Global Research

It’s official.

The United States government closed out the 2016 fiscal year that ended a few days ago on Friday September 30th with a debt level of $19,573,444,713,936.79.

That’s an increase of $1,422,827,047,452.46 over last year’s fiscal year close.

Incredible. By the way, that debt growth amounts to roughly 7.5% of the entire US economy.

By comparison, the Marshall Plan, which completely rebuilt Western Europe after World World II, cost $12 billion back in 1948, or roughly 4.3% of US GDP at the time.

The initial appropriation for the WPA, perhaps the largest of Roosevelt’s New Deal “make work” programs that employed millions of people, cost 6.7% of US GDP.

And, more recently, the US $700 billion bank bailout at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis was the equivalent of 4.8% of GDP.

So basically these people managed to increase the national debt by a bigger percentage than the cost of the New Deal, Marshall Plan, and 2008 bank bailout.

What exactly did you get for that money?

Did they spend $1.4 trillion on achieving world peace, eradicating poverty, saving the planet, or some other pipedream?

Did they finally fix America’s crumbling infrastructure that has been in desperate need of repair?

Did they send a gigantic tax refund check to every man, woman, and child in the country?

Actually the answer is (D), none of the above. They squandered it all.

In fact, the 2016 fiscal year had the THIRD largest increase in government debt in US history.

The only two previous times in which the debt increased more than the 2016 fiscal year were during the financial crisis.

But there was no financial crisis in 2016.

The government didn’t have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks.

All things considered, 2016 was a pretty normal fiscal year for the federal government. There were no major emergencies to drain taxpayer funds.

Yet they still managed to blow $1.4 trillion because this level of waste and spending is now baked into the system.

Even if they dramatically slashed spending and got rid of entire departments of the federal government, they would still be hemmhoraging cash at a rate far greater than the economy can now possibly grow.

Social Security and Medicare are now the largest parts of that financial sinkhole, and according to their own projections, their drain on the budget is growing each year.

All other government spending COMBINED pales in comparison to Social Security and Medicare.

So if you add up military spending, homeland security, national parks, and President Obama’s jet, it’s just a fraction of what they spend on Social Security and Medicare.

These programs consume the vast majority of US tax revenue, forcing the government to borrow mind-boggling amounts of money to fund its operations, even in good times.

(Just imagine how much the debt will grow when times get tough again.)

What’s even more crazy is that Social Security and Medicare aren’t even properly funded. Both are rapidly running out of money.

The programs’ annual trustee reports show that their primary trust funds will become completely depleted starting in the next few years.

In fact one of Social Security’s major trust funds for Disability Insurance was actually fully depleted last year.

So even though these programs are already draining taxpayer resources and forcing the government to take on more and more debt, they are in need of a HUGE bailout.

This leaves precisely ONE option: default… but on whom?

It’s possible the government could try to borrow the $42 trillion that they calculate is necessary to make these programs solvent again.

That seems extraordinarily unlikely.

But even if it were possible to print and/or borrow that much money, it would either create a terminal currency crisis, or force the US government to default on unaffordable interest payments, throwing the financial system into chaos.

The other option is to simply default on the future beneficiaries of these programs, telling people, “Hey sorry, we wasted all of your money and there’s nothing left.”

So their choice comes down to either screwing the banks or screwing the taxpayer.

Gee I wonder which option they’ll pick…

After the US Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which overrides the principle of sovereign immunity to allow families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia, an Iraqi group has requested parliament to prepare a lawsuit seeking compensation from the US for the invasion of Iraq.

The “Arab Project in Iraq” lobby group “sees their opportunity to ask for compensation from the United States over violations by the US forces following the US invasion that saw the toppling of late President Saddam Hussein in 2003,” the Al-Arabiya news channel reported on Saturday.

“It urged for a full-fledged investigation over the killing of civilians targets, loss of properties and individuals who suffered torture and other mistreatment on the hand of US forces.”

