

More news on this situation:

• “Live Fire Reported in Police Invasion of Movement of Landless Rural Workers Training School in Brazil,” Alternet.org.
• “Policia invade ENFF sem mandado de busca e apreensão,” MST.org.
• “The Crisis Will Be Profound and Prolonged…,” The Bullet.

Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST)

The Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, or MST) is one of the largest movements in Latin America with an estimated membership of 1.5 million members across 23 of Brazil’s 26 states. It has been at the centre of the international peasants’ movement, La Via Campesina. The MST’s aims are to fight for general access to the land for poor workers through land reform in Brazil, land occupations and through activism around social issues related to land possession. This is part of a wider agenda of addressing unequal income distribution, social inequalities related to race and gender. The MST has worked at a self-sustainable way of life for the poor in rural areas, linked to the wider struggle for new forms of socialism.

Russian forces operating in Syria upon Damascus’ request have met several close calls during military and humanitarian missions over the past two months. In late October, Syrian and Russian organised humanitarian corridors came under heavy fire in Aleppo in a brazen attempt by Western-backed militants to prevent civilians from crossing over into government-controlled western Aleppo.

Dan Rivers of UK-based ITV would say in an October 20 Tweet:

Buses ready to ‘evacuate’ civilians from east – so far no one has crossed. A rebel mortar just landed 50 ft from us. No injuries thank God.

Alex  Thomson of British Channel 4 would also Tweet:

Confirmed – rebels are firing mortars into the checkpoint areas making it extremely dangerous to attempt to leave E Aleppo…

It is important to cite Western journalists present at the corridors dodging incoming mortars particularly because the incoming fire went otherwise unreported by the Western media. The Washington Post would allude to it in an article strategically titled, “Russia says Aleppo escape corridors under fire,” in an attempt to make the claims appear to be baseless Russian propaganda.

Then early this month, Russian helicopters came under fire by designated foreign terrorist organisation, the Islamic State in western Syria with Newsweek in its article, “ISIS Claims to Have Shot Russian Helicopter,” claiming:

Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed militants hit one of its aircraft during a flight in Syria, but denied reports of any fatalities in the incident, Russian state news agency Itar-Tass reports. 

Extremist militant group Islamic State (ISIS) reported via their news agency Amaq they had destroyed a Russian attack helicopter in Syria’s Homs Governorate using guided missiles on Thursday, according to news website SITE Intelligence.

And again, strategically, Newsweek decides to conclude its article by stating:

The Russian government has come under heavy scrutiny for not upholding a ceasefire agreement and continuing military operations in Syria, in support of the Assad regime.

Could these serendipitous setbacks for Russia simply be a coincidence? Or are they the manifestation of Western desires to remove Russia from the Syrian conflict by targeting its forces by proxy?

US Has Openly Threatened to “Covertly” Kill Russians in Syria  

In 2015, former acting director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morell would openly declare his desire to see Iran and Russia “pay a little price“ amid the ongoing conflict in Syria. When interviewer Charlie Rose attempted to clarify Morell’s comments by asking if he meant, “by killing Russians, by killing Iranians,” Morell emphatically responded, “yes, covertly.”

Morell justified this by making the incomprehensible comparison between America’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and alleged Iranian support for militias fighting the US occupation, and the current conflict in Syria in which Russia and Iran are backing the legitimate government of Syria, upon Damascus’ request. It should be noted that Morell’s desire to “kill Russians” was never even so much as incomprehensibly linked to the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.

Since his comments, and similar sentiments made throughout the entirety of America’s foreign policy and media circles in 2015, there have been a string of incidents where designated terrorist organisations, either Jabhat Al Nusra or the Islamic State, have targeted Russian forces, particularly their aircraft and have done so using US and European missiles and rockets. In other words, Russians were being targeted and even killed, “covertly.”

Hating Russia Enough to Kill? 

The real question for observers worldwide is, why would the US find itself at such odds with Russia regarding Syria to want to begin targeting and killing Russians?

The United States’ official purpose for being involved in Syria is to fight the Islamic State.

Under the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF–OIR), the United States’ official mission according to US President Barack Obama is to:

…degrade, and ultimately destroy, [the Islamic State] through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.

With Russian forces suffering losses fighting the Islamic State in Syria, it would appear that the US and Russia should be natural allies, yet they clearly are not.

That is either because the US believes Russia isn’t truly fighting the Islamic State, despite losing one of their helicopters just this month while doing so, or because the US itself is not really in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The latter, is clearly the case, with US policy think tanks, American media op-eds and even US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton declaring that their collective intent is the overthrow of the Syrian government, which Russia most certainly is not a party to.

In essence, Russia’s mortal sin is not allowing Syria to be rendered a divided, destroyed and ultimately failed state by the United States and its allies just as has been done to Libya and Iraq before it. So determined to dismember Syria, the United States is willing to “covertly” target and destroy forces openly engaged in combat against alleged enemies of the United States, including Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State, enemies who just so happen to also be America’s best bet for ousting the government in Damascus.

Understanding and communicating to the public the fact that each and every “covert” attack on Russian forces carried out by Al Qaeda affiliates and the Islamic State not only proves Russia is actually in Syria to combat terrorism, but it also further proves how the United States has used the excuse of fighting terrorism to hide its true agenda behind, rather than uphold as its primary mission.

In a sane world, Syria would never have been set upon in the first place, and those nations seeking to use terrorism as a geopolitical tool would instead be isolated and neutralised by a coalition including both Russia and America. In reality, however, terrorism is but one of many tools of US power used against Damascus in a long-planned bid to overthrow it, and Russia has responded in an attempt to stop these dominoes of chaos from falling, started in 2011 under the cover of the Arab Spring, and aimed ultimately right at Moscow’s front door itself.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Dr Peter Clausing says the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have twisted scientific facts to give glyphosate a clean bill of health. 

The German toxicologist Dr Peter Clausing has accused the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of committing scientific fraud by twisting scientific facts and distorting the truth, with the aim of concluding that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. EFSA and BfR thereby accepted and reinforced the conclusion proposed by the Monsanto-led Glyphosate Task Force (GTF).  

Clausing made this accusation in front of five judges at the Monsanto Tribunal, held in The Hague from 14–16 October.

The background to this latest allegation of foul play by the EU authorities over glyphosate is the high-level dispute over whether or not the pesticide causes cancer.

Dr Peter Clausing at the Monsanto Tribunal

In March 2015 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency IARC concluded that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen.[1]

BfR did not agree, stating that a classification for carcinogenicity is not “warranted” for glyphosate.[2] EFSA sided with BfR, saying that “glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential”.[3]

But Clausing told the Monsanto Tribunal that BfR’s and EFSA’s statements are contradicted by evidence contained in BfR’s own reports on glyphosate and the draft report submitted to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) by the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.[4]

Authorities twisted and distorted the truth

Clausing, a former industry toxicologist who now works for Pesticide Action Network Germany, said there is “ample evidence” that “European authorities twisted or ignored scientific facts and distorted the truth to enable the conclusion that glyphosate is not to be considered a carcinogen. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) committed scientific fraud.”[4]

Clausing explained that the males of all five mouse carcinogenicity studies considered by these authorities to be of an acceptable quality showed a statistically significant increase in the incidence of one or several tumour types.

