Global Research

Over 1,000 people have reportedly died as a result of Hurricane Matthew in Haiti just six-and-a-half years after a devastating earthquake which killed hundreds of thousands.

In addition to the deaths, injuries and physical destruction there is concern that an outbreak of cholera could erupt as did in the post-earthquake situation of 2010.

Today’s relief efforts surrounding the destruction in the country should be viewed within the same context as the military history of European and United States interventions.  Haiti was born during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries through a war of national liberation mainly in opposition to France but also included battles fought against Spain and Britain.

On October 15 the director of the U.S. Southern Command Admiral Kurt Tidd indicated that the Pentagon’s role in the relief operations in Haiti would conclude in a few days. He said the main task involved delivering hundreds of thousands of pounds of rice and medical supplies.

“What you’re beginning to see is a transition as the civil authorities, [non-governmental organizations] and other entities get in, get on the ground … and deliver life-saving goods,” Tidd said.  “We’re kind of at that natural point where the demand signal on us is going down as their picking up the load.” (Navy Times, Oct. 15)

This same military official said the Pentagon jets which had been in Haiti for ten days would begin pulling out while the airlift duties would shift to the 11 helicopters on the amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima — a mix of CH-53 Sea Stallions, MH-60S Knighthawks and MV-22 Ospreys. (Navy Times)

Yet for over a century the U.S. has made several military invasions and occupations of Haiti. From 1915-1934, Washington’s military forces suppressed a revolt against successive administrations which treated the country as a colony.

In more recent times, in 1994, the administration of President Bill Clinton sent thousands of Marines into the country ostensibly to reinstall the elected leader of Haiti who was overthrown with the assistance of this same government under the previous regime of George Bush, Sr. Conditions set down during the 1994 intervention plagued Haiti for another decade when George Bush, Jr. in 2004, on the bicentennial anniversary of Haiti, deployed thousands of additional troops to topple the Aristide government forcing him into exile for several years.

The Pentagon along with military forces from Canada and France paved the way for the United Nations Mission to Haiti which maintains a presence inside the country. These military forces which have occupied Haiti for more than two decades have not been able to ensure that adequate relief reaches the majority of the impoverished population.

What Happens to the Money?

In the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti the U.S. government and other entities pledged to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for humanitarian assistance and reconstruction. According to most accounts these funds which were raised did not benefit the people in need of assistance and only a small number of homes were built to address the crisis of displacement and homelessness.

A recent article published by the Huffington Post entitled “Should You Trust The American Red Cross With Your Donation For Haiti?”, questioned the role of such agencies which are making appeals for assistance to Haiti. This organization due to its reputation associated with providing relief, operates fundraising networks where billions are channeled every year.

Adam Hamze wrote on October 14 that “The Red Cross, the world’s 16th-largest charity with a yearly budget of more than $3.1 billion, has a complicated history in Haiti. The group raised $500 million in donations after the 2010 earthquake, promising to provide shelter, rebuild infrastructure and meet basic needs. But a 2015 investigation by ProPublica and NPR found that the Red Cross fell short of its promises. The charity had only built six permanent homes in the entire country, the media organizations found, and its efforts were plagued by internal disorganization, lack of experience in Haiti, use of donations for its own expenses, and tensions with residents and government officials.”

Although the Red Cross said that 91 percent of the funds collected went directly for charitable purposes, the ProPublica and NPR investigation claimed that it was only 60 percent with the remaining 40 percent going for administrative costs for the agency. Haitians who are involved in providing assistance on the ground inside the country emphasized that aid promised by the Red Cross was never delivered.

Institute for Justice and Democracy staff Attorney Nicole Phillips, who is based in the capital of Port-au-Prince, disputed the Red Cross responses to the allegations made by the investigators saying “The reputation of the Red Cross in Haiti is very negative. Some good work was done by the Red Cross, but I think the overwhelming experience from Haitians with the Red Cross has been disappointment and frustration.” (Huffington Post, Oct. 14)

Phillips encouraged individuals and organizations seeking to provide assistance to donate directly to organizations that are based in the country. Stressing this point Phillips noted “Haitians know how to help other Haitians better than we do, and their efforts are extremely impressive. By giving money directly to the Haitian network, you’re cutting out a huge sum of cost that otherwise would have to pay for the middleman, for plane tickets, accommodations, et cetera  — it’s going directly to Haitians.”

The famous Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat urged people to send donations to organizations that have been working in the country for years, mentioning Paradis des Indiens, The Three Little Flowers Center, and the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation. Public relations manager for Camp-Pericare, Isha Rosemond, a Haitian-run group that collaborates with other aid agencies, said that philanthropic organizations must cooperate with people on the ground to make sure the relief is delivered and is provided to those who are in need.

Haitian Migration Crisis Escalates

Haitians are fleeing once again out of the country to seek refuge and work in other nations including the U.S. In the wake of the hurricane, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said that the administration of President Barack Obama would suspend deportation flights to Haiti. This statement came in the aftermath of an announcement in late September that an acceleration of deportations of Haitians would resume.

There was a halting of deportations after the 2010 earthquake. Nonetheless in 2011, these expulsions began again ostensibly at a slower rate.

However, this policy of temporary suspension is shrouded in ambiguity because Johnson also said that the flight would resume very soon. At the same time the issue has gained almost no attention in the U.S. corporate and governmental media which is consumed with the mudslinging that is characterizing the 2016 presidential elections.

On the Mexican border with U.S. at Tijuana and other border towns, there are a number of Haitians who are stranded awaiting hearings with immigration officials. Many of the Haitians have traveled from Brazil where they found employment surrounding the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games.

With the political coup against Worker’s Party President Dilma Rousseff and the overall economic downturn in Brazil, Haitians are rapidly moving across South and Central America in search of refuge and employment. These problems will only be addressed through a mass outcry from immigration advocates along with civil and human rights organizations.

The U.S. has always maintained a racist immigration policy which benefits those nationals who can best benefit the political priorities of the ruling class. These and other issues will require the attention of activists leading into the next administration in the U.S.

Why do we hear only of the “humanitarian crisis in Aleppo” and not of the humanitarian crisis everywhere else in Syria where the evil that rules in Washington has unleashed its ISIL mercenaries to slaughter the Syrian people?  Why do we not hear about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen where the US and its Saudi Arabian vassal are slaughtering Yemeni women and children?  Why don’t we hear about the humanitarian crisis in Libya where Washington destroyed a country leaving chaos in its place?  Why don’t we hear about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, ongoing now for 13 years, or the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan now 15 years old?

The answer is that the crisis in Aleppo is the crisis of Washington losing its ISIL mercenaries to the Syrian army and Russian air force.  The jihadists sent by Obama and the killer Hillary (“We came, we saw, he died”) to destroy Syria are being themselves destroyed.  The Obama regime and the Western presstitutes are trying to save the jihadists by covering them in the blanket of “humanitarian crisis.”

Such hypocrisy is standard fare for Washington.  If the Obama regime gave a hoot about “humanitarian crisis,” the Obama regime would not have orchestrated humanitarian crisis in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen.

We are in the middle of a presidential campaign in the US and no one has asked why the US is determined to overthrow a democratically elected Syrian government that is supported by the Syrian people.

No one has asked why the White House Fool is empowered to remove the president of Syria by siccing US-supplied jihadists, which the presstitutes misrepresent as “moderate rebels,” on the Syrian people.

Washington, of course, has no acceptable answer to the question, and that is why the question is not asked.

The answer to the question is that Washington’s strategy for destabilizing Iran and then the Muslim provinces of the Russian Federation, former Soviet central Asia, and the Muslim province of China is to replace stable governments with the chaos of jihadism.  Iraq, Libya, and Syria had stable secular societies in which the government’s strong hand was used to prevent sectarian strife between Muslim sects. By overthrowing these secular governments and the current effort to overthrow Assad, Washington released the chaos of terrorism.

There was no terrorism in the Middle East until Washington brought it there with invasions, bombings, and torture.

Jihadists such as those that Washington used to overthrow Gaddafi appeared in Syria when the British Parliament and the Russian government blocked Obama’s planned invasion of Syria. As Washington was prevented from directly attacking Syria, Washington used mercenaries.  The prostitutes that pretend to be an American media obliged Washington with the propaganda that the jihadist terrorists are Syrian democrats rebelling against “the Assad dictatorship.”  This transparant and blatant lie has been repeated so many times that it now is confused with truth.

Syria has no connection whatsoever to Washington’s original justification for introducing violence into the Middle East.  The original justification was 9/11 which was used to invade Afghanistan on the fabrication that the Taliban was shielding Osama bin Laden, the “mastermind,” who at the time was dying of renal failure in a Pakistani hospital.  Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset who was used against the Soviets in Afghanistan.  He was not the perpetrator of 9/11.  And most certainly, neither were the Taliban.

But the Western presstitutes covered up for the Bush regime’s lie, and the public was deceived with the phrase that we must “defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.”

Of course, Muslims were not going to attack us at home. If Muslims are a threat, why does the US government keep bringing so many of them here as refugees from Washington’s wars against Muslims?

9/11 was the neoconservatives “new Pearl Harbor” that they wrote they needed in order to launch their wars in the Middle East. George W. Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury said that the topic of Bush’s first cabinet meeting was the invasion of Iraq.  This was prior to 9/11.  In other words, Washington’s wars in the Middle East were planned prior to 9/11.

The neoconservatives are zionists. By reducing the Middle East to chaos they achieve both of their goals.  They remove organized opposition to Israeli expansion, and they create jihadism that can be used to destabilize countries such as Russia, Iran, and China that are in the way of their exercise of unilateral power, which, they believe, the Soviet collapse bequeathed to the “indispensable nation,” the USA.

Osama bin Laden, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, was dying, not directing a terror war against the US from a cave in Afghanistan. The Taliban were focused on establishing their rule in Afghanistan, not on attacking the West. After blowing up weddings, funerals, and childrens’ soccer games, Washington moved on to Iraq.  There was no sign of Iraqi beligerance toward the US. UN weapons inspectors said that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but Washington did not hear.  The whores who comprise the American media helped the Bush regime create the image of a nuclear mushroom cloud going up over America if the US did not invade Iraq.

Iraq had no nuclear weapons and everyone knew it, but facts were irrelevant.  There was an agenda at work, an undeclared agenda.  To advance its agenda that the government did not dare reveal, the government used fear.  “We have to kill them over there before they kill us over here.”

So Iraq, a stable, progressive country was reduced to ruins.

Libya was next. Gaddafi would not join Washington’s Africa Command.  Moreover, China was developing the oil fields in eastern Libya.  Washington was already troubled by Russia’s presence in the Mediterranean and did not want China there also.  So Gaddafi had to go.

Next Assad was set up with faked evidence that he had used chemical weapons against the rebellion that Washington had started.  No one believed the transparant Washington lie, not even the British Parliament.  Unable to find support to cover an invasion, Killary the Psychopath sent the jihadists Washington used to destroy Libya to overthrow Assad.

The Russians, who until this point had been so naive and gullible as to trust Washington, finally figured out that the instability that Washington was brewing was directed at them.  The Russian government decided that Syria was their red line and, at the request of the Syrian government, intervened against the Washington-supported jihadists.

Washington is outraged and is now threatening to commit yet another criminal violation of the Nuremberg Standard with blatant aggression against Syria. Such an ill-advised step would bring Washington into military conflict with Russia and by implication with China.  Before Europeans enable Washington to initiate such a dangerous conflict, they had best consider the warning from Sergey Karaganov, a member of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Foreign Policy and Defense council:  “Russia will never again fight on its own territory. If NATO initiates an encroachment against a nuclear power like ourselves, NATO will be punished.”

That the government of the United States is criminally insane should frighten every person on earth.  Killary-Hillary is commited to conflict with Russia.  Regardless,  Obama, the presstitutes, and the Democratic and Republican establishments are doing everything in their power to put into the Oval Office the person who will maximize conflict with Russia.

The life of the planet is in the hands of the criminally insane. This is the real humanitarian crisis.

www.paulcraigroberts.org

Notes: 

Lt. General Michael Flynn, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency stated in an interview that the creation of ISIS was “a willful Washington decision.”  See, for example:

https://www.rt.com/usa/312050-dia-flynn-islamic-state/   Also:  http://russia-insider.com/en/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-us-created-isis-tool-overthrow-syrias-president-assad/ri7364

The DIA warned that ISIS would result in a Salafist principality over parts of Iraq and Syria.  http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf   The warning went unheeded as the neoconservative Obama regime saw ISIS as a strategic asset to be used against Syria.

“[Shimon Peres] thought about history where Netanyahu thinks about the next election.” — Itamar Rabinovic, New York Times, Sep 30, 2016

“We learned from the British,” explained the late Shimon Peres in The Guardian in 2011, “what democracy means, and how it behaves in times of danger, war and terror.  We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.”[1]

This student of history was the pitch perfect representation of the Israeli narrative, one born in brutality, maturing in it, and then, in time, considering the option of peace through necessity. The realisation that the Jewish state would have to make concessions from its imperial loft was not a point he wished to make. Circumstances dictated it.

All of this was part of the role of making history, to count in its annals, to matter in the books.  Each Israeli leader has been obsessed by that theme: to achieve something supposedly unprecedented, the next stage, a form of outdoing the impossible, namely, Ben-Gurion’s own effort in establishing the state of Israel.

Prior to Israel’s birth as a nation state, Peres was confronted by the dilemma of what entity would become. A vision of it came, fittingly enough, from Ben-Gurion, who in 1946 was chairman of the Jewish Agency.  Leon Trotsky, explained Ben-Gurion to Peres, was no statesman, “Because of his concept of no-peace-no-war.”

Ben-Gurion went on to elaborate.  Such a concept was a “Jewish invention,” and not something Lenin succumbed to when he agreed with the brutally stripping 1917 Brest-Litovsk treaty with Imperial Germany.  Lenin, despite being “Trotsky’s inferior in terms of intellect” was the supreme statesman, deciding on peace and paying “the heavy price that peace required.”[2]

For decades, Peres was the man of war.  He joined the predecessor of the Israeli Defence Forces in 1947, the Haganah, and in 1948, became head of naval services.  With Israel still in swaddling clothes, Peres was dispatched to Washington to procure arms, a line of supply which has never dwindled.  He kept company with Ben-Gurion on his 1956 trip to Sevres, France, where Israel plotted with French and British ministers to make war on Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt after the Suez Canal had been seized.

Political figures in the Middle East tend to be highly evolved chameleons, adeptly changing colours in far more skilled fashion than clumsy tigers hiding spots they can never remove.  This adjustment saw Peres morph from dedicated war maker and military builder to agent of reconciliation, though few were fooled by this change of heart. Those with sufficiently long memories recall the firm backer of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in the 1970s.

Politics offers a flexible medium to play in, and in the theatre of the Middle East, grand manoeuvrability is possible.  On this stage, Peres ducked and weaved, living up to the assessment made by another man of transformed credo, Yitzhak Rabin, who claimed Peres was “a tireless schemer” and “indefatigable underminer”.

With the victory of Labour in June 1992, the first in fifteen years, Israel was still functioning with the perspective of war as the essential, if not only weapon, for its survival.  Rabin preferred a different tack: To use peace as a weapon, a task which he sought assistance from his long term foe.

It was projected in two phases, one featuring an interim arrangement granting the Palestinians control over most of Gaza and local governance in the West Bank.   These would be affirmed in the second phase to secure a permanent arrangement after the 1996 elections.  Jordan and Syria would also feature as regional partners.

On the surface, it seemed that progress was being made. But the agreement with Yasser Arafat and the subsequent creation of the Palestinian Authority enabled a different form of control to be asserted. While the PA, lacking accountability and transparency, bullied and ruled, Israel was still able to exert control over the subjects it was meant to be gradually releasing from historical captivity.

With the assassination of Rabin in November 1995, Peres became prime minister, gifted a legacy he squandered at the election of May 29, 1996.  Where Rabin had been certain, Peres dithered, leaving the ground fresh for a seizure by Benjamin Netanyahu. The Oslo process withered, as did the image of Peres the peacemaker, with a dubious campaign in Lebanon, and the killing of a Hamas operative in January 1996 that sparked retaliatory Palestinian suicide attacks.

To the last, Peres would speak of the need for yielding.  “Israel,” he claimed at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv two years ago, “will be giving up its future if it sees the status quo as its desire.”[3]  That status quo has been all the rage under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Peres, at 93, was one of the last significant figures to the tortured history of a country deemed both remarkable and tyrannous in equal measure, a stunning yet brutal social experiment in the Middle East.  As with his colleagues, and Ben-Gurion, Peres helped build a country that has seen a state neither of peace nor war, but a kingdom precariously perched on the precipice.

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

The United States government has already declared that in regards to what it alleges to be a Russian cyberattack against the U.S. Democratic Party, the U.S. reserves the right to go to war against Russia. NATO has accordingly changed its policy so as to assert that a cyberattack (in this case actually cyber-espionage, such as the U.S. government itself perpetrates against even its own allies such as Angela Merkel by tapping her phone) constitutes an act of war by the alleged cyberattacker, and so requires all NATO member nations to join any cyberattacked NATO nation in war against its alleged (cyber)attacker, if the cyberattacked member declares war against its alleged cyberattacker.

Excuses are being sought for a war against Russia; and expanding the definition of “invasion,” to include mere espionage, is one such excuse. But it’s not the only one that the Obama Administration has cooked up.

U.S. Senator Mike Lee has asserted that President Barack Obama must obtain a declaration of war against Syria — which is allied with and defended by Russia — before invading Syria. Syria has, for the past few years, already been invaded by tens of thousands of foreign jihadists (financed mainly by the royal Sauds and Qataris, and armed mainly with U.S. weaponry) who are trying to overthrow and replace the Syrian government so that pipelines can be built through Syria into Europe to transport Saudi oil and Qatari gas into the EU, the world’s biggest energy-market, which now is dominated by Russia’s oil and gas. Since Syria is already being defended by Russia (those royals’ major competitor in the oil and gas markets), America’s invasion of Syria would necessarily place U.S. and Russia into an air-war against each other (for the benefit of those royal Arabs — who finance jihadist groups, as even Hillary Clinton acknowledges): Syria would thus become a battleground in a broader war against Russia.

So: declaring war against Syria would be a second excuse for World War III, and one which would especially serve the desires not only of U.S. ‘defense’ firms but of the U.S. aristocracy’s royal Arabic allies, who buy much of those ‘defense’ firms’ exports (weaponry), and also U.S. oilfield services firms such as pipelines by Halliburton. (It’s good business for them, no one else. Taxpayers and war-victims pay, but those corporations — and royal families — would profit.)

The U.S. government also declares that Russia ‘conquered’ Crimea in 2014 and that Russia must restore it to Ukraine. The U.S. government wants Ukraine to be accepted into NATO, so that all NATO nations will be at war against Russia if Russia doesn’t return Crimea to Ukraine, of which Crimea had only briefly (1954-2014) been a part, until Crimeans voted on 16 March 2014 to rejoin Russia. This Crimean issue is already the basis for America’s economic sanctions against Russia, and thus Russia’s continuing refusal to coerce Crimeans to accept again being part of Ukraine would be yet a third excuse for WW III.

The U.S. Presidential Contest

Hillary Clinton says “As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack.” She alleges that when information was unauthorizedly made public from Democratic National Committee computers, the cyberattacker was Russia. She can be counted as a strong proponent of that excuse for WW3. She’s with Barack Obama and the other neocons on that.

She has furthermore said that the U.S. should shoot down any Russian and Syrian bombers in Syria — the phrase for that proposed U.S. policy is to “establish a no-fly zone” there. She makes clear: “I am advocating the no-fly zone.” It would be war against not only Syria, but Russia. (After all: a no-fly zone in which the U.S. is shooting down the government’s planes and Russia’s planes, would be war by the U.S. against both Syria and Russia, but that’s what she wants to do.) She can thus be counted as a strong proponent of those two excuses for WW3.

On the matter of Crimea, she has said that “Putin invaded and annexed Crimea,” and “In the wake of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in early 2014, some have argued that NATO expansion either caused or exacerbated Russia’s aggression. I disagree with that argument.” She believes that the expansion of NATO right up to Russia’s borders is good, not horrific and terrifying (as it is to Russians — just like USSR’s conquering of Mexico would have been terrifying to Americans if USSR did that during the Cold War). Furthermore, because Ukraine is the main transit-route for Russian gas-pipelines into Europe, the coup that in 2014 overthrew the neutralist democratically elected President of Ukraine and replaced him by leaders who seek NATO membership for Ukraine and who have the power to cut off those pipelines, was strongly supported by both Obama and Clinton. She can thus be counted as a strong proponent of all three excuses for WW3.

U.S. President Obama has made unequivocally clear that he regards Russia as being by far the world’s most “aggressive” nation; and Clinton, too, commonly uses the term “aggression” as describing Russia (such as she did by her denial that “NATO expansion either caused or exacerbated Russia’s aggression”). To her, Russia’s opposing real aggression by the U.S. (in this case, America’s 2014 coup that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian President for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted), constitutes ‘Russia’s aggression’, somehow. Furthermore, as regards whether Crimea’s rejoining Russia was ‘illegal’ as she says: does she also deny the right of self-determination of peoples regarding the residents of Catalonia though the Spanish government accepts it there, and also by the residents of Scotland though the British government accepts it there? Or is she simply determined to have as many excuses to invade Russia as she can have? She has never condemned the independence movements in Scotland or Catalonia.

The United States is clearly on a path toward war with Russia. Donald Trump opposes all aspects of that policy.

That’s the main difference between the two U.S. Presidential candidates. Trump makes ridiculous statements about the ‘need’ to increase ‘defense’ spending during this period of soaring federal debt, but he has consistently condemned the moves toward war against Russia and said that America’s real enemy is jihadists, and that Russia is on our side in this war — the real war — not an enemy of America such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama claim. Both candidates (Trump and Clinton) are war-hawks, but Hillary wants to go to war against both jihadists and Russia, whereas Trump wants to go to war only against jihadists. Trump’s charge that Hillary would be a catastrophic President is borne out not only by her past record in public office, but by her present positions on these issues.

America’s Presidential campaign is dominated by Trump’s crassly vulgar obsession with sex, and by debates about whether his hiding his tax-returns is worse than Hillary’s hiding her paid speeches to corporate lobbyists, and her hiding her emails while she was Secretary of State. Regardless of whom America’s next President will be (either Clinton or Trump), it’s not going to be a good President, and anyone who thinks that these are the two best-qualified people to be contesting for the U.S. Presidency is either ignorant or else grossly misinformed — or else in sheer reality-denial. But all of those other issues are dwarfed by the top issue of this election: shall we have World War III? And that one issue is by far more important than all of the other ‘issues’ in this campaign, because it’s nothing less than an existential issue, regarding all of the world, and all of the future, which threatens the entire world within just the next few years, or even months, or maybe just weeks.

Americans are being offered, by this nation’s aristocracy, a choice between a marginally competent and deeply evil psychopath Hillary Clinton, versus an incompetent but far less evil psychopath Donald Trump, and the nation’s press are reporting instead a choice between two candidates of whom one (the actually evil Clinton) is presented as being far preferable to the other (the actually incompetent Trump), and possibly as being someone who might improve this nation if not the world. Virtually none of America’s Establishment is willing to report the truth: that the nation’s rotting will get worse under either person as President, but that only under Trump might this nation (and the world) stand a reasonable likelihood of surviving at all (i.e., nuclear war with Russia being averted).

Things won’t get better, but they definitely could get a hell of a lot worse — and this is the issue, the real one, in the present election: WW3, yes or no on that.

Hillary Clinton argues that she, with her neoconservative backing (consisting of the same people who cheer-led the invasion of Russia-friendly Iraq, and who shared her joy in doing the same to Russia-friendly Libya — “We came, we saw, he died, ha ha!”), is the better person to have her finger on the nuclear button with Russia. This U.S. Presidential election will be decided upon the WW3-issue, unless the American electorate are incredibly stupid (or else terribly deceived): Is she correct to allege that she and not Trump should have control over the nuclear button against Russia? She’s even more of a neoconservative than Obama is, and this is why she has the endorsement of neoconservatives in this election. And that is the issue.

The real question isn’t whether America and the world will be improved by the next U.S. President; it’s whether America and the world will be destroyed by the next U.S. President. All else is mere distraction, by comparison. And the U.S. public now are extremely distracted — unfortunately, even by the candidates themselves. The pathetic Presidential candidates that the U.S. aristocracy has provided to Americans, for the public’s votes in the final round, don’t focus on this reality.

Anyone who thinks that the majority of billionaires can’t possibly believe in a ‘winnable’ nuclear war and can’t possibly be wanting WW3 should read this. That was published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Wall Street’s international-affairs think tank. They mean business. And that’s the source of neoconservatism — the top U.S.-based international corporations, mainly in ‘defense’ and oil and Wall Street. (Clinton’s career is based upon precisely those three segments, whereas Trump’s is based instead upon real estate and entertainment, neither of which segments is neoconservative.)

It doesn’t come from nowhere; it comes from the people who buy and sell politicians.

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.

A Guardian piece last month described: ‘How September 11 revealed the real Hillary Clinton.’

While even supporters recognise that Clinton’s campaign has been notably cold, passionless and bereft of conviction, ‘The Clinton who emerges from the WNYC [New York Public Radio] tapes is passionate, raw and unrestrained.’

The Guardian quotes sources who reveal how Clinton ‘showed herself to be a fighter’, demonstrating a ‘personal care’ that ‘made a profound impression’. She was ‘kind and gentle’, the ‘most vivid memory’ being of ‘the senator’s eyes’. Her behaviour was ‘the mark of somebody who is sincere, who you want on your side’. All in all, ‘she came across as an effective and empathetic leader’. Tragically, the public has seen little of this:

‘I regret that sometimes she doesn’t come across well in front of a crowd as people don’t know her as so many of us do.’

This presidentialising of Clinton is a key, structural function of ‘left-liberal’ media like the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the BBC. Establishment candidates like Bill Clinton, Obama, and now Hillary Clinton are presented as awesomely benevolent, brave and wise. Even George W. Bush – derided as a buffoon both before and after he held office – was depicted as a calmly authoritative humanitarian. An ITN news report talked of Bush ‘losing patience’ with the president of crisis-hit Haiti. (ITN, 10:15 News, February 28, 2004) This was Bush as benign father figure, fierce in his determination to help the poor.

Propaganda of this kind exploits the human tendency to revere authority and celebrity. If leaders have an aura of benevolence, when their turn comes to ‘intervene’ with great violence in far-flung countries, few will be willing to question their good intentions.

In our time, this benevolence is often said to be indicated by a leader’s alleged passion for gender and sexual rights. Why ‘alleged’? Machiavelli explained:

‘It is not essential… that a Prince should have all the good qualities which I have enumerated above, but it is most essential that he should seem to have them…’ (Nicolò Machiavelli, ‘The Prince,’ 1513, Dover publications, 1992, p.46, our emphasis)

Gender and sexual rights are favoured because they can be presented as almost apolitical: a state-corporate executive can believe in gay marriage and bomb Iraq to smithereens; she can smash whole countries with bombing, invasion and ethnic cleansing, and support equality for women.

Writing on Clinton in June, senior Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee commented:

‘This is a time to celebrate. At last, a woman leads a major US party to fight for the presidency.’

Moreover:

‘Clinton is not some token woman who has inched into place by offending no one. All her life she has fought the feminist cause…’

Clinton, indeed, is ‘a feminist with a long track record of standing up for the right causes’.

In September, Laurie Penny, contributing editor to the New Statesman, backed Clinton ‘because she is a woman and a feminist, even if her feminism is unlike my own’. For Penny, Clinton is not just ‘a proud feminist woman’, she is a representative of something called ‘centrist soft-liberal feminism’; a claim to which we will return.

Toynbee argued that: ‘Rarely has any candidate so deserved their place.’ Penny agreed:

‘The presidency of the United States does not belong by right to anyone… If it did, though, it would belong to Hillary Clinton.’

Toynbee asked readers to carefully inspect their minds for traces of hidden gender bias:

‘If you are naturally left of centre, especially if you are a woman, yet you find you instinctively dislike her, ask yourself why.’

Penny did the same:

‘If you would truly prefer a Trump presidency to this… then you may want to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself, truly, if you might not be a little bit sexist.’

Toynbee emphasised Clinton’s credentials:

‘if she wins, what an added bonus that, as the first woman to enter the White House, she will also step through the door as by far the most qualified and experienced arrival there for generations… this first woman would also be the safest pair of hands in decades’.

So did Penny, noting that Clinton has ‘a career whose length and breadth would make her the most qualified presidential candidate in history’.

The Causes For Celebration

These, then, are the four causes for celebration: Clinton is 1) a woman, 2) a ‘feminist’ with 3) ‘a long track record of standing up for the right causes’, and 4) she would be ‘the safest pair of hands in decades’.

And yet Toynbee is dismayed by a curious lack of enthusiasm:

‘But among too many who should know better, her success has been greeted with a jaundiced yawn – or outright contempt… Why so fierce, so unreasonable, so vitriolic?’

Why indeed? Some explanations were proposed:

‘she’s not as radical as Sanders; she is not a natural rabble-rouser at rallies; she is the wife of a past president; she’s called “robotic” in her careful choice of words; and as a flesh-presser she warms the cockles of few hearts. After Barack Obama’s effortless charm and sublime speech-making, she is bound to seem leaden-footed in comparison.’

Really, one could hardly find a better example of a senior journalist viewing the world through a Guardian lens that filters out almost everything that matters.

Of course it is true that Clinton’s success would encourage women facing prejudice and inequality around the world; notably, white, mega-rich, American women belonging to great political dynasties. But what of the claims that she is a ‘feminist’ who has ‘a long track record of standing up for the right causes’ and would be ‘the safest pair of hands in decades’.

The ultimate test of the last claim is the developing ‘climate emergency’, by far the most serious and immediate threat of our time, which could literally end human life on this planet in the next few decades. Naomi Klein commented:

‘Hillary Clinton’s campaign… has received a lot of money from the employees and registered lobbyists of fossil-fuel companies. There’s the much-cited $4.5 million that Greenpeace calculated, which includes bundling by lobbyists.’

And:

‘Then there’s all the cash that fossil-fuel companies have directly pumped into the Clinton Foundation. In recent years, Exxon, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron have all contributed to the foundation.’

Last year, IB Times reported:

‘At the same time that Clinton’s State Department was lauding Colombia’s human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant’s founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire.

‘The details of these financial dealings remain murky, but this much is clear: After millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation – supplemented by millions more from Giustra himself – Secretary Clinton abruptly changed her position on the controversial U.S.-Colombia trade pact. Having opposed the deal as a bad one for labor rights back when she was a presidential candidate in 2008, she now promoted it, calling it “strongly in the interests of both Colombia and the United States.”‘

Bill Moyers added some detail:

‘Between 2009 and 2014, Clinton’s list of top 20 donors starts out with Citigroup and includes JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, whose chief Lloyd Blankfein has invested in Clinton’s son-in-law’s boutique hedge fund… They’re also among the deep-pocket outfits that paid for speeches and appearances by Hillary or Bill Clinton to the tune of more than $125 million since they left the White House in 2001.’

Klein strongly emphasised the point that matters on Clinton:

‘[T]aking on powerful corporations goes against her entire worldview, against everything she’s built, and everything she stands for‘. (Our emphasis)

This is very, very bad news; in fact, it is a disaster that will affect every single person on this planet – you, us, your children, our children. Why? Klein concluded:

‘If the next president wastes any more time with these schemes, the climate clock will run out, plain and simple. If we’re to have any hope of avoiding catastrophe, action needs to be unprecedented in its speed and scope.’

The next US president will be Clinton or Trump (a self-declared climate change denier), which suggests that we indeed, now, do not have any hope of avoiding catastrophe.

The Candidate Of The Military-Industrial Complex

What about the problem of Perpetual War, the endless US-UK ‘interventions’ that have created millions of corpses and refugees around the planet? David Sirota wrote:

‘Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation.’

Jeffrey Sachs added:

‘There’s no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial complex.’

Moreover:

‘Hillary was… a staunch supporter of the Iraq War, which has cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, and done more to create ISIS and Middle East instability than any other single decision of modern foreign policy.’

Immediately prior to the 1999 war on Serbia, while travelling in Africa, Hillary called husband Bill: ‘I urged him to bomb,’ she told a journalist.

Investigative reporter Gareth Porter has written of the ‘active effort’ made ‘by the US military to mitigate Obama administration regime change policies’. In 2011, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘had been strongly opposed to the effort to depose the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya led by then secretary of state Hillary Clinton’.

Clinton, then, was more hawkish even than the US military. Writing in the Sunday Times, James Rubin, former Chief Spokesman for the US State Department, commented of Libya:

‘Former defence secretary Bob Gates has written that it was secretary Clinton’s “considerable clout” that tipped the balance in favour of action.’ (Rubin, ‘Why Hillary Clinton would make a better president than Obama,’ Sunday Times, April 12, 2015)

Sachs added:

‘Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been Hillary’s relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011, Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must “get out of the way,” backed by secret CIA operations.

‘Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens US security.’

In her memoir, ‘Hard Choices’, Clinton revealed how she had also played a key role in supporting the coup in Honduras. A former sergeant in the Honduran military recently told the Guardian that, months before her death, he saw environmental activist Berta Cáceres on a hitlist distributed to U.S-trained special forces. The soldier said: ‘I’m 100 percent certain that Berta Cáceres was killed by the army.’

In 2014, Cáceres said:

‘We warned that this would be very dangerous. The elections took place under intense militarism, and enormous fraud. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book “Hard Choices,” practically said what was going to happen in Honduras.’

Clinton commented on Israel’s 2014, ‘Operation Protective Edge’ war on Gaza, in which 2,220 Palestinians were killed, of whom 1,492 were civilians (551 children and 299 women):

‘I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets. Israel has a right to defend itself.’

Did Israel do enough to try and avoid killing civilians? Clinton replied that mistakes were made, ‘but ultimately the responsibility rests with Hamas’. Shamelessly apologising for the massacre, Clinton added: ‘it’s impossible to know what happens in the fog of war. Some reports say, maybe it wasn’t the exact UN school that was bombed, but it was the annex to the school next door where they were firing the rockets’.

Clinton blamed criticism of Israel’s vicious policies on anti-semitism:

‘we do see this enormous international reaction against Israel, and Israel’s right to defend itself, and the way Israel has to defend itself. This reaction is uncalled for and unfair… You can’t ever discount anti-Semitism, especially with what’s going on in Europe today.’

Raised In Power Above Another

Remarkably, Toynbee omitted all of the above in locating the source of the ‘jaundiced’ and ‘vitriolic’ reaction to Clinton in the fact that ‘she is not a natural rabble-rouser’ and can’t compete with ‘Obama’s effortless charm and sublime speech-making’. This is the great lie of the world as seen through the Guardian lens.

Consider the third of the claims: that ‘All her life’ Clinton ‘has fought the feminist cause’, according to Toynbee, and is ‘a proud feminist woman’, according to Penny.

So what is feminism? The dictionary definition is straight forward enough: ‘the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’. Wikipedia summarises the goal:

‘to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, personal, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. Feminists typically advocate or support the rights and equality of women.’

Hannah McAtamney added an important observation on Huffington Post:

‘Feminism is not the belief that one gender should be raised in power above another. The very definition of feminism shows a complete opposition to this belief.’

This is key: feminism is indeed in ‘complete opposition’ to the idea that one gender should be raised in power above another. And yet it could hardly be clearer from Clinton’s ruthless service to elite power, notably the military industrial complex, and from her leading role in the destruction of whole countries like Libya, Honduras and Syria, that she does just that. Clinton has certainly acted to ensure that the interests of elite Western men and women are ‘raised in power above’ men and women in these target countries.

A high-level state executive who manages a system that destroys and damages millions of lives in systematically subordinating both men and women to state-corporate power cannot be described as a representative of ‘centrist soft-liberal feminism’, if the words have any meaning.

We strongly support authentic feminism as an obviously just response to the inequality, exploitation, prejudice and violence facing women the world over. The deepest support for equality of the sexes is found in the practice of ‘equalising self and others’ propounded by many ancient spiritual traditions, notably Mahayana Buddhism. This ‘equalising’ begins when we accept that no person’s happiness or suffering can be considered more or less important than anyone else’s. It is obviously irrational and unfair to suggest that ‘my’ happiness matters more than ‘your’ happiness. When we reflect repeatedly on this equality of importance, we can actually come to feel a sense of outrage at the idea that ‘I’ should benefit at ‘your’ expense. ‘I’ can actually come to take ‘your’ side against ‘my’ own egotism.

From this perspective, it is absurd to suggest that a woman’s suffering matters less than a man’s. Similarly, it is absurd to suggest that the suffering of a Libyan or Honduran man or woman matters less than that of a male or female member of the American 1%.

The idea that Clinton is a ‘feminist’, that her presidency would represent a victory for feminism, is a fraud. In reality, it would involve the exploitation of that vital cause by violent, greed-based power.