The Iraqi group is the first to take advantage of the precedent set by JASTA in overturning the principle of sovereign immunity.

President Obama had attempted to veto the legislation, but his veto was overturned by the Senate on Wednesday. By passing JASTA and allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia, the Senate has also made the US vulnerable to legal action seeking compensation for its foreign policy activities across the world.

The day after the Senate vote, former Republican Senator Larry Pressler expressed fear that as a veteran of the Vietnam War, he could now face legal action.

“As a Vietnam combat veteran, I could almost certainly be sued by the Vietnamese government or by a Vietnamese citizen,” Pressler wrote in The Hill.

“The Gulf War, Iraq War and Afghanistan War veterans are more protected by constitutional congressional actions, but we Vietnam veterans will be raw targets if Americans can sue Saudi Arabia.”

On Saturday the first US lawsuit was filed under JASTA, alleging that Saudi Arabia provided material support to al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. The complaint was filed by Stephanie Ross DeSimone, who was widowed when her husband, a Navy Commander, was killed at the Pentagon on 9/11. The lawsuit is also filed on behalf of the couple’s daughter, who was born after his death.

Saudi Arabia denies any culpability for the 9/11 attacks, and has warned that it might be forced to sell off billions of US assets to avoid sanctions if JASTA became law, a move which would destabilize the US dollar.

“Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in Treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts,” Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the US Congress in March, the New York Times reported.

Michel Chossudovsky will be speaking at the Beit Zatoun Cultural Centre in Toronto, 

Wednesday, October 5 @ 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm

In a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Monday, two former CIA detainees described previously unreported torture techniques used in secret U.S. prisons overseas, shedding new light on the program the government fought for years to keep hidden.

Ridha al-Najjar, 51, and Lotfi al-Arabi El Gherissi, 52, both Tunisian men recently repatriated after being in CIA custody for 13 years without charge, independently described being threatened with a makeshift electric chair, deprived of sleep, subject to multiple forms of water torture, chained by their wrists to the ceilings of their cells for extended periods of time, and severely beaten.

The executive summary of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s still-classified torture report makes no mention of electric chairs.

HRW writes of El Gherissi’s experience:

He said the chair was made of metal, or perhaps iron. It had clips with wires attached to it intended to be fit on fingers, and a helmet with wires. His description suggested something makeshift, attached to a pipe that came out of a wall. His interrogators put him in the chair and threatened to use it on him unless he gave them more information, though they did not. He said this terrified him and he was trembling. The room also had a board that they threatened to put him on, but never did. He said he understood that water would be used on him while he was on the board.

Al-Najjar separately recounted similar treatment:

It was made out of metal or iron, had plugs attached to wires for fitting on fingers, and a headset with wires. The description suggested make-shift apparatus, attached to a wall pipe. His U.S. interrogators threatened during interrogations to use the chair on him, but never actually did. The room also contained other instruments used for torture, including a board that he believes his interrogators used on him on various occasions for different types of water torture, and a coffin in which they threatened to place him.

“These terrifying accounts of previously unreported CIA torture methods show how little the public still knows about the U.S. torture program,” said HRW senior U.S. national security counsel Laura Pitter.

The most abuse took place at a facility known as Cobalt, a site in Afghanistan, which al-Najjar and El Gherissi called the “Dark Prison.” Other detainees have referred to it alternately as the Dark Prison or the “Salt Pit” as well. Al-Najjar recounted his interrogators at Cobalt “threatening the ‘well-being of his family,’ using ‘sound disorientation techniques,’ denying him sleep using round-the-clock interrogations, depriving him of any ‘sense of time,’ keeping him in ‘isolation in total darkness; lowering the quality of his food,’ using cold temperatures, playing music ’24 hours a day, and keeping him shackled and hooded.'”

A CIA cable issued September 21, 2002 described him as a “clearly broken man” who was “on the verge of a complete breakdown.” He remained in CIA custody for another 13 years.