Three of the five mouse studies exhibited a significant increase in one specific type of cancer, malignant lymphoma, emphasizing the reproducibility of the finding.[4]

Clausing pointed out that these findings alone exceed the criterion for the classification of glyphosate as a 1B carcinogen (substances presumed to have carcinogenic potential for humans, largely based on animal evidence[5]) under European legislation.[6]

Europe’s pesticide regulation has a “hazard-based cut-off” clause regarding carcinogenicity,[7] meaning that a 1B carcinogen classification for glyphosate would lead to an automatic ban unless exposure was proven to be “negligible”. The law does not allow industry and regulators to argue that the doses we are exposed to are below permitted levels and therefore safe.

Human cancer results reflect animal findings

IARC’s verdict that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic was partly prompted by what it called “limited evidence” in epidemiological studies for a link between exposure to glyphosate herbicides and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) in humans.

Commenting on the epidemiological studies, Clausing told GMWatch: “NHL in humans reflects the findings of malignant lymphoma in animal studies.”

Further confirmation of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, Clausing said, comes from epidemiological studies and mechanistic evidence showing that glyphosate damages DNA and causes oxidative stress, mechanisms that can lead to cancer.[4]

Arguments used by authorities are false or distortions

In his evidence to the Tribunal, Clausing systematically demolished arguments that the EU authorities used to dismiss the significant findings of glyphosate-induced malignant lymphoma in mouse carcinogenicity studies.

For example, EFSA claimed, “No evidence of carcinogenicity was observed in rats and mice”.[3] But Clausing responded, “The incidence of malignant lymphoma was higher in males of all glyphosate-treated groups of all five mouse studies. In addition, a statistically significant increase occurred in three of the studies, with a clear dose-dependence in two of them.”

In another example, the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which based its arguments on BfR’s report, claimed that the evidence for glyphosate-induced malignant lymphoma in the animal studies was “equivocal” because of “of “lack of statistical significance in pair-wise comparison tests” or “partly contradictory study outcomes, depending on the statistical method applied”.[8]

But Clausing showed this argument to be invalid. In assessing cancer results in animal studies, the OECD, which sets guidelines for industry testing of chemicals, recommends the use of two methods of statistical analysis: trend tests and pair-wise comparisons. It prefers trend tests as the “more powerful” method. In addition, and most importantly, the OECD clearly states, “Significance in either kind of test is sufficient to reject the hypothesis that chance accounts for the result.”

Clausing showed that the Federal Institute abused OECD guidelines in two ways:
1. It attempted to play off one statistical method against another, dismissing the significant cancer increase revealed by one method on the grounds that the other method did not show a significant increase – even though the OECD says that a significant finding from either method is enough to rule out chance as the cause.
2. In an example of bias, it chose to believe the results of the weaker method, which did not find a significant cancer increase.

The Federal Institute appears to have done this in order to hide the finding that glyphosate caused increased cancer in the rats.

Why did IARC disagree with the German authorities?

Interestingly, the IARC reviewed the available animal studies and concluded, like Clausing, that they showed that glyphosate caused an increase in cancer. Why the difference of opinion between IARC and the German authorities?

The answer is given in BfR’s own report on IARC’s findings.[10] Unlike the German authorities, IARC applied the superior statistical analysis – the trend test. Also unlike the German authorities, IARC did not violate OECD guidelines by claiming that a second type of statistical analysis cancelled out the findings of the first.

BfR accused of intentionally falsifying science on German TV

The statistical dodge employed by the German authorities to defend glyphosate was the subject of an explosive in-depth news report that aired on German TV last October,[11] in the midst of deliberations by EU authorities on whether to re-authorize the chemical.

The news report was broadcast by MDR, which is part of ARD, the main public national TV network in Germany. The report says that BfR stands “accused of endangering the population” and shows BfR director Prof Andreas Hensel facing questions from experts before the German Parliamentary committee for food and agriculture.

One of the experts, Prof Dr Eberhard Greiser, a retired epidemiologist at the University of Bremen, says of BfR’s actions, “I’d say this is an intentional falsification of the content of scientific studies.”

The MDR film notes that BfR, in its initial report to the EU authorities, claimed that there were no signs of cancer in the animal studies: “They took the position that even though one of the five studies on mice did show a significant increase in malignant lymphoma, they dismissed it as irrelevant, because, the BfR asserted, the other four studies did not indicate any cancer risk.”

But then, says the film, the “bombshell” hit, in the form of IARC’s report stating that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen.

The IARC experts had seen something different from BfR in the animal studies they looked at. In one lifetime study in mice they saw significant increases in kidney tumours, and in another, increases in blood vessel cancer. They also noted increases in malignant lymphoma in glyphosate-treated animals in a further three studies in mice.

However, these three studies were only mentioned in the IARC report; they were not included in the final evaluation and classification of glyphosate because the IARC experts did not have access to the full dataset. That is because these were industry studies, the details of which are kept hidden from the public and independent scientists under commercial confidentiality agreements with regulators. It is a fundamental principle of IARC to confine its evaluations to evidence that is in the public domain and where it has access to the full dataset.

Under pressure from the IARC report, BfR produced an “Addendum”[2] to its initial report, in which it defended its conclusion against the IARC findings. BfR now admitted that all of the tumour findings mentioned by IARC – and in additional studies – were significant, but explained them away by using the statistical dodge described above, along with other scientifically questionable practices described by Clausing in his evidence to the Tribunal.

MDR’s report featured Green politician Harald Ebner expressing surprise that the BfR still stood by its overall conclusion that there is no cancer risk from glyphosate, despite the new evaluation of the studies.

Ebner says, “I’m kind of stunned. Yes the studies are not new, they are a few years old. Then I ask myself, ‘How can they overlook them until now? Why did the BfR previously conclude that they were not significant, no carcinogenic effects?’”

Shockingly, the MDR investigation revealed that BfR did not perform its own statistical analysis of the industry test results: “The BfR literally said that they relied on the manufacturers’ reports. Does this mean that they accepted those reports at face value?”

This is the conclusion of Peter Clausing, who was interviewed by the MDR film makers after a painstaking evaluation of the BfR reports. Clausing says in the film: “The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment has confirmed several times in writing that it performed an independent evaluation of the studies and materials it had. That should include the statistical evaluation of cancer studies. And the fact that the results of the industrial studies were so blindly trusted is scandalous.”

Taken together, Clausing’s evidence to the Tribunal and the MDR film raise serious questions about BfR’s and EFSA’s scientific integrity and competence. It’s no surprise that EU member states have so far failed to agree to re-authorize glyphosate. In response to the impasse, the Commission has granted a temporary 18-month re-licensing of glyphosate rather than the usual 15 years to give the “competent” agencies time to deliberate and pass a final judgment. It will be interesting to see how BfR’s growing credibility crisis affects the verdict.