At one point in her New Statesman article, Laurie Penny appeared to be overcome with emotion:

‘…Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton! The very personification of steely-eyed, iron-jawed, soft-neoliberal feminism, a woman with short hair and pants…’

But in the strange way of so much corporate ‘leftism’, Penny also passionately insisted that she was opposed to the establishment grandee she was presidentialising:

‘Hillary Clinton is the sort of enemy I’ve been dreaming of over ten years of political work… I look forward to fighting her on her commitment to climate protection, on workers’ rights, on welfare, on foreign policy. Bring that shit on.’

Really? Why wait? Just three weeks after a committee of British MPs exposed one of the great war crimes of modern times – the cataclysmic orgy of death and destruction known in Washington as ‘Hillary’s war’ – Penny made no mention at all of one single, telling word: ‘Libya‘.

Canadian autoworkers have long been pace setters in the Canadian labour movement and as soon as its most recent agreement with General Motors was ratified, Unifor (the successor in 2013 after the merger of CAW and CEP) laid claim to that agreement’s ‘historic’ status. It has now also been ratified by the Chrysler workers, but at the Ford assembly plant in Oakville – now the largest auto facility in the country – it’s pretty hard to find any enthusiasm for the outcome of this latest bargaining round. If this agreement is indeed historic, it may be so in a sense quite different than the leadership’s bravado declaration intended.

Background: The Cancer of Two-Tier Wages

When the financial crisis of 2007-9 brought GM and Chrysler to their knees, it was hardly surprising that the pressure would intensify on workers. This came not only from the economics of the crisis and threats from the companies, but also from the U.S. and Canadian governments. As they intervened to save the companies with public monies, they notably added further pressures on the union and its members by explicitly demanding autoworkers ‘do their share’ to lower corporate costs. (Ford, the third of the auto triumvirate, had enough of a cash hoard to avoid seeking state help, but was no less anxious to exploit the crisis in bargaining with its unions).

Such working class concessions did not of course start with this latest crisis. In the auto sector, the American union (United Automobile Workers – UAW) had, since the end of the 1970s, repeatedly rationalized wage restraint or concessions as ‘trade-offs’ for jobs. That the job security never really materialized rarely led to that logic being challenged; rather, it only resulted in hunkering down to ever more desperate cycles of concessions to save the remaining jobs which, by virtue of decent-paying jobs disappearing throughout the economy, now seemed even more valuable. In contrast, the Canadian section of the union had over most of that same period strongly opposed that illusory trade off – to the point of breaking their institutional links with its American parent in the mid-80s to establish the CAW.

But stubbornness itself was always an incomplete response to the attacks on working people. By the early years of the new millennium the CAW too was slipping toward greater accommodation to corporate power. The marked rise in the Canadian dollar – an outcome of both the Tar Sands exports and an economy not doing as badly as the U.S. during the crisis – compounded the pressures on autoworkers. For years the Canadian dollar had bounced around $0.80 (US); as the Canadian dollar approached and even occasionally exceeded parity with the U.S. dollar, the competitive advantages of being paid in lower Canadian funds faded.

Going into the latest bargaining round, Canadian autoworkers had seen both their base rates frozen and their cost-of living suspended since 2008. The result was that in inflation-adjusted terms, their hourly pay in the fall of 2016 was about 16% below what it was in the summer of 2008. Nor was that the only concession. The auto companies, smelling blood, also demanded a radical change in the compensation of new hires, calling for them to be paid substantially less and their defined pension benefits to be converted to benefits dependent on contribution and returns on investments.

The push for a two-tier wage structure – workers doing the exact same work getting different rates of pay over and above a short initial adjustment period – first significantly erupted in the U.S. in the early 80s. It cropped up in the airline industry, which was struggling with the impact of deregulation, and quickly flowed into aerospace. With corporations demanding concessions and the workforce stubbornly resisting, an ‘innovative’ solution emerged: apply the concessions to workers not yet in the industry and therefore not voting on the contracts.

The head of the Canadian section of the UAW, Bob White, called two-tier wages a ‘cancer’ that had to be stopped ‘before it spread into Canada’ [Bob White, Hard Bargains, p.367]. When, in 1984, McDonnell-Douglas achieved a two-tier structure in the U.S. and tried to bring it across the border, the Canadians, backed by a strike threat, did successfully block this import. The union did however accept a lower hiring rate of 85%, though this was limited to an 18 month grow-in. The hiring rate structure remained unchanged over the following decades, but during the crisis of 2008-9, it was revived as the easy way to shift the burden of concessions (or at least a significant part of them) to another generation.

In 2008 the starting rate was lowered to 70% and the grow-in increased to three years. In the Ford ratification brochure highlighting the new agreement, the President of the CAW at the time insisted that this remained consistent with the principles of “solidarity between generations, linking today’s union members with both retirees and the generation that comes after us. Equal pay for equal work. And a refusal to subsidize, out of our own pockets, a crisis that is not remotely our fault.” But a door had been opened and the corporations, taking advantage of the fear occasioned by the crisis, pushed on relentlessly to gain acceptance for re-opening the contract in 2009 and increasing the grow-in to 6 years.

In 2012, the roof caved in on the new-hire structure. The 2012 agreement brought an unambiguously qualitative change in the practice of equal pay for doing the same work. The grow-in was extended to ten years and new hires started at 60% of the base year with the movement through the grid frozen for three years. After the 10th year, new hires got to where the base was when they hired in. As for catching up to any increases the ‘traditional’ workers got over that interim period, this would occur in incremental annual steps after that 10th year. Furthermore, new hires would also be discriminated against in their retirement years; rather than defined benefit pensions they would have a ’hybrid’ plan that combined elements of both defined and contributory pensions plans.

Changing Course?

Soon after the signing of that definitive four-year agreement of 2012, the crisis in auto sales abruptly ended. Profits, especially at GM and Ford, rose and stayed exceptionally high. As the 2016 bargaining round approached, the lower Canadian health care costs and the fall of the Canadian dollar to the $0.75 (US) range left the Canadians with a significant cost advantage relative to the USA. As the Windsor Star noted, in U.S. dollars, the all-in labour costs at the Detroit Three Canadian plants were “about $50 an hour compared to $54 in the U.S.” For new hires this was “about $30 an hour compared to $42 for new hires at U.S. plants.” [Windsor Star, June 28, 2015].

This changed context seemed to suggest that a reversal of the past concessions would surely come, and interviewed on the eve of his election as the first president of Unifor, Jerry Dias indicated as much. Dias “predicted that a major ‘pushback’ and more labour unrest is coming” and added – ironically in terms of his later defense of the union’s new-hire structure – that “young people will lead that charge because I see them being very militant. … They won’t accept the norm anymore.” [Toronto Star, August 30, 2013].

As the UAW went into negotiations in the summer of 2015, that readiness to correct the concessions of the recent past was reconfirmed: “This isn’t 2008 anymore,” Dias declared. “The auto companies are doing incredibly well and it’s time workers shared in the success. Heaven knows we shared during the troubled times.” [Windsor Star, above]. Dias went on to express his expectations of the U.S. bargaining round:

I am pulling for [UAW president] Dennis [Williams] because his members deserve a share in the success of their companies. … There’s no question in my mind Dennis is determined to make incredible inroads in the two-tier wage system. He understands clearly the incredible inequity that exists. He also understands that his tier-one members haven’t had a pay increase in eight years, which is unacceptable.

And yet for some reason that advice and the hopes behind it didn’t apply to Canada. Far from challenging and reversing the concessions made, the union consolidated them. Though wages did rise by 4% over the four-year agreement (the UAW got a marginally better 6% raise and significant profit-sharing sums), the continued suspension of the cost-of-living allowance meant that after adjustment for inflation, real wages would continue to fall. By the agreement’s end in 2020, the loss will approach 20%. Since pensioners also lost their cost-of-living, they too will continue to see their incomes erode.

It might have been thought that such restraint was the most the companies would expect given the strong revival of the companies, the earlier sacrifices of the workers, and the favorable costs in Canada. Surely, this was the moment to ease the new-hire penalty? But having finally gotten the new hire rate, the companies weren’t about to willingly modify it. And as a bulletin to the Ford and Chrysler workers following GM’s ratification made clear, the union leadership wasn’t up to challenging the corporations on this score. Unifor meekly let the companies define what was possible, offering only this rather lame ‘explanation’:

“Unifor negotiators also pursued with all three companies the idea of shortening the current 10-year grow-in period. In the eyes of U.S.-based CEOs, the ten-year grow-in timetable was crucial for attracting new investment and new product north of the border. On this point the companies were unanimous and aggressive in rejecting changes to the progression length.” [Special Information Bulletin for Unifor Leadership at Fiat-Chrysler and Ford, September, 2016].

The agreement included some tinkering in the new-hire system – improvements in the grid were no longer frozen for three years – but the core structure remained unchanged. This did not even match the very modest change in the U.S. from a 10-year grow-in to an 8-year grow in – which itself only occurred after the Chrysler workers in the U.S. rejected their tentative agreement.

Union information sheets claimed the changes made in the new hire rate would give new hires ‘thousands of dollars’ but that only brought to mind a robber taking your money and car, returning a fiver for a coffee and bus fare, then waiting for you to express your gratitude for his generosity. The point is that even after the adjustment in the new-hire rate, a new hire under the new agreement would lose some $200,000 relative to the pre-2008 hiring-in structure (i.e. 85% with an 18 month grow-in) and about $90,000 relative to the 2009 concession of moving to 70% over 6 years.

Here again, it might have seemed that with wage increases below the rate of inflation, no improvements in pensions, and the basic acceptance of the two-tier structure for new hires, the Company had little basis for adding more takeaways to the new hires. Wrong again. When companies see weakness it only invites them to demand more. In this case, the defined benefit portion of the ‘hybrid’ pension was ended; new hires would henceforth only have a contributory pension benefit plan. This permanent two-tier system in retirement would mean that the pensions of new hires would be lower than ‘traditional’ workers; the pension amounts would be more uncertain with the risks shifted from the companies to the workers; and in contrast to other union members, the new hires would have to pay 4%-5% of their wages out of pocket for this inferior plan.

Selling the Agreement

Unifor’s leadership has dismissed criticism of the agreement worked out at GM and now ratified at Fiat-Chrysler (FCA) as the easy pontifications of outsiders with ‘no skin in the game’. This is an old expedient for avoiding debate, but in this case it also dismisses the extent of dissatisfaction within the union.

The 65% ratification at GM was the lowest in history (since the 1984 negotiations which led to the formation of the CAW, ratifications have averaged 84%). At GM’s St. Catharine’s engine plant, there have been discussions about recalling the local bargaining committee. At CAMI – the ‘little sister’ at GM that stands outside the Master agreement but is very much affected by it – the local leadership took the unprecedented step of distributing an angry leaflet opposing the agreement. Most significant, as noted earlier the leadership in the Ford Oakville plant, very much backed by its members is intending to reject the pattern.

By defending and so aggressively overselling the achievements of this contract, the union leadership came to depend on the same contradictory arguments that it once decried when used by the UAW. Those arguments, the CAW emphasized at the time, had ensnared the union into making the case for the companies rather than defending its members. So Unifor bulletins now deny that the new-hire structure is effectively a two-tier structure even though almost everyone clearly understands it to be so. Or the union argues that two-tiers are not really that bad since its ‘better than not having a job’.

National and local leaders praise pattern bargaining as equalizing conditions across the Detroit Three – “If I’m working on the line, I’m going to make the same money regardless of which one of the Detroit Three (it is)” [Detroit News, October 6, 2015] – but they remarkably set aside inequalities among two people doing the same work in one plant. In attacking the Oakville workers for not accepting the pattern as an unchallengeable given, they too readily forget that the solidarity behind pattern bargaining was introduced to make progress, not prevent workers from fighting their employers. They forget as well that the very formation of the CAW was rooted in the Canadian section of the UAW refusing to follow the American pattern it had for so long automatically accepted.

In justifying the phasing out of defined benefit plans, Unifor does raise the legitimate question of whether private companies can in fact guarantee defined benefit plans in the future. This does need deeper discussion along with the alternative of a radically transformed universal pension plan that parallels universal health care. But to simply give up on such plans in bargaining betrays those still trying to hang on to their plans. Moreover, it tends to lower popular expectations of what is possible for senior citizens in a rich society, and correspondingly reduces pressure on governments to actually move toward such pensions. Giving up defined benefit plans without a struggle is hardly the way to place on the agenda the larger, difficult question of the future of decent pensions for all.

The Trap of Bargaining Investment

Underlying all this is the strategic trap Unifor fell into by effectively making investment the primary and, as the Oakville local rightly noted, the only issue in bargaining. It is one thing to join with other workers in a political struggle to address investment and jobs. But making it into the principle demand moves bargaining to a terrain in which the corporations call the shots and the union is left to more or less ask “What can workers do for you to ‘buy’ new investment?.”

This point cannot be underestimated. Once on this track, why should any company ever make an announcement about planned investments before first holding it back and asserting its conditionality on more restraint/concessions from workers and subsidies from governments? Investments that would have been made anyways now become corporate bargaining chips – and worst of all, this is not temporary. It will never end. In 2020, corporate profits will again be brushed aside. If Canadian labour costs are in fact lower, this will again be said to be irrelevant; if workers have issues to correct – tough. The blackmail, once given into, works its magic indefinitely.

And that too is not the end of the problem. Even when corporations ‘give in’ and make promises, they sometimes honestly can’t meet them for reasons beyond their control, given that the economy as a whole is unplanned and future markets and competition are so uncertain (though the concessions made by workers are of course firmly tied down). Other times, corporations, in the pursuit of their own goals, simply ignore those promises because they can – there is no mechanism to enforce them. And sometimes the fine print in the promises is itself rather iffy. The most recent investment announcements at GM and Chrysler are certainly welcome, but aside from the possibility that some of this may have been coming anyways, unconfirmed reports suggest that GM’s promises in Oshawa and St. Catharines involve Canada getting ‘overflow’ investment, not ‘primary’ investments. If the market is there, the investments will come; and if it isn’t, cutbacks will first occur in Canada.

The experience in dealing with such promises is littered with false promises that the press and the union itself steadfastly ignores. When the UAW began to trade restraint for jobs in the late 70s, its U.S. Detroit Three membership stood at approximately 750,000. Today, after all those ‘trade-offs’ for jobs, U.S. membership stands at under 120,000 – a loss of well over 600,000 jobs or close to 85% of that earlier number. In Canada, the collapse was not quite as bad but still stunning: from about 70,000 to a current 23,000 – a loss of about 2/3 of the jobs.

Desperate to defend its virtual total emphasis on bargaining investment commitments (and perhaps also to isolate the Oakville local), Unifor has pointed to the Oakville plant as an example, arguing that the very major investments it got in 2013 were the result of the new-hire structure negotiated in 2012. But this is dishonest at worst, misleading at best. As the president of the Oakville local has pointed out, the commitment for these investments was actually made in 2009, before the 60%, 10-year phase-in came into place. The 2009 highlights brochure, produced by the national union, confirms this: it proudly proclaims that Ford has made a commitment to the “allocation of new-generation products to Oakville based on a new global vehicle platform during the business plan period.”

The point is that bargaining over jobs ends up giving workers neither decent standards for their work nor job security. It diverts attention from the broader, complex question of what needs to be done now that private corporations clearly aren’t up to improving working people’s lives and making them more secure. And it tends to demoralize workers and weaken unions so that they’re no longer a force capable of addressing those larger issues and leading progressive change.

Conclusion: Making History?

It would be unfair to blame the weaknesses in this current agreement solely on the present leadership of Unifor. The die was cast earlier under former leaderships. Moreover, the crisis in labour is clearly much deeper than recent trends in auto. When the turn to a new aggressiveness against working classes became the norm across capitalist countries, the responses of the trade union movement were remarkably limited.

One response assumed that nothing had fundamentally changed, that what was going on was temporary, that it would correct itself as the business cycle turned or as new politicians came into office with new policies. And so the best thing to do was to muddle through. Another was to find a technical solution in growth through union mergers, thinking that as with corporate mergers, ‘size’ would be their salvation. A third acknowledged the significance of the changes going on but was overwhelmed by them. These changes were seen as inevitable, leaving little to do but to accommodate to them – make concessions to hang on to what you had and make deals with the corporations you formerly distrusted and the politicians you formerly despised. Either way, unions faded as a vehicle for expressing and leading popular discontent What these so-called alternatives all had in common was their refusal to learn the lessons of the past and grasp that only mobilization and organizing, not muddling through, size, nor deals dressed in militant rhetoric could save the labour movement.

The criticism of Unifor’s current direction lies in its response to the deep economic crisis in auto being over; the auto companies now rolling in money; Canada currently sitting in an advantageous competitive position; and a new generation of workers looking to see what unions were really about. The time seemed ripe to lead a reversal in the labour movement’s trajectory – but this was not even tried. That failure defines what was in fact ‘historic’ about the 2016 agreement: it was not the highly overblown claims of the union’s achievements, but the confirmation of the end of the union’s leadership legacy within the labour and social movements.

The story may, however, not be over. The Ford workers in Oakville continue to press to reject the agreement reached at GM and Chrysler and to do so primarily around the basic principle of solidarity with a new generation of autoworkers. Whether or not they can sustain such a fight remains to be seen; challenging not just one of the largest global companies but one’s own union is an intimidating prospect. But if these workers and their local leaders do have the confidence to take on this battle to the end of establishing a new pattern for the next round of negotiations, supporting them will be a test for the entire rank and file of Unifor and for the labour movement as a whole. And it may very well give a different meaning to the ‘historic’ nature of the 2016 bargaining round. •

Sam Gindin, now retired, was an Assistant to two Presidents of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (now Unifor).

Wow, the world gets crazier every moment!  Stephen Lewis, former socialist NDP leader from Canada’s province of Ontario was asked about PM Justin Trudeau’s letter to the UN asking for a special General Assembly meeting, as reported by the CBC yesterday:

The Canadian Mission to the United Nations has submitted a rare request asking the president of the General Assembly for a meeting of all 193 member states to “explore concerted action to apply pressure on the parties of the violence [in Syria],” now in its sixth year.

ON CBC this morning (Friday, October 14, 2016) Lewis was briefly interviewed by the CBC and clearly and distinctly chose the U.S. /NATO / western imperialist /mainstream media (MSM)  position on Syria.  He called Canada’s moves “artful and important.”  His reasons were shallow and demonstrated clearly that his socialist ideals – at least as an international socialist – are not very near and dear to his heart.

He commented that “war crimes are being committed by Russia” but hopefully that “Russia may at some point be forced to reconsider,” its position.   When questioned further on this he said he did not think that Russia – more specifically Putin, our now necessary evil ‘other’ personified as one man – would change its actions.  Why?  Because “Putin doesn’t care”, he wants to show that “Russia is back” and that is a “terrifying proposal.”

Double standards abound

Apparently the letter was co-sponsored by 68 other countries.  All of them for sure sycophantic allies of the U.S. empire….but perhaps underneath something unintended may occur.

Lewis said the meeting of the UN would “allow the world to express its outrage” at Russia’s war crimes, at the “destruction of children…the murder of children.”  Most interesting here is that while Russia is being singled out with this narrative, the history of the U.S. empire over the past several decades appears to be getting a clear pass.

Does anyone remember the war in Iraq, an illegal war (all initiators of wars are war criminals) that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (many children obviously, as most populations consist of about fifty per cent children)?  And before that, an estimated 500 thousand children died as a result of U.S. sanctions against the Hussein regime.  When questioned about this, then U.S. Secretary of State said the deaths were worth it for  U.S. interests.  War crimes?  Absolutely.

And what about Libya and the war crimes committed there, with the destruction of civilian infrastructure and attacks against the government that went well beyond the UN sanctioned no-fly zone.  More war crimes, more severe unintended consequences – although it did play into U.S. plans to  eliminate Syria.

Back to Afghanistan where the U.S. “war on terror” simmers on.   War crimes and crimes against humanity were committed there by U.S. forces and its “coalition” forces, including Canada.   Afghanistan as you should well know, is now a mess of factional fighting with the Taliban controlling about a third of the country.

Before all those, Serbia was bombed illegally by NATO (which the U.S. leads and in which Canada played a major role), attacking civilian structures such as bridges, industrial plants, public buildings, businesses, and as an aside, the Chinese embassy.  This was supposedly a “right to protect” operation, proved to be a preconceived excuse in order to weaken the Serb Republic and further contain a soon to be resurgent Russia.  An estimated 500 civilians were killed – sorry, no child count there.  But definitely a war crime.

And I probably shouldn’t mention Israel as I will instantly be labelled anti-Semitic, but the war crimes against civilians there – both in the West Bank and Gaza – have been ongoing for decades.  The notable case here at least as seen from the MSM perspective, have been the Israeli attacks against the open air prison of Gaza (population now at 2 million).   Hundreds of children have been slaughtered there using many “made in the U.S.A.” weapons, including chemical warfare (modified tear gas, phosphorous bombs), serving as well as a testing/proving ground for Israeli manufactured materials in support of their militarized economy.  More U.S. supported war crimes.

The U.S. has committed war crimes of an overt or covert nature in 50 countries since WW II, disposing of non-compliant governments with violence against citizens of those sovereign states.

Careful what you wish for

Perhaps, just perhaps, the unintended consequences of the UN meeting might be the bringing to light the war crimes of the U.S., against children, against civilians, against sovereign governments.  I don’t expect that as the U.S. controls the MSM for the western world.  But to focus a call on Russian war crimes is the height of arrogance and hubris from a nation (Canada) that has supported U.S. war crimes and committed some of its own.

Yes, indeed, let’s have a special General Assembly meeting on war crimes, but let’s do it for the whole world and not just the sycophantic interests of an increasingly belligerent member of the U.S. imperial coalition.

The world does need to express its outrage – at war crimes committed by the U.S., about U.S. support for Saudi war crimes in Yemen, about U.S. support for Saudi support of the various salafist jihadi groups around the world.

Russia is back

Well, yes and no.  Russia endured three major invasions from Western Europe (Napoleon, Wilhelm, Hitler), more invasions after WW I from western nations, and suffered under the “shock doctrine” of U.S. neoliberalism.  The latter came about as the result of U.S. influence on the drunkard Yeltsin and created a country in decline ruled by oligarchs who stole much of the wealth of the country (Khodorkovsky, Magnitsky among them).   Currently, the U.S. has a first strike nuclear policy with missile bases in Poland and Romania within minutes of the Russian heartland.

Not exactly a great history of western accommodation.  And now NATO has expanded towards Russia’s borders, yet accuse Russia of aggression (??)  – logic not being a strength of the MSM or the politicians of the west.  The U.S. initiated the coup in Ukraine, just ask Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, partner of Robert Kagan, known neocon warmonger.

The MSM across the west, in collusion with the political elites, are doing their best to create an evil Putin leading an evil Russia trying to regain its empire.  That they have succeeded in this image is a testament to the power of the MSM, the ignorance of the people of the west (most particularly in Canada and the U.S.), and the arrogance, hubris, and wilful ignorance of the elite class.

Russia is back (and Canada postures)

– and is scaring the bejesus out of the U.S. and its allies.  It has obviously revived its military power, and in many cases is considered to be well ahead of the U.S.   It’s economy, in spite of the best intentions of U.S. sanctions, is doing reasonably well as its home grown industries are being forced to develop more, and its agricultural sector has benefited from counter sanctions against EU products.   Western action against China have created a Sino-Russian alliance stronger than it ever was during the Sino-Soviet era.

The latter has serious implications for the U.S. desire to be the global hegemon with full spectrum dominance over – everyone and everything.  And for that, it is good that Russia is back.

For Canada and Trudeau to attempt to corral the western MSM message into the UN is simply political posturing.  Whether it comes from wilful ignorance and arrogance,  simple ignorance, simple stupidity, or a pretty boy posturing as the good guy Canadian mediator is difficult to discern.  But it is definitely posturing – it is the U.S. that has created the mess in the MIddle east, it is the U.S./NATO that has created the belligerence towards Russia, it is the U.S. military /industrial /political /financial complex that has created a world of fear and terror in order to attempt its global hegemony.  Finally someone is capable of standing up to that – which unfortunately, given the U.S. propensity for nuclear sword threats, may result in the U.S. having created the perfect storm to induce world war last.

America knows the leverage corporations have on Washington, but the latest WikiLeaks files on Podesta show how big the influence truly is.

WikiLeaks just released the 9th set of intercepted emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign boss John Podesta. The current batch contains clues that suggest corporate control mechanisms that lead straight to President Obama.

According to the below statement from the WikiLeaks Twitter account, a state party has intentionally cut off access to the Internet for Julian Assange, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks. This happened after the ninth consecutive day of releases of emails from the hacked account of John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign committee. It also comes on the heels of a potentially serious campaign finance problem for the Hillary for America committee, the primary fundraising vehicle for Clinton, according to an email released by WikiLeaks just yesterday. This would be the second time in less than six months that the Clinton campaign’s finances have come under scrutiny.

In April and May of this year, Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign charged the Clinton campaign with serious violations of campaign finance law, including “looting funds meant for the state parties to skirt fundraising limits on her presidential campaign,” and exploiting “the rules in ways that let her high-dollar donors like Alice Walton of Wal-Mart fame and the actor George Clooney and his super-rich Hollywood friends skirt legal limits on campaign contributions.”

The prior allegations play into the hands of the Trump camp which has consistently portrayed Hillary Clinton as someone who doesn’t care about fellow Americans but only herself and getting rich. The release of an email yesterday by WikiLeaks, together with others over the prior eight days, are making those charges harder to refute.

Robby Mook is Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager. According to numerous leaked emails, over many months in 2014 Mook was consulting and coordinating elaborate professional services for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Unfortunately, there were three major problems with this. Hillary Clinton had not told the Federal Election Commission that she was running a campaign; she wasn’t reporting contributions and expenditures; and Robby Mook, during this time, was being paid by Common Good PAC at the rate of approximately $10,000 per month. Common Good PAC is a Virginia Political Action Committee set up by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a long time Clinton loyalist. (The PAC had already been the target of negative publicity for offering private dinners with Governor McAuliffe and his wife in exchange for $100,000 donations, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.)

The deterrent for Hillary Clinton to set up the normal exploratory campaign vehicle was that throughout 2014 and into the spring of 2015, both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton were making millions of dollars giving paid speeches to global banks, corporations and corporate trade associations according to her financial disclosure report. Each of the Clintons received personal fees of typically more than $200,000 per speech. In an email dated November 18, 2014, long-time adviser to Clinton, Huma Abedin, wrote to other members of the Clinton camp: “We ended up locking in ALL her remaining paid speaking offers a few weeks ago. She reviewed them all with you at meeting so you know everything.” Those paid speeches for Clinton stretched into March of 2015, preventing her from declaring her candidacy without the need to dodge embarrassing questions on pay-to-play.

An October 7, 2014 speech that Hillary Clinton delivered on behalf of Deutsche Bank in exchange for a fee of $260,000 was particularly dicey. Just three months prior to this speech, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had conducted a hearing into how Deutsche Bank had engaged in a scheme with hedge funds to cheat the Internal Revenue Service out of billions of dollars in taxes. Just six months later, a unit of Deutsche Bank entered a guilty plea with the U.S. Justice Department for wire fraud and engaging in a price-fixing conspiracy.

Read complete article on Wall Street on Parade

Since previous military report, the Syrian army, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Liwa al-Quds Lebanese Hezbollah have achieved more gains in Aleppo city. They took control of the agriculture school, located south of Tall Asfar, and reached the ”Youth Housing” north of the Hanano Housing. Now, the army and Liwa al-Quds focused on military operations in the areas of the Ba’edin and Jandoul roundabouts.  By Oct. 17, the government forces seized the Intharat Heights near the Ba’edin roundabout and secured the areas near the neighborhoods of Ayn at-Tal and Haydariyah.

A separate attempt to push to Jabal Badro has not resulted in any notable success.

The army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) also launched an operation, advancing in the areas west of the Aleppo International Airport. Sheikh Lutfi is the goal. On Oct. 17, clashes intensified in Salah Addeen and the army took control of large parts of the 1070 Apartent Project.

On Oct. 16, the Syrian Army’s Tiger Forces and the NDF liberated from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra), Ahrar al-Sham and its allies the strategic city of Ma’ardas in the northern part of Hama province. This was the biggest success of the pro-government forces since the start of massive counter-offensive in the province. The militant-controlled city of Souran will become the next target of the army and the NDF. Both Souran and Ma’ardas are strategically located along the highway between the cities of Homs and Aleppo.

The army also set a full-control of the villages of Qudsiyah and al-Hamah, located near Damascus after militants had withdrew from the areas under the deal with the government.

On Oct. 17, the army and the NDF continued operation in Western Ghouta, aiming the strategic town of Khan Shih. The government forces were developing the advance from the recently liberated town of Deir Khabiyah. The militants’ defenses are on the verge of collapse in the region.

Late on Oct. 15, the ISIS terrorist group withdrew from the area of Azaz in the northern part of Aleppo province. The ISIS forces were set to deploy in Al-Bab in order to prepare to defend this strategic city in Aleppo province. Next day Turkish-backed militant groups, supported by the Turkish Armed Forces, took control of the cities of Dabiq and Sawran and the nearby areas, including Sawran, Tilalayn, Salihiyah, Hawr al-Nahr and Sunbul.

On Oct. 15, the Russian Northern Fleet officially announced that a group of warships, led by heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser, had started a cruise to the areas of the northeastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The group includes “the Pyotr Velikiy heavy nuclear missile cruiser, anti-submarine warships the Vice Admiral Kulakov and the Severomorsk, as well as supply vessels.”

The Kuznetsov is expected to join up with a nuclear submarine, as well as Tu-160 long-range strategic bombers, for anti-piracy and anti-terror exercises before arriving in Eastern Mediterranean where it will join the Russian forces fighting terrorists in Syria.

The joint forces of the US-led coalition, the Iraqi government, the pro-government Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) and the Kurdish Peshmerga launched the long-awaited military operation to liberate the last ISIS major stronghold in Iraq – Mosul. Since Saturday, Mosul and the nearby areas have been the target of massive shelling and bombing campaigns by the US artillery and the US-led coalition’s air power.

The joint anti-ISIS forces are aiming to secure the Mosul countryside before storming the ISIS stronghold itself. On Oct. 16, the Iraqi Army’s 9th Division and the PMU liberated the city of Bashiqa from ISIS. The Peshmerga joined the operation northeast of Mosul. The Kurdish fighters will block ISIS escape routers and receive and screen refugees but not enter the city.

The Obama administration focused on attempts to retake Mosul after the widely promoted idea of liberation of Raqqa in Syria failed due to the ongoing Turkish-Kurdish tensions in northern Syria. There are also reports that the US military staff has opposed that operation because it will weaken anti-Assad forces.

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73% of Republicans – and according to one poll, 41% of all voters – believe the election could be stolen by Clinton and her lackeys in the media.

Democrats urgently warn that there’s a real threat that Russia could hack our election to steal it for Trump.

While these sound like opposites that are so different that they cannot be reconciled, there’s a bigger picture: our voting systems are so insecure that elections can be stolen.

The alternative media has been warning for years that America’s voting systems are so poorly-designed that it would be child’s play to steal an election.

(Indeed, Democratic president Carter and Republican Supreme Court Justice O’Connor said that the 2000 presidential election was stolen.  And some experts – including the 100th President of the American Statistical Association, professor Fritz Scheuren – say that the Democratic race was stolen from Sanders.)

As security expert Bruce Schneier writes in the Washington Post:

While computer security experts like me have sounded the alarm for many years, states have largely ignored the threat, and the machine manufacturers have thrown up enough obfuscating babble that election officials are largely mollified.

We no longer have time for that. We must ignore the machine manufacturers’ spurious claims of security, create tiger teams to test the machines’ and systems’ resistance to attack, drastically increase their cyber-defenses and take them offline if we can’t guarantee their security online.

Longer term, we need to return to election systems that are secure from manipulation. This means voting machines with voter-verified paper audit trails, and no Internet voting. I know it’s slower and less convenient to stick to the old-fashioned way, but the security risks are simply too great.

Unless we shore up our voting systems and ditch the electronic voting systems with no paper trail, American democracy won’t be worth the paper it’s written on  …

We are living in a society where dangerous political ignorance prevails, and truth is subordinated.

“Forbidden truths” are concealed beneath the protective cover of a growing array of taboos.  The taboos protect the criminal warmongers and the oligarch class, as they corrode peace, equality, freedom, and prosperity.

Despite the preponderance of strong evidence that the 9/11 catastrophe was a false flag, those who question the ever-changing official narratives are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists”. Open discussions are replaced by ad hominem attacks, or straw man arguments that are thought to neutralize dissent and make the truth go away. The repetition of these logical fallacies, especially the “conspiracy theory” label, then serves to conceal the truth within the walls of the taboo.  The CIA is well-versed in these psychological operations, and the masses willingly and gullibly take the bait every time. Writer Paul Craig Roberts cleverly reverses the psy op and wonders if those who refuse to hear the truth are “CIA stooges”.

The 9/11 taboo continues to provide cover for criminal invasions masquerading as “counter-terrorism”, and the “Global War On Terror”.  It continues to shield the public from the known and well-documented truth that the West is expanding the reach of terrorism globally by using mercenary terrorists as proxies to destroy and occupy non-belligerent countries such as Syria.

Everything that mainstream media (MSM) vomits about Syria is false, yet the public rarely thinks critically about the messaging, despite the on-going deceptions and genocides of all the post-9/11 invasions.

False flags are the spark that begin previously-planned invasions, and they always have been.  Invasions take time to plan and prepare.  The illegal invasion of Afghanistan, for example, launched almost immediately after the 9/11 carnage, was not a spur of the moment decision.  Prof Michel Chossudovsky explains in “September 11, 2001: The War Crimes Committed ‘In the Name of 9/11’| Initiating a Legal Procedure against the Perpetrators of 9/11”:

“Military analysts will confirm that a major theater war takes months and months, up to a year or more of advanced preparations. Confirmed by press reports, the war on Afghanistan was already in an advanced state of readiness prior to September 11, 2001, which begs the question of foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.”

Instead of relegating open discussions about false flags to the sidelines, shows such as “False Flag Weekly News”, featuring Profs Kevin Barrett and Anthony Hall, should be front and center.  But the taboo prevents this from happening, as elements within our deluded society emerge to suppress the show and its commentators. Hall’s recent suspension without pay from his tenured position as Professor at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, seems emblematic of this suppression.

Those in the Academy who seek to further the cause for peace and international justice, as evidenced by Hall’s books, The American Empire and the Fourth World: The Bowl With One Spoon, Part One (McGill-Queen’s Native and Northern Series) and Earth into Property: Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism (McGill-Queen’s Native and Northern Series) are seemingly targeted, even as schools such as the Munk School of Global Affairs  — the namesake of which  elicits connotations of predatory economic practices, and predatory forms of globalization – capture positive mainstream attention.

Consequently, political ignorance prevails, terrorism grows, predatory economic models grow, free speech and thought are squelched, and repressive police state legislation flourishes globally.

All of this protects and enriches the criminal warmongers and the oligarch classes, to the detriment of peace, justice, and stability.  Those who seek the truth and open discussion about transformative events are seeking peace, not war, and yet (ironically), they are the ones who are condemned, not the criminal warmongers. Taboo topics also serve to maintain the political status quo at the highest levels.  Geopolitically, most areas are off-limits, so political campaigning is increasingly nonsensical, even absurd.  Third party candidates such as Jill Stein are almost “disappeared”, and the focus is seemingly on the allegations of personal deeds or misdeeds of the lead players: currently Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Evidence-based political analysis is shelved — commentators who might be critical of Apartheid Israel must first survive labels such as “Anti-Semite” or “Holocaust Denier”, each as effective in its own way as the “Conspiracy Theory” label, so important topics are excluded even before the debates and the campaigns begin.

And there is nothing new about this.  Howard Zinn, in A People’s History Of The United States quotes Henry Adams, a nineteenth century commentator who wrote to his friend about the presidential election:

“We are plunged in politics funnier than words can express.  Very great issues are involved  … But the amusing thing is that no one talks about real interests.  By common consent they agree to let these alone.  We are afraid to discuss them.  Instead of this the press is engaged in a most amusing dispute whether Mr. Cleveland had an illegitimate child and did or did not live with more than one mistress.”

The choice is ours.  We can continue on this path that leads us from one catastrophe to another, including permanent and increasingly dangerous warfare, or we can break some taboos and reject the status quo.  The latter choice is more life-enriching.

Debunking the Western Media’s Coverage of the War on Syria

By Daniel Espinosa Winder, October 16 2016

There were indeed anti-Assad protests, sometimes clashing with pro-Assad protests, but they were in many cases infiltrated or even promoted by elements with very different goals, mainly not Syrian in origin, and used for violence against civilians and peaceful protestors, policemen and soldiers.

Hybrid Warfare and US Geostrategy

By Michael Welch and Andrew Korybko, October 16 2016

Once the US has identified its target, it begins searching for the structural vulnerabilities that it will exploit in the coming Hybrid War. Contextually, these aren’t physical objects to be sabotaged such as power plants and roads … but socio-political characteristics that are meant to be manipulated in order to attractively emphasize a certain demographic’s “separateness” from the existing national fabric and thus ‘legitimize’ their forthcoming foreign-managed revolt against the authorities.