Both men were set free in 2015 with no compensation or support from the U.S. or Tunisian governments, which violated international human rights law, HRW said—particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture, both of which the U.S. has ratified. Under those laws, “governments have obligations to ensure the right to an effective remedy for victims of serious human rights violations, including torture and other ill-treatment,” the human rights group wrote. “Although these violations did not take place in the United States, they occurred while the individuals were under the effective control of U.S. security forces.”

Today, al-Najjar and El Gherissi live with their families in Tunisia in destitute conditions, struggling with severe trauma. Al-Najjar, who said his hips, ankle, and back were broken in detention, told HRW that he is still suffering from damage to several internal organs, as well as his ear. “My sister has five kids,” he told Pitter. “I am the sixth.”

El Gherissi lives with his family in a house that has no doors or full roof. He shares a bed with his elderly mother and cannot afford to see a doctor.

Pitter continued, “The release of these two men without the U.S. providing any assistance or redress for their torture and suffering also shows how much the U.S. still needs to do to put the CIA torture program behind it.”

Through an endless barrage of ugly propaganda, the U.S. government and the mainstream American press have put the world on course for a potential nuclear showdown with Russia, an existential risk that has been undertaken cavalierly amid bizarre expressions of self-righteousness from Western institutions.

This extraordinarily dangerous moment reflects the insistence of the Establishment in Washington that it should continue to rule the world and that it will not broach the possibility of other nations asserting their own national interests even in their own neighborhoods.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a meeting room at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, at the outset of a bilateral meeting on July 14, 2016. [State Department Photo]

While that may not be the intention of President Obama, who in his recent United Nations address acknowledged the risks from imposing uni-polar order on the world, a powerful bureaucratic machinery is in place to advance U.S. propaganda goals. It is operating on a crazed auto-pilot hurtling toward destruction but beyond anyone’s ability to turn it off.

This machinery consists not just of outlets and activists funded by U.S. tax dollars via the National Endowment for Democracy or the U.S. Agency for International Development or NATO’s Strategic Communications Command, but like-minded “human rights” entities paid for by billionaire currency speculator George Soros or controlled by neoconservative ideologues who now run major U.S. newspapers, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times.

This propaganda apparatus now has so many specialized features that you get supposedly “progressive” and “anti-war” organizations promoting a major U.S. invasion of Syria under the guise of sweet-sounding policies like “no-fly zones” and “safe zones,” the same euphemisms that were used as the gateway to bloody “regime change” wars in Iraq and Libya.

There exists what intelligence veterans call a Mighty Wurlitzer, an organ with so many keys and pedals that it’s hard to know where all the sounds come from that make up the powerful harmony, all building to the same crescendo. But that crescendo may now be war with nuclear-armed Russia, which finds in all this demonizing the prelude to either a destabilization campaign aimed at “regime change” in Moscow or outright war.

Yet, the West can’t seem to muster the sanity or the honesty to begin toning down or even showing skepticism toward the escalating charges aimed at Russia. We saw similar patterns in the run-up to war in Iraq in 2002-2003 and in justifying the ouster, torture and murder of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Western propaganda also has enveloped the conflict in Syria to such an extent that the American people don’t understand that the U.S. government and its regional “allies” have been supporting and arming jihadist groups fighting under the command of Al Qaeda and even the Islamic State. The propaganda has focused on demonizing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while downplaying or ignoring the real nature of the “moderate” opposition.