Notes 

1. IARC (2015). IARC Monographs Volume 112: Evaluation of five organophosphate insecticides and herbicides. http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol112/
2. RMS Germany (2015): Renewal Assessment Report Glyphosate. Addendum 1 to RAR, Assessment of IARC Monographs Volume 112 (2015): Glyphosate, 31 August 2015. http://bit.ly/2eMJ8KG
3. EFSA (2015): Conclusion on the peer review of the pesticide risk assessment of the active substance glyphosate. EFSA Journal 2015;13(11):4302.
4. Clausing, P. Regulatory agencies (BfR, EFSA) used biased arguments to deny the carcinogenicity of glyphosate: Memorandum by Dr Peter Clausing, PAN Germany, as a witness to the Monsanto Tribunal. The Hague, Netherlands, 15-16 October 2016. http://www.pan-germany.org/download/Memo_Monsanto-Tribunal_Peter_Clausing_10_2016.pdf
5. CNRS Chemical Risk Prevention Unit (PRC) (2011). Carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxicants: European regulatory classification criteria, hazard communication elements. CNRS. http://www.prc.cnrs-gif.fr/IMG/pdf/cmr-criteria-clp.pdf
6. Regulation EC 1272/2008.
7. Regulation EC No 1107/2009.
8. German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (2016). Proposal for Harmonised Classification and Labelling. Based on Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 (CLP Regulation), Annex VI, Part 2. Substance Name: N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine; Glyphosate (ISO). ECHA. http://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/13626/clh_report_glyphosate_en.pdf 
9. OECD (2012). Guidance Document 116 on the Conduct and Design of Chronic Toxicity and Carcinogenicity Studies, Supporting Test Guidelines 451, 452 and 453, 2nd Edition Series on Testing and Assessment No. 116. ENV/JM/MONO(2011)47, Paris. http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/displaydocument/?cote=ENV/JM/MONO(2011)47&doclanguage=en 
10. RMS Germany (2015). Renewal Assessment Report Glyphosate. Addendum 1 to RAR, Assessment of IARC Monographs Volume 112 (2015): Glyphosate, 31 August 2015. p. 37. http://bit.ly/2eMJ8KG
11. Investigative reporter Andreas Rummel’s film was broadcast in Germany by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) in October 2015. The film (in German) is included in Rummel’s glyphosate herbicides dossier on MDR’s website: http://www.mdr.de/fakt/glyphosat156.html 
Direct link to the film: http://www.mdr.de/fakt/video-57628.html

Turkey’s President Erdogan used his mercenary Army to fight against the Syrian government military forces for the purpose of regime change.  This military project of regime change in Syria was devised, supported and established by the United States of America, who is a close ally of Turkey, and fellow NATO member.  

“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” General Wesley Clark, interview with “Democracy Now” dated 2007.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

Pres. Erdogan’s mercenary Army are all Chinese citizens of the far Western region in China, and home of the Uygur people, and are Sunni Muslims.  The Uygur people are an ethnic group of Muslims living near the far west frontier of China and they speak the ancient Turkic language, which is the root of the modern Turkish language now spoken in Turkey.  Their province is Xinjiang, and their capital city is Urumqi.

Google.com Map

For many years, Pres. Erdogan has supported the Uygur’s claims of oppression by the Chinese government.  Pres. Erdogan has made speeches in which he compared the Uygur people to the ancestors of the people of Turkey.  Pres. Erdogan feels there is a close historical and ethnical tie between modern Turkey and the Uygur people.  In a speech, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that “Eastern Turkestan is not only the home of the Turkic peoples, but it is also the cradle of Turkic history, civilization, and culture. The martyrs of Eastern Turkestan are our own martyrs.”  His designation of Eastern Turkestan is actually the Chinese province of Xinjiang, the home of the Uygur people.

Pres. Erdogan used his own mercenary Army of Chinese citizens: the Uygurs.   He had allowed them Turkish passports, which they used to pass legally through Central Asia to arrive in Turkey.  The immigration officials at the airport in Turkey recognized these special passports, and would confiscate them, but allow the Chinese to pass through legally and enter Turkey.  Pres. Erdogan had arranged for them to be transported from the airport in Turkey into Syria through the large and porous border area North of Idlib, which was once a mid-size town in North West Syria.   In the Zeytinburnu distict of Istanbul, Nurali T., a Uyghur Turk working to transport terrorists into Syria, with implicit allowance of the Turkish government, and especially the Turkish Intelligence Services, provides militants with passports worldwide.  According to Nurali T.’s office manager, “More than 50,000 Uyghur Turks came to Turkey with these fake passports from China via Thailand and Malaysia and entered Syria after staying a day in Istanbul”.  Militants who entered Turkey with these fake passports are hosted either in hotels or guesthouses for a day before they pass into Syria through the borders which are under terrorist control.

http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2015/07/turkey-plays-uyghur-card.html

Idlib was a hot-spot of violence and destruction from the early months of the Syrian crisis, which started in March 2011.  By late summer of 2011, Idlib was almost empty of residents, who either fled to Turkish refugee camps nearby, or fled to the refugee camps of Latakia.  Idlib transformed into a Free Syrian Army headquarters and base of operations.

When Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona made his famous illegal trip into Syria, to meet the FSA commanders, he was near Idlib.  Eventually, the FSA recruited and invited Al Qaeda from Libya, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and other Arab and Western countries, such as USA, UK, Europe and Australia. The majority of Syrian residents do not support armed revolution, or the armed opposition called FSA.  Because of this lack of support on the ground, the FSA chose to call in their Jihadi brothers globally, or face defeat.  The American CIA office in Adana, Turkey, who runs the FSA command and supplies headquarters, had no problem in allowing the Al Qaeda and their affiliates to bolster the ground forces of the FSA, who had been dwindling.  America used the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and Al Qaeda affiliates:  Jibhat al Nusra, Islamic Army, Nour al Deen al Zinki and Ahrar al Sham, to fight the Syrian government forces, thus avoiding American “boots on the ground”.  In fact, the FSA and all the other armed militias are acting as American “boots on the ground”: as mercenaries.

The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is the Radical Islamic political group made up of Uygur people.  Their leader is Emir Abd al-Ḥaqq al-Turkistānī.  Since 2001, TIP has been affiliated with Al Qaeda.  The ground battlefield leaders of TIP in Idlib province of Syria are Abu Rida al-Turkestani, and Ibrahim Mansour.  In 2013 TIP aligned itself with Jibhat al Nusra, a terrorist group in Syria which is on the US list of outlawed terrorist groups.   The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said,  “Chechens who defected to ISIS were replaced with the Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party allied with Al-Qaeda.”

 “Islam Awazi,” the TIP’s media center, publishes three to four videos monthly in the column, “A Call From the Front Lines of Jihad,” which report about the military “successes” of TIP fighters. Also, a monthly “Tourism of the Believers” video is produced which demonstrates the “peaceful” and “military” life of Uyghur fighters in Syria. In particular, on July 22, 2016 the Turkestan Islamic Party distributed a video titled “My Desire,” which highlighted photos of Uyghur fighters in Syria.”

http://thediplomat.com/2016/08/chinas-nightmare-xinjiang-jihadists-go-global/

Today ISIS-inspired radicals in Europe repeat the experience of TIP fighters, who massacred Han Chinese at stations in Kunming and Guangzhou using knives, axes, and machetes in 2014. The TIP has a long history of terrorist attacks inside China, targeting Chinese people who are not Muslim.  Now that TIP is in Syria in large numbers, they have become a serious contender in global Jihad.   In October 2013, five died when a car crashed into a group of pedestrians near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and TIP claimed responsibility for the attack in a video.  This act reminds us of the Nice, France truck attack which killed and injured a large number of pedestrians in summer 2016.

The TIP terrorists in Idlib took great pride in destroying the several Christian Churches of the area.  As in many parts of Syria, the Idlib area had been home to Muslims, Christians and minority sects.  The TIP made many videos of the destruction of Churches and placing their TIP flag on the steeple of the Churches.

The Uygurs are in general a poor and under educated group in China.   They have a strong sense of family ties, and some have felt a political alienation from the Chinese government and society.  Because of that, most of the Uygurs who migrated to Idlib, Syria brought their entire families with them.  The married males: their wife, their children and their elderly parents.  This is unlike most Jihadists, who are young males traveling alone.   Because these Jihadists of the TIP had arrived in Idlib, Syria as whole family units, they needed special living arrangements, unlike the male-only typical terrorist camps.  The TIP occupied a whole village in the Idlib province named Az-Zanbaqi, which is now home to 3,500 Uygurs of all ages and sexes.  There were so many children with them, that they established their own schools there.  The children are mainly taught the Koran and military training, like ‘Junior Jihadis’.  Their dream is to survive the Syrian Jihad, and grow up well trained in terrorist fighting, then make their way back to China and begin their attack on China, to transform China into an Islamic State.