President Obama Threatens President Putin With Nuclear War

By Eric Zuesse, October 16 2016

“It’ll be at a time of our choosing,” says U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, on NBC’’s “Meet the Press,” aired on Sunday, October 16th. Interviewer Chuck Todd had asked him, “Why would he [Obama] send a message out to Putin?” Biden (image right) pursed his lips, paused, and said, with a grim look on his face, “We sent him the message.” Of course that didn’t answer Todd’s question, which was “Why?” Biden and Todd both remained silent for another tense moment. Then, Biden picked up again: “We have the capacity to do it, and, uh,” and Todd interrupted him there with “He’ll know it?”

Stop Greenwashing Capitalism, Start Holding Corporations to Account

By Rosemary Mason, October 17 2016

In the 1970s, the agrochemicals industry was able to evade effective regulation in the UK. Robert van den Bosch, wrote in 1978 in The Pesticide Conspiracy: “If one considers how dangerous these chemicals are, one would suppose that it would be government policy to minimize their use by every possible means. However, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution notes, ‘there is… no such policy in the UK, nor does the possible need for it appear to have been considered, notwithstanding the great increases in the use of these chemicals.’”

Demonising Wind Energy in Australia: The South Australian Blackout

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 17 2016

From the time when energy became a state ambition and the central, almost paranoid platform of security, its messiness became apparent.  Energy reserves needed to be controlled; corrupt regimes with access to such resources needed to be placated, or, if not, overthrown and replaced by compliant puppet governments.  The world of energy is one governed by invasion, acquisitive brutality and resistance.

About Bob Dylan – Nobel Laureate: “A Lightning Rod for Contentious Debate and Polarized Views”

By Adeyinka Makinde, October 17 2016

Did Bob Dylan deserve the Nobel Prize for Literature? Not to those who feel that an award for literature cannot be based on writing popular music songs and publishing a book on prose poetry. While Dylan’s influence on rock music cannot be denied, he nonetheless serves as a lightning rod for contentious debate and polarized views.

In an ominous sign for press freedom, documentary filmmaker and journalist Deia Schlosberg was arrested and charged with felonies carrying a whopping maximum sentence of up to 45 years in prison—simply for reporting on the ongoing Indigenous protests against fossil fuel infrastructure.

Schlosberg was arrested in Walhalla, North Dakota on Tuesday for filming activists shutting down a tar sands pipeline, part of a nationwide solidarity action organized on behalf of those battling the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“The actions of the North Dakota Police force are not just a violation of the climate, but a violation of the constitution.”
—Josh Fox, Gasland filmmaker

The filmmaker was held without access to a lawyer for 48 hours, her colleague Josh Fox wrote in the Nation, and her footage was confiscated by the police.

Schlosberg was then charged Friday with three felonies, the Huffington Post reported: “conspiracy to theft of property, conspiracy to theft of services and conspiracy to tampering with or damaging a public service. Together, the charges carry 45 years in maximum prison sentences.”

“They have in my view violated the First Amendment,” Fox told the Huffington Post, referring to the state’s Pembina County Sheriff’s Department. “It’s fucking scary, it knocks the wind of your sails, it throws you for a loop. They threw the book at Deia for being a journalist.”

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden observed that Schlosberg faces more years in prison than he does for leaking secret documents about the NSA’s mass surveillance program in 2013:

“Deia isn’t alone,” observed Fox in an op-ed in the Nation. “The arrest of journalists, filmmakers, and others witnessing and reporting on citizen protests against fossil-fuel infrastructure amid climate change is part of a worrisome and growing pattern.”

Indeed, the news of Schlosberg’s arrest followed Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman announcement earlier this week that she will return to North Dakota to combat charges she faces as a result of reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline protest last month.

“Goodman, whose camera crew filmed a private security team attacking peaceful Native American protesters with dogs and pepper spray, faces charges of criminal trespassing—which many have said amounts to an assault on press freedom,” as Common Dreams reported.

It also emerged late Saturday that a North Dakota state prosecutor has dropped the trespassing charge and is seeking instead to charge Goodman with participating in a “riot,” Democracy Now reported.

“I came back to North Dakota to fight a trespass charge. They saw that they could never make that charge stick, so now they want to charge me with rioting,” said Goodman. “I wasn’t trespassing, I wasn’t engaging in a riot, I was doing my job as a journalist by covering a violent attack on Native American protesters.”

A warrant for Goodman’s arrest was issued September 8.

Meanwhile, actor Shailene Woodley was arrested Monday while live-streaming a prayer action at a Dakota Access construction site. “She was singled out, the police told her, because she was well-known and had 40,000 people watching live on her Facebook page,” Fox wrote. “Other filmmakers shooting protest actions along the pipeline have also been arrested.”

“Journalism is not a crime; it is a responsibility,” Fox said in a press statement about this pattern of arrests. “The actions of the North Dakota Police force are not just a violation of the climate, but a violation of the constitution.”

Supporters have created a petition calling on the authorities in North Dakota to drop charges against Schlosberg, Goodman, and other journalists arrested for doing their work and reporting on the protests against Dakota Access.

Neil Young, Mark Ruffalo, Daryl Hannah, and other celebrities have also signed an open letter to President Barack Obama and North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple, calling on the leaders to intervene and for Schlosberg’s charges to be dropped. The charges were “unfair, unjust, and illegal,” the letter said, according to Reuters.

“This is not only about reporting on the climate-change movement,” Fox argued in the Nation.

 “Journalists have also been arrested reporting on Black Lives Matter, the movement for Native rights, and many other important movements the corporate media fails to cover. The First Amendment and the Constitution are at stake in this case. If we lose it, we lose America too.”

Did Bob Dylan deserve the Nobel Prize for Literature? Not to those who feel that an award for literature cannot be based on writing popular music songs and publishing a book on prose poetry. While Dylan’s influence on rock music cannot be denied, he nonetheless serves as a lightning rod for contentious debate and polarized views.

For many, Bob Dylan, nee Robert Zimmerman, is a living legend and quite simply a genius. He is an American icon; one in a long line of unique characters hailing from a culture where the capacity for self-invention is seemingly limitless.  In this case, Dylan, the descendant of eastern European Jews raised in a small town in the American Midwest became an important figure in an age of tumultuous social change during which there was a marked evolution in the forms of popular musical expression.

One revolutionary aspect of Bob Dylan’s early career was his part in nullifying ‘Tin Pan Alley’-style lyrics as the only viable vehicle for expressing popular music. This ‘Shakespeare in the alley’ changed the way rock musicians could write songs. Think of the imagery he conjures in songs like “All Along the Watchtower”, “Jokerman” and “Blind Willie McTell”. His influence on fellow musicians was profound. Think of the Byrds and the Beatles for starters.

And don’t forget that sounding like a screeching, electrocuted poor kitty cat didn’t stop that controversial aspect of his package from being influential. Fans of Jimi Hendrix should give Dylan a lot of credit for inspiring him to sing. Hendrix, the story goes, was self-conscious about his voice and only really took to singing because he felt that he stood a chance if the whinny-voiced Dylan could become successful in the business.

But Dylan has always been a polarizing figure right from the time he plugged his guitar into an electric socket. The folk purists never forgave him. Also unforgivable to many of the ideological Left was his support for political Zionism clearly enunciated in the song ‘Neighborhood Bully’. Dylan, they claim had praised Meir Kehane and never retracted this even though the two major bodies that Kehane founded, the Jewish Defense League and the Israeli Kach Party, were both extremist organisations which were later proscribed.

And of course, unforgivable to many is the perception of Dylan as a sell-out to the values to which he had professed as he was propelled to fame and fortune. They argue that he imitated the folk hero activist mantle of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger but only used the protest movement as a pathway to personal enrichment and a means of opening the door to membership of the social elite. In this way, Dylan, it is argued, is no better than those purveyors of the 1960s ‘counter culture’ who had by the 1980s reinvented themselves as agents and functionaries within the capitalist system.

The popular view of Dylan as a rebel has worn thin with the passage of time. Songs of social protest gave way to ruminations of a personal and religious form. It is fair to say that Dylan did not have to bear the turmoil of threats to his life and livelihood as did the musician purveyors of Tropicalismo who had to flee from the clutches of the Brazilian military junta of the 1960s and 1970s, or the Nigerian Fela Kuti who suffered beatings and imprisonment at the hands of successive military governments or Bob Marley who survived an assassination attempt by gunmen with a political motive.

If the question were asked as to what tangible change a political musician such as Jackson Browne achieved from his protests on behalf of the environment and against the United States backed authoritarian governments of Latin America, the response might be that Dylan did not even bother trying.

Dylan’s award of the Nobel Prize is not its first controversial award. The committee’s award to Barack Obama that of its Peace Prize was criticised since the incoming president had not presided over any successful peace initiative. The award of that prize to the former Irgun terror chief Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, who as a young Egyptian officer had been willing to cooperate with the advancing Wehrmacht if they could secure his country’s independence, while based on an unexpected peace treaty in a troubled region, was in time criticized by those who believe that only a comprehensive peace settlement and not separate treaties will bring true and lasting peace to that area of the world.

There has always been the suspicion of a political basis in regards to Nobel awards.

Does the committee favour those who work within the English language above others? Are developing countries given a fair appraisal? There are suspicions of a rotation system among the continents. For instance, when Japan was about to receive its first award for literature, it was felt that Yukio Mishima, the most prominent Japanese writer of his time was the favourite. But Mishima later ruled himself out of contention when he discovered that his early mentor Yasunari Kawabata was in the reckoning and wanted consideration. Kawabata won. Mishima had written a note of recommendation to the Nobel committee in Kawabata’s favour and died having correctly prophesized that when Japan’s ‘turn’ came again, it would be his rival Kenzaburo Oe who would be the more likely to succeed.

The award to Bob Dylan is baffling. While it is true that Dylan has, as the committee cited, created “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” song lyrics are not poems and many poets may tend to eschew the use of instruments as part of their range of expression. He has only written one book of prose poetry and an autobiography. Meanwhile, those writers who have been genuinely innovative and experimental in form and content have been ignored.

Perhaps the members of the Nobel Prize giving board are just sentimental old hippies.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England

From the time when energy became a state ambition and the central, almost paranoid platform of security, its messiness became apparent.  Energy reserves needed to be controlled; corrupt regimes with access to such resources needed to be placated, or, if not, overthrown and replaced by compliant puppet governments.  The world of energy is one governed by invasion, acquisitive brutality and resistance.

Even within countries less susceptible to regime change via energy exploitation, the tendency to politicise the issues surrounding access and acquisition remain.  Cleaner, more sustainable options are deemed unpatriotic, draining traditional industries and jobs.  The sense that the climate change phenomenon is an exaggerated bogey of politics persists.

At stages the argument has been panicked.  The violent storms in South Australia last month, so-called “act of God” events which inflicted an energy blackout through the state, did not draw sympathy from the federal government, which persists in its autistic policies on the environment.  The opposite was the case.

According to Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the blackout was exacerbated by poor energy policies, notably of the environmentally inclined sort.  The finger, he argued, could be pointed to renewal energy targets at the state level deemed “extremely aggressive, extremely unrealistic.”  It did not take long for the suggestion to be made that the Greens, and those sympathetic to green policies, be hauled out and given a public dressing down.

Various political figures were also lending their voices to the vitriolic mix, adding good lashings of distortion. After all, South Australia is something of a golden boy in the renewable revolution in a country often hostile to it.  The figure of 41 percent of the state’s energy generated from renewables, much of it drawn from wind, was condemned as a feature of irresponsibility rather than praised as a matter of foresight.

Permanent school boy Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce might well be a fanatic when it comes to repelling the introduction of biosecurity threats into Australia (remember the Depp affair), but tends to be softheaded on the greening of the economy.

Earlier this month, Joyce suggested that the mid-latitude cyclone, which generated several tornados, should not be saddled with the dramatic devastation.  He had found the indisputable culprit.  “It wasn’t a hurricane.  It was a severe thunderstorm.  They’ve had severe thunderstorms before.”  Wind energy, in short was “obviously not working” given the dramatic consequence.

Having made the erroneous deduction that South Australia, having had similar events before, should have been more resilient in the face of the usual, he condemned recent spikes in energy prices in the state, and the “appalling management” on the ground.[1]

Similar views could also be heard from the muddled Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, who remains a customary conquistador indifferent to the renewable industry, and South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, wind energy’s permanent critic.

The searing spotlight had moved to demonising wind and the uneven nature of renewable targets across the states.  “Federal and State renewable energy targets being different,” he explained to Radio National, “does create a problem, because it skews investment in an inefficient way”.  The theme here: money, investment, rather than environmental conscientiousness.

Frydenberg went on to tell the 7.30 Report that, “questions are raised by the virtue of the increasing amount of renewables”, a point he twinned with an admission that “South Australia lost its power due to the most extreme weather event there in half a century”.[2]

Wind energy, as Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel explained, had become something of a handy scapegoat. Not that his views mattered.  “If you had a natural gas generator there, and the voltage was collapsing, and the frequency was collapsing, that natural gas generator would have taken itself off the grid just as rapidly as the wind farms had taken themselves off” (ABC News, Oct 6).

In the populist bilge, the exceptional nature of the weather event, advanced by the energy experts, was ignored.  The views of engineers, gathered from such sources as ElectraNet, which installed temporary transmission towers in the state’s mid-north, were discounted.

A regulatory report released this month by the National Energy Market Operator examining the outage came to the sensible conclusion that weather’s destruction of infrastructure, not environmental mismanagement, was the catalyst.  The authors of the report acknowledged a sudden loss of wind energy, but preferred to focus on the effects of the storm.  The result of the damage to transmission lines increased pressure on the main interconnector with Victoria, resulting in a tripping of the system after an inevitable overload.

Admitting that at the political level would be sensible, but in the ruthless and often misinformed world of energy politics, it would be unexpected.  The point is made more acute in a country where climate change denialism, along with a continued insistence on fossil fuels, prevails with stubborn determination.  In all this, the de-greening of Turnbull’s faux credentials in this entire process is perhaps the most striking feature of the debate.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-06/appalling-management-to-blame-for-prolonged-black-out-in-sa/7908032
[2] https://newmatilda.com/2016/10/09/black-friday-brain-fades-black-outs-and-josh-frydenbergs-awkward-day-in-canberra/

All participants of the international ministerial meeting on the Syrian settlement in the Swiss city of Lausanne have apparently confirmed their commitment to preserve Syria’s integrity.

However, Gregory Copley, editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs and President of the parent organization, the International Strategic Studies Association, warned that the stance currently adopted by the US on Syria may in fact yield some rather risky and unpleasant outcomes.

During an interview with Sputnik Radio, he said that the US insistence that ‘Assad must go’ and stubbornly continuing to support proxy rebel forces looks like a “recipe for disaster.”

“I believe that the Obama administration will be reckless about this and will basically push for a risky outcome. We could see how regardless of the good intentions stated the US is about to do something risky, I believe, in Syria,” Copley said.

He also predicted that if Hillary Clinton gets elected as the next US president, she’s likely to pursue the “risky confrontation with Russia”, in no small part due to her commitment to the anti-Russian policies espoused by the US financial elites.

Also, he ventured a guess that any new agreement reached on the Syrian conflict between the parties involved is unlikely to be a long-lasting arrangement due to the US agenda.

“I think that the US will be forced to get along with things that should sound moderate and supportive of consensus… But the reality is that the United States is now looking for active ways to increase its military engagement in Syria and has just done a number of things which have been extremely provocative,” Copley remarked.

At the same time, he added, if the Syrian army continues to make steady progress in Aleppo and stabilize the situation in the city then it might in fact help “remove some of the apparent legitimacy of Washington’s claims that it must intervene.”

“The US labeled any of its strikes against Syrian government or Russian positions as accidents and labeled anything that Syrian or Russian forces do which might have a civilian impact as being war crimes – this isn’t really a path to achieve any meaningful settlement. However, if the situation stabilizes because the government takes control over east Aleppo, then I think it might remove some of the opportunity for Washington to push ahead with a military solution,” Copley surmised.

To hear US corporate media tell it, the US was dragged into a brand new war on Wednesday.

US destroyers in the Gulf of Aden launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels, a Shia insurgent group currently withstanding a massive bombing campaign from a Saudi-led coalition in a year-and-half conflict between largely Shia rebels and the Saudi-backed Sunni government in Yemen. The Pentagon insisted that cruise missiles had been fired onto the USS Mason on Sunday and Wednesday from Houthi-controlled territory, and called the airstrikes a “limited self-defense” response.

Needless to say, US media followed the Pentagon’s lead. The fact that the United States has been literally fueling Saudi warplanes for 18 months while selling weapons and providing intelligence support to the Gulf monarchy—acts which even the US State Department believes could expose the US to war crimes prosecution—was either downplayed or ignored. Nor did media recall the US’s long history of drone warfare in Yemen, where the military and CIA have been carrying out long-range assassinations since 2002, killing more than 500 people, including at least 65 civilians.

So far, most print media reporting has at least bothered to briefly put the attack and counterattack in broader context, noting the US role in the brutal bombing campaign that has left over 4,000 dead, including over 140 bombed at a funeral in Sana’a last week—even as the stories’ framing downplayed the US’s history in the conflict. The New York Times (10/12/16), for example, said in the second paragraph of its report on the airstrikes (emphasis added):

The strikes against the Houthi rebels marked the first time the United States has become involved militarily in the civil war between the Houthis, an indigenous Shiite group with loose connections to Iran, and the Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations.

But the Times story went on to acknowledge, somewhat contradictorily, that the US had been “quietly providing military support to a Saudi Arabia-led bombing campaign against the rebels since last year.” The story noted that the US had been

providing intelligence and Air Force tankers to refuel the coalition’s jets and bombers. The American military has refueled more than 5,700 aircraft involved in the bombing campaign…. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed since the bombing began, according to the United Nations’ top human rights official.

TV news reports, on the other hand, kept the spin and left out the context. They mostly failed to mention that the US has been assisting the Saudi assault on the Houthi rebels for a year and a half, and framed the incident as a US warship being attacked while simply minding its own business in international waters.

CBS’s David Martin, fresh off his 14-minute Pentagon commercial last month, didn’t mention the Saudi bombing campaign or explain the US’s role in the war for his segment for CBS This Morning (10/13/16). In fact, Martin never uttered the word “Saudi” or named any of the other countries involved in Yemen, only noting that the rebels are “trying to overthrow the government.” The average viewer would come away thinking the US Navy ship just happened to be in the neighborhood when it was randomly fired upon.

ABC’s Martha Raddatz (Good Morning America,10/13/16) likewise didn’t inform the viewer that the US has been a party to the civil war for 18 months. She also never used the word “Saudi” or referred to the brutal bombing campaign; she barely even alluded to there being a conflict at all.

CNN’s Barbara Starr (CNN, 10/13/16) joined the club, omitting the US and Saudi roles in the conflict entirely. She went one step further and repeatedly speculated about “direct” Iranian involvement in the Mason attack and what that would entail, despite there being zero evidence and no suggestion from the Pentagon of Iranian participation. Starr even conflated Al Qaeda and Iran, despite their being on opposite sides of the conflict:

The Yemeni missiles were fairly old but had been outfitted with highly lethal warheads, the kind Al Qaeda and Iran know how to make.

The implication was that Al Qaeda might have somehow provided Houthi rebels with missiles, but this, of course, is absurd: The Houthis and Al Qaeda are sectarian enemies and have been fighting each other throughout the civil war. Never mind; Starr needed to raise the stakes and throw out as many boogeymen as she could.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (10/13/16) delivered the worst of the batch. Not only did she too omit the Saudi bombing campaign and the US’s role in it (again, leaving the viewer to believe the attack was a total non sequitur), she spun the issue in tedious partisan terms, recalling Trump’s statement he would attack Iranian warships that threatened the US:

You might remember Republican candidate Donald Trump said in an off-handed remark during the campaign that if Iranian ships got too close to American ships and if Iranian sailors made rude gestures towards our American sailors under President Trump, we’d blow those Iranian ships out of the water. Well, Iranian ships and American ships are now in the same waters, off the coast of Yemen in the middle of war, with Tomahawk missiles and cruise missiles already flying. Steady on.

Why are American ships in those waters? Why are Tomahawk missiles “flying”? The conflict is never explained; it’s only brought up so that Maddow can warn that the GOP nominee could make things worse. Of course, it isn’t Trump who backed the Saudis in an air campaign that’s left thousands dead, but Obama—and it’s Hillary Clinton who as secretary of State enthusiastically pushed to sell warplanes to Riyadh (The Intercept, 2/22/16). But such facts would messy up the election-season narrative.

Maddow, like the other reports, used the loaded modifier “Iran-backed” to describe the Houthis (even though experts and Pentagon officials think Iran’s support is overblown). This is a stark asymmetry, considering that none of the reports referred to the Yemeni government as “US-backed” or “Saudi-backed.” She also said that the Navy blamed the attacks on the Houthis, when the Pentagon only claims the missiles came from rebel territory, and could very well be from other allied groups (New York Times, 10/13/16).

Not only is the US’s backing of Saudi Arabia omitted from all these reports, the word “Saudi” isn’t uttered in any of them. The viewer is given the impression that the war, aside from Iranian meddling, is an entirely internal affair—when it actually involves over 15 different countries, mostly Sunni monarchies propping up the Yemeni government—and that the rebels just randomly decided to pick a fight with the largest military in the history of the world.

The Houthis, for their part, vehemently deny having carried out the attack on the Mason, and there is no publicly available evidence it was them or allied forces. It should be noted, however, that Houthi forces took credit for sinking a United Arab Emirates supply ship two weeks earlier.

As is often the case with war, the issue of “first blood”—or who started the fighting—gets muddied. Governments naturally want global audiences and their own citizens to view their actions as defensive—a necessary response to aggression, not aggression itself. US corporate media are aiding this official spin in their reporting on the US bombing of Yemen.

The passing of Thailand’s head of state, the 88 year old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, marks a historically significant event in Thailand’s history. For most Thais, they have known only one king their entire life – King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

The significance of Thailand’s monarchy to Thai people is difficult for Westerners to understand. Unlike Western monarchies who rule from above, Thailand’s monarchy has historically ruled through service to the people. It is in recognition of this service that drives hundreds of thousands of Thais into the streets of Bangkok to participate in the beginning of funeral rites this week.

The depth and scope of this service includes not only the political boundaries and stability the monarchy provided when politicians and political parties clashed within the nation, but also service in driving long-term infrastructure projects regarding irrigation, energy, and agriculture shortsighted politicians refused to pursue.

Many aspects of Thai agriculture, from the introduction of new crops to the concept of cooperatives and localizing rice mills, were introduced through initiatives promoted and funded by the Royal Family itself. King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s royal palace in Bangkok was many years ago converted into a demonstration and training center where today, foreigners and Thais alike can augment their skills and diversify their economic activity.

Politically, the monarchy’s ability to reside above contests of political power and the deep respect Thais hold for the institution, creates a set of boundaries that have prevented dangerous – even violent political struggles – from expanding into the sort of destructive conflicts seen previously in neighboring Cambodia or currently expanding across the Middle East.

For Thailand’s enemies who seek to undermine political stability or overthrow Thailand’s political order, their primary obstacle and thus target has always been the nation’s revered, powerful monarchy. The passing of Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej presents a perceived vulnerability Thailand’s enemies will undoubtedly seek to exploit to weaken Thailand and thus by doing so, disrupt regional stability.

Thailand’s Importance to Southeast Asia 

Thailand is a prominent Southeast Asian nation, home to 70 million people, a dynamic and diverse economy ranging from agriculture to manufacturing, and remains the only nation in the region to have eluded Western colonization.

It has played a pivotal role throughout history, leveraging colonial powers against one another before the World Wars, a battlefield during World War 2, a contributing  factor to France’s loss of Indochina and host to US military forces during the Vietnam War.

Since the conflict in Vietnam, Thailand has slowly and incrementally pivoted away from its role in US regional hegemony toward a more balanced place in the region.

Today, as the US performs its own “pivot toward Asia,” Thailand’s geopolitical shift has become even more pronounced as it seeks to evade US pressure, influence, and domination.

Thailand’s arsenal – once dominated by aging American hardware – now hosts Chinese, Russian, European, and even Middle Eastern defense systems. The nation strives to cultivate multiple relationships so as to not be dominated or overly dependent on any single one of them – which has been the key to Thailand’s longstanding sovereignty throughout history.

Currently, Thailand along with the rest of Southeast Asia, serves as a source of trade and cooperation with Beijing. Contrary to popular belief, both China and Southeast Asia conduct the majority of their trade within Asia itself. The stability of the region is therefore essential to each and every nation within the region.

For the US who seeks to encircle and contain China, the destabilization of the region is key to hindering China’s rise and preventing the all but inevitable waning of US “primacy” in Asia Pacific.

Attacking along China’s peripheries, either by coercing, destabilizing, or overthrowing and replacing the governments of China’s neighbors in Southeast Asia is essential to eventually coercing, destabilizing, or overthrowing and replacing the government of China itself.

Target Thailand 

Thailand is just one of several nations currently being destabilized by the US. For each nation in the region, the US pursues similar strategies with only minor differences depending on socioeconomic and culturally factors. The presence of US-funded opposition groups and a virtual army of faux-non governmental organizations (NGOs) exist in each and every nation in Southeast Asia.

In Thailand in particular, the primary target is Thailand’s monarchy and its military – two institutions the US sees as obstacles to ever placing an obedient client regime into power. The US believes this precisely because over the past 15 years, through their proxy Thaksin Shinawatra, they have tried and failed to seize power by proxy because of two military coups and massive street protests organized by Thais rallying around their historical institutions.

The average Thai is acutely aware of – if not the current geopolitical and domestic political dynamics of Thailand’s present – the fact that the military and monarchy now and throughout Thailand’s ancient history have been the primary reason the nation remains unconquered.

Attacks, or perceived attacks on either of Thailand’s revered and respected institutions is perceived by the vast majority of Thais as an attack on Thailand itself.

Thus, throughout the media, those networks including CNN and the BBC who regularly and intentionally target the military and monarchy are reviled by Thais. In 2010, when CNN corespondent Dan Rivers mischaracterized street violence carried out by Thaksin Shinawatra’s political party, Thais campaigned against CNN until Rivers was eventually sent home.

Today, the Western media seeks to exploit the sensitive transition period as Thais mourn the passing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej – and have already launched a campaign to undermine the heir, Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Making or Breaking Relations with Thailand

Those networks perceived as exploiting or disrupting Thailand’s sensitive transition will immediately be identified by Thais as “enemies” of not only the monarchy, but the nation it has historically served.

For Westerners who live in nations where institutions from as large as government to as small as family are mired in dysfunction, the concept of an entire nation existing as a large “extended family” is alien to them. However alien such a concept may be, the consequences of misunderstanding this concept can cost some nations their influence and standing, not only in Thailand but in Southeast Asia in which Thailand resides a central and influential nation.

Those nations whose media avoids sensationalism and gossip, as well as verified US-engineered propaganda, will come out the other side of Thailand’s transition a stronger ally than ever. It appears out of all nations and regions, it will be China and Thailand’s other Asian neighbors who enjoy this status, while the West and even Russia appear disinterested or incapable of fostering closer ties.A recent article published by Russia’s RT, for example, will undoubtedly be perceived by Thais as a collective attack on them. While the article was likely written, edited, and published by a handful of unprofessional journalists – citing the US State Department and paid lobbyists – it will inadvertently reflect poorly on Russia collectively. Just like CNN and the BBC are reviled and the national influence of the US and UK negatively affected by their actions in Thailand and Asia, careless networks in Russia like RT will become a vector of similar backlash directed at Russia itself if such unprofessionalism is not rectified.

Should the West as well as Russia seek better ties with Thailand, they must take the time to carefully understand the nation and shape policy to meet it, rather than insist on imposing cultural, political, and economic prejudices entire empires throughout history have tried and failed to impose upon the Thai people.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Stephen Loiaconi (WJLA, 10/13/16) quoted FAIR’s Jim Naureckas on the legitimacy of examining Donald Trump’s treatment of women as a campaign issue:

To a degree, Trump brought the scrutiny he now faces on himself by making Bill Clinton’s infidelity and unproven claims of assault against him part of the campaign, according to Jim Naureckas of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a liberal media watchdog group.

“Trump himself made it clear that he thought that Hillary Clinton’s handling of charges of sexual wrongdoing against her husband in the 1990s should be a key, even decisive issue,” Naureckas said.

Later in the article, Naureckas compared the handling of the abuse charges to the coverage of the Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks:

Naureckas said the emails are a legitimate story, and one that provides unique insight into a presidential campaign, but he warned against trying to equate it with the allegations against Trump.

“One should not give readers the impression that a candidate revealed to have crafted public statements for political effect is the same sort of thing as a candidate being accused of sexual assault,” he said.

This is a story about the last few weeks in the life of a man who ended up in Guantanamo where the physical torture was bad enough, and the emotional torture was worse. He was put through the psychological equivalent of a wood chipper.

As they chipped away at his spirit, he chipped away at his own body, with clumsy suicide attempts that only succeeded in creating scars.  One day, he really did kill himself – or so it would seem.

But what really happened to the 31-year-old Yemeni, Mohammed Al Hanashi? And why would anyone question the official version of what happened to him?

In his book — Cover-up at Guantánamo: The NCIS Investigation into the “Suicides” of Mohammed Al Hanashi and Abdul Rahman Al Amri — Dr. Jeffrey Kaye reveals what he found after relentless research. Clear evidence of a cover-up: missing, suppressed material, contradictory testimony, and more. As he wrote in his Preface,

“The possible criminality and compromised nature of the NCIS investigations is especially highlighted in the case of Al Hanashi, where NCIS was forced in the middle of its death query to open a subordinate investigation – reported for the first time here – into why the Guantanamo computerized detainee database system was ordered turned off as soon as Al Hanashi’s body was discovered. Even more suspicious, the order to shut off computer entries apparently was given by an unidentified NCIS agent him or herself!”

What Dr. Kaye had to work with was circumstantial evidence — which is defined as “evidence that proves a fact or event by inference.” This is the most difficult kind of material to work with, for it demands logic, perception, and imagination.

WhoWhatWhy Introduction written by Milicent Cranor

Excerpt from 

Cover-up at Guantánamo: The NCIS Investigation into the “Suicides” of Mohammed Al Hanashi and Abdul Rahman Al Amri,

by Jeffrey Kaye

(Publisher: Jeffrey S. Kaye, PhD, September, 2016).

Chapter 4, “The only solution is death”: Al Hanashi’s Final Days.  

On April 1, 2009, 31-year-old Mohammed Al Hanashi sat in his hospital cell at Guantánamo writing what reads like his last will and testament. The tiny room is nearly all white. There is a sink, a toilet, and a steel door with a slot for food and medications. A light shone at all times, day and night.

Probably unknown to Al Hanashi, in a grotesque coincidence, a USO tour of Guantánamo with both the 2008 winners of the Miss USA and Miss Universe contests had just visited the camp. Dayana Mendoza, the Miss Universe winner from Venezuela, caused some controversy with a blog piece about her visit.

“We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the [sic] recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting,” Ms. Mendoza wrote.

“The water in Guantánamo Bay is soooo beautiful! It was unbelievable, we were able to enjoy it for at least an hour. We went to the glass beach, and realized the name of it comes from the little pieces of broken glass from hundred of years ago. It is pretty to see all the colors shining with the sun….

“I didn’t want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.”

How impossibly distant was the experience of detainee number 078.

“In the name of Allah the merciful the compassionate!” Al Hanashi wrote in Arabic. He had been imprisoned at that point for over seven years. Some may think, well, there are literally thousands of prisoners in US prisons who have been imprisoned as long and longer, who have spent years in isolation. Such prisoners often have been seriously damaged by their experience, but the Guantánamo experience took matters even farther.

The detainee had not been charged with any crime. He had not met with any attorney. The length of his imprisonment remained unknown and indeterminate. He was thousands of miles from home, held by a foreign power, manipulated in a regime that fancied itself a “battle lab in the war on terror.”

The detainee, Yemeni prisoner Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi, was one of hundreds still imprisoned at the US Department of Defense “strategic interrogation” prison site at Guantánamo.

He’d been on hunger strike and fed via tube for some time (we don’t know if he was forcibly fed or not, but another detainee has written that he was). Now he pondered his death, probably by suicide. Or perhaps he thought he would die from the hunger strike, or as a victim of torture.

Al Hanashi pondered the “hardness” of life at Guantánamo. “Do not be sad for my death O family!” he wrote. “Allah almighty said ‘every soul will taste death.’”

“Life is no good without honor and a poet put it: ‘I have sworn either to live with honor and dignity or you may taste my bones.’”

From the document, it appears Al Hanashi had considered suicide deeply, and the deprivation of prison life at Guantanámo proved too much for him. “Anyway O family, I am well aware of my situation and of my circumstances,” he wrote. “I have not come to this without having been convinced by legal scholars.

“One has no blessing in life if one is deprived from certain joys.”

The cell of a non-compliant prisoner at Camp Delta, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Photo credit: US Department of Defense

According to his 2008 JTF-GTMO detainee assessment (one of hundreds released by Wikileaks), Al Hanashi was born in February 1978. He grew up in Yemen and graduated secondary school in 1995 or 1996. “After graduation… [he] worked for his father on the family farm where they raised livestock and grew watermelons, tomatoes, corn and other crops,” though the detainee assessment said he told a Yemeni delegation to Guantánamo that he used to be in the military.

In general, intelligence officials at Guantánamo thought Al Hanashi minimized his role fighting in forces associated with Al Qaeda. As a result, they judged him as “High risk,” a threat to the US and its interests and allies, as well as “A High threat from a detention perspective.” (They would state the same thing about Al Amri.)

According to Guantánamo expert Andy Worthington,

“[Al Hanashi] was one of around 50 prisoners at Guantánamo who had survived a massacre at Qala-i-Janghi, a fort in northern Afghanistan, at the end of November 2001, when, after the surrender of the city of Kunduz, several hundred foreign fighters surrendered to General Rashid Dostum, one of the leaders of the Northern Alliance, in the mistaken belief that they would be allowed to return home. Instead, they were imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, a nineteenth century mud fort in Mazar-e-Sharif, and when some of the men started an uprising against their captors, which led to the death of a CIA operative, US Special Forces, working with the Northern Alliance and British Special Forces, called in bombing raids to suppress the uprising, leading to hundreds of deaths. The survivors — who, for the most part, had not taken part in the fighting — took shelter in the basement of the fort, where they endured further bombing, and they emerged only after many more had died when the basement was set on fire and then flooded. “

This was the same prison revolt and subsequent massacre by US, British and Northern Alliance forces where the so-called “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh, was also captured and later tortured by US operatives.

According to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) record, Al Hanashi went to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban in early 2001. He was 23 years old.

Al Hanashi told Guantánamo officials he never heard about Al Qaeda until he read media reports while on the front lines in Afghanistan. He explained that he fought against the Northern Alliance, but said he never killed anybody.

After surviving Qala-i-Janghi, he was shipped off to Shabraghan Prison, where he spent the next four weeks or so recuperating in the prison hospital. Also in the hospital with Al Hanashi were victims of a transfer of Northern Alliance prisoners from Kunduz, the survivors of a purported war crime by Dostum’s forces (possibly with the knowledge or connivance of US Special Forces), as thousands of prisoners were “stuffed into closed metal shipping containers and given no food or water; many suffocated while being trucked to the prison. Other prisoners were killed when guards shot into the containers,” according to a New York Times story.

Did al Hanashi talk with survivors of the Dostum mass killings? Did he hear tales of US Special Operations soldiers or officers involved? According to his JTF-GTMO detainee assessment, an area of “possible exploitation” in his ongoing incarceration was the “Uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif and detainee’s reported leadership” there. The claims about “leadership” came from the interrogation of John Walker Lindh, who supposedly told interrogators that Al Hanashi had helped negotiate the surrender of prisoners at Qala-i-Janghi.

Appended to a section of the assessment is an “Analyst Note,” which stated, “If detainee was truly in a situation to negotiate for others, he may have been in a more significant leadership position than reported.”

The question of the level of leadership Al Hanashi exerted was brought up both by outside observers (like the former detainee Binyam Mohamed) and, as noted in the released NCIS interviews, by Guantánamo guard and medical personnel. In addition, as we have seen, when Guantánamo officials decided to change the policies for psychiatrically hospitalized detainees, bringing them into alignment with rules for the rest of the camp, top Guantánamo officials came to the Behavioral Health Unit to discuss the situation with Al Hanashi.

Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
Photo credit: Joint Task Force Guantanamo / Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Some of the statements made about Al Hanashi can be taken with a grain of salt. Former Guantánamo inmate, Binyam Mohamed, who knew Al Hanashi, has said he didn’t believe the 31-year-old Yemeni force-fed hunger striker committed suicide. He told the journalist Naomi Wolf that reports that Al Hanashi was “an upbeat person with no mental problems and would never have considered suicide.” The documentary record from Guantánamo doesn’t support that conclusion.