Taking Aim at Putin

In many ways, the Western insistence on “regime change” in Syria ties in directly to the extraordinary escalation of that strategy to seek “regime change” in Russia. In August-September 2013, America’s neocons and liberal war hawks were salivating over the prospect of a U.S. military bombing campaign to devastate Assad’s army as punishment for his alleged role in a sarin gas attack outside Damascus.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, flanked by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria “Toria” Nuland, addresses Russian President Vladimir Putin in a meeting room at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, at the outset of a bilateral meeting on July 14, 2016. [State Department Photo]

At the last minute, however, President Obama listened to the doubts from his intelligence advisers and rejected what he later called the Washington “playbook” of a military response to a complex problem. To the annoyance of Washington insiders, Obama then collaborated with President Putin in a diplomatic settlement in which Syria surrendered all its chemical weapons while still denying any role in the sarin attack. Obama was accused of weakness for not “enforcing his red line” against chemical weapons use.

The despair over Obama’s failure to bomb the Syrian government and open the path for a long-desired “regime change” in Damascus led to a search for other villains, the most obvious one being Putin, who then became the focus of neocon determination to make him share their pain and disappointment.

National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman took to the op-ed page of The Washington Post in late September 2013 to declare that Ukraine was now “the biggest prize” and represented an important interim step toward eventually toppling Putin in Russia.

Gershman, who is essentially a neocon paymaster dispensing $100 million a year in U.S. taxpayers’ money to activists, journalists and various other operatives, wrote: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

Within weeks, U.S. neocons – including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain – were encouraging right-wing Ukrainian nationalists to overthrow Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych, a coup accomplished on Feb. 22, 2014, touching off a civil war between Ukraine’s west and east.

As part of that Western propaganda barrage, the Ukraine coup ousting the elected president was hailed as a victory for “democracy” and Yanukovych’s supporters in the south and east who resisted this imposition of illegitimate authority in Kiev became the target of a U.S.-backed “Anti-Terrorism Operation” or ATO.

Led by The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Western media fell in line behind the preferred narrative that there was “no coup,” that there were “no neo-Nazis” spearheading the non-coup (or maybe just a few), that the “Heavenly Hundred” who died in the putsch against Yanukovych had given their lives for Ukraine’s “freedom” even though some of the “heavenly” inconveniently were neo-Nazi street fighters, part of a paramilitary force that had killed some 16 police officers.

Killing ‘Terrorists’

Given the West’s pro-coup propaganda themes, it became necessary to justify the thousands of eastern Ukrainians slaughtered in the ATO as the killing of “terrorists” or Russian “stooges,” getting what they deserved. The 96 percent vote in Crimea’s referendum to reunify with Russia had to be a “sham” since the West’s narrative held that the Ukrainian people were thrilled with the putsch, so the Crimeans must have voted that way at Russian gunpoint.

Screen shot of the fatal fire in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2, 2014, killing scores of ethnic Russians trapped inside. (From RT video)

The explanation of Crimea’s secession from Ukraine was that Russia “invaded” and “annexed” Crimea although there were no images of an invasion (no tanks crossing Crimea’s borders, no amphibious landings, no paratroopers descending from the sky – because Russian troops were already in Crimea as part of a basing agreement and helped protect Crimea’s inhabitants so they could hold their vote which did represent their desires).

Because the Western propaganda insisted that the new authorities in Kiev were wearing white hats, the Russians had to be fitted with black hats. Every bad thing that happened was automatically Putin’s fault. So, when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the West’s propaganda machinery whirred into action, blaming Russia for supposedly giving the ethnic Russian rebels powerful Buk anti-aircraft missiles.

The propaganda momentum was so strong by then that there was no Western support for Russia’s request for a United Nations investigation. Instead the inquiry was largely turned over to the torture-implicated Ukrainian intelligence service, the SBU, upon which the Dutch and Australians, the other two principal members, became increasingly dependent (by their own admissions). Belgium and Malaysia played lesser roles.

The Joint Investigation Committee (JIT) considered no serious alternatives to the Russians and the rebels being responsible. For instance, when the JIT released its “report” on Sept. 28, 2016, there was no explanation offered for why Dutch intelligence (i.e. NATO intelligence) had concluded that the only missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, capable of shooting down MH-17 were controlled by the Ukrainian military. The JIT “report” was silent about where those Ukrainian Buk missile systems were at the time of the shoot-down.