The Saudi Arabian and Qatari petro-dollars are funding the regime change project in Syria, with the actual cash payroll distributed from Turkey by a Saudi official.   America is the source of the regime change policy towards Syria, with Turkey as the logistical base of operations, and Syria is the battlefield, with unarmed Syrian civilians amounting to the largest number of casualties.

Turkey is a modern democracy.  It has long prided itself on its secular form of government.   However, the AKP party, which is now the ruling party of Pres. Erdogan, is in fact an Islamist party.   Pres. Erdogan has continually been making substantial changes to the social and political fabric of Turkey, in order to shift it towards Radical Islam.  Radical Islam is not a religion, or sect, but a political ideology.  The Muslim Brotherhood is a global political party which is based on Radical Islam.  The Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in many countries, notably Egypt and Syria.  Pres. Erdogan is a supporter and defender of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Syrian armed opposition, FSA, has a political wing, Syrian National Coalition (SNC).  Pres. Erdogan hosted the SNC in Istanbul, Turkey.   America is also home to the Muslim Brotherhood, with offices and members in almost every big city across USA.  The US Congress once debated outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood; however, it did not pass.   Members of the Muslim Brotherhood hold high positions in Pres. Obama’s administration, and in key departments such as security and defense.  In the United Kingdom, the Muslim Brotherhood is also throughout the country, and has established itself with close ties to the UK government.  The same can be said of the Australian government scene.

Saudi Arabia is home to the Wahhabi brand of Radical Islam, while Qatar promotes the Salafi brand of Radical Islam, and Turkey, USA and UK are bases for the Muslim Brotherhood brand of Radical Islam.  These three brands are the three sides of the same coin.  However, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide reject Radical Islam, and according to Islamic scholars, they reject the “Death Cult “called ISIS, which was born out of the three brands just described.

Syria’s “Chinatown” is not a tourist spot, known for bright red paper lanterns and tasty noodle dishes.  For that you will have to go to San Francisco, or Seattle.   Syria’s “Chinatown” is a small village in the countryside, of rolling hills and olive orchards.   Syria’s Chinatown is a terrorist town, not a tourist town.  One day those Uygur ‘tourists’ to Syria will have out-stayed their VISA issued by Pres. Erdogan, and will face either death on the battlefield, or a slow walk Eastwards on the Old Silk Road their ancestors once made famous.

United States President Barack Obama has signed a bill into law that was written in part by the very billion-dollar corporation that will benefit directly from the legislation.

On Tuesday, Pres. Obama inked his name to H.R. 933, a continuing resolution spending bill approved in Congress days earlier. Buried 78 pages within the bill exists a provision that grossly protects biotech corporations such as the Missouri-based Monsanto Company from litigation.

With the president’s signature, agriculture giants that deal with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered (GE) seeds are given the go-ahead to continue to plant and sell man-made crops, even as questions remain largely unanswered about the health risks these types of products pose to consumers.

In light of approval from the House and Senate, more than 250,000 people signed a petition asking the president to veto the spending bill over the biotech rider tacked on, an item that has since been widely referred to as the “Monsanto Protection Act.”

But Obama ignored [the petition],”IB Times’ Connor Sheets writes, “instead choosing to sign a bill that effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO or GE crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future.

James Brumley, a reporter for Investor Place, explains a little more thoroughly just how dangerous the rider is now that biotech companies are allowed to bypass judicial scrutiny. Up until it was signed, he writes, “the USDA [US Department of Agriculture] oversaw and approved (or denied) the testing of genetically modified seeds, while the federal courts retained the authority to halt the testing or sale of these plants if it felt that public health was being jeopardized. With HR 933 now a law, however, the court system no longer has the right to step in and protect the consumer.”

It has been widely commented that the two main contenders in the US presidential race are both deeply flawed candidates, even that they are both unfit to hold high office. Whoever next takes up residence in the White House will become the most powerful person in the world at the conclusion of this coming week’s voting and the fate of all the peoples of the world will be in his or her hands. It’s a frightening prospect in itself that one individual can exercise so much power.

Hillary Clinton has a long record in office that is far from laudable. Everyone knows how she operates.

She uses politics to accumulate personal wealth; she is that modern type of politician who regards politics as a business for personal gain. “Public service” is but a cover. The UK has endured such politicians operating in Westminster too and the recent rise of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader was in part a demonstration that people had had quite enough of dishonest, self-serving politics.

There are legal cases involving Clinton from the Whitewater controversy – which concerned property and real estate – at the start of her political path to power right up until today with the questions surrounding the email releases; let’s be quite clear, the worry is not just about missing emails or abuse by Clinton of private email or her mobile phone; it concerns what the contents of these communications reveal about Clinton’s politics, her character, her true opinions and how they differ from her public statements. To sum it up in one sentence, the emails reveal her to be a scheming warmonger and duplicitous.

A Clinton presidency will mean more war. This much Trump is quite correct. Clinton wants a confrontation with Russia in Syria and in Europe over Ukraine and NATO’s relentless expansion eastwards.

Clinton has assisted ISIS to grow and enabled al Qaeda to flourish in order to a wage war on Iran and its allies in the region, such as Syria – which also happened to be a Russian ally.

She views jihadi terrorism as a tool to be manipulated to further US foreign policy in the Middle East, as Seymour Hersh and WikiLeaks have revealed. The Syria conflict will only worsen if Clinton is victorious.

Clinton will supply more sophisticated arms to the so-called rebels which are largely al Qaeda inspired although operating under a different name (al Nusra front or whatever their latest name change might be).

A “no-fly zone” which Clinton wants to impose over Syrian airspace will lead to a direct confrontation with Russia. US jets will be required to shoot down Russian planes and Russian helicopters. That could trigger no less than World War Three.

By contrast, Trump actually has a less aggressive foreign policy position. He wants to talk to Putin and has even called for talks with Assad to find a solution to the crisis over Syria. He wants America and Russia to join forces to combat the threat from Islamist terrorism. A new detente is therefore more likely if Trump were to triumph in the presidential race. A new détente would surely be a huge gain for the entire world. The new Cold War is totally ludicrous and to see the West behaving as if Russia is still the USSR is simply mind-boggling.

However, it is necessary to turn to Trump’s controversial domestic policy agenda; by talking about “building a wall” to keep Mexicans out of America, where they work in the “black economy”, Trump has exacerbated social tensions within the US, fuelling animosity between Americans and migrants, especially Hispanics, many of whom are American citizens too.

This aspect of the Trump phenomenon is obviously to be deplored. But this is virtually the only policy of the Trump campaign that has attracted media attention. The corporate media in the main has dwelt on it like an obsession. In reality, the anxieties about mass illegal migration are an expression of real public fears about the consequences of globalisation and the impact of free trade deals on their daily lives; this means job losses, working more for less and lower living standards. These concerns are not being addressed by mainstream politicians or by the media: hence the rise of the radical right in Europe and of Trump in the US. Trump has championed the “little man” and vowed to protect American jobs.

This has proved to be a popular policy. It is inevitably tainted with racism when the free movement of people has been deliberately engineered to create flexible labour markets and weaken organised labour by forcing it to compete with cheap imported labour and unregulated labour in the illegal economy. The politics of austerity insists that people must accept the inevitable dismantling of regulation and fiercer competition within the jobs market. The same harsh message from mainstream politicians has gone out to workers in the US and Europe:

“Unless you work that much harder your jobs will go to China, India or wherever”.