According to a July 30, 2009 news report, “Mohamed refuses to believe that Saleh committed suicide and the US military refuses to say how he allegedly took his life. ‘He was patient and encouraged others to be the same,’ Binyam said.”

Mohamed also had a different tale about how Al Hanashi came to be in the Behavioral Health Unit. He told reporters, “I was asked if I wanted to represent the prisoners on camp issues such as hunger strikes and other contentious issues. I declined, as did most. But poor Wadhah [Al Hanashi] agreed, wanting to help his brothers the best he could. Little did he realize that if they didn’t get their way he would be the one sacrificed.”

Regardless of how accurate Binyam Mohamed’s narrative of events was, he certainly understood the prison’s environmental pressures, and he has held the US military accountable for Al Hanashi’s death, as suicide was so improbable under the conditions of detainee confinement. Mohamed pointed out that “Everything that someone could use to hurt himself has been removed from the cell, and a guard watches each prisoner 24 hours a day, in person and on videotape. In light of this, I am amazed that the US government has the audacity to describe Wadhah’s death categorically as an ‘apparent suicide.’”

Another odd coincidence surrounding Al Hanashi’s death concerns the transfer of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a “high-value” detainee, who has been at Guantánamo since September 2006, to a New York federal court, only a week after Al Hanashi was found not breathing in Guantánamo’s psych ward. Ghailani was facing charges concerning his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The link between Ghailani and Al Hanashi is significant for at least one reason: According to Andy Worthington, Ghailani, who was tortured in the CIA’s black site prisons, fingered Al Hanashi in 2005 as having been at “the al-Farouq camp [the main training camp for Arabs, associated in the years before 9/11 with Osama bin Laden] in 1998-99 prior to moving on to the front lines in Kabul.”

But according to Al Hanashi and all other sources, Al Hanashi came to Afghanistan only in early 2001. Hence, his possible testimony at a trial in New York City, establishing that Ghailani’s admissions were false, and likely coerced by torture, may have been a hindrance to a government bent on convicting the supposed bomber. Interestingly, as Worthington points out, the other four embassy bombers were not kept in CIA black prisons or tortured, but convicted in a US court for the bombings in May 2001.

(Ghailani himself was acquitted of all but one of 280 counts in the embassy bombings, as the courts refused to admit a witness whose identification came via torture of Ghailani while he was held prisoner in a secret CIA prison. Even so, he was sentenced to life in prison for one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. Today, he is imprisoned at the ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.)

Al Hanashi’s death, coming only weeks before he was, after seven long years imprisonment, to meet finally with an attorney, brings to mind the untimely death of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, also at first reported as a suicide, in a prison cell in Libya in May 2009, only weeks before Al Hanashi died. Al-Libi, too, was supposed to meet soon with people from the outside, according to a report from Newsweek.

Al-Libi was infamously the source of tortured information that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was gathering weapons of mass destruction, information that Al-Libi later recanted. According to Human Rights Watch, some of their workers met Al-Libi in his prison cell on April 27, 2009, “during a research mission to Libya.” Al-Libi “refused to be interviewed, and would say nothing more than: ‘Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails”?

Jeffrey Kaye, author of Cover-up at Guantanamo: The NCIS Investigation into the “Suicides” of Mohammed Al Hanashi and Abdul Rahman Al Amri.
Photo credit: Jeffrey Kaye (Twitter) and Jeffrey S. Kaye, Ph.D publisher

As is the case with Al-Libi, the Al Hanashi death has a strange feel to it.

On June 1, 2009, three months after writing out his last testament, Al Hanashi was found seemingly lifeless in his cell. He was taken to the prison hospital, where he was pronounced dead less than an hour later by Dr. Enterprise, a prison physician. (Could that be his actual name? Medical officers routinely used pseudonyms at Guantánamo.) Military authorities said Al Hanashi had committed suicide by self-strangulation.

According to NCIS documents, Al Hanashi repeatedly told the Chief of Guantánamo’s Behavioral Health Unit (BHU) that he felt he was being tortured. They argued about it even on the last day of the detainee’s life.

Later that day, only a little over 2 months after writing what NCIS investigators labeled Al Hanashi’s “last will and testament,” Al Hanashi wrote what appeared to be a suicide note, but he was too depressed and disheartened to even finish it. Reportedly in silence and quickly, he strangled himself to death with a piece of elastic supposedly taken from his underwear.

Al Hanashi was haunted by the deaths of three prisoners, supposedly by suicide, on June 10, 2006. While there is evidence that the government’s story about those suicides has real holes — as already noted, former Guantánamo guard, Joe Hickman, wrote a book exposing the suppression of and tampering with evidence by the investigating agency — Al Hanashi told medical personnel in the Behavioral Health Unit at Guantánamo that he was supposed to die with the other three detainees on that day, too.

According to a statement given by the Senior Medical Officer, JTF GTMO, she had heard “at various JTF meetings” that Al Hanashi “was on a directed suicide list authored by [redacted].” But Al Hanashi was described as seeking refuge in the detainee mental hospital as a way to escape other detainees “who might have been pressuring him to commit suicide.”

No evidence of such a suicide list, or of pressures by other detainees on Al Hanashi to kill himself was included in the FOIA release I received in May 2015 on NCIS investigation into his death.

I had made the original FOIA request in January 2012. But little did I know at the time — which was two-and-a-half years after Al Hanashi died — that, as I filed my FOIA request, the NCIS investigation was still underway. Nor did I have any idea the investigation ultimately would take three years to complete.

Reading the documents that were finally released, it did not seem NCIS personnel felt much urgency about closing the case. At times, months went by and no investigative activity took place.

When the investigation was finally closed on June 13, 2012, NCIS had to admit in documented form that key portions of the evidence bearing on the chronology of events surrounding Al Hanashi’s death had gone missing.

As already described, someone — allegedly an investigator from NCIS itself — told Guantánamo personnel to stop entering information on Al Hanashi into a computer database, once his body was discovered. Subsequently, and we don’t know exactly when, the logs for the database the day Al Hanashi died and the following day disappeared entirely.

What happened during Al Hanashi’s final weeks? How did the detainee who had made numerous suicide attempts in the previous months leading up to his death, finally come to take his life? Did he, in fact, kill himself?

It is worth taking an in-depth, closer look at his death, including actions taken in the days leading up to his death by doctors, nurses and guards. But this remains a provisional narrative, as the full story is still pointedly unknown, blocked on one hand by government censorship and the failure to release all documentation. On the other hand, we do not have access to the scene of his death. We do not have access to the witnesses. They cannot be cross-examined. The key witness, Al Hanashi himself, is dead.

Honorbound sign at Joint Task Force Guantanamo’s Camp Delta.
Photo credit: US Army / Flickr

With all the attention of the world upon Guantánamo, the actual events inside the Cuba-based US prison are shrouded in deep mystery, sealed by classification and censorship. Hence the death of one man is barely known, much less remembered, and what happened to him even less known.

For the first time in this book, the circumstances around his death are open to public scrutiny. The record, even as it remains censored in part, shows that perceived violations of trust by doctors, nurses and mental health personnel contributed, at the very least, to Al Hanashi’s decision to take his life. It is possible some person or persons – medical personnel or guards – facilitated his death, or even murdered Al Hanashi. We can only speculate.

“Everything seemed normal”

Al Hanashi had been suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts for some time. A long-time hunger striker, Al Hanashi’s weight had fluctuated dramatically over the years, as detailed above. As a reminder, according to government records, on July 22, 2006 his weight dropped under 80 pounds. Only months before he had weighed just over 140. His weight had dropped by over 60 pounds in just four months.

According to his autopsy report, Al Hanashi had gone on hunger strike again in January 2009. During his last hunger strike, Al Hanashi was fed via tube. At his death, he weighed 120 lbs.

A Medical Record Review by NCIS investigators stated he entered the BHU on Jan. 10 for “making suicidal ideations.” His autopsy report also noted that Al Hanashi had made five suicide attempts in the month before he died.

The NCIS Medical Record Review contradicted that account, stating it was three attempts, all in the presence of prison personnel. By any account, Al Hanashi was deeply depressed and suicidal. Yet despite his history of recent suicide attempts, on the night he supposedly killed himself, Al Hanashi did not appear to be on suicide watch.

The guards reported little of consequence that evening. There were nine guards and a Watch Commander on duty that night, and seven detainees present on the BHU. One guard told NCIS investigators, “The BHU houses detainees that have expressed the desire to harm themselves.”

The procedure on the unit was to have two guards at a time monitor the seven detainees. One African-American guard with the Naval Expeditionary Guard Battalion (NEGB) described the scene:

“Our duties were to look inside each cell and check on the welfare of the detainees. We look inside the cell windows to ensure the detainees are not in possession of contraband or attempting to do harm to themselves. We usually spend approximately thirty seconds to one minute looking inside of each cell window.”

For whatever reason, this guard changed his statement later to reflect the fact that guards only spent “approximately thirty few seconds to one minute” watching the prisoner. The words “thirty” and “to one minute” were crossed out, though not enough that one couldn’t see what was originally written.

“Everything seemed normal,” the Navy guard stated. “I did not notice anything out of the ordinary.”

Al Hanashi was in cell two and “seemed in good spirits.” He had seen Al Hanashi upset in his cell before, pacing, or “praying loudly.” He was not writing anything, the guard said, “or doing anything out of his normal pattern.”

Another guard, who ended his roving tier patrol an hour before Al Hanashi died, told NCIS he too experienced the night as “normal.” On the other hand, he did see Al Hanashi writing something for most of the time he was on his shift.

In addition, Al Hanashi did not seem “in good spirits” to this guard, but rather seemed “down.” Al Hanashi was “a little more quiet than normal.” Al Hanashi reportedly was “usually talkative.” Nearly a full page of this guard’s statement is still redacted and “under classification review” by a Command other than NCIS.

An African-American Navy Airman assigned to the BHU Response Team told NCIS about earlier contact with Al Hanashi.

It was mid-May, only a few weeks before Al Hanashi’s death. He was told before his shift in mid-May 2009 that Al Hanashi had made a suicide attempt earlier that day. He’d rammed his head into a fence, and then tried to hang himself with his t-shirt.

The NCIS review of medical records dates the attempt to May 13, and expanded on the story. Al Hanashi reportedly “slammed his head on an exposed bolt located on a fence in the BHU recreational area.” The same day, he “attempted to strangle himself with a shirt.”

Five days before the May 13 attempt, Al Hanashi had also “tore off pieces of his shirt and attempted to strangle himself in the recreation yard.”

The guard told NCIS what he saw on his shift later that day after the suicidal behaviors, “Due to his suicide attempts, [redacted, but certainly 078, i.e., Al Hanashi] was under constant monitoring by a guard and he was placed in a green self harm suit. During the shift, [redacted, again, certainly 078] had some type of a Code Yellow (urgent medical issue) that required the response team to enter his cell and move him to the padded restraint chair adjacent to the tier.”

The medical issue isn’t known, but the guard thought, “[It] didn’t seem to be serious.” But another guard, in a different context, explained that Code Yellow means a detainee is “unresponsive.”

Another guard, who was on tier duty on the Duty Section One (Nights) shift the day Al Hanashi died, also described his duties. “Our job on the tier is to check every detainee every three minutes,” he told NCIS investigators. A check was only deemed satisfactory if they saw “breathing or some type of movement on each detainee.”

That night, this guard heard Al Hanashi talking from his cell with other prisoners on the BHU. This was not unusual, but as the conversations were in Arabic, he didn’t know what was said. There was nothing else unusual, either. Al Hanashi “seemed to be acting normal.”

“Is he breathing?”

Later that night, around 9:45 pm, Al Hanashi asked the guard to get him the nurse on duty. He called a corpsman, who then called the nurse. The guard observed the nurse talk with Al Hanashi for 5 or 10 minutes. She left and came back shortly with a sleeping pill (though the guard didn’t know what kind of pill it was at the time, he said). The guard watched him take it, swallowing it with water.

This guard heard Hanashi continue to talk to someone. The identity of the person he was speaking with is redacted in the documents, but from internal evidence, it seems to have been the nurse. The last reported contact with Al Hanashi, according to the autopsy narrative, was 10-15 minutes after Al Hanashi spoke to the nurse who gave him the pill. “… [H]e asked the guard to close the ‘bean hole cover,’ a sign that he was ready to go to sleep.”

Three minutes after his last check, “at approximately 2200,” he looked inside the cell and “did not see any movement or breathing.” Al Hanashi was described as lying “in the fetal position on the floor with the top of his head against the door and his feet facing the rear of his cell.” A green blanket covered his body up to his eyes. His hair, hands and feet were sticking out.

“I am not involved in [redacted, likely “078’s”] death,” the guard told NCIS, somewhat defensively it seems.

Yet another guard, a Caucasian male with NEGB, was coming on duty right at the time Al Hanashi was discovered on the floor of his cell. He overheard the two guards who were checking on Al Hanashi’s cell say “something to the effect, ‘is he breathing’ or ‘check to see if he is breathing.’”

This guard looked in the room and Al Hanashi wasn’t moving. He saw a woman, possibly a nurse, “dealing” with another detainee. She told the guard Al Hanashi might not be responding “because he had been given sleep medication by medical personnel.” At the same time, two other detainees “began shouting that [redacted] was sleeping and that we should leave him alone.”

The guard decided to ignore the warnings. He called in through a slot in the door to get Al Hanashi’s attention. Another guard reached in through the lower slot in the door and tried to shake Al Hanashi, who was lying close to the door. But then something caught the guard’s attention…

Jeffrey S. Kaye is a practicing psychologist in San Francisco, California. He is the author of numerous works, including “Isolation, Sensory Deprivation, and Sensory Overload: History, Research, and Interrogation Policy, from the 1950s to the Present Day,” Guild Practitioner, Vol. 66, No. 1, Spring 2009  and “CIA declassifies new portions of Cold War-era interrogation manual,” Muckrock, April 8, 2014.

Yesterday, the Today programme referred to this horror as a ‘forgotten war’ – but it has never been forgotten by investigative journalists like Felicity Arbuthnot, who has written in detail about the savage air strikes carried out carried out by the Saudi led “coalition”, armed by the US and UK and advised by their military specialists. She indicts the collusion and co-operation of both countries which renders them, “equally culpable for the carnage”, writing:

“This heartbreak, fear and destruction has been rained down in commensurate devastation near every twenty-four hours since March 2015, Saudi Arabia is the lead culprit, but in the “coalition” are also Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait”; we note elsewhere news of Britain’s covert assistance in air surveillance of targets and – it is feared – other ‘special operations’, unsanctioned by and undisclosed to parliament”.

Air strikes that targeted a funeral gathering in the capital of Sana’a on 8 October, killing over 140 mourners and injuring 500 others attending the ceremony, have renewed international condemnation of the UK’s controversial weapons trade with Saudi Arabia.

Theresa May defended the arms sales last month, claiming the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia,“helped to keep people on the streets of Britain safe”

Conservative ministers have repeatedly rejected calls for a pause in weapons sales amid frequent reports of war crimes and the Government refused to give MPs a vote on the issue.

The British Government now says it will consider the terms of its lucrative arms exports to Saudi Arabia after its ally admitted responsibility for killing more than 140 mourners and injuring 500 others at a funeral in Yemen.

A few facts:

• A United Nations report on children and armed conflict said the Saudi-led coalition was responsible for 60 per cent of all child causalities – 510 deaths and 667 injuries – in the conflict last year. The UN warned that while international attention has focused on Syria, more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen, including at least 4,000 civilians in the past 18 months alone.
• Britain sold £3.3bn worth of arms between April 2015 and March 2016 alone – the first year of the Saudi-led coalition’s deadly bombing campaign in Yemen, where it intervened against Houthi rebels at President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi’s request. Tim Farron, Jeremy Corbyn and Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas are among those calling for trade to be suspended.

Military instructors from NATO countries were onboard a combat helicopter, shot down by servicemen of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on October 13, deputy commander of the Operational Command of the republic, Eduard Basurin, said on Friday.

“According to preliminary information, foreign mercenaries – instructors from the NATO, were in the downed helicopter. The area of the incidence [with the helicopter] is cordoned off for several days, cellular communication is disabled,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted the words of the representative of the DPR Defense Ministry.

According to head of the DPR Alexander Zakharchenko, UAVs attempted to attack the territory of the republic under the cover of the military helicopter, which was put out of action, but managed to land on the territory of Donbass, occupied by the Kiev Forces. DPR soldiers shot the enemy’s helicopter down, while it was attacking their positions. According to the DPR intelligence, the incapacitated helicopter landed near Krasngotovka.

The use of combat aircraft and drones, with the exception of UAVs of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM), is prohibited along the entire contact line by the Minsk Agreements.

The last time, Kiev used aircraft in Donbass on January 18, 2015. On that day, several the Su-25 fighter jets were noticed in the sky near Gorlovka.

“If one considers how dangerous these chemicals are, one would suppose that it would be government policy to minimize their use by every possible means. However, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution notes, ‘there is… no such policy in the UK, nor does the possible need for it appear to have been considered, notwithstanding the great increases in the use of these chemicals.’”

He went on to condemn the UK for aerial spraying:

SATIRE: This is how Syrians view the US election campaign:  

Translation of Singing in Arabic:

Trump and Clinton are Dancing: “We love you Bashar, and we will only vote for you, and the Syrian people will rebuild the country with you…”

Trump et Clinton dansent sur l’air : “Nous t’aimons Bachar, nous ne voterons que pour toi et le peuple syrien reconstruira le pays avec toi!…

also available at  (original Syria post on Facebook)

“Once the US has identified its target, it begins searching for the structural vulnerabilities that it will exploit in the coming Hybrid War. Contextually, these aren’t physical objects to be sabotaged such as power plants and roads … but socio-political characteristics that are meant to be manipulated in order to attractively emphasize a certain demographic’s “separateness” from the existing national fabric and thus ‘legitimize’ their forthcoming foreign-managed revolt against the authorities.” -Andrew Korybko [1]

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Length (59:26)

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This isn’t your daddy’s vision for military strategy.

Military operations, for good or for ill, are typically imagined as involving uniformed State actors engaged in violence with the aim of overthrowing a target government.

The aggression by NATO countries against Yugoslavia in 1999, or Afghanistan 15 years ago this month, or the invasion of Iraq in 2003, or the ousting of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 all seem to conform to this portrait of modern warfare.

More astute students of history might also recall engagements under-written by covert mechanisms, such as the CIA instigated coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954) and Chile (1973).

There is however a new form of military engagement on the world stage, and is principally practiced by the United States. It is called Hybrid Warfare.

 Andrew Korybko is an American commentator based in Moscow who has written a book and several authoritative articles on this new brand of warfare. Hybrid warfare, as he explains it, involves two pillars. The first is a “coloured revolution” or soft coup triggered by external sources instigating anti-government sentiment within the framework identity politics. The second is unconventional warfare, involving non-state actors executing violence designed to generate chaos and disorder and keep authorities off-balance and vulnerable to overthrow. [2]

Korybko explains that the hybrid war strategy aims “to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects,” specifically Russia’s Eurasian integration objectives, and China’s Silk Road projects. As he has argued in his writing, the recent insurgencies in Syria and Ukraine represent test cases of a stratagem finding application in the Balkans, East Asia, the Horn of Africa, and even Latin America. [3]

In a special feature length interview for the Global Research News Hour, Korybko elaborates on his thesis, putting it in the post Soviet context, points to flashpoints on the horizon, and outlines how those targeted countries and regions may be able to frustrate the objectives of American war-planners.

Andrew Korybko currently works with the Sputnik news agency. He has also written for Oriental Review and Katehon among other online journals. Much of his work focuses on the tactics of regime change, color revolutions and unconventional warfare used across the world. He is the author of the 2015 book Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change.

Andrew Korybko currently studies at the Moscow State University of International Relations and is a member of the expert council for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Predictions at the People’s Friendship University of Russia.

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Length (59:26)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca 

Notes:

1. http://orientalreview.org/2016/03/04/hybrid-wars-1-the-law-of-hybrid-warfare/
2. Andrew Korybko (2015), “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change”; (p.10, 59); http://orientalreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AK-Hybrid-Wars-updated.pdf
3. http://orientalreview.org/2016/03/04/hybrid-wars-1-the-law-of-hybrid-warfare/

The tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo enabled the Allies to expose the crimes committed by the Axis during the Second World War, and also served to justify both the price of their victory and their domination over the world. Based on this model, Washington believed it could judge and condemn 120 Syrian leaders, including President Bachar el-Assad, in order to justify the war and the overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic. All that was left to do was invent their crimes…

In April 2012 – in other words after the French withdrawal from the war (which it rejoined in July), and before the Russian-US sharing agreement (30 June in Geneva) – the «Friends of Syria» had decided to judge President Bachar el-Assad before an international court of law. The point of this was to stage, a posteriori, the Pax Americana, after the murder of Slobodan Milošević in his prison at The Hague, the hanging of Saddam Hussein and the lynching of Muamar Gaddafi.

In order to do this, the United States had created an association at The Hague, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC). For two years, lawyers and jurists gathered witness accounts of the alleged «tortures” practised by the regime.

The Office of Global Criminal Justice for the Secretary of State, at that time directed by Ambassador Stephen Rapp, had solicited Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and Turkey to finance a «UN Special Tribunal for Syria» on the model of the «UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon».

Let us remember that the Lebanon Tribunal, contrary to its denomination, is not a tribunal in the real sense of the term, since it was created by only two executives, the General Secretary of the United Nations and the Prime Minister of Lebanon, without ever being endorsed either by the Security Council or the Lebanese Parliament. This pseudo-tribunal would have been able to ignore the rules of law and condemn the Syrian President without proof.

The principle of the tribunals for Lebanon and for Syria was imagined by Jeffrey Feltman, ex-US Ambassador in Beirut, then Under-Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and currently Director of Political Affairs for the UN. Mr. Feltman created the Tribunal for Lebanon, after having personally organised the assassination of Rafic Hariri, to judge and condemn Presidents Emile Lahoud and Bachar al-Assad, whom he intended to accuse. We were able to consult an internal document from his office, and learned that after the overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic, NATO had planned to judge and condemn 120 leaders of the country, 80 of whom were already listed as persons under sanctions established by the United States and/or the European Union.

On 20 January 2014, two days before the opening of the Geneva 2 negotiations, the London-based law firm Carter-Ruck accused Syria of having tortured and killed more than 11,000 of its own citizens during the war. It then published a report by three international lawyers authenticating 55,000 images allegedly taken by a defected military photographer. Although two of the lawyers were seriously called into question for their partiality in previous affairs, and the third had been tasked by the CIA to create the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), and despite denials by Syria, John Kerry did not miss the opportunity of quoting this document at the opening of the Geneva 2 Conference.

On 31 July 2014, the Commission for Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives interviewed the Syrian photographer. He showed 10 images among the 55,000 in his collection, but only after having blurred them out, rendering them unidentifiable.

And oh my! On 22 September 2014, Russia and China opposed their veto to a French project for a Resolution which referred to the International Criminal Court concerning the crimes committed in Syria. The State Department ruled that the material gathered, although extremely voluminous, had no more value than the false witness statements from the Tribunal for Lebanon. As a result, it ceased to sponsor the preparations for the Syrian Nuremberg.

However, the Secretary of State recently sponsored the Center for Victims of Torture in Minnesota, not only for its actions, but also in order to come to the assistance of «victims of the régime» – if they can find any – but not to help the 80,000 people kidnapped by the United States and tortured by the Navy in Guantánamo and in prison boats in international waters during the two mandates of George W. Bush.

Besides this, the State Department sponsored an exhibition by Qatar at the United Nations in New York, then at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and finally, last week in Rome – based on the photos from the Carter-Ruck law firm. Of course, there was no question of showing all 55,000 photos, but the same 10 blurred-out photos accompanied by a few others relative to the war.

At the same time, the pro-Israeli representative, Eliot Engel, (already the author of the Syrian Accountability Act) presented the proposition for law H.R.5732, which was aimed at strengthening the sanctions against Syria.

On 6 October 2016, Hollande (whose military is illegally deployed in Syria) organised a meeting at their embassy in Washington in order to relaunch the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) and finance the project of a Tribunal for Syria.

Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, and of course the United States, announced that they would participate with a contribution. The project should cost only a few million dollars per year.

For Washington, it is now clear that the Syrian Arab Republic will not fall, and that it will be impossible to judge and condemn President Bachar el-Assad without proof. This set-up is part of the conditioning of the Western public as the «defenders of Good against the cruel Syrians». France, which has been successively spokesperson for the interests of Turkey, then Qatar, then Saudi Arabia, and today, Israël, does not see things this way. It therefore hopes to judge the 120 Syrian leaders (who are already condemned on paper) before the International Criminal Court… in absentia.

On 10 October, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jean-Marc Ayrault, announced that he had asked a group of lawyers to find a way of referring to the International Criminal Court, despite the predictable opposition of the Security Council.

It seems that Washington is preparing to accept the end of the unipolar world. In this case, the most ridiculous and terrifying accusations against Syria will serve to darken the image of the Russian camp.

Documents :

 “A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime“, Carter-Ruck, January 20, 2014.
 «Report sulla attendibilità delle “Foto di Caesar” che si paventa saranno esposte in mostra al Senato della Repubblica italiana», Sibialiria, Marzo 2016.
 “The Caesar Photo Fraud that Undermined Syrian Negotiations”, Rick Sterling, March 2016.

Thierry Meyssan: French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

Four days ago, after reports that Saudi Arabia had bombed a funeral in Yemen killing 140 mourners, America announced it would “review its support” for the Saudi-led coalition.

Three days ago the USS Mason, an American destroyer patrolling the Red Sea, was apparently fired upon from Yemen. It has gone unquestioned in the Western MSM that the Houthis were behind this attack, despite strong denials from the Houthis themselves.

Yesterday, all thoughts of “reviewing support” put aside, the Americans bombed three “radar sites” that they claim were a threat to their assets in the Red Sea.

Just like that, America is now an active player in the war on Yemen, when before they were simply selling weapons to the Saudis et al.

You might consider it strange that the Houthis, who have not fired on American ships ever before in the nearly 2 years of warfare in Yemen, suddenly decided – just as American support for Saudi Arabia was in question – to launch missiles at an American destroyer.

You might be asking yourself, “Why would the Houthis, who struggle to get any coverage in the Western press at all, let alone sympathetic coverage, launch an attack on America?”

You might consider it strange that the Houthis, already fighting a losing battle against a richer and better equipped enemy, might try and drag America into the war.

It’s not strange. Not in the least. It fits so well with the history of American military entanglements that one might even call it predictable, at this point.

There was the USS Maine, for example. In 1898 the Cuban War for Independence was three years old, the revolutionaries (supplied and trained in America) were fighting to free Cuba from Spanish rule. The American press was full of exaggerated or made up stories of Spanish “atrocities”, and many in Washington were calling for war. However, President McKinley favored diplomacy. Then the USS Maine was (allegedly) maliciously and deliberately blown up by the Spanish, killing 258 American sailors. “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!” became a battle cry, and America declared war.

There has never been any evidence the Maine was attacked deliberately by the Spanish, and all historical investigations have pointed to an accidental sinking as a result of fire.

Or there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident – the casus belli behind the Vietnam war. When North Vietnamese torpedo boats engaged and attacked American destroyers. This act of aggression from North Vietnam pulled America into a war they would not leave for 10 long years.

Except of course, it literally never happened.

The pattern is set. There are enough articles about “false flags” on the internet to fill a whole library of books, there’s nothing more to add. This is quite clearly another to file in the historical annals between the Reichstag Fire and Operation Northwoods.

That this should happen just as the Western press is waking up to what they now uniformly calling “the forgotten war”, is no coincidence.

In the Telegraph, Con Coughlin – a rather red-faced bombast, unfettered by petty reality, and in favor of starting a war with Russia – writes that the “forgotten war” is all Iran’s fault, and while Saudia Arabia might be killing practically every civilian that has died in the conflict, really it’s all down to Iran’s meddling.

The Guardian takes the tone that we (the West) should “do more”, and again references the mythic American reluctance to get involved. (yes, they are so totally without irony that they can actually claim America doesn’t want to be involved THE SAME DAY they launched missiles into Yemen). Despite some vague chastising of the UK/US, the Guardian agrees that Yemen is almost entirely Iran’s fault, that the Iranians are “exploiting and manipulating” Yemen to their own ends.

The Washington Post echoed that the US “must act” to pull Yemen back from collapse.

The focus, currently, is on the “humanitarian catastrophe”, and all decry the lack of negotiations…but that’s always the way it starts. Emotive language and made up statistics, the declaration that “something must be done”. Then, when the negotiations start the Houthis will either be presented with terms to which they simply cannot agree, or the Saudis will break the truce and the MSM will blame the Houthis and Iran anyway. At that point the “something” which “must be done” becomes a military intervention…in order to stop the war and protect civilians.

The question becomes: Why? Why is the US suddenly committing more resources to a war in Yemen? Why are the press suddenly waking up to their “forgotten war”?

The Houthi rebels in Yemen are reportedly backed by Iran and Hezbollah (there’s no direct evidence this is true, but given the political make up of Yemen, it does seem likely). It’s possible that America sees increased assistance to the Arab coalition, and actual low-key interventions of their own, to be – in effect – the opening of a second front of their proxy war with Iran in Syria. It’s possible they want to encourage Iran and Hezbollah to expend more of their resources in Yemen, and thus weaken their presence in Syria.

Does the Clinton administration want to undo the Obama-backed Iran deal? Will the new President undermine and verbally attack Iran in the hopes of scuppering the treaty? The vague possibility of a Nuclear-armed Iran has been America’s excuse for building missile defense shields in Eastern Europe, being able to refresh this brazenly false alibi would make life a little easier at the Pentagon.

It’s possible that America is seeking to build itself a little hill of highground, having taken a lot of flak recently for their preposterously hypocritical stance of at once denouncing Russia and Syria as “war criminal”, and supporting Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen (including selling them bombs to drop on funerals).

It’s possible that they feel the need to insert themselves into Yemen to head off any Russian involvement there. Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh made general overtures to Russia in a television interview six weeks ago. The last thing America would want is Russia to have access to naval bases on the Red Sea, and a Russian presence in Yemen would hinder any possibility of America putting boots on the ground there (hopefully, anyway).

Of course, it’s also possible that they need to fire off a few bombs so that they have an excuse to buy more. Fifth homes for ex-senators-turned-arms industry lobbyists don’t buy themselves.

When you’re a power-mad, institutionalised sociopath there doesn’t have to be a grand plan, or a big reason. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

In this most bizarre of presidential elections, no one is talking about one of the biggest—if not the biggest—issues of our time. Namely, the global power imbalance between corporations and governments.

Not Donald Trump, as he obsesses over the weight of a long-past Miss Universe. Not Hillary Clinton, despite her many substantive proposals that the media largely ignores. Not even Jill Stein, although she offers many proposals for moving power to the people at the national level.

Earth is dying. A few hundred billionaires are consolidating their control of the Earth’s remaining real wealth. Racism is rampant. And violence devastates millions of lives.

These issues do get mention, though less than they deserve. What is not mentioned, the elephant in the room, is that which blocks serious action on these and other critical threats to the human future: the glaring and growing global power imbalance between corporations that represent purely financial interests and the institutions of government we depend on to represent the interests of people and living communities.

The healthy function of society requires that governments be accountable to the electorate and that corporations in turn be accountable to democratic governments. Our ability to deal with every other issue of our time—from climate disruption to inequality to violence—depends on that accountability.

In a complex modern society, government is the essential and primary institution by which communities set the rules within which they organize. Even markets need rules to function in the community interest, and those rules must be made and enforced by government. Claims that a “free” market—a market free from rules—best serves the common good are an ideological fiction born of the dreams of banksters.

No candidate is addressing the global power imbalance issue—and no corporate media outlet will ever call them on it.

The significance of this issue rests on an analysis of the role and power of money in contemporary society.

Not that long ago, most people lived directly from what they harvested from their land—and might barter for other needs. For example, a country doctor might treat a patient in exchange for a chicken. By these and other means, most people minimized their need for money.

As society urbanized and industrialized, people were, by choice or exclusion, separated from the lands and community relationships that provided their means of living with little need for money.

We now live in a society in which our access to food, water, shelter, energy, transportation, health care, education, communication, and most all the other basic essentials of daily life depends on our ability to pay. No money, no life.

Each time we monetize a relationship—for example, replacing a parental caregiver with a paid child care worker or a backyard garden with a trip to the supermarket—we grow GDP and create new opportunities for corporate profits. At the same time, we weaken the loving bond between child and parent and between humans and Earth. And we become more dependent on money.

So what does this have to do with power? The more dependent we become on money, the more dependent we become on the money masters—bankers and corporations—that control our access to money through their control of paid employment, loans, and investments.

We now live in servitude to money masters, who organize globally beyond the reach of democratic institutions and deny responsibility for or accountability to the people and communities they hold hostage. From their position of separation, power, and privilege, they buy politicians, avoid taxes, and take over the institutions of media, education, health care, agriculture, criminal justice, communications, energy, and more.

Though it is a defining issue of our time, politicians who depend on corporate money and media dare not mention the growing power imbalance between corporations and governments and its sweeping implications. They will face it and address it only when forced to do so by “we the people.” Leadership in the cause of democracy and community will come—can only come—from an organized electorate with a power analysis. (Watch for Part Two in my October 19 column.

David Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine as part of his column on “A Living Earth Economy.” David is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, president of the Living Economies Forum, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, a member of the Club of Rome, and the author of influential books, including When Corporations Rule the World and Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth. His work builds on lessons from the 21 years he and his wife, Fran, lived and worked in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on a quest to end global poverty. Follow him on Twitter @dkorten and Facebook.

The most prestigious newspaper in Peru is no more than another mouthpiece for power. But this shouldn´t surprise anyone familiar with mainstream media and its propagandistic role in our society.

Sadly, most people remain unaware of this reality and still approach this kind of media for understanding on the appalling problems of contemporary life. For them there are real news: you will find no such understanding in El Comercio.

We will consider the Syrian conflict because it’s an ongoing issue with massive coverage to analyze. The fact that mainstream media (MSM) in Peru, as elsewhere, import its articles from Big Media and their agencies around the world does not, of course, release them of the responsibility to verify everything they publish and therefore endorse.

Let´s imagine ourselves taking half an hour of our busy lives to seek information in MSM regarding Syria, in order to learn what’s been happening there for the last five years. What could be better than an article titled: “Seven questions to understand what is happening in Syria”? (elcomercio.pe, 09/24/16).

The answer could easily be anything, because the supposed facts being paraded in this article imported from the BBC are misleading, fallacious or wrong. And any reader searching for truth or an honest interpretation based on facts regarding this conflict may find itself more confused or even worse, completely deceived about its nature. This analysis targets a narrative common to most Western MSM. Its Peruvian counterpart is particularly shallow and disaffected, and rarely redact their own articles on foreign conflicts, importing them, for an even more homogenized massive world coverage.

This sort of articles aimed at understanding something in a set of simple and clear steps are getting more popular as more and more people seem to drift away from questioning and thinking, researching, or going into contemporary subjects with any kind of depth.

The first subtitle in the article reads: (all quotes from El Comercio in light blue)

“What started as a peaceful uprising against the Syrian president, turned into a bloody civil war”.

This is a statement of two of the most important points in the Western narrative regarding not only Syria, but many other past conflicts, as this article will argue.

So let’s proceed and debunk this set of lies repeated by the MSM ad-nauseam to advance the interests of empire.

1. “What was the situation in Syria before the war begun?”

2. “How did the war start?”

This two first questions need a wide and historic point of view that the MSM can´t entertain in its pages and television airwaves because of the simplified nature of its narrative and the limited space they devote to foreign conflicts. The only paragraph dedicated to the situation in Syria before the war (question 1) states:

“Years before the conflict started, many Syrians complained about the high unemployment rates in the country, extensive corruption, lack of political freedom and government repression by Assad…”

The article then jumps right into the events of 2011 that started the uprising. But where should we start if we want to assert the real reasons behind the conflict and its evolution through the last five years?

One of the best places to find political and economic information regarding most countries in the world are their respective US embassies, as the WikiLeaks files or authors as Phillip Agee have shown us in the past. This is especially true when the US have important interests at stake, as in the case of Syria, where in 2006 a private diplomatic email by chargé de affaires William Roebuck shows a clear intention by its officials regarding the regime and its ´vulnerabilities´:

“We believe Bashar´s weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as the conflict between economic reform steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question, and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists. This cable summarizes our assessment of this vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be actions, statements, and signals that the USG can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising”. (Emphasis added)

As Robert Naiman exposed (WikiLeaks Files):

“In public, the US was opposed to Islamist “extremists” everywhere; but in private it saw the “potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremist” as an “opportunity” that the US should take action to try to increase”.

Along with other pieces of advice, Roebuck suggests “playing on Sunni fears of Iranian influence… thought often exaggerated”, adding that both the “Egyptian and Saudi missions in Syria are giving increased attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue”. Fanning sectarian tensions is an old one, especially within strategies unconcerned by its effects on civil societies.

But creating division among the Syrian population wasn´t quite enough, as Roebuck also suggests to “Encourage rumors and signals of external plotting” aiming for the regime’s “paranoia and increasing the possibility of a self-defeating over-reaction”.  As we can observe, there was no paranoia at all, but grounded concerns.