It’s also a bit of a misnomer to describe the JIT’s findings as a “report” since they were really expressed in a series of videos featuring computer-generated graphics supposedly showing a Russian Buk crew driving around Ukraine, mixed in with a few photos from social media of a Buk convoy.

Key to the JIT’s findings were phone intercepts provided by the SBU and assembled to reinforce the impression of Russian guilt. The problem, however, was that except for one intercept in which someone said he’d like to have Buks, the word “Buk” is not mentioned; nor the word “missiles”; nor the word “aircraft”; nor any discussion about shooting down a plane. That was all supposition with an authoritative narrator filling in the gaps.

Ignoring Contrary Evidence

The JIT also ignored evidence that contradicted its conclusions, such as other intercepts reporting that a Ukrainian convoy had penetrated close to the eastern city of Luhansk. The significance of that revelation is that it confirms a point that has been largely ignored, that the Ukrainian military could move almost at will across “rebel-controlled territory.” The notion that the Ukrainian civil war was like World War I with fixed trench lines was simply a fallacy.

Screen shot from the Joint Investigation Team’s video report citing where a Russian Buk missile battery allegedly crossed into eastern Ukraine.

The JIT also had to impose a bizarre route for the Russian Buk battery to follow on its way to the supposed firing location south of the remote eastern town of Snizhne. Because the “social media” photos show the Buk convoy heading east toward Russia, not west from Russia, the JIT had to map out a journey that ignored a simple, direct and discreet route from the Russian border to Snizhhe in favor of a trip more than twice as long roaming around eastern Ukraine all the way to Donetsk before turning eastward past a number of heavily populated areas where the Buk convoy, supposedly on a highly secret mission, could be photographed.

The alleged firing location also conflicts with the alleged reason for the Russians taking the extraordinary risk of introducing a Buk system – that it was needed to defend rebel soldiers then fighting mostly in the north against Ukrainian troops and aircraft. For that purpose, the positioning of a Buk battery far to the southeast makes little sense, nor does the decision for a Russian Buk crew to shoot down a commercial airliner flying at 33,000 feet.

JIT’s account of the post-crash exfiltration of the Buk convoy back to Russia also is curious, since again the shortest, easiest and least populated route was ignored in favor of one that went far to the north past Luhansk, the alleged site of the supposed “getaway” video (although the supposed location of the “getaway” video was misplaced by Western media groups trying to pin the blame on Russia).

The confirmed parts of the Buk convoy’s route, i.e., along highways east of Donetsk, would fit better with a scenario that, I’m told, received serious consideration from U.S. intelligence analysts, that a Ukrainian Buk system under the control of a rogue military unit loyal to a fiercely anti-Putin oligarch traveled east into what was considered “rebel-controlled territory” to fire on what was hoped to be Putin’s official plane returning from a state visit to South America, i.e. to kill Putin.

A source briefed by these analysts said the missile was fired despite the unit’s doubt that the plane was Putin’s. Although it’s unclear to me exactly what the U.S. intelligence consensus ultimately turned out to be on MH-17 (since I have been refused official updates), there would be logic in a Ukrainian hardliner staging such an audacious missile attack deep inside “rebel territory,” since any assassination of Putin would have to be explained as an accidental attack by his own allies, i.e., the ultimate case of Putin being hoisted on his own petard.

To evaluate which scenario makes more sense – that the Russians dispatched a Buk missile battery on a wild ride across eastern Ukraine or that a Ukrainian Buk battery penetrated into supposedly rebel-controlled territory with the intent of attacking a civilian plane (although not MH-17) – it would be crucial to have an explanation of where the Ukrainian Buk batteries were located on July 17, 2014.

Silence on Dutch Intelligence

Some of the Russia-did-it crowd have dismissed claims that Ukrainian Buk systems were in the area as Russian disinformation, but their presence was confirmed by a report from the Dutch intelligence service, MIVD, relying on NATO information to explain why commercial airliners were still being allowed over the war zone.