Trump has positioned himself as the candidate who will defend jobs and protect US industry. He has achieved success by addressing these concerns by proposing what many see as demagogic solutions. He has pledged to cancel free trade deals, impose higher taxes on foreign corporations which relocate jobs overseas and says he will bring jobs back home. This had a popular appeal.

During the race for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders also addressed similar public concerns from a socialist perspective and achieved enormous resonance among the public which surprised many commentators that an avowed left-wing message could attract so much supporters in capitalist America. Sanders is now campaigning for Hillary Clinton.

During her campaign, Clinton has not given much priority to the social agenda espoused by Sanders, however, preferring instead to dwell on undermining Trump’s personal character and stoking up anti-Russian sentiment in a manifestation of extreme red-baiting rhetoric the likes of which US politics has not seen since the McCarthy mania of the 1950s. It will interesting to see if the groundswell of popular support for Sanders will automatically transfer to voting for Clinton despite her obvious flaws and her close connections to corporate America and Wall Street.

She is clearly the candidate of the privileged elite and in this respect it is illuminating to see her take the stage with Hollywood luminaries, pop stars and TV personalities.

The big question will people continue to see Clinton as part of the problem or is she now part of the solution?

How many of the former Sanders supporters will hold their noses and vote for Donald J Trump?

How many of the first time voters and those long alienated from the system will come out and vote for Trump?

Which one of the two is perceived to be the candidate of change? These are some of the crucial deciding factors as Americans go to the polls and we will all soon see the outcome.

Former Chief of British Defence Staff calls for dialogue with the Russians, rejects idea of no fly zone in Syria as threatening war, says Jihadis should be told to leave Aleppo, and calls for alliance with the Russians against ISIS.

Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, who has been successively Commander in Chief, Land Forces of the British Army, Chief of the British Army’s General Staff, and from October 2010 to July 2013 Chief of the Defence Staff (ie. the professional head of the British armed forces), has broken ranks with the British political class’s antipathy to Russia, and has called for the US and Britain to agree to the Syrian government’s recapture of eastern Aleppo.

Lord Richards’s comments, made in a parliamentary debate in the House of Lords where he sits as an independent, could not be clearer.  Since they are so unusual I reproduce them in full as they have been provided by the Independent newspaper.

Firstly Lord Richards criticised the present ideological crusade against Russia, and spoke of Donald Trump as someone who as President might restore dialogue with Russia, thereby securing world peace.

In doing so Lord Richards also made the point that the greatest danger presently does not come from Russia but from groups like ISIS and that it is in everyone’s interest that the US and Russia come together to fight this common enemy

In the Cold War era states coalesced and they had this understanding and it worked – even though there was a massive amount at stake, communications and mutual understanding between Russia and America wasn’t too bad.

It’s non-state actors like Isis that are the biggest threat to our security. If countries and states could coalesce better to deal with these people – and I think Trump’s instinct is to go down that route – then I think there’s the case for saying that the world certainly won’t be any less safe.

It’s that lack of understanding and empathy with each other as big power players that is a risk to us all at the moment.

Therefore I think he would reinvigorate big power relationships, which might make the world ironically safer.

The comments, which correspond exactly to things said by us in The Duran, most eloquently by our contributor Adam Garrie, will cause great anger within the powerful neocon lobby in Britain.  What Lord Richards had to say about Syria, and about Aleppo in particular, will have made them more angry still.

Before discussing what Lord Richards had to say about Syria, it is important to remember that he is an exceptionally well-informed observer of the Syrian war.  As a top ranking military officer for many years, and as Chief of the Defence Staff from October 2010 to July 2013, Lord Richards was heavily involved in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and drew up plans to arm the Jihadis in Syria.  He is therefore highly experienced about the realities of the various Middle East wars – including the Syrian war – and he knows what he is talking about when he discusses them.

On the subject of Aleppo he was crystal clear: the only proper and humanitarian thing to do is to persuade the Jihadis to leave eastern Aleppo, as Putin has told them to do, and to agree to its recapture by the Syrian government

If the humanitarian situation in Syria is our major concern, which it should be – millions of lives have been ruined, hundreds of thousands have been killed – I believe there is a strong case for allowing Assad to get in there and take the city back.

We want the humanitarian horror of Aleppo to come to a rapid halt. The best and quickest way of doing that is to encourage the opposition groups to leave. The Russians are undoubtedly using their weapons indiscriminately. If they’re going to attack those groups then there is inevitably going to be civilian casualties.

(bold italics added)

If he made this point in the starkest and clearest possible way, Lord Richards also spoke the unvarnished truth about the total impracticality and utter foolishness of even discussing a no fly zone.  In doing so he spoke scathing about Hillary Clinton

Unless she (NB: Hillary Clinton – AM) is prepared to do this properly and go to war with Russia, she shouldn’t talk about no-fly zones and nor should we. We would have to shoot down Russian aircraft in order to impose it. Do we really want to go to a shooting war over Aleppo?

…….

The alternative is for the West to declare a no-fly zone and that means you’ve got to be prepared to go to war with Russia ultimately.

I see no appetite for that and nor, frankly, do I see much sense in it. It sticks in my throat to say it because I have no love for Assad.

The fact is, the only way to get it to stop now is to allow Assad to win and win quickly and then turn on Isis with the Russians.

(bold italics added)

Expressed with such brutal clarity these comments are guaranteed to provoke howls of outrage in Britain’s neocon/regime change circles, though because of the wide knowledge in political circles that the British public actually agrees with Lord Richards these are more likely to be expressed privately than in public.  What will make the anger especially great is that Lord Richards’s arguments are actually unarguable.

The big question is whether Lord Richards is speaking only for himself or whether his comments signal a wider discussion within the British government and the British army?

Obviously I do not know the answer to this question.  However, for what it’s worth, my opinion is that it is most unlikely that a former Chief of the Defence Staff would talk publicly in this way unless he was sure his views were widely shared within the British military.  Indeed I suspect that Lord Richards is speaking out on the British military’s behalf, knowing that as a retired officer he is free to say things that serving officers bound by military discipline can’t.  Most likely there has been a lengthy round of private conversations about the prospect of war in Syria within the British military, and Lord Richards’s speech is the way the British military is making its opinions public and known to the country’s political class.

If so then Lord Richards’s speech to the House of Lords should be seen for what it almost certainly is: the public expression of the grave doubts many serving British officers surely have about Boris Johnson’s crackpot scheme for a “no bombing” zone in Syria and for the various other equally harebrained schemes for military intervention in Syria that get all too frequently talked about in the British media and in the British parliament.

The US military has made it quite clear that it adamantly opposes military intervention in Syria given the sophisticated air defence system the Russians have set up there.  Judging from Lord Richards’s comments, that is the view of the British military as well.  As discussed previously, the opposition of the military means Western military intervention in Syria simply isn’t going to happen, whether Hillary Clinton is elected President or not.

Whether the Jihadis fighting in Aleppo or elsewhere in Syria understand this is another matter.  Whether they understand it or not, the fact however is that as the Syrian and Russian militaries close in on them, they are on their own.

 This is the continuation of the testimony I will present before the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission’s Administrative Law Court November 2 and 3, 2016.