Other formerly classified documents also look back into the moments before the 2011 uprising, as this US Defense Intelligence Agency heavily redacted document obtained through a federal lawsuit, states:

“AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) supported the Syrian opposition since the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. AQI declared its opposition to the Assad’s government because it considered it sectarian regime targeting Sunnis”.

This information haven’t seen the light of MSM coverage, as it’s radically opposed to the pro-Western rhetoric, as El Comercio/ BBC repeats:

“The incident (a group of boys allegedly arrested and tortured for graffiti paintings in Daraa) provoked pro-democratic protests, inspired on the Arab Spring… security forces opened fire on the protestors, killing several, which provoked more people into taking the streets. The uprising extended through the country asking for the resignation of Assad…”

Other less publicized testimonies, as that from Jesuit priest Frans Van der Lugt (left), killed by extremists in 2014 in Homs, suggest that the beginning of the conflict was not as simple as MSM states, but rather follow the logic expressed in the formerly classified cables:

”I have seen from the beginning armed protesters in those demonstrations … they were the first to fire on the police. Very often the violence of the security forces comes in response to the brutal violence of the armed insurgents.”

There were indeed anti-Assad protests, sometimes clashing with pro-Assad protests, but they were in many cases infiltrated or even promoted by elements with very different goals, mainly not Syrian in origin, and used for violence against civilians and peaceful protestors, policemen and soldiers.

“Many opposition sympathizers started to arm themselves, first as protection and later to expel government’s forces”. “(The conflict) soon acquired sectarian features… this dragged into the conflict other regional forces…”

Presumably the article refers to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey (among others). But as our research tells us, they were already involved in a more covert fashion before the uprising begun.

As Andrew Cockburn reported for Harper´s magazine in January, 2016:

“Earlier in the Syrian war, US officials had at least maintained the pretense that weapons were being funneled only to so-called moderate opposition groups. But in 2014, in a speech at Harvard, Vice President Joe Biden confirmed that we were arming extremists once again, although he was careful to pin the blame on America´s allies in the region, whom he denounced as ‘our largest problem in Syria.’ In response to a student´s question, he volunteered that our allies

‘…were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis (sic) coming from other parts of the world´.

“Biden’s explanation was entirely reminiscent of official excuses for the arming of fundamentalists in Afghanistan during the 1980s, which maintained that the Pakistanis had total control of the distribution of US-supplied weapons and that the CIA was incapable of intervening when most of those weapons ended up with the likes of G. Hekmatyar. Asked why the United States was supposedly powerless to stop nations like Qatar, population 2.19 million, from pouring arms into de arsenals of Nusra and similar groups, a former adviser to one of the Gulf States replied softly: ‘They didn´t want to’”.

Let’s go forward into the third question without having exhausted our rather lengthy arguments regarding the nature of the 2011 uprising.

3. Who is fighting against who now?

The answer starts by stating that “the armed opposition has evolved since its beginnings”. (From what?) The MSM narrative tries to make a clear, but false, separation between terrorists and armed opposition. In the analyzed article the former only arrived to Syria when the conflict was ongoing, to take advantage of the disputed territories and wage a war against the Shia/Alawite ‘infidels’ in power, and are also at war with the supposed “moderates”.

Let’s kill two birds with one stone on this one, by taking as an example the “moderate” rebels from Nour al-Din al-Zenki, one of the groups supported by the CIA, who beheaded a Palestinian boy last July for the cameras and took ‘selfies’ of themselves while doing it. A few months later another incident, this time covered (or produced) by the “Aleppo Media Center”, shown the world a wounded child by the name of Omran (Aylan in other reports), who then became the poster boy for the Syrian conflict by means of media exposition.

The connection between this two apparently dissociated incidents goes by the name of Mahmoud Raslan, one of Omran’s rescuers and photographer, seen in the video footage of the rescue outside the ambulance holding a camera with members of the White Helmets (civilian rescuers). This individual is also in pictures with the “moderate” beheaders of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki mentioned above, posing like friends on a weekend trip, blurring the already thin line between moderates, extremists and even the so-called non-partisan civilian rescuers (USAID-funded) White Helmets.

By the end of the 3rd answer we find another gem:

“And regardless of moderate rebels repeatedly asking Washington for anti-aircraft weaponry to respond to Russian and Syrian devastating attacks, the United States have declined the request, fearing the advanced weaponry could end up in jihadist’s hands”.

This is a particularly deceiving statement. While the US haven´t, to my knowledge, provided anti-air weapons to the rebels, it has delivered all sorts of other weaponry to them, directly by the CIA, or indirectly through its allies in the region. A report by the Washington Post says the CIA was spending 1 billion USD a year in funding this groups, which also includes training and other services. Of course, this weapons are given to the so called “moderates”, but as we argue, and many testimonies by US officials prove, this arms end up in the wrong hands rather often, as another article by the New York Times notes two weeks later: “CIA Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say”. Are we supposed to believe this is some kind of mistake, as self-indulgent MSM analysts do?

Throughout the article there’s no mention of who is arming the rebels. In the paragraphs answering the 2nd question it misleadingly states that:

“…opposition sympathizers started to arm themselves…”

4. How did foreign powers got involved?

5. Why is the conflict lasting so long?

As we already mentioned, foreign powers, meaning the US and its allies, were already involved in many ways in a “regime change” scheme since as early as 2006. The answer for question number 4 mentions in one line that:

“The United States, on their part, insist on Assad being responsible for huge atrocities and must resign”.

And that’s the extent of the influence of the US in this conflict according to this wholesale MSM article written for the disoriented masses. But the whitewashing continue in favor of US regional allies:

“Saudi Arabia is another participant in this proxy war. To counter Iran´s influence, its main rival in the region, SA has sent considerable military and financial aid to the rebels, including those with Islamist Ideologies”. (Emphasis added)

Another misleading piece of information on the nature of the conflict reads:

“The divisions between the Sunni majority and the Alawite Shia, have provoked both sides to commit atrocities that have caused not only an enormous loss in lives but the destruction of communities, strengthen positions and reduce hope on a political solution”.

But the majority of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is Sunni, and has included in the past a few Christian generals. As Kamal Alam writes for The National Interest´s blog:

“The fact remains: The moderate Syrian opposition only exists in fancy suits in Western hotel lobbies. It has little military backing on the ground. If you want to ask why Assad is still the president of Syria, the answer is not simply Russia or Iran, but the fact that his army remains resilient and pluralistic, representing a Syria in which religion alone does not determine who rises to the top”.

Deir-Ezzor, “an entirely Sunni city which has held out against ISIS encirclement for two years—and is commanded by the Druze General Issam Zahreddine”, as Alam continues, was attacked by the US Army, who targeted an SAA base killing 62 soldiers and wounding several more, in the first direct attack from the Pentagon on a Syrian Government facility or its forces. This incident happened on September 17th and ended the ceasefire, and not the alleged Russian attack on a UN aid convoy happened two days later.

In short, the “atrocities” cannot be blamed on sectarian allegiance, since it’s not what drives the main actors involved, although terrorists will often address to religious rhetoric.

A fact not mentioned by the mainstream media: Syria’s President’s wife Asma al-Assad (right) is Sunni.

Taking in consideration the secular character of the Syrian society and its government, all bets on sectarian originated violence should be on the rebel side, also known for establishing Sharia law courts in controlled territories.

6. What has been the impact of this war?

“The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a monitoring group based in London, indicates that up to September 2016, the number of deaths is 301,000”.

Estimates put the numbers between 250,000 and almost 500,000 victims and several millions displaced and surviving as refugees mainly in neighbor countries and Europe.

But the sources of this information are not without an allegiance either. We already talked about the White Helmets, working hand in glove with the not so “moderate” groups and factions mentioned above, only in rebel-held areas and many times as a sort of PR firm for the jihadists as well, which doesn’t mean they couldn’t at the same time rescue some people from the rubble.

Another, probably massive media´s favorite source of information regarding Syria, would be the above mentioned, ‘Syrian Observatory of Human Rights’, a one man operation located in a suburb in Coventry, England. Also known as Rami Abdulrahman, he is a declared member of the opposition: “I came to Britain the day Hafez al-Assad died, and I’ll return when Bashar al-Assad goes,” as he told Reuters on 2011. It was also revealed by the New York Times that the SOHR is funded by subsidies from the European Union and a certain European country he won’t disclose.

As Tony Cartalucci notes: “it is beyond doubt that it is the United Kingdom itself – as Abdul Rahman has direct access to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, who he has been documented meeting in person on multiple occasions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. The NYT in fact reveals that it was the British government that first relocated Abdul Rahman to Coventry, England after he fled Syria over a decade ago because of his anti-government activities…”

By any means the SOHR, the most widely cited source by MSM on Syria, is far from being an impartial one.

Beyond the visible death and destruction of Syrian society lies another untold consequence of this conflict: the fact that thousands of newly armed and trained jihadists will remain to roam around the Middle East and the rest of the world, regardless of the outcome of this war.

A conspiracy theorist would argue that another monster is being created deliberately by Western forces to further military expense, diminish civilian liberties and to excuse uncontested military presence virtually anywhere while fighting its own creation and its many tentacles.

7. What is the international community doing to put an end to the conflict?

Being this question answered above in some extension, we should refer to the diplomatic performance of the different powers struggling for whatever their particular goals are.

John Kerry and Samantha Power (left) have reduced themselves to advocates for terrorism by campaigning against Syria and Russia in their efforts to regain Eastern Aleppo from forces made up of 50% al-Nusra, the Syrian branch to al-Qaeda. Who are also said to dominate any other faction fighting on that side. “Rebel-held Aleppo” is a mainstream media fiction fostering support for terrorism among world public opinion.

We should remember at this point that when Aleppo was not under the spotlight of MSM as it has been in the last months, many news reports covered it as a city swarming with al-Nusra extremists and other al-Qaeda affiliates, as this April 2013 NYT article shows:

In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

Another talking point recently integrated into the discourse is found in the last paragraphs:

“The last partial ceasefire, in mid-September, failed a few days after entering into force when a humanitarian convoy was lethally attacked.”

Although Russia has denied the charges, it’s being treated by the MSM as the obvious culprit. As we already mentioned, the attack on Deir-Ezzor happened two days earlier and the US immediately took responsibility for the “mistake”.

While honest journalism would denounce the audacity of a government whose officials advocate for human rights and point fingers at Russia for alleged war crimes while at the same time supporting terrorism as a manner of proxy army against Syria, MSM instead acts as a sort of PR asset for power. It’s not surprising to find out very recent cases when high ranking diplomats and politicians are caught lying to the public, even about supposed war crimes, to be then whitewashed by media giants as the New York Times or the BBC. This is the kind of journalism available for most people in the world.

Samantha Power also leaves out the bombing on Yemen by its Middle East ‘partner in crime’ Saudi Arabia, with more than a billion in arms sold to them in 2015 by the US, as well as Intelligence and aerial refueling for its jets, which to some accounts (The Yemen Data Project) hit as many civilian targets as military. The UN puts the death toll of the 18-month war at more than 10,000.

Between 2009 and 2015 the US and the Saudis have signed deals for (potentially) 100 billion dollars.

While opinion pieces in MSM tend to offer a deeper, and sometimes even more truthful look into international conflicts, the facts covered only make it into the official narrative if they contribute to the ideas listed below, otherwise they are buried under whatever narrative is repeated non-stop as the truth.

A closer look into MSM coverage on Syria expose some of the specific messages that compose the “civil war/ peaceful protestor” narrative (as mentioned in the first subtitle of the analyzed article) aligned with US interests, many of them are easy to find in this wholesale dumbed-down piece of journalism by the BBC / El Comercio, and have been exposed by independent journalism on a daily basis for the last years:

• The uprising was purely civilian, terrorists groups entered the ongoing conflict later, taking advantage of the situation.

• The regime started the conflict by using violence against peaceful protestors, who then started “arming themselves” to fight back.

• The US got involved in Syria in response to alleged chemical attacks by Assad’s forces (2013).

• The US and allies fund, arm and train rebel “moderates” only.

• Religious sectarianism drives both pro-Assad and anti-Assad forces in what seems to be a Sunni vs Shia/ Opposition vs Government “civil war”, and not a fight to get rid of and international coalition of terrorist factions decimating a secular society.

• With complete disregard for international law and its institutions, the “criminal regime” must be toppled by an international coalition in its “Responsibility to Protect” civilians.

• Rebels and terrorists are visibly separated and sometimes fighting against each other.

Daniel Espinosa Winder (34) lives in Caraz, a very small city in the Andes of Peru. He graduated in Communication Sciences in Lima and started researching mainstream media and more specifically, propaganda. His writings are a critique of the role of massive media in our society.

Notes:

One month before the presidential election of 2008, the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup submitted to the Obama campaign a list of its preferred candidates for cabinet positions in an Obama administration. This list corresponds almost exactly to the eventual composition of Barack Obama’s cabinet.

The memorandum, revealed by WikiLeaks in a recent document release from the email account of John Podesta, who currently serves as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, was written by Michael Froman, who was then an executive with Citigroup and currently serves as US trade representative. The email is dated Oct. 6, 2008 and bears the subject line “Lists.” It went to Podesta a month before he was named chairman of President-Elect Obama’s transition team.

The email was sent at the height of the financial meltdown that erupted after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15. Even as Citigroup and its Wall Street counterparts were dragging the US and world economy into its deepest crisis since the 1930s, they remained, as the email shows, the real power behind the façade of American democracy and its electoral process.

Froman’s list proved remarkably prescient. As it proposed, Robert Gates, a Bush holdover, became secretary of Defense; Eric Holder became attorney general; Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security; Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff; Susan Rice, United Nations ambassador; Arne Duncan, secretary of Education; Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services; Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget; Eric Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs; and Melody Barnes, chief of the Domestic Policy Council.

For the highly sensitive position of secretary of the Treasury, three possibilities were presented: Robert Rubin and Rubin’s close disciples Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Obama chose Geithner, then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Geithner, along with Bush Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, had played the leading role in organizing the Wall Street bailout.

Rubin had served as Treasury secretary in the Bill Clinton administration from 1995 until 1999, when he was succeeded by Summers. In that capacity, Rubin and Summers oversaw the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which had imposed a legal wall separating commercial banking from investment banking. Immediately after leaving Treasury, Rubin became a top executive at Citigroup, remaining there until 2009.

A notable aspect of the Froman memo is its use of identity politics. Among the Citigroup executive’s lists of proposed hires to Podesta were a “Diversity List” including “African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, broken down by Cabinet/Deputy and Under/Assistant/Deputy Assistant level,” in Froman’s words, and “a similar document on women.” Froman also took diversity into account for his White House cabinet list, “probability-weighting the likelihood of appointing a diverse candidate for each position.” This list concluded with a table breaking down the 31 assignments by race and gender.

Citigroup’s recommendations came just three days after then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks. The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45 billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306 billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related assets.

Then-presidential candidate Obama played a critical political role in shepherding the massively unpopular bank bailout through Congress. The September financial crash convinced decisive sections of the US corporate-financial elite that the Democratic candidate of “hope” and “change” would be better positioned to contain popular opposition to the bailout than his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

As president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks, he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced prosecution for the orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation capping executive pay at bailed-out firms.

The same furtive and corrupt process is underway in relation to a Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump administration. Froman’s email is one of many thousands released by WikiLeaks from the account of Podesta. Those communications, such as the Froman email, which expose who really rules America, have been virtually ignored by the media. The pro-Democratic Party New Republic called attention to it in an article published Friday, but the story has received little if any further coverage.

The media has instead focused on salacious details of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s sexual activities, designed, in part, to divert attention from the substance of the Clinton campaign-related emails being released by WikiLeaks and other sources.

The New Republic drew attention to the Froman memo not because it opposes such machinations, but as a warning to the interests it represents that they must move now to influence the eventual composition of a Hillary Clinton administration.

“If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors,” wrote New Republic author David Dayen. “And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.”

In this historic victory–arguably the biggest thing to happen in Venezuela since the death of Hugo Chavez–a movement of small farmers took on one of the largest corporations in the world, and won.

“Nature will always prevail,” says Angel Moreno, a campesino and leader in the National Network of Popular Agroecological Schools, as he points to the grass sprouting through the sidewalk in the mountain village of Monte Carmelo in Venezuela. “But if we’re going to fight imperialism, we need seeds.”

It is Oct. 29, 2015, the 10th anniversary of the Day of the Campesino seed, and over a thousand people from around the country and around the world have gathered in this humble village, described by the Agujero Negro media collective as “the ecosocialist capital of Venezuela.”

The people of Monte Carmelo began these gatherings in 2005, and in 2012 they hosted an international gathering from eight countries throughout Latin America. There, over multiple days of discussions and debates, they wrote the Monte Carmelo Declaration and launched the international network of the Guardians of Seeds.

Monte Carmelo has become a center of gravity in Venezuela for the politics and practice of a movement that calls itself ecosocialist, leading a return to the land and the transcendence of the oil economy. Most big decisions in Venezuela are decided in the capital city of Caracas, but the people of Monte Carmelo and the neighboring towns are leading the way in a movement which is all at once local, national and global–to return to the source of ancestral practices of seed saving.

This year the small farmers of Monte Carmelo once again took the lead in a struggle to fight back against the ongoing economic crisis through a program of grassroots action. “We’re in a profound food crisis globally,” said Ximena Gonzalez, an activist academic from the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Investigations who like many others come to Monte Carmelo to participate and accompany this movement of seed savers. “We should take advantage of this conjuncture to put forward an integral plan of mobilization, legislation, and production.” And over the next several days, that is what happened.

The Guardians of Seeds

We live in a world where one third of all food is wasted, where industrial agriculture accounts for the lion’s share of carbon emissions, and where the genetic diversity of the whole food chain is in free-fall, all presided over by an international regime of biopiracy headed by multinational corporations like Monsanto. But not everyone is taking it sitting down.

The Guardians of the Seeds are the alternative, and in their struggles and celebrations they prefigure a different way of life. As over a thousand people streamed into the small town of Monte Carmelo on the morning of October 29, this vision comes to life. People from around the country bring their seeds to trade, to discuss, to learn and compare. Small children run through the crowds, as eager to trade for a new kind of seed as children in the cities to buy a new plastic toy.

The Guardians of the Seeds don’t see their job as just agriculture or production. There is a profound spiritual consciousness, diverse and deep, which pervades the atmosphere. “Seeds are the beginning, the force of rebirth, and the inspiration to reclaim our cultural and ancestral heritage,” said Cesar David Escalona, a young anthropologist and historian living in and studying the history of Monte Carmelo.

The Guardians are promoting not only another kind of agriculture, but another kind of life. “I used to live by earning money,” Daniel, a campesino from Trujillo told me. “Money puts your mind to sleep. True liberty is in the land, in protecting nature.”

The political framework for this vision is ecosocialism, since 2013 the official policy of the Venezuelan government. The “eco-socialist economic production model” as defined in the current six year plan, written by constituent assemblies and voted into law in 2013, is “based on a harmonious relationship between humanity and nature that guarantees the rational and optimal use of natural resources while preserving the processes and cycles of nature.” While there are ecosocialist organizations on every populated continent, each bringing the theory into unique practices, it is in places like Monte Carmelo that the political philosophy comes to life. Asking attendees what ecosocialism means to them elicits responses as diverse as the seeds themselves.

The people of Monte Carmelo are overwhelmingly in support of the current government of Venezuela, which since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999 has transformed the country legally, socially and politically. But the vision of ecosocialism which emerges from Monte Carmelo is decidedly and unapologetically grassroots. Like in the Zapatista communities of Chiapas, in Monte Carmelo the people command and the government obeys. “Those who work in institutions don’t follow the lunar calendar,” said Angel Moreno, criticizing politicians, bureaucrats and academics who don’t work the land themselves. “We’re talking about the afro-descendent, Indigenous and campesino seeds, and we have to take care of them ourselves, so that the institutions don’t come and put our seeds in a refrigerator.” This is the Venezuelan revolution at its most radical. And it comes not a moment too soon.

Economic Crisis

Venezuela is currently in a severe economic crisis – so severe that the word that is used in Venezuela today is not crisis, but war. And it’s no exaggeration – the scale of the crisis requires the permanent mobilization of the whole society in order to make ends meet.

But in Monte Carmelo, another picture emerges of this crisis, one which again prompts us to return to the source for answers. “The economic crisis hasn’t effected us very much,” said Abigail Garcia, one of the founders of the Socialist Seedbed of Monte Carmelo: “We grow our own food; we don’t need to wait in line for mayonnaise. Most of all this crisis has provoked a change of consciousness, and that is the most important of all changes.”

All around Venezuela, this sentiment is on the front lines. As prices surge beyond control or comprehension, the economic war has also brought communities together into networks of solidarity and production, where people are rediscovering their roots.

“When a crisis comes, we fall back on our cultural, historical reserves as a people, including the actual geographic sites of exchange and trade routes,” said Livio Rangel from the National Trueke Network: “We’re not talking about anything new. Look in your roots and your ancestors.” Rangel is one of the promoters of the “Trueke” movement. Literally translated as barter, Trueke combines community organizing around basic economic needs with a political and historical education wherein communities design their own currencies and organize themselves in assembly. At a Trueke, people of all ages gather to exchange everything from seeds to books, clothing to cosmetics, and also give workshops in specific skills.

“Trueke is what can save us from this economic war,” Rangel continues: “It can help us to find ourselves within our socio-productive essence…When you go to the supermarket, the Other is the enemy. When you go to Trueke, the Other is a friend, a love…” In Monte Carmelo, at the height of an economic war whose casualties are measured not only by inflation but by real human lives, where people die because medicine is being hoarded, the Trueke movement suddenly seems to have become common sense.

Trueke

The economic crisis has moved Trueke to center stage of the political process, and in Monte Carmelo this common sense is common practice: People were exchanging seeds, plants, food, books, arts and crafts, ideas and practices, all without money. I spoke with Walterio Lanz, a nationally respected figure whose innovative fish-farming practices and political activism over decades have earned him strong ecosocialist credentials. “We have gone a step beyond Jesus; we don’t just teach people how to fish, we teach them how to grow and care for them.”

While the market system is failing, this ancient system of economics is being jump-started again. The economy of Trueke reaches back to ancestral and indigenous traditions where different ethnicities engaged in trade across and throughout bioregions. An initiative from the Ministry of Higher Education has organized workshops around the country, organized by bioegion, to implement community-university Trueke systems in every state of Venezuela. And in the context of economic crisis, Trueke is taking on the character of a street action.

In the town of Lagunillas, a few days before the gathering in Monte Carmelo, I attended a Trueke where seeds were given away in exchange for the commitment to plant them (with names and phone numbers collected to check in), and dozens gathered at a workshop to learn how to make soap out of used cooking oil. “This is the ancient and new call of Trueke,” said Pablo Mayayo, another leader in the national Trueke network: “Against the monotheism of money, which we worship every day, let’s learn to resolve our problems without money. Let’s take a rest from cash, and exchange with solidarity. We are re-learning how to grow food, we are apprentices to small farmers. The return to the small farm is the return to our roots. They want this revolutionary process to fall, but what’s falling is capitalism, because it doesn’t know how to sow seeds, it doesn’t know how to love.”

Trueke is not only grassroots economics, but also grassroots democracy; an assembly at the end of every Trueke determines how to move forward; where the next one will be, who will participate, who will take which responsibilities. While hundreds of people line up in the cities to buy soap, in the countryside a new economics and a new politics are taking place. “I think that’s the most subversive thing you can do,” Livio Rangel told me: “Make your own soap, grow your own food. Make by yourself the things thatthey are hoarding. That’s the counter-model.”

Monsanto Vs. Monte Carmelo

But how does this economy and politics take on a larger scale? How can the experience of Monte Carmelo be spread and shared throughout Venezuela in the context of a rentier petroleum economy that imports the majority of its food? And how can it be mobilized to fight against the spread of corporate industrial agriculture, which has already begun to bring the chemical pesticides, fertilizers and hybrid and genetically modified seeds into the country?

In 2013, a seed law that would have opened a legal loophole for the importation of genetically modified seeds almost passed the Venezuelan legislature. Since the constituent assembly in 1999 when Venezuelans rewrote their constitution, the Venezuelan people have taken an active and leading role in writing and refining new laws to support their movements. So in 2013, the movement was ready – it blocked the passage of this law, and began a three-year process of writing a new seed law. This one would be written from the bottom up, through assemblies and workshops held across the country.

The struggle for a new seed law was the subtext of this year’s gathering in Monte Carmelo. With parliamentary elections coming up that December, it was widely perceived that the movement needed to act quickly to pass the People’s Seed Law, which by October had achieved consensus in assemblies throughout the country.

Tensions were high. One woman in an assembly reminded the crowd: “If the bad seed law is approved, we will all be converted into criminals – everyone who grows and guards ancestral seeds.” As far-fetched as it sounds, laws have criminalized seed saving around the world. The United States is an instructive example, where the federal government has persecuted and shut down seed banks across the country.

So in the midst of debates on October 30, the assembly decided that they would convoke a march to Caracas where they would rally outside the national assembly and demand that the people’s seed law be passed. And so it was. At the end of November, the outgoing national assembly voted into law a revolutionary seed law written by small farmers. It outlaws not only any GMO seeds, but also prohibits all forms of patent and intellectual property rights on seeds. And because small farmers know that laws on paper by themselves don’t necessarily change things, the law also stipulates that the government is responsible for helping to promote an alternative sustainable agro-ecological model throughout the country.

In this historic victory – arguably the biggest thing to happen in Venezuela since the death of Hugo Chavez – a movement of small farmers took on one of the largest corporations in the world, and won. And yet they remain humble. “We’re not at the head or the first of anything, we’re not on the top of a pyramid,” said Alan Soto Lopez, an artisan and activist who accompanies this movement. Walterio Lanz echoed: “We’re just doing what history is pushing us towards.”

“Plan de Siembra”

Even before the passage of the revolutionary seed law, the Guardians of the Seeds were dreaming up plans for how to organize the country along ecosocialist lines. On October 30, after the Day of the Campesino Seed, a coalition of academics and farmers, young activists and veteran organizers gathered in Monte Carmelo to debate a plan to win the economic war by building an ecosocialist mode of production from the bottom up; the “Plan de Siembra,” or the Plan of Sowing.

“Where are we going?” a poster at the front of the room asked at the beginning of a long day of discussion and debate, and pointed towards the answers: “Toward productive and political coherence: the rescue of native varieties, the use of organic fertilizers, and the empowerment of a communal chain of production and distribution.” The plan, which was subsequently illustrated and refined throughout the day, was to sow over 60,000 acres under “the logic of the communes.” Forty thousand would be devoted to corn, to beat the monopoly on pre-cooked corn flour owned by the Polar company, directed by the counter-revolutionary agribusiness tycoon Lorenzo Mendoza.

While Monsanto and other proponents of the Green Revolution propose that societies like Venezuela overcome their food problems by turning to new innovations in agricultural science and technology, the Guardians of the Seeds and their allies in Monte Carmelo are pointing in precisely the opposite direction.

“The ancient things are the most powerful,” Mayayo explained: “They are more trustworthy than the new things, because the ancient things have already proved themselves; they have resisted capitalism for hundreds of years. They’re still here!”

For the whole day, the hundreds of people from around the country divided themselves into rooms organized by type of crop – beans, corn, potatoes, and so on – in order to measure the efforts of all the different communities and integrate them into a coherent whole.

Here in a small mountain village, small farmers were on the cutting edge of history, protagonists in debates concerning the future of the nation and the revolutionary process.

Gabriel Garcia, a small farmer and a leader in Monte Carmelo, emphasized that there should not be a centralized state bureaucracy which manages seeds, and that legislation should not substitute for mobilization: “Seeds can’t be in a museum. They have to be cultivated. Every day is the Day of Seeds, not just October 29. We have to believe in ourselves, or we’ll always depend on technicians from universities, and we’ll end up using heavy machinery and other inappropriate technologies.”

Rangel and Mayayo from the Trueke network voiced concerns that the Plan of Sowing should not devolve into centralized bureaucracies where small farmers would be once again sacrificed on the altar of industrial production. “First they kick the small farmer off the land, then they force them into a city, and now they want to accuse them of not producing enough to feed the city?” Rangel questioned: “The point is not just the seed but the farmer; to defend not just the seed but the person who defends the seed. In counting seeds we get screwed. Take the harvest to the Trueke, not to the state.” Angel Moreno also argued against the quantitative framework: “Here in this seed is our essence. It can’t be measured.” Mayayo continued, “central planning in agriculture never worked in Russia or in China. It worked in health, education, prevention of accidents, but not in economy.” Walter Lanz took it a step further, telling me later: “any solution has to break with the logic of cities. As long as we can’t break from the model of exploiting the country to feed the city, we’ll never resolve our social or ecological problems.”

Such radical and often spiritual perspectives are strong in Monte Carmelo, and the tensions between small farmers who insist that their production could not be measured clashed with those who were concerned that without a quantifiable plan, the movement would not be able to either pass legislation that favored their efforts, or truly coordinate them into a coherent whole capable of providing an alternative to both the current economic crisis or the industrial agriculture of the Green Revolution. The debates were not only between friends and comrades and organizations, but also included deputies and representatives of the government.

And yet what emerged was not a mess of contradictions, but a beautifully complex picture of solidarity and struggle. Relieving some of the high tensions after a day of debates, Moreno reminded everyone that they were together as revolutionaries. “We live conspiring. We have to be insurgents. Next year let’s come with sacks of seeds, not just little bags.”

Conclusion

The Guardians of Seeds in Monte Carmelo are returning to the source, and they are inviting the world to join them. Their program is an integrated plan of action, including mobilization, legislation, and production. It’s an uphill battle in difficult conditions, but their convictions, like their practices, are deeply rooted and not easily discouraged.

An international media and diplomacy war against Venezuela continues to confuse the world about what is really happening in Venezuela – to the extent where one of the more reliable news sources on the country is the corrections section of the New York Times. But the revolutionary process in Venezuela continues to make major strides. While detractors point to long lines for food, people in Venezuela are also pointing to the first anti-GMO seed law in the world, and an ecosocialist Plan of Sowing. While some claim human rights abuses, the National Human Rights Plan launched by the government for 2015-2019 is one of the most comprehensive in the world, also having been written with participation of thousands of people across the country.

For small farmers in Venezuela at the cutting edge of history, the future is now. What is called for both by the grassroots and also by the government, is nothing less than a new geography – where the cities don’t exploit the countryside – and a new calendar – where the seasonal and lunar cycles matter more than the electoral and business cycles.

Monte Carmelo doesn’t rest on its laurels. On October 31st, over fifty people from eight different countries gathered to discuss and debate “the convocation of the First Ecosocialist International.” They invite the world to join them in a return to the source, which takes us beyond the source, like the seed, which unites the soil to the sky.

Britain’s House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee today issued a Report on Antisemitism in the UK that, while correctly identifying the far Right as the source of most hate crime, shows such bias in its sources and assessment of evidence that it calls into question the committee’s reputation and competence.

The Report, from a Tory dominated committee, takes up the weapons that have been used to try to unseat Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader by smearing those he has attracted to the Party with charges of antisemitism. The apparent collusion of Labour committee members reflects the dirty war being waged against Corbyn’s radical leadership by elements within the party.

Britain’s House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Report:                    

• Depends on evidence from almost exclusively pro-Israel, anti-Corbyn sources
• Advocates re-defining antisemitism so as to intimidate and silence pro-Palestinian voices, including making it a punishable offence to use the word Zionist “in an accusatory context”
• Dismisses the Chakrabarti Report’s principled recommendations for fair and transparent disciplinary Labour Party procedures  in cases of alleged antisemitism and other forms of racism, proposing draconian, politically motivated measures instead

Prof Jonathan Rosenhead, from the Jewish-led campaign group Free Speech on Israel (FSOI), said the select committee had aligned itself with extreme pro-Israel advocates, by setting restrictive limits on what may and may not be said, threatening to close down free speech on Israel and Palestine.

“The dire record of antisemitism over the centuries and especially in the last one means that vigilance is essential,” said Prof Rosenhead. “But antisemitism is not, currently, the major racist threat in this country; nor is it a significant problem in the Labour Party. This report loses all sense of proportion. It risks actually weakening the defences against true antisemitism (‘hatred of Jews as Jews’) by trying to extend its meaning to include many legitimate criticisms of Israel.

“For those of us who argue, along with many other Jews and Israelis, that the Zionist project has inflicted intolerable injustice on the Palestinians, the adjective ‘Zionist’ inevitably has an ‘accusatory’ aspect.  But it is directed against the State of Israel and its founding ideology, not against Jews.”

Notes:

1. House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee report on antisemitism http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/home-affairs-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/inquiry2/publications/
2. Free Speech on Israel is a network of labour, green and trade union activists in the UK, mainly Jewish, who came together in April 2016 to counter attempts by pro-Israel right wingers to brand the campaign for justice for Palestinians as antisemitic. 
3. Prof Jonathan Rosenhead explores the workings of the campaign to discover antisemitism in every corner of Corbyn’s Labour Party https://opendemocracy.net/jonathan-rosenhead/jackie-walker-suspense-mystery
4. Free Speech on Israel submission to the Chakrabarti Inquiry. https://www.scribd.com/doc/315237906/Free-Speech-on-Israel-Submission-to-Chakrabarti-Submission
5. Asa Winstanley exposes the fabrication of many antisemitism allegations https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-lobby-manufactured-uk-labour-partys-anti-semitism-crisis/16481

The pro-jihadist “west” is doing its best to define the number of civilians in east-Aleppo up and the number of al-Qaeda fighters in the city down. If the current numbering trend continues there will be a no al-Qaeda fighters left in east-Aleppo even as none have left. They will be redefined into “moderate rebels” who are entitled to the failed ceasefire they had never accepted in the first place.

The terrorists in east-Aleppo are encircled and besieged. The Syrian army nibbles away piece after piece of their territorial hold while the Syrian and Russian air force attack any recognized concentrations of forces or material. It is only a question of time until they are completely defeated.

Most of the fighters in the besieged area are associated with al-Qaeda. They are several thousand strong. Only few civilians remain. The eastern parts once housed some 300,000 people. About 10% of those, likely less, are still there. That are the realistic numbers. The spin differs.

When in 2013 the sectarian rebels had enclosed and completely besieged (map) the government held parts of Aleppo every win of theirs was called a liberation.

They since killed many of the people they “liberated”. Others fled. But the tide has turned. This animated map shows the development from September 2015 to 2016. The now besieged “rebel” held areas in east-Aleppo are shrinking every day. This is today’s situation. Much of the northern parts of the besieged area, including the Palestinian camp Handarat, are back in government hands.

Sooner or later the Syrian army will try to split the “rebel” held part along the east-west road from the airport to the inner (old) city.

The number game is played in front of the United Nations and in the “western media”. The first marks from an October 5 post here:

“It is primarily al-Qaeda that holds Aleppo,” said (vid) the spokesperson of the U.S. led ‘Operation Inherent Resolve’, Colonel Warren. That was back in April and al-Qaeda (aka Jabat al-Nusra) has since strengthen its capacities in the city. The French Syria (military intelligence) expert Fabrice Balanche tells Le Figaro (translated from French):

[Al-Qaeda’s] grip on Aleppo’s east has only increased since the spring of 2016, when it sent 700 reinforcement fighters while moderate brigades fighters began to leave the area before the final exit was closed. The provisional opening of a breach of the siege of Aleppo in August 2016 (Battle of Ramousseh) has further increased its prestige and influence on the rebels.

The UN Special Envoy for Syria De Mistura told (vid, 27:43) the UN Security Council:

We have seen information from other sources that tell us more than half of the fighters present in eastern Aleppo are al-Nusra. We have also seen reports alleging the intentional placement of firing positions close to social infrastructure, inside and aside civilian quarters.

A few days after that speech De Mistura held a press conference in which he offered to escort al-Qaeda fighters out of the besieged area. He alos sharply revised the number of al-Qaeda fighters down to less than 10% of all fighters. From his October 6 press conference:

We have done a much more updated analysis of the al-Nusra reality in eastern Aleppo. I know I was quoted, and is correct, I did refer to a figure which was close to 50%, you must have heard it, I think it was in the context of the Security Council. Well based on a more accurate estimates, which are also more up to date, and which are never completely perfect but are in my opinion, quite reliable, we are talking now about a presence in eastern Aleppo of at maximum 900 people, 900 people. The previous figure probably was also based on the out of date figure, that about 1500 al-Nusra fighters had left Idlib and other locations in order to join the al- Ramousseh battle which you remember took place some time ago when they attempted to re-take al-Ramousseh road. But they, according to our information, did withdraw, once this counter-offensive did not succeed and failed. So this amends, and please take it now as the line, which can always be amended by facts and figures, and more effective analysis, but that amends the so-called 50% thing. 900 al-Nusra fighters in eastern Aleppo.The total number is, the question is of the fighters in general, including the so-called main stream fighters or the AOGs in eastern Aleppo, the maximum figure that is being considered as such is 8000 people, 8000.