A very similar scheme, I offer, currently is being used and foisted upon customers and consumers by vested interests and even the PA PUC I may add, which depend upon fifty-year-old or more, radar science heat-producing (thermal) studies to prove that microwave technologies RFs/EMFs do not harm human health, while specifically totally disregarding and discrediting scientifically documented Non-thermal health effects in order to cash in on federal grant monies that promote what’s being called “The Internet of Things” or the “Grid.”

Moreover, the U.S. military document in Exhibit L indicates that RF/EMF microwave safety is not cost effective and, therefore, always has been avoided and deliberately not pursued further.  That deliberate fact needs to be prosecuted as crimes of conspiracy, collusion and racketeering to maintain specific military vested interests, which have impacted industry, including controlling a one-sided inaccurate assessment of science and technology, detrimental to human health and the environment.

According to the study “Epidemiologic evidence relevant to radar (microwave) effects” published in 1997 online at Environmental Health Prospectives, PECO, Exelon, and the PA PUC must consider the following regarding cancer and EMFs, which are created by microwave functioning AMI Smart Meters, including the “dirty electricity” they create:

Public and occupational exposures to microwave (RF) are of two main types. The first type of exposures are [sic] those connected with military and industrial uses and, to some extent broadcast exposures. It is this type that most of the data cited in this study draw upon. The second type, cellular telephones and their associated broadcast requirements, [which AMI Smart Meters operate on] have raised concerns about current exposures because of their increasingly widespread use. Four types of effects were originally reported in multiple studies: increased spontaneous abortion, shifts in red and white blood cell counts, increased somatic mutation rates in lymphocytes,and increased childhood, testicular, and other cancers.  In addition, there is evidence of generalized increased disability rates from a variety of causes in one study and symptoms of sensitivity reactions and lenticular opacity in at least one other. These findings suggest that RF exposures are potentially carcinogenic and have other health effects. Therefore, prudent avoidance of unneeded exposures is recommended as a precautionary measure. [1] [CJF emphasis added]

Additionally, I introduce Exhibit R-2 Scientific-Medical Evidence on EMF Radiation, which further corroborates the medical science affirming non-thermal health effects from RF/EMF radiation.

Science promotes the recommendation for using precautionary measures or the Precautionary Principle[2], which, in the case of AMI Smart Meters, is the avoidance of RFs/EMFs.  Frompovich has proven in her answers to Attorney Smith’s interrogatories that she lives, as humanly possible, an electromagnetic-free lifestyle as possible since she has no RF/EMF-producing appliances, gadgets, or even a TV in her home.  And yet, Frompovich is being harassed and threatened with no electric power if she does not submit to scientific folly, corporate agendas, and ill-found administrative mandates that depend upon 1940s radar science when it is now 2016!

Talk about insanity surrounding AMI Smart Meters!  Duquesne Light had been harassing utility customers because of AMI Smart Meter malfunctions, which were explained away as “Smart Meters are like computers, and discrepancies and technical issues occur.”  However, no technical issues occurred for decades with safe, efficient, non-plastic parts, non-RF/EMF-producing analog meters.

I have a question for the PA PUC:  Are you aware of the inefficiencies of AMI Smart Meters; how they are causing all sorts of heartaches—literally and figuratively—for customers? And, pray tell, what are you doing about them, other than holding hearings like mine and allowing, and even enabling, consumer health and domestic problems?

Reporter Jon Delano of KDKA2 TV, a Pittsburgh CBS affiliate, reports   about one customer whose first bill, after the AMI Smart Meter was installed, went from previous monthly bills of $42 to $2,545.13!  Another customer reported receiving zero bills for electricity used, and then was harassed and threatened with service termination for non-payment!

It’s totally outrageous what goes on with AMI Smart Meters, their malfunctions, safety issues like fires and, most of all, their politics!  How can customers trust they are not getting ripped off by utility companies with the obvious blessing of the PA PUC when bills skyrocket for no apparent reasons?

Here’s what ought to be most perturbing information for the PA PUC and all entities involved in pushing RFs and EMFs AMI Smart Meters on to unsuspecting public consumers.  This is happening in Australia where a judge has allowed the case to proceed through that legal system:

Over the past few years, New Farm resident Louise Brosnan has lead [sic] the community charge in raising awareness regarding her findings relating to EMR (electromagnetic radiation) and to stop Telcos emitting harmful exposure. Her efforts and research have been an attempt to get people doing something about this menace – but also to provide awareness to unsuspecting residents. Louise suffers from microwave sickness or electro-hypersensitivity and claims that Telcos via their installation of a mobile phone tower emission have threatened to assault her with unseen electrical energy.  Increasingly, in many territories, wi-fi is being removed from schools and hospitals.[3]

That assault threat is deemed sufficiently legal to allow Ms. Brosnan’s case to proceed through Australia’s legal system.  We need such legal awareness, e.g., assault and battery from microwaves and their generation, in the USA, I offer.  Australian law recognizes the culpability involved from microwave-generated RFs/EMFs.  Furthermore, Frompovich stresses that microwave assault and battery legal actions probably soon will—and should—follow within the USA legal system.

Additionally, I feel morally obligated to mention that some researchers are noticing parallels between EMF effects and autism physiology.  Dr Martha R Herbert, PhD, MD (Harvard Medical School, MGH Neurology, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, TRANSCEND Research, Higher Synthesis Foundation & Higher Synthesis Health) gave a slide presentation titled “Parallels between EMF effects and Autism Findings,” accessible at the Pediatric Societies Conference in May of 2016.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByIQaPLaf3_PQUl0MFA1RXFlMGM/view?pref=2&pli=1

So what do EMFs do physiologically to impact autism physiology? According to Dr Herbert, there’s a page full of twelve (12) physiological issues, which I will not read but introduce as Exhibit P, “Parallels Between EMF Effects and Autism Findings.”  Additional information can be found at Footnote [4] of my written testimony.

Dr Herbert’s slide presentations Conclusions need to be taken seriously insofar as she says that “EMF is likely to make autism’s cellular, metabolic and nervous system physiological dysfunctions worse,” and that “Reducing EMF exposures could reduce severity and incidence of autism.”  If that be the case, AMI Smart Meters on every house may become the proverbial albatross around utilities necks when class action lawsuits, similar to those filed for prescription drug damages, start being filed by parents whose children are impacted by microwave RFs/EMFs and dirty electricity travelling on their homes’ wiring generated by AMI Smart Meters 24/7/365, as often as every 15 seconds, 9600 times a day!

Personally, I recommend the PA PUC look further into how RFs/EMFs, AMI Smart Meters and Wi-Fi in schools are adversely impacting children, who are the most vulnerable to RF/EMF radiation.

Moreover, I’d like to impress upon this court, the PA PUC, and all utility companies installing and operating AMI Smart Meters what the American Academy of Environmental Medicine states in its “Electromagnetic and Radiofrequency Fields Effect on Human Health” paper Exhibit I:

While it was practical to regulate thermal bioeffects, it was also stated that non-thermal effects are not well understood and no conclusive scientific evidence point to non-thermal based negative health effect.  Further arguments are made with respect to RF exposure from WiFi, cell towers and smart meters that due to distance, exposure to these wavelengths are negligible.  However, many in vitro, in vivo and epidemiological studies demonstrate that significant harmful biological effects occur from non-thermal RF exposure and satisfy Hill’s criteria of causality[5].  Genetic damage, productive defects, cancer, neurological degeneration and nervous system dysfunction, immune system dysfunction, cognitive effects, protein and peptide damage, kidney damage, and developmental effects have all been reported in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Pg. 2 [Printed copy provided]

And this from “Health Impacts of Radiofrequency Exposure from Smart Meters” April 2011, a 52-page report prepared by the California Council on Science and Technology:

Two Types of Radio Frequency Effects: Thermal and Non-Thermal

Household electronic devices, such as cellular and cordless telephones, microwave ovens, wireless routers, and wireless smart meters produce RF emissions.  Exposure to RF emissions may lead to thermal and non-thermal effects.  Thermal effects on human have been extensively studied and appear to be well understood.  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has established guidelines to protect public health from known hazards associated with thermal impacts of RF: tissue heating from absorbing energy associated with radiofrequency emissions.  Non-thermal effects, however, including cumulative or prolonged exposure to lower levels of RF emissions, are not well understood.  Some studies have suggested non-thermal effects may include fatigue, headache, irritability, or even cancer.

https://ccst.us/publications/2011/2011smart-final.pdf Pg. 4 [CJF emphasis added]

I’d be extremely lax if I did not address and question the “Cost Effectiveness” of AMI Smart Meters, which other states Attorneys General and Utility Commissioners have studied and feel do not support a mandated roll out, like Pennsylvanians are experiencing.