So we went from “it is primarily al-Qaeda that holds Aleppo” to some 10% of all fighters there within a few month without any al-Qaeda fighter leaving. This while the siege was partially breached by the “rebels” in August and additional al-Qaeda fighters reportedly used the opening to entered the city.

One gets the feeling that Samantha Power herself, the “wailing banshee” and U.S. Ambassador to the UN, dictated those “more accurate estimates” to De Mistura.

But even those numbers are still too high some “diplomatic sources” now tell Reuters:

The number of Islamist rebels in eastern Aleppo who are not protected by any ceasefire deal, and can therefore be legitimately targeted, is far smaller than an estimate given by the United Nations, diplomatic sources have told Reuters.
…
Several sources independently told Reuters that de Mistura’s figure for JFS fighters was far too high, and the real number was no more than 200, perhaps below 100. One Western diplomat said it possibly had no more than a “symbolic” presence.

Next week we will be down to one or three “symbolic” al-Qaeda fighters in east-Aleppo. When De Mistura finally escorts them out he will need a few helpers to push the wheelchairs of those few, old and disabled people. That then will have “liberated” east-Aleppo from all Jihadi-fighters and only upright, secular and democratic rebels will remain. They will fall under the ceasefire (the one the U.S. and these “rebels” never accepted or immediately broke). They do not deserve to be targeted by Russia and the Syrian government – no matter what they do. That, at least, is what John Kerry and the “western” media will tell the people. It will of course be complete bullshit and no serious analysts will fall for it. But those do not get quoted in the media.

While the number of Jihadis and rebels gets defined down the number of civilians in the now besieged area goes up. The eastern besieged parts of the built-up city originally had some 300-400,000 inhabitants while the government held western parts held nearly 2,000,000. That is, at first sight of the above maps, irritating. But if one studies the satellite pictures underlying the maps in detail one will notice that at least half of the now besieged parts are open country and factory areas. The built-up share is much smaller than in the western parts. Current UN estimates for the western parts vary between 1.3 and 1.5 million. That is consistent with Syrian government claims. The UN has several relief missions and offices in the western parts and those estimates seem therefore reliable.

But for the eastern part the UN has given the abstruse estimates of 250,000-275,000. It has not given any sources for that number. It also has no offices and no missions in the eastern part. It is implausible that only very few people left an area that is ruled by various competing Jihadi groups, has had little electricity and water and has been fought over for years. Until very recently passages to west-Aleppo were open to civilians. The rebels only now blockade them.

An independent estimates of the real population in east-Aleppo comes from Martin Chulov, a journalist for The Guardian who has visited the area ten times since it was occupied by rebels from out of town. After his last visit he estimated the actual number of inhabitants to be down to 40,000:

Those who remain in eastern Aleppo, roughly 40,000 from a prewar population …

Just last week Chulov reconfirmed his observation:

I returned to the city for the last time. Finding residents in the east was difficult. Those who had stayed this long had no plans to leave. Umm Abdu, a wedding dress seamstress turned nurse was one of them.
…
Umm Abdu has left Aleppo, and few of the others I met along the way have stayed behind.

The Syrian government estimates are consistent with Chulov’s observations:

EHSANI2 @EHSANI22
According to well informed senior sources in #Damascus , number of civilians in #Aleppo does not exceed 60k according to their best estimate
11:02 AM – 14 Oct 2016EHSANI2 ‏@EHSANI22
@MoonofA @TPAtticus @CamilleOtrakji “range” of Syrian government estimate of civilians in E.Aleppo is 40k-60k…60k is high of the range
11:48 AM – 14 Oct 2016

In other siege areas where the rebels gave up to the Syrian government the numbers of people coming out of them were much smaller than the original inhabitants. The numbers were also smaller than all prior estimates. Daraya, near Damascus, originally had some 80,000 inhabitants. The numbers of besieged people in Daraya the UN had given were variously between several ten-thousands and down to 8,000. When the evacuation of Daraya started the Syrian army estimated that 800-1,200 fighters and 4,000 civilians would come out. In the end the numbers of leaving fighters was some 600-700 and less than 2,000 civilians turned up to leave. The area was searched and all had left.

Based on the Daraya numbers and those of other sieges in Syria there are probably no more than 4-5,000 fighters and some 3-5 civilians per fighter, i.e. their immediate families, in east-Aleppo. The real total could easily be as low as 20,000.

But even then the al-Qaeda fighters will be still be the majority of the “rebels” in the city. It is implausible that their total number is now less than the number which were earlier announced to enter as reinforcement. The official spinmasters talking to Reuters obviously want the numbers to be very, very low to keep the al-Qaeda fighters unharmed and in place for future operations.

I am confident that neither the Syrian nor the Russian military will be a sucker for such BS.  That role is reserved for “western” journalist and the the usual lobbyist-“analysts” who are employed by Qatar, the U.S. and other Jihadi sponsors.

Theo Patnos, who was held hostage by al-Qaeda in Syria for nearly two years, was interviewed by Vanity Fair (watch the video at that link). Asked what the presidential candidates know about Syria he responds:

They don’t know a thing about Syria. Neither do the journalists, by the way. They’re doing their best, but they don’t know. They’re guessing. They speak with great authority but they really know very little. I don’t criticize them for being incompetent, but I criticize them for not having the up-close knowledge. They’re speaking of a planet they’ve never visited but they speak as though they do know and it’s a little confusing for me.

“It’ll be at a time of our choosing,” says U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, on NBC’’s “Meet the Press,” aired on Sunday, October 16th.

Interviewer Chuck Todd had asked him, “Why would he [Obama] send a message out to Putin?”

Biden (image right) pursed his lips, paused, and said, with a grim look on his face, “We sent him the message.”

Of course that didn’t answer Todd’s question, which was “Why?” Biden and Todd both remained silent for another tense moment.

Then, Biden picked up again: “We have the capacity to do it, and, uh,” and Todd interrupted him there with “He’ll know it?”

Biden replied: “He’ll know it, and it’ll be at a time of our choosing, and under circumstances that have the greatest impact. Uh, the capacity to do, to fundamentally alter the election, is not what people think; and, uh, I tell you what: to the extent that they do [‘do’ presumably meaning: fundamentally alter the election], we will be proportionate in what we do. And, uh,”

Todd again interrupted his interviewee, and said, “So, a message is going to be sent. Will the public know?” Biden replied, “Hope not.”

Full Biden Interview on NBC Meet The Press, October 16, 2016. Relevant section starts at 11′.47″

Of course, that “Hope not” could mean many things. It might mean: A blitz nuclear attack in line with our government’s belief that we now enjoy Nuclear Primacy (an idea that was first published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2006, and which has never yet been renounced by the U.S. government, during the decade since). That would be very much a public response, which Biden would “hope not” to be ’necessary’. In other words: Biden might have meant, there: “I hope it won’t have to be that.” But, clearly, Biden isn’t wanting the public to understand anything, other than that President Obama has threatened President Putin, with something, and that it will be “proportionate,” and the excuse for it will be — if it will happen — that Putin had done something which Obama thinks caused Hillary Clinton to lose the election to Donald Trump.

Standing behind what Biden is saying there, is the belief that Putin does have in his possession some option that might “fundamentally alter the election.” This is clearly a threat that’s meant to deter Putin from doing something that Putin hasn’t yet done. Obama is telling Putin that either the winner will be the person he wants to be his successor, or else — or else what?

In other words: what Biden is saying, is that, if Trump wins this election, then there is going to be some sudden, unannounced, U.S. government response against Putin, and that only after it is over, will the U.S. government explain to the public why it did.

But, of course, that assumes Americans will still be alive, even if Russians are not; and, so, if the “proportionate” response turns out to be a blitz nuclear attack against Russia, then anyone who is still alive will be wondering: what was it ‘proportionate’ to?

The United States is no longer — at least not in Syria — actually fighting the thing that Trump calls “extremist Islamic terrorism”: we are instead arming Al Qaeda in Syria to overthrow and replace Putin’s ally, Bashar al-Assad, there.

All of the U.S. government’s talk against “ISIL” (the Sauds’ preferred acronym for “ISIS”) is mere distraction from the tens of thousands of other jihadist fighters from other jihadist groups that have also been imported by the U.S. and Saudi governments into Syria as Obama’s and the Sauds’ “boots on the ground” to overthrow Assad there.

The leadership now for all of those jihadist groups (except for ISIS itself) is, in fact, Al Qaeda in Syria, which has gone under the name “al-Nusra.” Nusra is supplying the leadership now to all the jihadist factions that have been sent into Syria; Nusra is the only jihadist group that possesses the long experience and training in jihad and military matters, which is needed in order to be able to overthrow Assad. Al Qaeda is now America’s essential ally, at doing what the U.S. government most wants to do: overthrow and replace Assad.

The U.S. is deadly serious about that intention, as can be seen here from the NBC News preview video of their interview with Biden, from which the above quotations are sourced. Looking at Biden’s face there, one can see that this is deadly serious. This isn’t about sexual aggression — either Donald Trump’s or Bill Clinton’s — it’s about the survival of civilization, or else nuclear war.

There have been many reports in the U.S. press saying that Obama has, ever since at least October 6th, been contemplating an all-out U.S. bombing campaign to bring down Assad. But that would mean war with Russia, which has been actively bombing Nusra and all the other jihadists in Syria.

Hillary Clinton is urging a “no-fly zone” in Syria, so that we can do to Assad what we did to another ally of Moscow, Muammar Gaddafi. However, when that was done to Gaddafi, Putin stood aside and wasn’t supplying military assistance to Gaddafi, which would have enabled Gaddafi to wipe out the fundamentalist Muslims who were trying to overthrow him. Russia is involved actively, this time, to prevent happening in Syria what happened in Libya. A no-fly zone in Syria would thus mean U.S. war against Russia.

These are tense times. Any escalation that the U.S. can do against Russia, can be met by an escalation that Russia can do against the United States.

Consequently, whatever escalation Obama is now threatening against Putin, might be met by an escalation on the other side. Where will it stop, or would it even be able to stop?

Whatever escalation Obama might consider to be ‘proportionate’, could consequently end up ending the world as we know it — and not for the better. Hillary Clinton has threatened Putin with war; now Barack Obama has done likewise.

Whatever Biden’s assignment here actually was from Obama, one thing about it is clear: this President is determined that Hillary Clinton be his successor, and Obama will target anyone who gets in his way if he doesn’t win his way on this. And Obama wants the American public to know that this is how he feels about the matter.

This Biden-interview is really intended, in that sense, to be a threat aimed at America’s voters, telling them, telling each one of us: Vote for Hillary Clinton, or else! He’s not telling us what that “or else!” is going to be — and maybe he himself has no accurate idea of how far it will ultimately cycle and go. Ultimately, whatever he thinks it would be, might not turn out to be the last step in this cycle of escalation — unless it’s going to go directly to a blitz attack against Russia.

Obama is thus coercing us, before he coerces Putin. He’s telling us: If we vote against Hillary Clinton — if she loses this election — then President Obama has something in mind that we won’t like — and he won’t wait until the next President is inaugurated on 20 January 2017 to do it, whatever ‘it’ might be. Obama here is threatenting not only Vladimir Putin, but the American people. Even if Obama truly believes that he alone possesses all the power, he does not, unless he possesses the power to terrorize America’s voters to elect Hillary Clinton, even if we otherwise would not.

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.

Kinder Morgan has been negotiating with landowners in 14 Ohio counties

BOWLING GREEN, OHIO — A Wood County Common Pleas judge ruled today that the company behind the Utopia East pipeline project does not have eminent domain rights, throwing a potentially expensive roadblock into the project’s path.

Judge Robert Pollex ruled that Kinder Morgan’s plan to pipe ethane from the Utica shale region in eastern Ohio to a chemical company in Windsor, Ont., is not necessary and not for a public use, and thus the company cannot use eminent domain to force Wood County landowners to give easements on their property.

Kinder Morgan, North America’s largest energy-infrastructure company, has been negotiating with landowners in 14 Ohio counties to build the 12-inch pipeline, which would transport the ethane — used in the production of plastics — to a pipeline in Michigan that then heads to Canada. The product would solely be used by NOVA Chemicals Corp., a Canadian company.

For property owners who have not been willing to sell, or sell at the price Kinder Morgan proposed, the company has petitioned Ohio courts for the right to appropriate the property at fair value. Some of those cases are in Wood County, including one involving PDB Farms of Wood County, which is south of Pemberville.

Several dozen landowners have been represented by Andrew Mayle of the Fremont law firm Mayle, Ray & Mayle and by Maurice Thompson a lawyer and the founder and director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law in Columbus.

Judge Pollex’s ruling involved PDB Farms and several other landowners represented by Mr. Mayle and Mr. Thompson, as the judge consolidated several of the cases.

The product Kinder Morgan wants to transport is a byproduct of hydraulic fracturing of shale to extract oil and natural gas. Mr. Mayle said that pipeline companies are becoming increasingly aggressive, asserting eminent domain rights as they build pipelines across the Midwest.

“It’s probably the most important eminent domain case in the United States right now,” he said.

A Kinder Morgan official said this afternoon the company was reviewing the decision and would have a statement by the end of the day.

Ohio allows some private companies the right to use eminent domain if the project is for the public good. Among those companies are ”common carriers,” which can include pipeline companies transporting petroleum products.

Kinder Morgan has argued that the project is necessary and for the public use because the Utopia East pipeline would help in the development of America’s energy infrastructure, create hundreds of temporary union jobs and several permanent positions, and would amount to a $500 million investment.

However, Judge Pollex ruled that Kinder Morgan’s proposed project is not necessary or for public use, and does not qualify as a common carrier, because only the Canadian company would directly benefit. He also expressed incredulity that state law allows private companies to essentially grant themselves eminent domain rights.

“It is astonishing to this court that Kinder Morgan is able to make its own determination to proceed and not be required to obtain any permit or permission from a governmental entity,” Judge Pollex wrote.

The judge also wrote that, if Ohio’s laws were read to make Kinder Morgan a common carrier, that law would be an ”unconstitutional infringement on the property rights of the defendants.”

Mr. Mayle said he believes other judges in Wood, Lucas, Seneca, Sandusky, and other counties will use the ruling in their decisions in similar cases.

“We think this decision was spot on, and it was the right decision, and we think other courts will be persuaded by it and follow it,” he said.

The inability of Kinder Morgan — potentially other companies seeking to build pipelines — to use eminent domain would give landowners significantly more leverage in negotiations with the companies or force the companies to alter their pipeline routes.

Contact Nolan Rosenkrans at: [email protected] or on Twitter @NolanRosenkrans.

The events in the Middle East, Syria and Aleppo are the focus of global attention. Rarely has a battle been so decisive to the outcome of a war and the fate of hundreds of millions of people around the world

Hillary Clinton in the last presidential debate repeatedly called for the establishment of a no-fly zone (NFZ) in Syria. The concept, reiterated several times, clashes with the revelation contained in her private emails admitting that the implementation of a NFZ would entail the increased deaths of Syrian civilians.

In a recent hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Philip Breedlove (image right) was asked what kind of effort would be required for the US armed forces to impose a NFZ over Syrian skies. With obvious embarrassment, the General was forced to admit that such a request would involve hitting Russian and Syrian aircraft and vehicles, opening the door to a direct confrontation between Moscow and Washington, a decision the General was simply not willing to take. The military leadership has always shown a readiness to implement the military option; so this time they must have sniffed the danger of a direct conflict with Moscow.

The Kremlin has publicly admitted to deploying in Syria the S-400 (image below) and S-300V4 advanced anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems respectively. The presence of the defense complex was intentionally announced as a factor of deterrence and is a logical strategy. The message to Washington is clear: any unidentified object in Syrian skies will be shot down.

The United States bases much of its military strength on the constant need to project power, making its opponents believe that it possesses capabilities that others do not hold. Therefore it is very unlikely» that the Pentagon would want to reveal to the world the worth of their stealth systems and their «legendary« American cruise missiles when faced with the S-300V4 or S-400. The Kosovo War serves to remind of the F-117 that was shot down by Soviet systems (S-125) dating from the 1960s.

Hillary Clinton’s threats against Moscow were not the only ones. The present policy makers in Washington continue to make aggressive statements demonstrating their total loss of touch with reality. In recent weeks, hysterical reactions were recorded by the Pentagon, the State Department, top military generals, and even representatives of American diplomacy. To emphasize the unhappiness prevalent in some Washington circles, several articles appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times calling for the imposition of a US no-fly zone in Syria, ignoring the consequences highlighted by Dunford. There are two hypotheses under consideration: hitting the Syrian army air bases with cruise missiles, or the use of stealth planes to bomb Damascus’s A2/AD installations.

Behind Washington’s frantic reactions and vehement protests is the probability of military defeat. The US does not have any ability to prevent the liberation of Aleppo by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Russian Federation. In the last fifteen days, the SAA and Russia have achieved significant progress, and it is this that has led to an escalation of tensions. Some of the most significant episodes reflecting this over the last few days include: jets of the international coalition hitting the SAA, causing 90 deaths; US government officials threatening Russia with the downing of her planes and the bombings of her cities, resulting in Russian civilian deaths; and the blaming of Moscow for an attack on a humanitarian convoy.

The climax seemed to have been reached at the United Nations where the US representatives prevented a Russian resolution condemning the terrorist attacks on the Russian embassy in Damascus. It is interesting to note that fifteen years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Washington finds itself defending Al Nusra Front (AKA Al Qaeda) in an official United Nations meeting; something to ponder. But apparently there is no limit to provocations, and a few days after this incredible denouement, the Pentagon was keen to point out that the possibility of a preventive nuclear strike against Russia is still valid.

It therefore seems almost simplistic to emphasize that because of the success of the SAA, Washington, Ankara, Riyadh, Doha and Tel Aviv are showing unprecedented signs of weakness and nervousness. Their commitment to overthrowing the legitimate government of Assad has failed. The combined action of the Syrian and Russian ground, air and sea forces pushed Washington and the corporate media to move from words of condemnation to increasingly open threats.

Last month the situation against the terrorists quickly changed in the north of Syria thanks to the Syrian Arab Army and its allies supported by the West. In Aleppo, the SAA continues to work every day with great success toward the city’s liberation. Neighborhoods and large areas are back under government control. The relentless advances of the troops loyal to Assad are altering the course of the war in Syria in favor of Damascus, eliminating the US attempts to remove the legitimate Syrian government. A victory in Aleppo would mean the near certainty of defeat for the terrorists in the remaining areas of the country. The closing of the border with Turkey would cut the supply lines, with consequences and repercussions throughout Syria.

What would still remain open are a few crossing areas in the south of the country near the border with Jordan that have always been a supply source for terrorists. However, it would be very difficult for this supply line alone to sustain the conflict or adequately replace the one closed north of Aleppo. Especially in the north through Turkey, and to the west through the uncontrolled border with Iraq, the terrorists receive continuous supplies. The liberation of Mosul by the Iraqi army, Aleppo by the SAA, and Der Al-Zur in the near future, will pave the way for the strategic recapture of Raqqa, the last bastion of Daesh, thereby defeating even the Plan B to partition the country.

With the failure of the northern front, the terrorists will be faced with the probable prospect of the complete collapse of their operations nationwide. Some will continue to fight, but most will throw away their weapons knowing that they have lost the war. Once this is achieved, the liberation of the rest of Syria should be a matter of a few months. It should be remembered that the recapture of Aleppo would guarantee a crushing defeat for the regional sponsors of international terrorism (Qatar and Saudi Arabia).

Still, it is not only the advance of Aleppo that is cause for concern for enemies of Syria. Obama and his administration are now irrelevant, also because of one of the most controversial presidential elections in recent history. The uncertain future of Washington’s foreign policy has prompted partners such as Riyadh, Doha, Ankara and Tel Aviv not to hesitate in further adding fuel to the Syrian conflagration, worried about any future inactivity from Washington and eager to advance their own military solution to the conflict.

In the case of Ankara, the invasion of Iraq and Syria is a serious danger that risks plunging the region into further chaos and destruction, with the Iraqi prime minister not hesitating to label the Turkish move reckless and warning of the conflict expanding into a regional conflict. Saudi Arabia’s problems are even greater, as it does not have the ability, in terms of men and means, to intervene directly in Syria because of its disastrous involvement in the war in Yemen. The speed with which confidence in Riyadh is crumbling is unprecedented. Her large currency reserves are dwindling, and it seems it is because tens of billions of dollars have been squandering in financing the military action against Yemen. Another example of independent military action concerns Israel.

Four years into the Syrian conflict, Israel continues its secret war against Hezbollah and Iranian troops, who are engaged in areas bordering Israel in fighting al-Nusra Front and Daesh. For Tel Aviv, there are still two options desirable to the Syrian crisis, both in line with their strategy, namely, the continuation of chaos and disorder, or a balkanization of Syria. In both cases, the objective is to expand Israel’s sphere of influence far beyond the Golan Heights, which were occupied illegally years ago.

The unsuccessful attempts of Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia to change events in Syria have highlighted the growing strategic misunderstandings between the United States and regional partners, misunderstandings that often oblige Ankara, Riyadh and Tel Aviv to turn to the Russian Federation for confidential dialogue, since Moscow is the only player able to adjust the delicate Middle East equilibrium.

In the near future, it remains evident to Moscow and Damascus that some risks still exist, despite a well-considered overall strategy. The acceleration in the liberation of Aleppo also has an ancillary purpose that aims to minimize maneuverability for the next American administration. In a certain way, it is a race against time: Aleppo must be liberated in order to chart the way towards the end of the conflict before the next US president comes into office in January 2017. It is yet to be seen whether Clinton or Trump plan to go beyond Obama’s empty threats, but understandably Damascus and Moscow have no intention of being caught off guard, especially with a probable Clinton presidency.

After years of negotiations with the schizophrenic diplomacy of the US, Moscow and Damascus have decided to protect themselves against any sudden decisions that may come from the American «deep state». Deploying the most advanced systems existing in air defense, Moscow has called Washington’s bluff as no one has done in years. The red line for Moscow was crossed by the tragic events of September 17 in Der al-zur. The creation by the Russians of a no-fly zone over Syrian skies has been repeatedly suggested. But incredibly, in the hours immediately after the cowardly attack against Syrian troops, the US Department of Defense and the State Department proposed the creation of a no-fly-zone that would serve to ground Russian and Syrian planes. It was a brazen and provocative proposal for Damascus and Moscow if there ever was one.

Sensing the danger in these words, Moscow acted immediately, deploying cutting-edge systems to protect Syrians skies with equipment that can shoot down cruise missiles, stealth aircraft, and even ballistic missiles (S-300 and S-400). To make sure Washington fully understood the message, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) reiterated what was already publicly announced, namely that any unidentified object would be shot down immediately, as there would not be any sufficient time for Russian operators to verify the original launch, trajectory and final target of any objects detected. It is a clear warning to the US and its long-standing strategy that requires the use of large amounts of cruise missiles to destroy anti-aircraft systems in order to pave the way for a no-fly zone as was seen in Libya.

The Russian MoD has even specified that American fifth-generation stealth aircraft could be easily targeted, alluding to a radius of operation of the S-200 systems, S-300 and S-400 (and all variants) that would surprise many international observers. This statement also seems to indirectly confirm another theory that remains pure speculation, which is that during the September 17 attack by the US on the SAA in Der Al-Zur seem, some jets from the international coalition were targeted by Russian or Syrian air-defense systems (perhaps S-200s or S-400s), forcing the airplanes to retreat before facing the prospect of being shot down.

Whatever the intentions that are hidden behind Washington’s hysterical threats, Moscow has suggested several asymmetrical scenarios in response to a direct attack on its personnel in Syria. In addition to the S-300 and S-400 systems, the MoD has openly declared its knowledge of the exact locations of US special forces in Syria, a clear reference to the Syrian and Russian ability to strike US soldiers operating alongside terrorists or moderate rebels.

All of Major-General Igor Konashenkov’s recent press conferences have clearly shown new systems deployed in Syria for air defense, a more than intentional advertisement. Aside from deterrence continuing to be one preferred instrument adopted by Moscow, the unusually strong, direct and unambiguous words of the Russian MoD easily show how the patience of Moscow and Damascus has been exhausted, especially following the recent sequence of events as well as repeated threats.

In such a scenario, the US can only rely on one weapon: complaints, threats and hysterical crying amplified by the mainstream media, generals and the official spokespeople of dozens of agencies in Washington. Nothing that can actually stop the liberating action of the SAA and its allies.

The United States has no alternatives available to prevent an outcome to the conflict that is undesirable for it.

Whichever route it chooses, there is no way to change the events in Syria. Even American generals had to admit that a no-fly zone in Syria is out of the question. It is easy for US State Department spokesperson Admiral Kirby to launch empty threats, but it is more difficult for the military to act on these threats while avoiding a nuclear apocalypse. Whatever the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections, the war in Syria for the United States and its regional partners is irretrievably lost, and the hysteria and provocations of recent weeks is symptomatic of the frustration and nervousness that has not been common for Americans in recent years.

Kevin Frost, a special forces sergeant in the Australian Army, has done something unusual. He wishes, even demands, to be tried for his role behind the summary execution of an Afghan prisoner in his captivity during a tour of the country.

From Frost came a statement to an inquiry digging through allegations of war crimes by Australian troops that took place after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.  According to Frost, the incident took place on one of three tours of the beleaguered country with the ADF, though details were sketchy as to where, and when, it took place.

“The particular incident that I was involved in resulted in the POW that I captured actually being executed, murdered.  Now, I can’t remember if he [the executioner] cut the cuffs off first or if he cut the cuffs off after he shot him.  That’s one point I can’t remember there, because I wasn’t looking, I didn’t want to look.  I turned around, and the guy was dead.  He’d been shot through the forehead.”

For Frost, investigation and prosecution would be a form of deliverance, a necessary catharsis for his years of depression and onerous guilt.  His statement almost assumed that of a desperate plea: “I believe I should be punished with the full weight of the law, and justly.  I do not believe this should be brushed under the carpet.”

Frost’s case is not unusual.  In May this year, a former lance corporal of the Army’s elite 1^st Commando Regiment, given the name Dave, found keeping a lid on his role in a raid resulting in the deaths of Afghan children, impossible.  He had been charged, along with his sergeant colleague, with manslaughter by former director of military prosecutions, Brigadier Lyn McDade.  “From the moment I realised there were dead children, I was horrified, numb, just struggling to grasp.”[1]

His missions were typical, operating in conditions of killing or capturing Taliban targets.  In the blood lust and fury, there were bound to be casualties, notably against civilians.  The fundamental problem in this approach remains its often unreliable foundation: that of suitable intelligence.

“The intelligence we received,” claimed Corporal Geoff Evans, “was of varying quality.  Sometimes it was very, very good, and other times it felt like they were throwing a dart at a map.” All the travails, in fact, of guerrilla war and insurgency.

In this specific case, the prosecutor’s views, outlined in a memorandum from September 23, 2011, identified the sergeant as the individual giving the order to detonate grenades, “an indiscriminate weapons system, into a very confined space, when they ought to have known, and during the attack knew for certain, that women and children were present.”

According to Brigadier McDade, “the evidence discloses that Sergeant J and Lance Corporal D knew for certain there were women and children in the room.  They both provided statements to the inquiry officer to this effect; specifically that they could hear the women and children screaming from inside the room.”

The lance corporal did have his case dismissed, but the ADF dug in its bureaucratic heels in not formally exonerating him and the sergeant.  The lance corporal also took issue with the brigadier’s assessment of his state of awareness:

“We didn’t believe there would be any women and children in that room for two reasons, that being that we had earlier found who we believed to be the family living in that compound and removed them from an earlier room.  And secondly, that we were now receiving gunfire from that room and we believed that we had found the insurgents that we had been told were staying there.”

Battle field conditions, and the search for the unruly and violent on the ground as convenient scapegoats of armchair ignorance, remain perennial themes.  Controlling what happens in that field is, at best, an overly confident assertion in the face of adversity.

The point of such atrocities is that they are irreversible and immutable. As Lance Corporal “Dave” explained, despite disagreeing with the assessment of alleged criminality, “When you’ve realised you’ve killed children, devastating doesn’t even begin to describe it, and I feel like I can’t fix it and I can’t atone for it.  I can’t do anything to undo the damage that was done.”

Atrocity is axiomatic to the waging of war.  The righteous wars, pursued with misplaced moral outrage, tend to be the worst.  The post-September 11, 2001 conflicts suffer from a brutalised mix of humanitarianism and vengeance, one that has been unsparing to Australia’s soldiers, and their victims.

Instead of putting a brake on enthusiastic deployments to distant, even irrelevant theatres of conflict, Australian governments continue to engage in blind, and damaging deployments.  Where the Stars and Stripes go, the Southern Cross will follow.  When that happens, there will be more Lance Corporal Daves and Sergeant Frosts.

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

Notes

[1]http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-23/soldier’s-story-exposes-serious-flaws-in-deadly-adf-raid/7435548

Now I’ve had the time of my life
No I never felt like this before
Yes I swear it’s the truth

and I owe it all to you

.

‘Cause I’ve had the time of my life

and I owe it all to you

.

I’ve been waiting for so long
Now I’ve finally found someone
To stand by me

.

We saw the writing on the wall
As we felt this magical fantasy

.

.

Satirical Video Production by LuckyTV, Netherlands.

The desert town of Agadez in Niger is currently best known as a stop on the people-smuggling route between West Africa and Europe, but it is about to take its place in the geopolitical stage as the American military has announced it will build a drone base on its outskirts. Reportedly costing U.S. taxpayers as much of $100 million, the base is just the latest American play for military supremacy in Africa — Niger is the only country in that volatile region of the continent prepared to risk allowing Washington a base for its MQ-9 Reapers, the even more lethal successor to the notorious Predator drone.

While the U.S. is strengthening its military capabilities in the region, it is also forging deeper ties with Niger’s repressive government. President Mahamadou Issoufou was re-elected in March with a laughably high 92% of the vote. Suspicions about the legitimacy of the landslide win are warranted, considering the run-up the election was marred by the jailing of a pro-opposition pop singer, the barring of nearly a quarter of voters from the race, and the fact that the opposition coalition withdrew its candidate, Hama Amadou, from the contest. The opposition cited unfair treatment between the two candidates, not least because Amadou was put in jail on spurious charges of “baby trafficking” and forced to campaign from behind bars. Issoufou’s American partners, however, promptly issued a laughable press release congratulating Issoufou on his win and reaffirming the US’s commitment to its “partnership with Niger on security, development, and democratic governance.”

The people of Niger have less to be pleased about. While President Issoufou and his military enjoy the lucrative revenue that comes with inviting the American military to pursue the endless War on Terror on Nigerien soil, everyday Nigerians continue to suffer. As the United Nations Human Development Index makes clear, Niger is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Issoufou, for his part, seems to forget who he is meant to be representing, especially as he continues to grant French energy company Areva tax breaks as it mines uranium in the north of the country. No matter that the local population is affected by radiation without benefiting from the extraction taking place in their midst.

Far from being the exception, Niger is simply the latest in a long line of countries happy to take greenbacks in exchange for allowing the U.S. to pursue its hegemonic designs for Africa. Across the continent in Djibouti, to take just one example, Ismail Omar Guelleh has turned his tiny country – barely bigger than the state of New Jersey – into a massive multi-nation military base, with U.S. and Chinese warships nestled alongside each other. It is, according to American ambassador Thomas Kelly, a modern day equivalent of Casablanca in the 1940s. Specifically, he cites “all the different nationalities elbowing each other” and “all the intrigue”.

Like Niger, Djibouti exploits the “island of stability” narrative to make itself indispensable to international partners. Sadly, the money earned from all the military bases in the country do not trickle down to the population. 42% of Djiboutians live in extreme poverty, and another 48% are unemployed. Meanwhile, the U.S. turns a blind eye to “electoral hold-ups” like Guelleh’s re-election earlier this year. Washington said little in 2010, when President Guelleh amended the constitution to permit himself to seek his third and now fourth term in office. In the U.S. foreign policy calculus, it seems allegiance to autocrats will always trump the democratic commitment to human rights and popular sovereignty from the moment fuzzy words like “terrorism” or “security” come into play.

Sadly, this pattern that goes back decades in Africa. The Reagan administration helped Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré – dubbed ‘Africa’s Pinochet’ – into power and helped keep him there with millions of dollars in military aid and training for his bloodthirsty secret police. Habré, of course, was put on trial in Senegal in 2015 for crimes against humanity, torture and war crimes, and his historic conviction this year marked one of the rare instances when an African dictator has truly faced justice for their actions. In 2011, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak enjoyed $1.3 billion in aid from American partners and was seen as “an ideal partner for the United States, as long as Washington focused on stability in the present without much thought about long term implications.”

The “long term implications” are where Washington’s one-track mindset ends up burning American policymakers time and time again. Instead of helping to reinforce stability in any part of the world, be it West Africa, Central America, or the Middle East, US-backed dictators eventually fall. Their abuses, combined with the collateral damage wrought by U.S. actions (especially drone strikes), help stoke and perpetuate the grievances that allow the very terrorist groups Washington is targeting to thrive. As American aid and support goes to leaders that crush dissent and subvert the democratic order, as Issoufou is doing in Niger, the invariable result is widespread resentment against the U.S. and the West more generally.

Blaise Compaoré, the former president of Burkina Faso – a “key hub of the U.S. spying network” – is only one of the most recent to fall. Despite the fact that Compaoré’s early years in power were marked by a cozy relationship with Muammar Gaddafi and accusations that he sent mercenaries to fight United Nations peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, the U.S. security community embraced him as a partner. After a popular uprising in the streets of Ouagadougou blocked Compaoré’s attempt to extend his 27 years in power, the onetime army officer fled to Ivory Coast, leaving behind him not only a tumultuous political legacy but also an impoverished country not altogether from terrorist attacks like those conducted by al-Qaeda in January.

By getting into bed with African dictators, the U.S. simply sets up future problems for itself while ensuring life gets no better for the continent’s most vulnerable populations.

Allan Swenson is a Paris-based international development practitioner and social entrepreneur with a focus on African life and society. Read other articles by Allan.

The position I will be defending in this short intervention is that the subjection of Greece to memoranda and its consequent social and economic destruction is not simply a product of the global economic crisis that was initiated in the United States in 2007-2008, with the explosion of subprime loans and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and then exported from America to Europe. In fact, hidden behind all this was a set of machinations undertaken, on the occasion of the crisis, by the European Directorate, which is mainly controlled by German interests.

At that moment, that is in the late 2008 and early 2009, Greece was run by the conservative government of Costas Karamanlis, who was reassuring the internal audience that Greece’s economy and its banking system were absolutely safe. And this, not only because of the supposed dynamism of the Greek economy, but also because of the fact that the Greek banking system was not exposed to high-risk lawns. At the same time, the Greek government knew very well that it could no longer borrow from the international markets in order to refinance its debt.

Following a common recommendation on behalf of European leaders to both the Prime Minister Caramanlis and the leader of the opposition and head of PASOK George Papandreou, elections were set for the autumn of 2009. In the ensuing electoral campaign, the Prime Minister, well aware of the coming crisis, kept a low profile, while advocating the need for harsh measures to be taken in order to avert the danger. In contrast, PASOK leader George Papandreou was promising generous benefits to all.

Having no idea of the real situation in which the country had entered, the Greek people gave PASOK a smashing victory with a 43% of the vote. The outgoing Prime Minister Karamanlis essentially vanished from the public scene, remaining silent as to what had happened up to then. While his government had announced an economic deficit of 6.9%, the new Papandreou government claimed it had reached 10%. Following new calculations, with the agreement of European officials, the deficit appeared to exceed 15%.

This was due to the introduction of new parameters in its measurement, such as the deficits of Public Organizations, which almost no other country in the European Union takes into account in calculating the national deficit; it was also due, as it later became apparent, to data corruption effected by the Greek Statistical Service and its director Andreas Georgiou, appointed by the new government and favored by both EU and IMF officials.

Let me note that Mr. Georgiou today stands accused of having forged Greek deficit numbers. In 2009, Greece’s borrowing from the markets became impossible on such economic evidence. The bonds of the Greek Public Sector possessed by French and German banks, which then exceeded 70 billion euros, were in danger of terminating without being paid, thus taking down with them the common currency itself (the euro). Obviously, this could not be tolerated by the European elite and its organs, since the euro was the mechanism that guaranteed the transferable securities (bonds etc.) on which it had invested, as well as its further profitability.

As the making of the Euro-system did not include mechanisms for dealing with the crisis, unbearable pressures were exercised on the Greek government, with the threat of immediate bankruptcy, to get it to sign the first memorandum in May 2010, allowing for a 110 billion euros loan to be granted, but also for the IMF to take part in European affairs starting from Greece. Among other things, the Greek government accepted that the new loan would come under British law, and no longer under Greek law – up to then, the latter gave jurisdiction to the Greek courts and consequently ample time to the Greek government, apart from being less burdensome for the borrower.

The loan agreement and the ensuing memorandum, while being presented as a necessary condition in order to save citizens’ wages and pensions, actually hid their true aims, which were, on the one hand, to provide French and German banks with enough time to disinvest themselves from the Greek bonds they possessed –which they achieved within only a year– and, on the other, to assure the manipulation and control of the country through the terms and mechanisms they established. The sum total went to the Greek banks and to the payment of debts, without actually helping the Greek economy.