I introduce Exhibit Q Smart Meters Cost Effectiveness Questioned into the record along with the specific request that the PA PUC provide Frompovich the study regarding cost effectiveness or feasibility studies documenting AMI Smart Meters’ ability to effectuate consumer savings that was done before, and presented to the PA PUC prior to, the roll out in Pennsylvania.

Such a study certainly should have to have been required and done to comply with the PA PUC Title 66 §1501 Utilities Not Harm Customers, as part of a feasibility study regarding implementing a new product and/or type of service before deployment or roll out.  What is the date of that study, and may I please have a copy of it?

Furthermore, may I respectfully remind everyone that PECO had to stop installing, plus reinstall close to 200,000 AMI smart meters[6], due to the Sensus AMI smart meter fires [7] that were occurring in the metropolitan Philadelphia area.  One AMI smart meter fire, about which I reported internationally, has made the family destitute and no one at the PA PUC or PECO has stepped up to the plate to correct the damage caused by the installation of an AMI smart meter![8]

However, there is one last measure of unfinished business; it concerns Chairman Robert Godshall of the PA House Consumer Affairs Committee, who has sat on AMI Smart Meter opt-out bills for years and continues to this day to NOT call up, nor release, several bills currently in that committee.

Since PA state legislators have heard the plea from citizens for redress to government and introduced appropriate bills to deal with AMI Smart Meters, I allege that Chairman Godshall is depriving all Pennsylvanians of due process, plus redress from harmful health effects to citizens minds, bodies, and health by not allowing said opt-out bills to be released for a vote, which subsequently will pass that committee and the entire state legislature.

Representative Godshall knows that and is acting to prevent those bills from becoming law, I contend.  Therefore, I allege Chairman Godshall is acting in his own or industry’s best interests—not Pennsylvanians and either should recuse himself, since his son Grey works or worked for PECO/Exelon, which prompts conflict of interest claims, or there should be a recall of Representative Godshall who is preventing Pennsylvanians from having their grievances heard about AMI Smart Meters and NOT processing bills introduced into the legislative process to rectify AMI Smart Meter hardships.  Other states have enacted opt-out legislation for AMI Smart Meters, so what’s preventing Representative Godshall from releasing those bills?

May I respectfully remind the PA PUC, every PA state legislator, and all state government agency administrators, who actually function as fiduciaries in their relationships with taxpaying citizens, that you should be demanding Representative Godshall’s resignation for his blatant exercise for several years of what appears to be a pre-set and/or determined agenda, or course of action, that is not in the best interests of Pennsylvanians’ health and wellbeing, but smacks clearly of a conflict of interest and even possible collusion.

And finally, the following are my closing remarks.

Unfortunately and most dramatically, a classic example of government inefficiencies and governmental agencies’ questionable and inaccurate health information and/or advisories, or more accurately—the lack of correct and proper health information or science, plus  probable “vested-interest data propaganda,” input is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s totally inept and clearly ludicrous daily September 11, 2001 event air quality reports during the World Trade Center implosions that contended air quality was safe, along with insistent admonitions to go back to work in that area and get on with life as normal.

Such GROSSLY inaccurate information for all involved, especially first responders, EMS personnel, rescue and recovery crews, plus deconstruction and reconstruction crews later on, now has been proven scientifically false and apparently driven either by blatantly unqualified or deliberately bad scientific information, OR possibly, a deliberate “conspiracy” to keep important air quality health damaging information from those brave men and women who put their lives in danger to help their fellow human beings.  I, for one, remember that day and salute with the highest esteem I can muster those brave and selfless souls and their families who have suffered the consequences of government stupidity or malfeasance, deliberate or otherwise, I offer.

There were extremely high levels of toxic contaminants—chemicals, heavy metals and questionable particulates—and federal, City of New York and State of New York health officials knowingly did NOT protect the public’s health, only doggedly reassured and told obvious scientific lies, which leads Frompovich to question if similar modus operandi are employed with regard to electromagnetic frequencies non-thermal adverse health effects from microwave technology being forced upon Pennsylvanians via utility companies’ AMI Smart Meters and PA PUC’s regulations, despite what HB2200 stated:

(f) (2) (i) upon request from a customer that agrees to pay the cost of the smart meter at the time of the request.

Frompovich’s question to PECO and the PA PUC is this:  How many PECO customers requested an AMI Smart Meter?  May I please have the number of customer requests for a smart meter, plus the cost of each customer’s meter?  I’d be willing to wager neither of you have had such requests!

After all the scientific research, publications and documentation Frompovich has introduced into this hearing record, especially the Bioinitiative 2012 report with 1800 new studies that I introduce as Exhibit R-1, the PA PUC, PECO, all Pennsylvania utility companies, the media and federal government agencies surely now must know the current scientific facts about EMFs/RFs and electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) problems emanating from microwave technologies by which AMI Smart Meters operate.

What is the PA Public Utility Commission going to do about it now that you know?

Unfortunately, human nature is such that humans cannot understand, nor appreciate, the problems others are saddled with, which some even consider as ‘odd’ UNTIL—and here’s the key moment—one actually experiences those very same problems, but then it’s too late.  Have any of you walked in an EHS person’s shoes?  When you contract electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), you, too, I can almost guarantee, will become totally distraught and demand relief.

What is the PA PUC going to do to relieve the fear, mental and physical anguish and suffering of those who have forced retrofitted AMI Smart Meters on their homes, plus all the harassment Pennsylvania consumers who refuse(d) being damaged by AMI Smart Meter EMFs receive(d); are bullied about; and/or threatened with loss of service and/or fines?

Where is the PA PUC’s collective government conscience and fiduciary responsibility regarding the PA PUC’s safety mission?

Where is the current experimental—not epidemiological—science proving there are no EMF/RF non-thermal adverse health effects?  Frompovich requests that PECO please produce them to her and the PA PUC Administrative Law judges  before any decision is rendered by this court in the Frompovich case.

Lastly, where are the PA PUC members’ individual senses of integrity, honor and agency decency regarding implementation of Act 129 of 2008 as actually passed by the legislature as HB2200, not what PA PUC employees “believed” legislators had passed?

I rest my case, and thank you very much for the opportunity to present my testimony, which I respectfully ask be printed in its entirety as part of this hearing record, with no deletions and/or redactions.

Catherine J Frompovich
November 2, 2016

Notes:

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1469943/
[2] http://www.precautionaryprinciple.eu/
[3] https://app.box.com/s/svj3a4q7pi77dzrtxg3ekbn4dmp26ppm
[4] http://ehtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MarthaHerbertPAS-Handout-1.pdf Pp. 2-3
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Hill_criteria
Criteria: Strength, Consistency, Specificity, Temporality, Biological gradient, Plausibility, Coherence, Experiment, Analogy
[6] http://marylandsmartmeterawareness.org/smart-meter-news/after-tests-peco-to-resume-smart-meter-installations-sensus-defends-their-meters/
[7] http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-16/news/33217445_1_smart-meters-smart-meter-installation-sensus
[8] http://www.activistpost.com/2015/06/smart-meters-fire-living-hell-and.html

Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.

Catherine’s latest book, published October 4, 2013, is Vaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccines, available on Amazon.com.

Her 2012 book A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments, is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook.

Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)

Catherine’s NEW book: Eat To Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities ©2016 Catherine J Frompovich is now available

A mass exodus of Ukrainians to Russia: The symbol of the new year in Ukraine may be a Cossack Vakula* that flies over precincts in St. Petersburg. Or a deserted farm near Little Russian Dikanka, a hut where the wind sings through the windows. Ukrainians are rushing to Russia not for overseas slippers, but for daily bread. They run from the country with their families, together with their farm neighbors, leaving forever.

1/4  WON’T RETURN

Members of the International human rights organization Human Rights Action (HRA) said that over the past year in Ukraine, where over the last 10 years the population has decreased from 48 to 42 million, more than three million people have left for Russia! And according to European researchers the depopulation going on in the Ukraine  is about to cause a social explosion.

“No need for Ukrainian youth in migrant-saturated Europe, but it’s easy to find earnings in Russia”

This is what the Prime Minister of Ukraine Vladimir Groisman acknowledged at one of the recent sessions of the government. In the session there was talk that Ukraine in the next year may be deprived of its last support – the agricultural sector. The land will soon have no one to work it, as it’s the elderly who remain in the villages.

Ukrainian youth are not needed in the Europe that is now supersaturated with migrants, but it is easy to find earnings in Russia.

Kiev media also are actively discussing the warning of Oleksandr Okhrimenko, President of the Ukrainian Analytical Center. He made the forecast  that in the next year the migratory flow from the Ukraine could grow by half, and a quarter of those who left would change citizenship, and will work in Russia.

20 MILLION LEAVE

The Russian Interior Ministry notes a sharp increase in the flow of migrants from Ukraine. It is expected that in the second half of October 25-30 thousand migrant workers more than usual will arrive in Russia from Ukraine. Already 80-85 thousand Ukrainian citizens arrive per week. Basically they come to us in search of work. At the same time, it is no longer about the residents of the Donbass, who fled from the war. It is very real ethnic Ukrainians, from the western regions.

In Ukraine, some experts are trying to support the version of this as a seasonal phenomenon: it is said, the potato harvest is done on the farms and now they have gone to earn some cash on Russian construction sites. But experts at “KP” argue that it’s not just that.

– The economic crisis has gotten worse in the Ukraine, as people are looking for any stable earnings and Poroshenko has once again shown that Ukrainians are not needed in Europe. They are not needed either as migrant workers or as visa-free visitors, Yuri Moskovski told the correspondent of “Komsomolskaya Pravda.” Moskovski is chairman of the National Affairs Council in the Government of Moscow, and the Foundation projects director, international relations for the Neighbourhood Foundation.

“They always find their niche on the Russian labor market. Our task is to receive them, place, and help them to adapt. The migration from the Ukraine will continue to grow.”** When the Zaporozhye army swore oaths to Russia, about 700 thousand people lived there. When Ukraine left the Soviet Union, there were more than 50 million citizens, and now in fact – 38. But Bandera said in his time time that for the Ukraine to establish a national state a population of 20 million would do. His successors have chosen his path. They are stubbornly headed to depopulation.

There are several reasons why the citizens of Ukraine began to recuse their nationality, and leave for Russia with their families. Though last year the Ukrainians were free to come to Russia and work, while remaining in the background with other migrants virtually invisible to law enforcement, the migration rules have become stricter this year.

Under the current legislation a migrant from Ukraine is obliged to register, acquire an INN (Taxpayer ID Number), health insurance, pass an exam on the Russian language, to acquire a work permit, is given a month to get a contract of employment, and has to pay 4000 rubles a month on the permit. Violators are fined, and forcibly expelled with a re-entry restriction for 5-10 years.

In addition, the Federal Migration Service of Russia, which was engaged in the control of illegal migration, has recently been abolished. The functions of this department were turned over to the Interior Ministry of Russia, a Ministry, which will not only supervise but also achieve results with forceful measures.

It is because the Ukrainians are in a rush to move to Russia, to obtain residence permits, and Russian citizenship, which gives the right to work without restrictions and additional fees.

Poroshenko recently added to this determination among his constituents. He put pressure on his people by means of prohibitions on Russian payment systems, and fears of an introduction of a visa regime with Russia. All within the format of the chosen policy: Team Poroshenko clearly is following the precepts of Bandera.

Notes

*Vakula the Smith: character from a Gogol story, common in porcelan; also an opera.

**The quotation marks are placed by the translator: The quoted passage is plainly from Moskovski, but the original writer has no quotation marks at all, so it is unclear where Moskovski leaves off and the writer tacks on — Tr.

Alexander Boyko, in Konsomolskaya Pravda, translated by Tom Winter

On November 3rd, Morning Consult’s Jon Reid bannered, “Poverty on the Rise in Nearly All House Districts” and he reported that, “A Brookings Institution study, released less than a week before the election, shows that the number of people living in poverty has increased in 96 percent of congressional districts between 2000 and 2010-2014.”

That finding fits along with others, such as that the economic ‘recovery’ after Barack Obama came into the White House in 2009, went virtually entirely to the very rich.

According to the top experts on wealth-inequality in the United States, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, American wealth-inequality soared faster during 2003-2013 than ever since the period 1923-1928, right before the Great Crash of 1929. Their study “Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913”, published in the May 2016 Quarterly Journal of Economics, reported that ever since the remilitarization of the U.S. from the 2003 invasion of Iraq onward (and continuing under Obama, with boosts to NATO, and invasions such as of Libya in 2011), the percentage of total wealth owned by the richest .1% of American families (those families whose net worth was $111 million or higher) rose from 15% of the total in 2003, to 22% of the total in 2013, and this means that the percentage going to the lower 99.9% declined from 85% down to 78% during that time.

America’s soaring inequality during the George W. Bush Presidency continued unaffected by the 2009 change of Presidential Administrations.

In fact: whereas Bush’s stock-market plunge in 2006-2008 hit the richest the hardest, Obama’s coming into office restored their lost wealth rapidly, while the wealth of the bottom 90% of the U.S. population flatlined throughout his Presidency. The Obama economic recovery was no recovery at all for the bottom 90% of Americans.

Not just wealth but personal income also soared for the super-rich under Obama. The “Share of income earned by top 0.1% wealth holders” soared throughout Obama’s Presidency, at least up through 2012, which is the latest figure shown there for that. So: at least the bottom 90% of U.S. families have experienced none of the Obama economic recovery; what ‘recovery’ from the ‘recession’ there is, went only to the very rich.

Findings such as those are consistent with, and might help to explain, the finding in the new Brookings study, that 96% of House districts have experienced increased poverty under Obama. The nation’s poor have gotten political rhetoric, but not much else, and the middle class also have received no net benefit, under Obama.

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.

Russia expects Washington to provide an explanation after a report claimed that Pentagon cyber-offensive specialists have hacked into Russia’s power grids, telecommunications networks, and the Kremlin’s command systems for a possible sabotage.