Greek society did not remain idle, and a considerable strike movement began to manifest itself, undermined of course by the union bureaucracies that have been aligning themselves to government policy and controlling workers’, peasants’ and public sector unions throughout the long period of PASOK’s rule. Massive protests, on a scale unknown since the days of the reestablishment of democracy in 1974, started to materialize, and, while suffering a temporary drawback after the death of five people in a suspect fire in an Athenian bank during a mass demonstration, they soon resurfaced and climaxed in the great “movement of the squares” in the spring and summer of 2011; this witnessed the participation of hundreds of thousands of people and exercised unprecedented pressure on the government and the whole Greek political establishment.

Under such conditions, imposing further memorandum terms and constraints on Greek society required no less than an actual parliamentary coup: the story is well known of how, in the European summit meeting at Cannes, the compliant government of George Papandreou and he himself were pushed (with the French President Sarkozy almost climbing on the conference table and calling him a “fucking psycho”) to refrain from a timidly proposed Greek referendum that would have at least allowed the people to take a stand on European loan agreements. The summit led, on that same night (and on the initiative of Foreign Affairs Minister Evangelos Venizelos), to the replacement of the elected Prime Minister Papandreou by the technocrat Loucas Papademos, a favorite of EU institutions and the markets.

On the following year, after the double elections of May and June 2012, the Greek political system was drawn to the formation of a government coalition between the two major parties, PASOK and New Democracy (together with the small extreme right-wing party or LAOS and the small center-left party of DIMAR). This went on to sign a new loan agreement and a memorandum of 130 billion euros, most of which was allocated to the payment of maturing bonds of the Greek Public Sector and the recapitalization of Greek banks, which were again on the verge of collapse. Once more, despite the excessively binding terms of this agreement and of the concomitant memorandum, the whole funding was directed outside the Greek economy which it was supposed to support so as to overcome the crisis.

While the first memorandum, apart from forging strong ties of dependence for Greece, had aimed at people’s salaries and pensions, the second memorandum mainly targeted public property through the creation of divestment mechanisms such as the ΤΑΙΠΕΔ (Public Sector’s Private Property Valorization / Exploitation Fund). Although social mobilization was still impressive, the rise of the SYRIZA party into the major anti-memorandum force in Greece tended to disempower resistance movements and block anti-memorandum outbursts, locking them into its governmental prospects and limiting them to the role of “assignment”.

That is, SYRIZA and its young leader Alexis Tsipras promised that simply their assumption of power would force Greece’s European partners to forego all memoranda so as to allow for a commonly accepted solution promoting the development of the Greek economy, rather than its destruction through austerity, to come to the fore. The Greek people continued to manifest its rejection of foreign dictates and its evolving political consciousness by moving from the right and center of the political spectrum to what appeared to be a genuine anti-memorandum force of the radical left, and gave SYRIZA a landslide electoral victory in January 2015 and the possibility to form a comfortable governmental majority in coalition with the radical right-wing party of ANEL.

As it soon became evident, SYRIZA had no program of negotiations, nor any plan for defending Greek society against the weapons of economic asphyxiation held by the European Central Bank. Its only assets were the gambling theories of its Minister of Finance Gianis Varoufakis. Its leadership had already abandoned any claim to national sovereignty, substituting the influence of the American factor for popular mobilization in its negotiations with European organs.

After six months of rather pointless such negotiations, and despite the quasi-shutting down of the banks and the imposition of capital controls in July 2016, the Greeks once more reasserted their opposition to foreign occupation by giving a 62% vote against memoranda in the referendum theatrically launched by the SYRIZA government. I say “theatrically” because this referendum was not intended to rally the people in the prospect of deliverance from the shackles of the memoranda, but rather to be used as a simple bargaining chip by an already subordinated government. Indeed, referendum results notwithstanding, the government came to sign a third, even more crushing memorandum, which includes, apart from everything else, the unheard-of condition that lenders are entitled to approve in advance every legislative initiative of the Greek government, thereby giving up any sense of national sovereignty.

Greece is an experiment, according to which, a country belonging to the first world is being violently downgraded to a third world country. We believe that this is a treatment that all European district countries are about to undergo, except of the metropolitan ones.

It is possible that countries such as Italy, due to its strong weight, as well as Portugal and Spain are to be exempted from this procedure due to economical, historical and political reasons. The countries of the European district, such as Greece, will be vanished as states, its public and private assets will be disposed of, in order to become the base in rem of the global financial extension. This last one, without values in rem, is economy to a complete destruction at a global scale. These countries are about to be divided into special economic zones exempted from state laws of any kind, such as labour, administrative, fiscal, or infrastructural, which leads to the destruction of the state both as an entity as well as a rule of law.

Greece is a country already under occupation. This might come as a surprise to some people but let’s get things in the right order. To begin with, a country is being occupied not only military but economically as well. The occupational status is being differentiated both by the colonial domination of a country and the protectorate and its status as well.

During colonial domination, .e.g in India which was under the British control, there was an administration, all over the Indian Territory, responsible for the application of the English law in order to secure the interests of the Metropolis. The case is the same with protectorates, where an administrative mechanism is being established in order to secure foreign interests. In contrast, what happens today in Greece is the termination of both the state and the public administration as well and the non implementation of legal rules.

This is, without a doubt, a regime of domination, which reminds us of the German occupation of Greece, lasted from 1941 to 1944, during which every aspect of the Greek administration was abolished by the Germans. The same thing happens nowadays in Greece and the absence of tanks and foreign military forces is the only thing missing from the real nature of the regime that Greek people are experiencing today.

On Monday October 10, Sudan celebrated the conclusion of the historic National Dialogue intended to give birth to a New Sudan and new constitution. Joining Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir on the dais were the heads of state from Egypt, Uganda, Chad and Mauritania, all who spoke in support of the agreement along with representatives from Russia, China, Ethiopia, and the Islamic Cooperation Organization.

The following day, President Bashir was seen dancing at an outdoor rally in front of cheering crowds. A senior member of the ruling National Congress Party-(NCP) told this author that the significance of this agreement is  second only to the founding of Sudan in 1956 when Sudan liberated itself from British colonialism.

President Bashir also announced extending the cease fire between government forces and military opposition groups in Darfur, Blue Nile, and South Kordorfan until the end of the year. Resolving the long standing internal armed conflict is essential for Sudan to proceed to the vital task of developing its flailing economy improving the living standards of its people.

The lack of attendance and press coverage by the United States and Europe was notable, but not surprising. The US led sanctions against Sudan that are inflicting undue hardships on the population and strangling the Sudan economy remains a critical obstacle for Sudan’s advancement on the path of progress following the remarkable accomplishment of the National Dialogue.

The Monday conference and signing of the National Document in Friendship Hall is the culmination of a more than two year process that began in July 2013. Recognizing the need for the NCP to initiate a transformation of the country after suffering economic and political difficulties following the separation of South Sudan, President Bashir called for a far reaching and transparent National Dialogue in January 2014 to re-examine fundamental concerns of the population. These included issues of peace, unity, the economy, external relations, freedom of speech and press. One of the most important concepts that was addressed is that of citizenship and identity. As one member of the Umma Federal Party participating in the National Dialogue told me that they decided to reaffirm that “we are not Arab nor African, but Sudanese in Africa.”

Seventy-four political parties and thirty-four armed movements joined the dialogue. Three armed rebel groups refused to sign the National Document; the JEM, the SLA, and the SPLM-N, but the opportunity for them to sign will remain open. The political side of the dialogue was conducted in the “seven plus seven plus one” discussions between the NCP and the opposition parties and movements. For the society at large, tribal leaders, religious groups, NGOs, unions, civil society, respected individuals, and citizens were invited to join the dialogue. Women represented a large minority-33% of participants in the process.

Sudanese from all parties and sections of society are hopeful that National Dialogue will finally lead to peace and stability in Sudan, which has been hampered by internal strife for approximately fifty of their sixty years of independence.

A new constitution will be written with new laws to embody the fresh conceptions that have emerged from this multi-year process. Supported by the platform created by the National Dialogue, Sudan has a propitious moment to articulate and implement a visionary national economic program to realize its full economic potential and lift its people out of poverty.

To help unify the nation, which has suffered from years of civil conflict, all parties should coalesce around a program for investment in the most vital categories of infrastructure; electrical power, railroads, water management, roads and finally cultivate Sudan’s huge amount of fertile land that has never been fully exploited. Such an infrastructure led developmental approach will not only increase the productivity of the economy for the benefit of all citizens, but will provide meaningful productive employment that will give the youth hope for the future.

Sudan’s current participation in China’s Maritime Silk Road through Port Sudan provides an advantage for economic growth as China’s “One Belt-One Road” global infrastructure policy is already transforming the world. President, Xi Jinping has announced China’s intention to eliminate poverty in Africa. Let the New Sudan adopt this mission as well.

Lawrence Freeman, Political-Economic Analyst for Africa – contact author [email protected]

Yesterday the U.S. openly attacked Yemen by “firing” cruise missiles against old Yemeni radar stations. This, allegedly, in response to four missiles fired on two days against a U.S. destroyer at the Yemeni coast. The U.S. Navy said the missiles fell short. They were unable to reach the ship. No one but the navy, especially no one in Yemen, has seen or reported any such missile launches – short or long.

The U.S. is in alliance with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other countries in bombing Yemen for 18 month now. They totally blockade the coast of the country that depends on imports of food and medicines. The actively fighting countries are heavily supported by the U.S. military. This has been widely admitted by U.S. officials and in military reports. The U.S. government even feared of being help legally responsible for the carnage it causes.

But since the launch of the cruise missile U.S. media have totally forgotten all of this. Now the U.S. “has been attacked”, without any recognizable reason, and is only “defending” itself. No legal consequences are to fear now. Anyone who believes that the U.S. is somehow responsible for the at least 10,000 dead and the many starving people in Yemen must somehow believe in a mysterious conspiracy.

Just consider this New York Times headline, from today, after the U.S. attack on Yemen.

Yemen Sees U.S. Strikes as Evidence of Hidden Hand Behind Saudi Air War.

The NYT tweeted the piece with this text:

New York Times World @nytimesworld
For the U.S., it was retaliation; for Yemen’s Houthi rebels, it confirmed a long-held beliefnyti.ms/2e9mKyb
6:30 PM – 13 Oct 2016

Wow. The Houthi rebels “believe” in a “hidden hand”. Must be crazy people. They unreasonably attacked. And they deserve such strikes.

The NYT piece reads:

WASHINGTON — For the United States, it was simple retaliation: Rebels in Yemen had fired missiles at an American warship twice in four days, and so the United States hit back, destroying rebel radar facilities with missiles.But for the rebels and many others in Yemen, the predawn strikes on Thursday were just the first public evidence of what they have long believed: that the United States has been waging an extended campaign in the country, the hidden hand behind Saudi Arabia’s punishing air war.

How could the Houthis come to “believe” of such a “hidden hand”? Was it really because the strike was the “first public evidence”? Or was it because the NYT and all other media reported many times over that the U.S. actively supports the Saudi attacks? Did the Houthi probably read yesterday’s NYT piece on Yemen written by the very same main authors?

Up to now, the Obama administration put limits on its support for the Saudi-led coalition, providing intelligence and Air Force tankers to refuel the coalition’s jets and bombers. The American military has refueled more than 5,700 aircraft involved in the bombing campaign since it began, according to statistics provided by United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.

So the “first evidence” of the “hidden hand” were, unlike the NYT today claims, not yesterdays strikes but official reports on the public CentCom website? Maybe frequent discussions of the war on Yemen the U.S. Congress held since a year ago also count as evidence? Various public reports over the last 18 month detailing the enormous amount of ammunition the U.S. openly sells to the Saudis were also just sightings of “hidden” hands?

Such reporting as in today’s NYT is just laughable. It flies in face of all reports of the last 18 month as well as extensive evidence given by the U.S. and other governments. The strikes on the radar sites were just “retaliation”. They have no larger context. This is a typical reflection of the U.S. myth of “immaculate conception” of U.S. foreign policy. According to that believe the U.S. always only reacts to being “attacked” or “threatened” for completely incomprehensible reasons when it bombs this or that country and kills thousands or even millions of foreign people.

That is even more evident in the reports by CNN and others. These reports only mention the 18 month of extensive U.S. support for the Saudi campaign down in the middle to end of their pieces. For any but a thorough reader the alleged “missile attacks” and all Yemeni enmity against the U.s. has no history at all. It comes from unreasonable and hostile people who willfully misunderstand U.S. well-meaning.

Thus no U.S. attack is ever unjustified or just a cruel continuation of decades of U.S. insidiousness, hostility and greed. It is always the other side that initiates the fight.

It is easy for the U.S. government propaganda to make such false claims. And U.S. media don’t report such but perpetrate anticipatory stenography. They write what the U.S. government wants and U.S. imperialism demands even when not directly ordered to. That is no longer astonishing.

Astonishing is how easy the U.S. public swallows this without any self awareness and protest.

Turkey’s two top leaders have both indicated that, if the U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton becomes elected as the U.S. President on November 8th, then Turkey, which is NATO’s only Muslim-majority member-nation, will have little alternative but to leave NATO and ally itself with Russia, in America’s movement towards war against Russia (which then would mean also war against Turkey).

 Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency headlined on October 12th, “Clinton remarks on arming PYD/PKK unfortunate: Erdogan”, and reported that “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Wednesday criticized U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s remarks on arming Syrian Kurds as ‘unfortunate.’ Clinton said, ‘We will continue to support the PYD and YPG.’ [Those are Kurdish political organizations, and the YPG is openly fighting to produce a Kurdish nation, which would remove valuable land and resources not only from Turkey, but from Syria, and also from Iraq, and maybe also from Iran.] ‘This is a very unfortunate statement,’ Erdogan said.” This assertion by Erdogan followed an even stronger statement by Turkey’s Prime Minister the day before, as follows:

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday October 11th, that “Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Tuesday criticized U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for comments suggesting that she would consider providing arms to support Kurdish fighters in Syria.” CBS News headlined this AP news-report as “Turkey blasts Clinton’s Syria proposal: ‘Isn’t America our ally?’” Military Times headlined it “Turkey slams Clinton for hinting support to Syrian Kurds”. The AP described there the severe concerns that Turkey’s government would have in the event Clinton becomes America’s President.

To state the matter simply here: Turkey’s leaders are viscerally opposed to Clinton’s repeated support for allowing Kurds to break away and to form their own independent nation, which breakaway would constitute a grave threat to Turkey. A previous pan-Kurdish statement by her was at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she urged (as she often has) that a “no-fly zone” be imposed in Syria, and that “we’ve got to work with the Kurds on both sides of the border, we have got to figure out how to, if possible, have a second Arab Awakening” — and she was saying this on 19 November 2015, after Russia had already begun its bombing campaign in Syria on 30 September 2015 and thus most of the warplanes that were bombing in Syria were Russian ones and America’s imposing a “no-fly zone” would thus mean that the U.S. would be shooting down Russian bombers, which would mean World War III. Furthermore, though she was fond of the “Arab Spring” because it had started the jihadists coming into Syria and the war in Syria, which she hoped to win as the U.S. President, most of the people who live in that region aren’t fond of the ‘Arab Spring’ at all.

Apparently, Turkey’s government has already had more than enough of Hillary Clinton.

Ever since the Turkish government defeated the military coup-attempt on 15 July 2016 that was aimed at replacing Turkey’s democratically elected leaders with leaders who would adhere to the U.S.-CIA-supported exiled-in-America Fethullah Gulen, the governments in Washington and Ankara have been having extremely strained relations, but Hillary Clinton would be an even worse U.S. President, from Turkey’s standpoint, than Barack Obama is. Obama and Clinton and the Saudi royals want to break up Turkey (and Syria, and Iraq, etc.), but Erdogan and Yildirim don’t.

As another Anadolu news-report noted on October 12th, “During his speech, the prime minister said the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) ‘is falling for’ the Fetullah Terror Organization (FETO)’s claims of being unjustly treated.”

The existing leadership of Turkey has made clear that they view the recent coup-attempt as a CIA-initiated operation, and don’t like it. As I had reported earlier, on 18 August 2016, headlining “What Was Behind the Turkish Coup-Attempt?” Erdogan and Yildirim not only know the answer to this question — that the U.S. government was behind it — but they almost certainly would be dead by now if Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hadn’t informed Erdogan just ahead of the coup, that it was about to happen. (Russian intelligence is very good even if American intelligence — or else the selective use of it by a traitorous President — produces results such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.)

So, ever since July 15th, Turkey has greatly increased its defenses against the United States; and Turkey’s leaders understand why creation of a Kurdistan would be terrible for Turkey, as well as for Iraq and Syria; and, that the CIA has wanted it ever since at least 1949. Thus, on July 16th (the day after the Turkish coup), there were “agreements reached, and recent U.S. commitments to provide direct military aid and financing of $415 million” which “is further evidence of the importance of the Kurds”; and, on July 18th, “US to Set Up 5 Military Bases in Iraqi Kurdistan Region”. It’s not because the U.S. aristocracy love Kurds, or love the Turkish public, or love the Iraqis, that America’s aristocracy want the existing Turkish government (not just Syria’s) overthrown; it’s all for oil-and-gas operations that America’s billionaires can then take a chunk of, such as by building the pipelines and marketing the oil and gas into Europe.

The American public might not know these things, but Turkey’s leaders do, and America’s leaders do, and Russia’s leaders do. And so does Hillary Clinton — President Obama’s chosen heir. After all: she is the person that America’s current President wants to be his successor. If she doesn’t become his successor, then his entire historical legacy (his service to America’s oligarchs) will be flushed away, and this is especially true with regard to his foreign policy, including isolating Russia and China, including his TPP and TTIP ‘trade’ treaties for that purpose and for giving control to the international corporations. She is just as determined to conquer Russia and to aid her financial backers as he is.

The loss of Turkey in that conquest-effort is a major setback for the U.S. aristocracy.

America’s Associated Press headlined on October 10th, “Turkey, Russia Sign Gas Pipeline Deal as Ties Improve”, and opened by saying that those two nations were engaging in “efforts to normalize ties,” and, so:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan watched as their countries’ energy ministers sealed an intergovernmental agreement for the ‘Turkish Stream’ project that would bring gas from Russia to Turkey. It would then be distributed to European Union nations.”

Nothing was said there about the U.S. coup-attempt nor about any of the other relevant background for understanding this, such as its being the beginning of the end of the Obama-phase in the CIA’s effort, ever since 1949, to overthrow the secular Syrian government, in order to install a fundamentalist-Sunni, pro-Saudi (Sharia-law), government in Syria, to enable the Sauds’ oil and the Thanis’ (Qatar’s) gas to be pipelined through Syria into Europe, to replace Russian oil and gas there.

If Turkey were to quit NATO, then the entire post-WW-II international order would be reorganized so that the U.S. government would no longer have a stranglehold against other nations. This wouldn’t directly affect the United Nations (FDR’s creation), but it would directly affect practically everything else (it would end Winston Churchill’s creation — which George Herbert Walker Bush and all subsequent U.S. Presidents kept going until now — the Cold War). As to why this is happening at the present moment: the only way that the U.S. aristocracy can continue any further to conquer Russia is by turning America’s Cold War into World War III, and some allied aristocracies are refusing to go that far. Turkey is just one example of this refusal, but, until Putin saved Erdogan’s life on July 15th, Turkey was part of Washington’s plan, not another enemy against it.

The current U.S. Presidential contest is, more than anything else, about whether to continue the Cold War (which, after 1990, has been a one-sided U.S. war against Russia, no longer a two-sided ideological war), into nuclear war. That’s what it’s really all about, though the American public haven’t yet been informed, except about the small issues and the non-‘issues’, which occupy most of the ‘debates’ in America’s ‘election’.

Almost no reporting is published on the real issues, but the real issues will be the important ones in retrospect, if there will be a retrospect. This isn’t to say that the other issues aren’t also significant, but only that they’re far less important than is the question: WW III — yes or no. And, furthermore, the published discussions of the lesser issues are highly deceptive, so that the public is voting largely on the basis of falsehoods anyway.

On 22 November 2015, the pro-Republican “Daily Caller” website headlined “Followers Of A Mysterious Turkish Islamic Cleric Have Donated Heavily To Hillary’s Campaign And Family Charity” and reported that, “A former president of the Gulen-linked Turkish Cultural Center, Ozkan gave between $500,001 and $1,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent months, the charity’s website shows. He also served as a national finance co-chair last year for a pro-Clinton political action committee called Ready PAC.”

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.

On Friday, several thousand Ukrainian ultranationalists descended onto the streets of Kiev to mark Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) day, dedicated to the 74th anniversary of the founding of the WWII-era Nazi collaborationist organization.

Ukrainian media reported that up to 5,000 radicals from organizations including the Azov Regiment, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Right Sector and the Svoboda Party gathered to celebrate the holiday, which coincides with the Day of Ukrainian Cossacks and Defender of Ukraine Day, the latter holiday invented in 2014 to replace the ‘Defender of the Fatherland Day’, celebrated in most post-Soviet countries on February 23.

The nationalists walked through the streets, holding torches and flares, throwing smoke bombs, chanting nationalist slogans, beating drums and holding the flags of ultranationalist and neo-fascist organizations.

The Nazi-collaborationist Ukrainian Insurgent Army was formed in the autumn of 1942, and fought against the Red Army during and after its offensive to liberate Soviet Ukraine from Nazi occupation. During the war, the UPA, the OUN and other nationalist groups attempted to form an ethnically ‘pure’ Ukrainian state, ethnically cleansing tens of thousands of Poles, and helping Nazi forces to murder Jews, Gypsies, Soviet POWs, and Ukrainian anti-fascists.

In 2015, in spite of the fact that over six million Ukrainians fought in the ranks of the Red Army, compared to the estimated 100,000 who fought for the UPA, the government granted the guerrilla movement the status of ‘fighters for Ukrainian independence’, and named its founder Stepan Bandera a ‘hero of Ukraine’.

The Azov Regiment, a volunteer fighting force formed after the February 2014 Maidan coup that has since been incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard, has been repeatedly accused of neo-Nazi sympathies. It and other ultranationalist volunteer battalions have been accused of committing war crimes against the civilian population in eastern Ukraine. Since 2014, Russia has repeatedly accused post-Maidan Kiev of collaborating with, coopting and using radical nationalists for political and military purposes, including in the civil war in east Ukraine.

Unfortunately, many Western governments supporting Ukraine have attempted to downplay these forces’ role, or to ignore them altogether.

GR Editor’s Note. This report presents a pro-Russian perspective, which contrasts with Western media reports.

To put Russia’s one year of peacemaking operations in Syria in perspective, one should think back to what the situation was like on the eve of the arrival of the first Russian aircraft, support personnel, military advisors, and military equipment, to Syria. By all accounts, Syrian government forces were in retreat on all fronts, being pushed back in Raqqa, Aleppo, Hama, Idlib, and Latakia provinces.

The Islamic State, the Jabhat al-Nusra, the so-called “Free Syrian Army”, and many other smaller rebel formations were conquering towns and military bases, with their advance triggering a flood of refugees into Turkey, Jordan, and other countries. Syria stood practically alone, with some Iranian assistance for sure, against a seemingly motley group of rebel formations which, however, enjoyed generous financial, military, and even operational support by several outside powers, including the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, with Jordan and Israel maintaining a state of benevolent neutrality toward the rebels. In September of 2015, the days of the Assad government seemed numbered.

In September of 2016, virtually nobody expects the Assad government to fall. Even the US Secretary of State John Kerry, in conversations with Syrian opposition which were made available to US media, acknowledged that the anti-Syrian coalition has been outmaneuvered to the point that the long-standing US/NATO/EU mantra of “Assad must go” has become obsolete. To the extent that nearly everyone recognizes that the world is now multipolar, Russia’s effective use of military power in Syria is the single most important factor behind that shift. How did Russia manage to effect such a dramatic change in spite of seemingly overwhelming odds against it, in what is becoming a classic exercise in the use of military force?

The first secret of its success was the strict adherence to international law.To put it bluntly, US military operations on or over Syria’s territory have no legal justification at all. Similarly, the support of the rebel groups listed above, most of whom allegedly pursue a radical agenda, employ large numbers of mercenaries, and don’t hesitate from committing atrocities to impose alien political dogmas, violates all manner of fundamental international norms, not the least of which are the concept of national sovereignty and self-determination. In contrast, Russian operations are being conducted at the invitation of the sole internationally recognized government of Syria. If the comprehensive campaign of disinformation and propaganda that is intended to shield Western audiences from the reality of the war in Syria is any indication, Western governments are keenly aware of the immorality and illegality of their actions. And so is the rest of the world.

Secondly, and also in stark contrast with the US and NATO uses of military power, Russia’s leadership appears to be aware of both the limits of the country’s power and of what can be accomplished using solely military force. There is no trace of hubris, of “Russian exceptionalist” rhetoric in either the political aims being pursued, or the military means which are used to accomplish them. In military sense, the goal of the operation is a modest one–the denial of victory to the West-backed jihadist coalition. Once that objective is achieved, once every major anti-Syrian actor acknowledges that Syria’s legitimate government or Russia’s military presence in Syria cannot be dislodged by any combination of political and military measures, they will be forced to negotiate a peace settlement that will preserve both the territorial and political integrity of the Syrian state.

To be sure, that modest military objective did require a wide range of measures to accomplish. The most urgent was the refashioning of the crumbling Syrian Arab Army into a military force capable of recovering the lost territories. While in the immediate term that task could be addressed by an aggressive bombing campaign that took the jihadists, unaccustomed to being opposed by a modern air force, by surprise. But the air campaign was not intended to defeat the jihadists by itself, but rather gain time for the re-equipment and re-training efforts to bear fruit, which they began to by the first months of 2016. Moreover, in the event the jihadists were expecting to outlast Syrian and Russian forces, the campaign of aerial interdiction of rebel supply routes and the Islamic State’s oil infrastructure was aimed at undermining the opposition’s long-term ability to sustain the war effort.

However, the jihadists and wild geeze aren’t the most dangerous foes faced by Syria. The Russian military had to minimize the prospect of a direct NATO military operation against the Syrian military and government that, as in the case of Libya, would have been spearheaded by US airpower. The goal of conventional deterrence against both air and land NATO incursions was achieved, though only after the loss of one Su-24 bomber, treacherously shot down over Syria by Turkish fighters, by the deployment of advanced S-400 air defense systems, Su-35 fighters, and Iskander-M tactical ballistic missiles, and the demonstration of the power of Russia’s air- and sea-launched cruise missiles which would have struck US air bases throughout the Middle East in the event of any escalation.

This effort has not been without a cost. 20 Russian servicemembers have lost their lives in Syria in the space of last year. The Russian military has also lost, in addition to the Su-24 bomber, several attack and transport helicopters

The effect, however, has been nothing short of spectacular. Rebel forces are in retreat on nearly every important sector of the front, and even the crucial struggle for Aleppo, which has reached the scale of a general battle that will decide the future of Syria, has decisively swung in Syria’s favor. Outside Syria, both friend and foe have taken note. Russia’s engagement has served as a veritable “seed capital” that drew larger contingents of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Iraq’s Shia militias, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, into the fray. Turkey has opted for what amounts to a negotiated “separate peace” with Russia and Syria in exchange for a free hand to focus on the Kurdish threat to its own sovereignty. Even the US, whose leaders are perennially invoking “Plan Bs” in an effort to intimidate Russia, is finding itself without viable policy options.

While the war is still far from over, after one year of intervention all the political and military trends in Syria are now in a positive direction.

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What has happened is that NATO provides cover for these transgressions of the United States government’s policy. In other words, it absolutely legitimizes what effectively is NATO aggression. Moreover, what one needs to bear in mind and what one needs to be mindful about is the fact that in Western Europe you no longer have rulers with the independence of Charles de Gaulle.

It seems that Washington, and we can use Washington, America and NATO interchangeably because NATO is dominated by the United States. It is a command structure, which ultimately is based on American military power and American military precedence.  Everybody else is effectively a vassal. Or, if the word vassal is too hard, they are certainly juniors in rank to what the Americans do.

America has used NATO and it has used the European Union as the means, in which it can have these designs implemented. By designs, I mean the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, the attempt to overthrow Assad in Syria. These are actually illegal. Russia and China were duped when they came to the UN position on Libya. Effectively, now we can see what it was.

It was right from the beginning a deceptive arrangement, based on overthrowing Gaddafi. On these occasions, they have been wholeheartedly supported by European leaders. During that campaign, Italian bases were used to bomb Libya and British Special Forces participated in training these Islamist rebels, who were eventually successful in overthrowing Gaddafi. French planes also were very instrumental in the bombing of Libya, the actual tracking down of Muammar Gaddafi and his lynching.

These are effectively war crimes. There are no two ways about it. Waging an aggressive war and assassinating foreign leaders. Therefore, this lack of spine in the European leadership is particularly regretful in the sense that the Americans are forcing them to do things against their interests.

We saw this after the coup in Kiev, which was sponsored by American intelligence, with the illegal overthrow of the legitimate government of Viktor Yanukovych. That was a situation in which the EU was complicit. In doing that, they have been forced by the United States to impose sanctions against Russia, which are against their economic interests.

So, absolutely, I would agree with that interpretation that NATO and the European Union don’t want Britain to break away from the EU. They have used that sufficient cover to give the validation of legality to what are illegal actions on the part of the United States and NATO.

Five activists shut down all the tar sands pipelines crossing the Canada-U.S. border Tuesday morning, in a bold, coordinated show of climate resistance amid the ongoing fight against the Dakota Access pipeline.

The activists employed manual safety valves to shut down Enbridge’s line 4 and 67 in Leonard, Minnesota; TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline in Walhalla, North Dakota; Spectra Energy’s Express pipeline in Coal Banks Landing, Montana; and Kinder-Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline in Anacortes, Washington.

The activists, who planned the action to coincide with the International Days of Prayer and Action With Standing Rock, expressed feeling “duty bound to halt the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels…in the absence of any political leadership” to address the withering goal of keeping global temperature increase beneath the 2°C climate threshold.

“I have signed hundreds of petitions, testified at dozens of hearings, met with most of my political representatives at every level, to very little avail,” said 64-year-old mother Annette Klapstein of Bainbridge Island, Washington, who was arrested just before publication. “I have come to believe that our current economic and political system is a death sentence to life on earth, and that I must do everything in my power to replace these systems with cooperative, just, equitable and love-centered ways of living together. This is my act of love.”

Fifty-nine-year-old Ken Ward of Corbette, Oregon, who was also arrested, said, “There is no plan of action, policy or strategy being advanced now by any political leader or environmental organization playing by the rules that does anything but acquiesce to ruin. Our only hope is to step outside polite conversation and put our bodies in the way. We must shut it down, starting with the most immediate threats—oil sands fuels and coal.”

The action comes two days after a U.S. federal court of appeals lifted an injunction on the Dakota Access project, to the dismay of the Indigenous water protectors and their supporters across the U.S. and Canada.

“Because of the climate change emergency, because governments and corporations have for decades increased fossil fuel extraction and carbon emissions when instead we must dramatically reduce carbon emissions; I am committed to the moral necessity of participating in nonviolent direct action to protect life,” added activist Leonard Higgins, 64, from Eugene, Oregon.

The activists are all members of the group Climate Direct Action, which is providing live updates on the coordinated shut-downs on its website and Facebook page. Others shared statements in support, as well as images and videos of the actions on social media with the hashtag #shutitdown.

Tim DeChristopher’s Climate Disobedience Action Fund is also supporting the action and has set up a legal fund for the activists’ defense.

Recent allegations of two women coming forward against U.S. Presidential hopeful Donald Trump seems calculated and suspicious. The article published by The New York Times titled ‘Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately’ by Megan Twohey and Michael Barbaro reeks of a conspiracy by the establishment media to frame Trump as a sexual predator who cannot keep his hands or his mouth to himself.

First, I want to make it clear that I do not favor any of the two candidates especially Hillary Clinton who in this case is worst than Trump. The New York Times story regarding these two women is propaganda because the accusations are questionable.

The story starts off with Jessica Leeds, a former business woman who worked for a paper company claims that Trump “lifted the armrest and began to touch her” then according to the article “grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.”

Then Ms. Leeds went on to say that “He was like an octopus,” and that “His hands were everywhere.” Seems like sexual assault or an attempted rape. Why weren’t the flight attendants and the pilots notified of the situation? According to the report “She fled to the back of the plane. “It was an assault,” she said.”

There are several questions about Ms. Leeds story. First, why did it take more than “three decades” for Ms. Leeds to tell her story?

Why wait a few weeks before the U.S. presidential elections? How can Donald Trump defend himself against an accusation that happened more than thirty years ago?

Ms. Leeds could have come forward with her accusations when Trump was on ‘The Apprentice’ or when Trump was in the process of getting a divorce from his ex-wife Ivanka?

Why has Ms. Leeds waited for so long? She told The New York Times “We accepted it for years,” she said of the conduct. “We were taught it was our fault.” It was her fault? Mr. Trump became an octopus and sexually assaulted Ms. Leeds on a first class business trip was enough to alert the airline staff and have the police waiting at the airport. But that did not happen. It does seem calculated and nearly impossible for Trump to defend himself against an accusation of that magnitude. Its Ms. Leeds words against Donald Trump and The New York Times made up its mind on whose words they choose to believe.

Another woman who came forward is a former receptionist by the name of Rachel Crooks who worked for the Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in 2005 that was located in the Trump Tower in Manhattan. Ms. Crooks claims that she was a victim of Donald Trump who was also watching the debate was furious at Trump’s statement that he had not kissed or touched women without permission according to the report:

Mr. Trump’s claim that his crude words had never turned into actions was similarly infuriating to a woman watching on Sunday night in Ohio: Rachel Crooks. Ms. Crooks was a 22-year-old receptionist at Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in Trump Tower in Manhattan, when she encountered Mr. Trump outside an elevator in the building one morning in 2005

Aware that her company did business with Mr. Trump, she turned and introduced herself. They shook hands, but Mr. Trump would not let go, she said. Instead, he began kissing her cheeks. Then, she said, he “kissed me directly on the mouth”

The first question we must ask ourselves is why Trump would start kissing Ms. Crook’s cheeks and then attempt to kiss her on the mouth outside an elevator of his own building? The Trump Towers have security cameras especially after the September 11th attacks, so the question is do you think that Trump is really that stupid to forcibly kiss Ms. Crooks outside an elevator of his own building? According to Ms. Crooks:

It didn’t feel like an accident, she said. It felt like a violation. “It was so inappropriate,” Ms. Crooks recalled in an interview. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.” Shaken, Ms. Crooks returned to her desk and immediately called her sister, Brianne Webb, in the small town in Ohio where they grew up, and told her what had happened.

“She was very worked up about it,” said Ms. Webb, who recalled pressing her sister for details. “Being from a town of 1,600 people, being naïve, I was like ‘Are you sure he didn’t just miss trying to kiss you on the cheek?’ She said, ‘No, he kissed me on the mouth.’ I was like, ‘That is not normal”

Why Ms. Crook’s sister did not tell her to complain to her company or find a lawyer who could sue Mr. Trump for sexual harassment? Ms. Leeds and Ms. Crooks were alleged victims of a sexual assault but they never reported the incidents to the authorities:

Ms. Crooks and Ms. Leeds never reported their accounts to the authorities, but they both shared what happened to them with friends and family. Ms. Crooks did so immediately afterward; Ms. Leeds described the events to those close to her more recently, as Mr. Trump became more visible politically and ran for president

The New York Times is supporting Hillary Clinton despite the fact that Wikileaks has published numerous emails that exposed Clinton’s Wall Street speeches and her involvement in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi which has destroyed Libya when she was Secretary of State. Wikileaks also released emails that confirmed her commitment to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by supporting and arming the “moderate rebels” (or terrorists). Other crimes committed by Clinton includes the deletion of more than 30,000 emails which most likely had more dirty secrets and don’t forget her collusion with the main-stream media (MSM) including the New York Times.

Hillary Clinton has authorized the murder of countless men, women and children in the Middle East, North Africa and Central America (Honduras). Trump is not perfect by any means and yes his recordings with Billy Bush were “lewd” and disrespectful towards women, but I would bet that Bill Clinton and his friends say worst things about women. Besides, Bill Clinton is actually accused of sexual assault and in some cases, rape by various women before and after he was U.S. President. Hillary Clinton herself defended a child rapist when she was a defense attorney in Arkansas but the New York Times will not mention those cases so close to the presidential election.

The MSM continues to associate Trump as an asset of Russia and now as a sexual predator who cannot keep his hands or mouth to himself. Rest assured more women are going to come forward with new allegations that Trump sexually assaulted them in one way or another. The New York Times is a propaganda mouthpiece for U.S. interventions and occupation (Judith Miller and the WMD story against the Iraqi Government is just one example) and to cover the blatant lies of the establishment. Whether you love or hate Trump, The New York Times is not following the rules of journalistic principles of ‘objectivity’ that includes being fair, reporting the facts and being nonpartisan. What is most important principle for any news organization is to tell the truth to the public and that is something the MSM in the West has lost a long time ago.

When the neo-cons in the UK parliament and the serial warmonger Hillary Clinton call for a “no-fly zone” they actually mean the opposite. They mean that NATO should be given untrammelled access to the airspace to carry out mass bombings – but that nobody else should.

We saw it in Libya. The argument goes like this. NATO aircraft need to enforce the no-fly zone. To do this in safety, they need to attack and destroy any ground to air weapons capabilities on the ground. That does not just include surface to air missiles, both carriage mounted and hand held, but anything that can be pointed upwards and fired. They need to take out by more bombing any stores that may house such weapons. They need to take out any radar installations, including civilian ones, that may pinpoint NATO aircraft. They need to destroy any runways and hangars, including civilian ones. They need to destroy by bombing all military command and control centres, including those in built up areas. They need to destroy the infrastructure on which air defence relies, including electricity generation and water supply, including civilian assets.

This is the result of NATO bombing of Sirte to “enforce the no-fly zone” in Libya.

I am not exaggerating. That really is the doctrine of NATO for enforcing a “no fly zone”, as previously witnessed in Iraq and Libya. It really was NATO aircraft which did to the beautiful Mediterranean town of Sirte the destruction which you see in that picture – in order to enforce a no-fly zone. Enforcement of the no-fly zone was the only authorisation NATO had for the massive bombing campaign on Libya which enabled regime change, which enabled rival jihadist militias to take over the country. They showed their gratitude by murdering the US Ambassador. The failure of central government led to Libya becoming the operating site from which a number now in the hundreds of thousands of boat refugees have crossed to Europe.

Now they wish to do precisely the same again. Make no mistake. Those calling for a “No-fly zone” do indeed want to stop the bombs falling on jihadist-held areas of Aleppo. But they want to replace this with NATO dropping a vastly greater weight of vastly more powerful weaponry on areas held by the Assad regime. They are relentless warmongering bastards, pretending to be motivated by humanitarian concern.

There are no easy answers in Syria. Without Russian and Syrian government air power, Syria might well already have fallen to disparate groups of murdering religious fanatics, who would then have redoubled their existing tendency to also kill each other. The pretence that there is any significant number of pro-western democratic rebels is ludicrous nonsense. But so equally is the pretence that the Assad regime is a decent regime. It is not and never has been. There is always this pathetic reductionism in the western media to conflict as between “good guys” and “bad guys”. They are all killing civilians. They are all bad guys.

If all bombing were to stop, the danger is that jihadists would again gain the upper hand. But in a situation where there are no good options, I think that is still better than the continued bombing of civilian areas held by jihadists. The fact that the West has repeatedly done this massively in Mosul or Fallujah does not make it right for the Russians or Assad to do it now. The moral balance now must be for a halt to all bombing and all military air operations – including by NATO.

A security council resolution could be tabled calling for the end of all military flights, by anybody, over Syrian airspace. The UK and US would oppose that, and so would all those Tories ad Blairites pretending to advocate a no-fly zone in the House of Commons. That would show up the bastards for the evil hypocrites they are.

Britain is fighting at least seven covert wars in the Middle East and North Africa, outside of any democratic oversight or control. Whitehall has in effect gone underground, with neither parliament nor the public being allowed to debate, scrutinise or even know about these wars.

To cover themselves, Ministers are now often resorting to lying about what they are authorising. While Britain has identified Islamic State (among others) as the enemy abroad, it is clear that it sees the British public and parliament as the enemy at home.

Syria

Britain began training Syrian rebel forces from bases in Jordan in 2012. This was also when the SAS was reported to be ‘slipping into Syria on missions’ against Islamic State. Now, British special forces are ‘mounting hit and run raids against IS deep inside eastern Syria dressed as insurgent fighters’ and ‘frequently cross into Syria to assist the New Syrian Army’ from their base in Jordan. British special forces also provide training, weapons and other equipment to the New Syrian Army.

British aircraft began covert strikes against IS targets in Syria in 2015, months before Parliament voted in favour of overt action in December 2015. These strikes were conducted by British pilots embedded with US and Canadian forces.

Britain has also been operating a secret drone warfare programme in Syria. Last year Reaper drones killed British IS fighters in Syria, again before parliament approved military action. As I have previously argued, British covert action and support of the Syrian rebels is, along with horrific Syrian government/Russian violence, helping to prolong a terrible conflict.

Iraq

Hundreds of British troops are officially in Iraq to train local security forces. But they are also engaged in covert combat operations against IS. One recent report suggests that Britain has more than 200 special force soldiers in the country, operating out of a fortified base within a Kurdish Peshmerga camp south of Mosul.

British Reaper drones were first deployed over Iraq in 2014 and are now flown remotely by satellite from an RAF base in Lincolnshire. Britain has conducted over 200 drones strikes in Iraq since November 2014.

Libya

SAS forces have been secretly deployed to Libya since the beginning of this year, working with Jordanian special forces embedded in the British contingent. This follows a mission by MI6 and the RAF in January to gather intelligence on IS and draw up potential targets for air strikes. British commandos are now reportedly fighting and directing assaults on Libyan frontlines and running intelligence, surveillance and logistical support operations from a base in the western city of Misrata.

But a team of 15 British forces are also reported to be based in a French-led multinational military operations centre in Benghazi, eastern Libya, supporting renegade Libyan general Khalifa Haftar. In July 2016, Middle East Eye reported that this British involvement was helping to coordinate air strikes in support of Haftar, whose forces are opposed to the Tripoli-based government that Britain is supposed to be supporting.

Yemen

The government says it has no military personnel based in Yemen. Yet a report by Vice News in April, based on numerous interviews with officials, revealed that British special forces in Yemen, who were seconded to MI6, were training Yemeni troops fighting Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and also had forces infiltrated in AQAP. The same report also found that British military personnel were helping with drone strikes against AQAP. Britain was playing ‘a crucial and sustained role with the CIA in finding and fixing targets, assessing the effect of strikes, and training Yemeni intelligence agencies to locate and identify targets for the US drone program’. In addition, the UK spybase at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire facilitates US drone strikes in Yemen.

Britain has been widely reported (outside the mainstream media) as supporting the brutal Saudi war in Yemen, which has caused thousands of civilian deaths, most of them due to Saudi air strikes. Indeed, Britain is party to the war. The government says there are around 100 UK military personnel based in Saudi Arabia including a ‘small number’ at ‘Saudi MOD and Operational Centres’. One such Centre, in Riyadh, coordinates the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen and includes British military personnel who are in the command room as air strikes are carried out and who have access to the bombing targets.

The UK is of course arming the Saudi campaign: The British government disclosed on 13 October that the Saudis have used five types of British bombs and missiles in Yemen. On the same day, it lied to Parliament that Britain was ‘not a party’ to the war in Yemen.

A secret ‘memorandum of understanding’ that Britain signed with Saudi Arabia in 2014 has not been made public since it ‘would damage the UK’s bilateral relationship’ with the Kingdom, the government states. It is likely that this pact includes reference to the secret British training of Syrian rebels in Saudi Arabia, which has taken place since mid-2015. Operating from a desert base in the north of the country, British forces have been teaching Syrian forces infantry skills as part of a US-led training programme.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, the public was told that British forces withdrew at the end of 2014. However, British forces stayed behind to help create and train an Afghan special forces unit. Despite officially only having ‘advisors’ in Afghanistan, in August 2015 it was reported that British covert forces were fighting IS and Taliban fighters. The SAS and SBS, along with US special forces, were ‘taking part in military operations almost every night’ as the insurgents closed in on the capital Kabul.

In 2014, the government stated that it had ended its drone air strikes programme in Afghanistan, which had begun in 2008 and covered much of the country. Yet last year it was reported that British special forces were calling in air strikes using US drones.

Pakistan and Somalia

Pakistan and Somalia are two other countries where Britain is conducting covert wars. Menwith Hill facilitates US drone strikes against jihadists in both countries, with Britain’s GCHQ providing ‘locational intelligence’ to US forces for use in these attacks.

The government has said that it has 27 military personnel in Somalia who are developing the national army and supporting the African Union Mission. Yet in 2012 it was reported that the SAS was covertly fighting against al-Shabab Islamist terrorists in Somalia, working with Kenyan forces in order to target leaders. This involved up to 60 SAS soldiers, close to a full squadron, including Forward Air Controllers who called in air strikes against al-Shabab targets by the Kenyan air force. In early 2016, it was further reported that Jordan’s King Abdullah, whose troops operate with UK special forces, was saying that his troops were ready with Britain and Kenya to go ‘over the border’ to attack al-Shabaab.

Drones

The RAF’s secret drone war, which involves a fleet of 10 Reaper drones, has been in permanent operation in Afghanistan since October 2007, but covertly began operating outside Afghanistan in 2014. The NGO Reprieve notes that Britain provides communications networks to the CIA ‘without which the US would not be able to operate this programme’. It says that this is a particular matter of concern as the US covert drone programme is illegal.

The Gulf

Even this may not be the sum total of British covert operations in the region. The government stated in 2015 that it had 177 military personnel embedded in other countries’ forces, with 30 personnel working with the US military. It is possible that these forces are also engaged in combat in the region. For example, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, has said that in the Gulf, British pilots fly US F18s from the decks of US aircraft carriers. This means that ‘US’ air strikes might well be carried out by British pilots.

Britain has many other military and intelligence assets in the region. Files leaked by Edward Snowden show that Britain has a network of three GCHQ spy bases in Oman – codenamed ‘Timpani’, ‘Guitar’ and ‘Clarinet’ – which tap in to various undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf. These bases intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, which information is then shared with the National Security Agency in the US.

The state of Qatar houses the anti-IS coalition’s Combined Air Operations Centre at Al Udeid airbase. The government says it has seven military personnel ‘permanently assigned to Qatar’ and an additional number of ‘temporary personnel’ working at the airbase. These are likely to be covert forces; the government says that ‘we do not discuss specific numbers for reasons of safeguarding operational security’.

Similarly, the government says it has six military personnel ‘permanently assigned’ to the United Arab Emirates and an additional number of ‘temporary personnel’ at the UAE’s Al Minhad airbase. Britain also has military assets at Manama harbour, Bahrain, whose repressive armed forces are also being secretly trained by British commandos.

Kenya and Turkey

Kenya hosts Britain’s Kahawa Garrishon barracks and Laikipia Air Base, from where thousands of troops who carry out military exercises in Kenya’s harsh terrain can be deployed on active operations in the Middle East. Turkey has also offered a base for British military training. In 2015, for example, Britain deployed several military trainers to Turkey as part of the US-led training programme in Syria, providing small arms, infantry tactics and medical training to rebel forces.

The web of deceit

When questioned about these covert activities, Ministers have two responses. One is to not to comment on special forces’ operations. The other is to lie, which has become so routine as to be official government policy. The reasoning is simple – the government believes the public simply has no right to know of these operations, let alone to influence them.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told parliament in July that the government is ‘committed to the convention that before troops are committed to combat the House of Commons should have an opportunity to debate the matter’. This is plainly not true, as the extent of British covert operations show.

Similarly, it was first reported in May that British troops were secretly engaged in combat in Libya. This news came two days after Fallon told MPs that Britain was not planning ‘any kind of combat role’ to fight IS in Libya.

There are many other examples of this straightforward web of deceit. In July 2016, the government issued six separate corrections to previous ministerial statements in which they claimed that Saudi Arabia is not targeting civilians or committing war crimes in Yemen. However, little noticed was that these corrections also claimed that ‘the UK is not a party’ to the conflict in Yemen. This claim is defied by various news reports in the public domain.

British foreign policy is in extreme mode, whereby Ministers do not believe they should be accountable to the public. This is the very definition of dictatorship. Although in some of these wars, Britain is combatting terrorist forces that are little short of evil, it is no minor matter that several UK interventions have encouraged these very same forces and prolonged wars, all the while being regularly disastrous for the people of the region. Britain’s absence of democracy needs serious and urgent challenging.

www.markcurtis.info – twitter – @markcurtis30

I heard the news today…. I caught the CBC news this morning (Thursday, October 13, 2016) as the French Prime Minister and Canada’s PM were talking to the media.  From the little bit I caught – a bit that makes for a good sound bite – it appears that Canada, under the guise of ’peacekeeping’  will be sending some 600 military personnel abroad.

I use the word ‘guise’ carefully, as the so called “right to protect” doctrine has been seriously discredited by mostly U.S. actions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Honduras among the ones that I recall at this moment.   But ‘peacekeeping’ is also a guise, as there is no peace to keep in today’s world, only “terror wars” of various disguises (same root) used to promote U.S./western interests in regions of the world not under their control (yet) nor obligingly sycophantic enough to remain untouched by covert or overt military action.

These announcements this morning  reflect earlier statements from the government wherein “Sajjan himself has said Africa hasn’t gotten “the right amount of attention” in recent years.”  Canada’s representative to the UN, Marc Andre Blanchard, indicated at that time, “while the road ahead might be dangerous for Canadian troops, the country has an obligation to intervene to prevent the violence from reaching our shores.”

But, Blanchard (and thus the Trudeau liberals) have not given up on the discredited “right to protect” (R2P) saying, “The mandates are multifaceted [but] there are things Canada has been a strong proponent of … the right to allow UN forces to protect citizens rather than just maintain peace and the status quo.” [1]

Wonderful, now Canada is taking a stab at the discredited, dishonoured R2P slogan.   Blanchard’s rationale for peacekeeping/R2P is “Peacekeeping is very different than it was 25 years ago. It’s all about mitigating the consequences of conflict.”  It has also adopted the idiotic U.SA. meme that we must stop violence from reaching our shores…as if sending our own troops overseas is not exporting more violence to other countries.  So rather than just maintain the status quo, we are now taking the role of wanting to change things for our own pursuits and interests, much the same as with the U.S. interests, but also with interests with our own corporations mostly involved with mineral exploitation of African resources. [2]

Mitigating consequences

It is correct, peacekeeping is different, as their is no peace to keep, no treaties signed, no truces, nothing like the Treaty of Guarantee in Cyprus for which Canada did play a significant peacekeeping role; or nothing like the armistice in Korea that has been in place until a “final peaceful settlement” can be achieved where Canada has not played a role in the meantime.

 Rather, we have the record of unsuccessful interventions that have not only not prevented “mitigating circumstance” but have always aggravated circumstances, leaving behind hundreds of thousand of dead and injured citizens of the “mitigated” countries as well as wasting a small portion of our own citizens lives.

In Afghanistan, now one third under the control of the Taliban,  with other portions now dealing with ISIS, and the government only able to control Kabul and only parts of that city, Canada essentially wasted 158 military lives for nothing.  For Libya, our  glorious military was honoured by the militant Stephen Harper  in the Senate Chambers (appropriate, given the depraved nature of Senatorial behaviour) for leaving behind a destroyed country, with many civilian deaths, ongoing fighting between different factions, and a hotbed of training and equipping for terrorists.

USA!  USA!!

Canada essentially has no independent foreign policy.  Generally we have followed U.S. interests and actions around the world, understandable as our economy has been seconded to that of the U.S.  The Liberal government, while speaking in gentler terms than the Harper militants, is following the same course.  We are supporting the neonazi/oligarch government in Ukraine, established through a not so covert U.S. series of actions.  Along with that goes all the hubris and rhetoric demonizing Putin as every empire requires an evil ‘other’ to rally the masses against.

We are ostensibly fighting against ISIS in Iraq, but that war represents a summation of U.S. errors and aggravating circumstances, from the mujahideen “freedom fighters” of the Reagan era, through the Taliban sprouting from that, on to the more violent al-Qaeda, which later morphed into the Bush era al-Qaeda in Iraq and the declared Islamic State of Iraq, which with al-Nusra, developed into the Obama era ISIS caliphate that now exists (tentatively) in the Middle East.

World War next anyone?

The U.S. has intervened in 50 countries since WWII to establish their own puppet governments and sycophantic supporters. The results are what we see today:  a world that is increasingly close to a third world war – not because of Russian aggression, but because of the U.S.’ failing empire, its unpayable economic debt policy, its military violence spread over much of the world, and its desire to guard the US$ as the hegemonic global reserve fiat currency.

Our good ally Saudi Arabia, implicated in 9/11, known to support jihadis throughout the world, known to support ISIS in the Middle East, committing war crimes and crimes against civilians in Yemen, with an archaic fundamentalist tribal government, complements our association with the U.S.   The only reason they survive is that they are ‘useful idiots’ for U.S. foreign policy and geostrategic/economic policies and thus our foreign policy.

With all this interplay of forces in the Middle East, with a declining debt ridden violent empire as our neighbour that pits a war-mongering lying chicken hawk against a xenophobic misogynist racist bigot, the future does not look too bright.  For Canada to now step into this increasing maelstrom of violence perpetrated mainly by the U.S./NATO alliance is sheer wilful ignorance and hubris.

Canada has pretensions that do not fit the proposed actions. Instead of peacemaking or peacekeeping, instead of “mitigating consequences”, Canada is simply adding to the violence of the U.S. empire.

Notes

[1] “Canada’s mission in Africa will be focused on ‘peacemaking,’ UN ambassador says”.  Paul Tasker, CBC News/Politics, August 27, 2016.

[2]  Yves Engler: Canada in Africa, and The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, both Fernwood Publishing, 2015 and 2009 respectively.

On October 12, the President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to reporter of “Komsomolskaya Pravda” Daria Aslamova.

Below is the complete transcript of the interview

A document (1, pdf) produced last December by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, headed: “ UK Humanitarian Aid in Response to The Syria Conflict”, makes interesting reading.

The British government it states, has spent “over £100 million” since 2012, “working closely with a range of actors” to “find a political solution to the conflict and prepare to rebuild the country in the post Assad era.” (Emphasis added.)

“Our efforts … include providing more than £67 million of support to the Syrian opposition.”

One of the “actors” to benefit from hefty chunks of British taxpayers moneys is the Syrian National Coalition whose website (2) states, under “Mission Statement and Goals”:

“The coalition will do everything in its power to reach the goal of overthrowing the Assad regime …” and to “Establish a transitional government …” (Emphasis added.)

Thus the UK government is overtly supporting the illegal overthrow of yet another sovereign government.

This all reads like a re-run of Ahmed Chalabi’s (image right) Iraq National Congress and Iyad Allawi’s Iraq National Accord, backed by the British and US governments to equally criminally overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s football pitches, gardens and back yards turned graveyards, probably three million deaths between the embargo, the 1991 thirty two country assault, the 2003 blitzkrieg and invasion – ongoing – the ruins of the “Cradle of Civilisation” of which Syria is equally custodian, are silent witness to that gargantuan crime against humanity – and history. Will Washington and Whitehall never learn – or is destruction of civil societies, Nazi-like aggression, illegal overthrows and rivers of blood their raison d’être?

Incidentally, Foreign Office accounting farcically includes: “more than £29 Million to reduce the impact of the conflict on the region.” Stopping dropping British bombs would surely be the most practical way to do that – and persuading their US “coalition partners” to do the same. Yet more nauseating, murderous, hypocrisy.

Talking of reducing “the impact of conflict on the region” – here is what the UK is contributing to destroying it – courtesy again the (un-consulted) British taxpayer:

“Each of the RAF’s Tornado GR4 jets costs £9.4 million, and each flight costs around £35,000 per hour.

“Two Tornados are typically used for each flight, and each flight lasts anywhere between four and eight hours. Even at the lowest estimate, each flight costs £140,000.

“Their cargo is four Paveway bombs and two Brimstone missiles, costing £22,000 and £105,000 per unit respectively.

“That’s £298,000 plus the cost of the flight which is £438,000, and that’s an optimistic estimate. If the jets carry Storm Shadow missiles – which cost a cool £800,000 a pop – and conduct an eight-hour mission, the total cost is a hell of a lot higher, and none of this takes into account the cost of fuel.” (3)

The British government document informs that:

“To date, there are over 2,700 volunteers in 110 civil defence stations across northern Syria, trained and equipped with help from UK funding … The ‘White Helmets’ as they are more commonly known … “

The “White Helmets” of course, only work in the areas held by the “moderate” organ eating, child decapitating, human incinerating, crucifying “opposition.”

In Foreign Office parlance, under the heading: “Moderate armed opposition: £4.4 million”, it is explained that this has been devoted to “life saving equipment”, presumably for the head choppers since the “life savers” appear to be their guests. Indeed the “White Helmets” website states that: “They are the largest civil society organisation operating in areas outside of government control …” (Emphasis added.)

Also, near farcically, the Foreign Office informs: “We have also funded Law of Armed Conflict training to help commanders train their fighters to understand their responsibilities and obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law.” Given their track record of near unique, mediaeval barbarity, the “training” is clearly falling on deaf ears.

The UK of course, is in no position to lecture on the law of armed conflict since the newly unelected Prime Minister, Theresa May, has vowed to halt all cases against British service men and women brought by Iraqis who allege torture, murder of relatives, and varying unimaginable abuses. So much for “responsibilities and obligations under human rights and humanitarian law.”

British generosity is seemingly boundless in murderous meddling in other nations. “Media activists” have been given £5.3 million:  “UK funded projects are helping establish a network of independent media outlets across Syria, whose work has included sending out messages about personal safety after the regime’s chemical weapons attack in Ghouta and, more recently, active reporting produced by civil society groups and the likes of the ‘White Helmets’ across Twitter and Facebook accounts.”

The “regime’s chemical weapons attack on Ghouta” has of course, been roundly disproved despite the best efforts of Western propaganda. As Eric Draitser has written (4):

“What makes that incident significant, both politically and historically, is the fact that, despite the evidence of Syrian government involvement being non-existent, the Obama administration nearly began a war with Syria using Ghouta as the pretext.

“As the months have passed however, scientific studies amassing an impressive body of evidence have shown that, not only were Washington’s claims of ‘certainty’ that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons in their war with extremist fighters utterly baseless, but in fact the reality was quite the opposite – the rebels were the most likely culprits of the attack.”

The cynic might ponder that funding “media activists” and the “The White Helmets” to possibly “actively (mis)report” is blatant propaganda. As the propoganda master, Joseph Goebbels knew: Propaganda is the art of persuasion – persuading others that your ‘side of the story’ is correct – with mega money and resources thrown at the “persuasion.”

The UK’s arguable illegal munificence also extends to: “ … working with other international donors to establish and build up the Free Syrian Police (FSP) a moderate police force in opposition-controlled areas … “

Breathtaking. Another re-run of Iraq:

Disband the police, army, all structures of State – and Iraq is the soul searing, haunting, admonishing ghost, mourning the vibrant, cohesive, civil society (for all its complexities, as most societies) it was prior to the embargo and Iraq Liberation Act (1998) which stated that: “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq…” and signed into law on 31st October 1998, by President Bill Clinton.

As mentioned previously, there is now of course the Syria Accountability and Liberation Act of 2010 (H.R. 1206.) Spot the parallels.

“The White Helmets” have also benefitted from $23 million from the US, according to State Department spokesman, Mark Toner (27th April 2016) and €4 million from the government of the Netherlands. Last week Germany announced increasing this year’s donation to ‎€7 million. Japan has also chipped in.

A great deal of money, it would seem, is being thrown at insurgents and illegal immigrants in a sovereign country, awarding themselves the title of Syrian Civil Defence. Yet they do not even have an emergency telephone number. As Vanessa Beeley (5) has pointed out in extensive writings on the subject, the real Syria Civil Defence was established in 1953, is a Member of the International Civil Defence Organisation whose partners include the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs – and as all national emergency services, they have a telephone number: 113.

Among the myriad tasks the “White Helmets” claim to undertake is: “The provision of medical services – including first aid – at the point of injury.” Why then were they trained not by expert first responders, paramedics, civil emergency operatives, but by a mercenary, sorry “private contractor”?

According to Wikipedia: “Founder of Syria’s White Helmets, James Le Mesurier is a British ‘security’ specialist and ‘ex’ British military intelligence officer with an impressive track record in some of the most dubious NATO intervention theatres including Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Le Mesurier has also been placed in a series of high-profile posts at the United Nations, European Union, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.”

Equally interesting is Le Mesurier’s own site (6):

“James has spent 20 years working in fragile states as a United Nations staff member, a consultant for private companies and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and as a British Army Officer. Much of his experience has involved delivering stabilisation activities through security sector and democratisation programmes. Since 2012, James has been working on the Syria crisis where he started the Syrian White Helmets programme in March 2013. In 2014, he founded Mayday Rescue, and is dedicated to strengthening local communities in countries that are entering, enduring or emerging from conflict. (Emphasis again added.)

“Democratisation programmes” eh? George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four” had a “Re-education Committee”, but let’s not get too carried away.

On Tuesday 11 October 2016, the UK’s arguably combative Andrew Mitchell MP, ex-Royal Tank Regiment, who allegedly called Downing Street Police after an altercation “f ***** g plebs”, was granted an emergency three-hour debate in the House of Commons on Syria after allegations by the ‘White Helmets’ that Russian military jets and Syrian helicopters were bombing civilians in eastern Aleppo.

Mitchell stormed the debate all guns blazing, calling the alleged situation “akin to the attack on Guernica during the Spanish civil war” and suggesting the RAF should be empowered to shoot down Russian and Syrian aircraft. He also pushed for a “no fly zone.” As is known from Libya, that is a Western-only fly zone obliterating all in its sights. Guernica indeed.

Again of course, all but Russian and Syrian aircraft are there illegally, but  Andrew Mitchell is being advised among others by former CIA Director General David Petraeus, who was also former Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan and of Multinational Forces in Iraq. Not really a mini think tank, some might speculate, where the rule of law is going to have highest priority.

Mitchell also called for extra funding for – you guessed it – “The White Helmets.”

Incidentally, there are rigid protocols for first responders, paramount among which is to protect the injured, the traumatized, from publicity and identification, in their vulnerability.

“The White Helmets” are seemingly never without camera crews handy recording a small body, face facing the camera, dust covered, blood spattered, clothes awry, in the arms of the “rescuer.”

“Lights, camera, action”? Heaven forbid.

Notes

1.https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/481277/Syria_UK_Non-Humanitarian_Support_-_Public_Document.pdf

2. http://en.etilaf.org

3. http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/03/whats-the-price-of-air-strikes-5542341/

4. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-infamous-ghouta-chemical-weapons-attack-two-years-on-all-out-war-on-syria-is-still-the-main-course-for-us/5470828

5. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-syria-civil-defence-exposes-natos-white-helmets-as-terrorist-linked-imposters/5547528

6. http://www.maydayrescue.org/content/james-le-mesurier-0

The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) re-launched attempts to seize the Al-Sha’er Gas Fields from ISIS in Homs province. The government forces stormed ISIS positions southwest of the gas fields and reached its gates. Clashes are ongoing in the area.

The pro-government forces have achieved another notable success in northern Aleppo. The army and Liwa al-Quds took control of Talat Bureij, Majbal Al-Zatin, Tal Owayjah, and Tal Al-Asfar. Controlling of these hilltops allows, the government forces are able to easily defend the previous gains in northern Aleppo, overlook areas in the northern part of Haydariyah Neighborhood and prepare a push to set control of the Ba’edin Roundabout. In southern Aleppo, the army and Hezbollah captured the strategic Sheikh Sa’eed hill in the Sheikh Sa’eed Neighborhood.

In Western Ghouta, the army and the NDF seized the Air Battalion Base, located southeast of Der Khabiyah. Now, the government troops are deployed at the western and southern flanks of Deir Khabiyeh controlled by Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham (formerly Al-Nusra Front) and Ahrar Al-Sham.

Yesterday, the army’s Tiger Forces and the NDF took control and defended from terrorist counter-attacks the town of Ma’an in northern Hama. Today, the Tiger Forces and the NDF are advancing west of the nearby village of Kubbariyah in an attempt to reach Suran, located at the highway between Hama and Aleppo. If Suran is re-taken, the militant controlled town of Ma’rades will become next target of the advance.

Next Saturday in Switzerland, Rusisa, the United States and local powers are set to discuss the military and political situation in Syria in order to find the so-called “peaceful solution” of the conflict. Most likely, the Russian-Syrian-Iranian alliance will not be ready to make some concessions to the “American partners”.

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Syria’s “White Helmets”: Fiction and Reality

By Ahmad Salah, October 14 2016

A young man, wearing a white helmet and a distinctive yellow-and-blue badge on his arm, digs for four hours in the rubble of a destroyed building in Idlib Province in northwest Syria. Finally, he sees what he’s looking for: an infant. He takes her to an ambulance like she is his own child. This is how the Western media portray the volunteers of Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets. But what does the reality look like?

Monsanto, the Pentagon’s Soldier and the Colombian “Peace Process”.The Use of Glyphosate Herbicide against the FARC

By Elena Sharoykina, October 14 2016

For decades Colombia has been some kind of battlefield where the USA try to restrain anti-US tendencies in South America. Washington has been fighting the ideas of neo-marxism, guevarism and Liberation theology, which inspire FARC rebels, as well as other left-wing fractions.  However, it’s not widely known that in jungles of Colombia there is another war front – the ecological one.

Kashmir: ‘Pivoting’ Toward War between India and Pakistan?

By Junaid S. Ahmad, October 14 2016

This past summer witnessed yet another people’s uprising in one of the longest running military occupations in modern times: the Indian occupation of Kashmir. The callous indifference to decades-old Indian atrocities against the people of Kashmir, including well-documented incidences of torture, disappearances, ‘encounter killings,’ rapes, and outright massacres, ought to put the international community to shame. This, after all, is a ‘conflict’ – a euphemism for a military occupation – that the UN and international law has clearly adjudicated on many decades ago, but Indian recalcitrance, Pakistani fumbling, and international criminal neglect have let the blood of Kashmiris spill uninterruptedly.

Dr. Walter Rodney: Revolutionary Intellectual, Socialist, Pan-Africanist and Historian

By Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya, October 14 2016

Dr. Walter Rodney was a revolutionary intellectual, socialist, Pan-Africanist and organizer who made a significant contribution to the Caribbean Radical Tradition[2] that seeks to create just, liberated and egalitarian societies in the Caribbean region. October 2016 marks the 48th anniversaries of the expulsion of Rodney from Jamaica and the subsequent Rodney Rebellion that took place as a reaction to his banning and the general exploitation of the African-Jamaican masses by the neocolonial regime.

Hope Moves In Shadowy And Offbeat Places: Bob Dylan, Death, And The Creative Spirit

By Edward Curtin, October 14 2016

Despite the mute despair and apathy that fill the air, hope is needed to carry on and resist these destructive forces.  Sometimes in such a dark time the eye begins to see and the ear hears hope in unexpected places.  Doing so necessitates a bit of a sideways move to discover pockets of resistance hiding in the shadows.  There are torches of illumination in the underworld, but we need to come to our senses to get there.

In a nationwide referendum on the 2nd October 2016 Colombian voters  rejected the government’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the biggest extreme-left guerrilla movement (FARC-EP, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, FARC).

Negotiations, preceding the sign of the deal, took four years and were seen as a hope to end a half-a-century civil war, that took more than 250 thousands of human lives.

The negative results of the referendum with a narrow margin of 0,5 % were completely unexpected and hit the position of the president  – a peacemaker Juan Manuel Santos Calderón. In the course of the last few years he invested all his political capital in negotiations with rebels, despite the lukewarm attitude of the White House towards this peace agreement.

The landmark handshake between Juan Manuel Santos and Timoshenko, with two helping hands from Cuban President Raul Castro. (Justice for Colombia).

For decades Colombia has been some kind of battlefield where the USA try to restrain anti-US tendencies in South America. Washington has been fighting the ideas of neo-marxism, guevarism and Liberation theology, which inspire FARC rebels, as well as other left-wing fractions.  However, it’s not widely known that in jungles of Colombia there is another war front – the ecological one.

The USA and the Colombian government accuse the rebels of illegal coca production and under cover of so-called «anti-narcotic war» air-spray the jungle with glyphosate herbicide. This pesticide is made by US corporation Monsanto and widely known under the trademark Roundup. Once reached the ground, it destroys not only coca, but all other plants as well.

The use of Glyphosate in the war against partisans has began in 1980s.  And in 1999, after signing anti-drug agreements between Washington and Bogota known as «Plan Colombia», this war method acquired an official status.

According to these agreements, the USA government pledged to fund the purchase of pesticide from Monsanto, to supply the project with specially equipped aircrafts and also to train and arm Colombian commandos in order to protect the aircrafts from possible ground fire.

This is what FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez (his real name is Rodrigo Londoño Echeverria), known as «Timoshenko» among partisans (by the way, he is a graduate of the Peoples’ Friendship University in Russia and is trained as medical doctor), according to his interview with the Colombian newspaper VOZ:

«In the regions, where farm communities live close to coca crops, the government accuses  landowners of illegal coca production and under this excuse constantly air-sprays their fields with glyphosate. This chemical destroys coca randomly along with other agricultural crops, causing irretrievable harm to animals and people, especially to children, seniors and pregnant women.»

The partisans try to shoot down US aircrafts loaded with chemical death. To escape the fire, pilots go higher and the glyphosate air-spraying becomes even less precisely aimed.

The FARC’s war against «Monsanto’s air-spray aviation» was used by US secret services to arrange a provocation against Russian businessman Victor But. He was arrested by the US Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008 in Thailand and accused of attempt to sell portable air defense systems to Colombian rebels.

Colombia is the only country in the world where the use of glyphosate happens in such a barbaric style.  Millions of liters of toxic herbicide are sprayed over «the lungs of the planet», how they often name tropical rain forests in South America. The country holds one of the first places in the world for biodiversity.  It is here almost 10% of all endemic (aboriginal) plant species grow.

More than 6 millions Colombians were forced to leave their homes in the areas affected by glyphosate. It is comparable to the number of refugees from Syrian conflict areas, but Colombia draws considerably less attention of the western mass media.

Number of various diseases, affecting local population, grows progressively, cancer and birth anomalies among them. Soil loses its fertility, forests are being eradicated and water is being polluted.

This makes me think about the Vietnam War, when the Pentagon also widely used the Agent Orange herbicide as a weapon against the Viet Cong, and it was also produced by Monsanto.  Around 3 million have suffered illnesses caused by Agent Orange, half a million of them died. The consequences of Agent Orange will likely emerge in the future generations of Vietnamese affected by various inherited diseases.

The lands abandoned by Colombians, because they can’t be used anymore for traditional agriculture, are now under the control of the biotechnology companies with a view to expanding their genetically-modified crops, resistant to glyphosate.

Monsanto has got a carte-blanche from the Colombian government to sell their GM-seeds in the country. It means that these GM-crops would also be consumed by humans and animals. That’s how the war against the Colombian guerrilla movement has led to the concurrent expansion of GM-technology.

In March 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization assigned glyphosate to the group of major risk agents causing human cancer (group 2A).   The IARC reports that glyphosate is able to penetrate human cells and to damage DNA and chromosomes.

In May 2015 the National Drug Council of Colombia decided to «suspend using glyphosate spraying as a means to combat narcotics». This moratorium was demanded by FARC representatives at the peace talks in Havana.

The IARC report was a nice excuse for president Santos to make a compromise with the rebels.

Despite the president’s support, the glyphosate moratorium was opposed by the Colombian «war fraction» and its US sponsors, including Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno, the defense minister, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the former president and Kevin Whitaker, US ambassador in Bogota. They claimed that it was an undeserved concession to the FARC and called for a continuation of the herbicide air-spraying «for the sake of combating the trade in narcotics».

Of course, it’s not only about coca plantations. The US use the anti-narcotic campaign in Colombia as an easy excuse to eradicate FARC. And vice versa, Washington is surprisingly tolerant to drug production, when it brings in profit.

Let’s take Afghanistan as an example. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, this country became the world’s largest heroin producer right after it had been occupied by American forces.

Russia repeatedly suggested to initiate (with the US) a campaign against opium poppy production in Afghanistan. But official US and NATO representatives declined this proposal, because, in their opinion, it might push local peasants to join Muslim fractions and create an additional war threat.

Let’s appraise the situation soberly. Nowadays, the estimated number of active FARC members hardly exceeds 5-6 thousand people. It’s naive to think that several thousand rebels trapped in jungle could retain control of a transnational joint venture known as «the Colombian cocaine industry», worth tens of billions US dollars.

It’s not only left-wing partisans who are involved in the drug-industry, there are also extreme-right «death squadrons» supported by the government, and other militant forces, they all form the core of a powerful drug cartel. Hordes of corrupt bureaucrats, bankers, law enforcement officers are complicit.

It is remarkable, that the FARC leader Timoshenko in his article «About Glyphosate: powerful chemical weapon of transnational power» linked the Pentagon and Monsanto hostilities in the region with «the Colombian money-laundering empire».

«Glyphosate» and «war» became synonyms now in Colombia.   That is why the moratorium on the herbicide air-spraying wouldn’t last long. Already in April 2016 the Colombian government under US pressure and on the pretext of fighting the drug trade resumed the use of glyphosate.

The Monsanto aircrafts came back to the Colombian sky and became the Stormcrows, foreboding trouble to the peace talks. The failed referendum in October 2016, could trigger the onslaught of a new and dramatic crisis in Columbia.

As long as it “rains with glyphosate”  over Colombian forests, there is no peace to be expected in this country.

Translated from Russian