A photograph of a Russian BUK missile system that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt published on Twitter in support of a claim about Russia placing BUK missiles in eastern Ukraine, except that the image appears to be an AP photo taken at an air show near Moscow two years earlier.

The MIVD’s explanation was that the only anti-aircraft missiles that could hit a plane at 33,000 feet were controlled by Ukraine, which was presumed to have no interest in attacking commercial aircraft, and that the rebels lacked any missile system that could reach that high. Clearly, there was an intelligence failure because either some Ukrainian Buk operators did have an intent to strike a civilian plane or the rebels did have a Buk system in the area.

If the JIT were operating objectively, it would have included something about this intelligence failure, either by showing that it had investigated the possibility that Ukrainian Buk missiles were used by a rogue unit or explaining how Western intelligence could have missed Russia’s introduction of a Buk system into eastern Ukraine.

Instead, there was just this video that includes cryptic phone intercepts, assertions about unnamed witnesses and computer-generated graphics “showing” the movement of a Russian Buk convoy along darkened roads in Ukraine.

Despite the unusual nature of this “indictment,” it was widely accepted in Western media as the final proof of Russian perfidy. The evidence was called “overwhelming” and “conclusive.”

Rather than treating the video report as a prosecutor’s brief – a set of allegations yet to be proved – Western journalists accepted it as flat fact, much as they did Secretary of State Colin Powell’s similar presentation on Feb. 5, 2003, “proving” that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. (Powell also used computer-generated images — of Iraq’s “mobile chemical weapons labs” that, in reality, didn’t exist.)

The day after the JIT video report was issued, The New York Times’ lead editorial was headlined, “Mr. Putin’s Outlaw State.” It read:

“President Vladimir Putin is fast turning Russia into an outlaw nation. As one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, his country shares a special responsibility to uphold international law. Yet, his behavior in Ukraine and Syria violates not only the rules intended to promote peace instead of conflict, but also common human decency.

“This bitter truth was driven home twice on Wednesday [Sept. 28]. An investigative team led by the Netherlands concluded that the surface-to-air missile system that shot down a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine in July 2014, killing 298 on board, was sent from Russia to Russian-backed separatists and returned to Russia the same night. …

“Russia has tried hard to pin the blame for the airline crash on Ukraine. But the new report, produced by prosecutors from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine, confirms earlier findings. It uses strict standards of evidence and meticulously documents not only the deployment of the Russian missile system that caused the disaster but also Moscow’s continuing cover-up. …

“President Obama has long refused to approve direct military intervention in Syria. And Mr. Putin may be assuming that Mr. Obama is unlikely to confront Russia in his final months and with an American election season in full swing. But with the rebel stronghold in Aleppo under threat of falling to the government, administration officials said that such a response is again under consideration.

“Mr. Putin fancies himself a man on a mission to restore Russia to greatness. Russia could indeed be a great force for good. Yet his unconscionable behavior — butchering civilians in Syria and Ukraine, annexing Crimea, computer-hacking American government agencies, crushing dissent at home — suggests that the furthest thing from his mind is becoming a constructive partner in the search for peace.”

Rich Irony

Granted, there is some rich irony in a major U.S. newspaper, which helped justify illegal aggression against Iraq with false reporting about Iraq buying aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges, pontificating about international law.

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who co-authored the Times’ bogus story about Iraq buying aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges.

Indeed, the very idea that any serious person in the United States would lecture other countries about international law would be laughable if the hypocrisy were not delivered in such a serious set of circumstances. For decades now, the United States has been a law onto itself, deciding which countries should be bombed and who should be assassinated.

President Obama himself has acknowledged authorizing military strikes in seven countries during his presidency and many of those attacks were done outside international law. Indeed, the Times editorial appears to urge Obama to launch illegal military strikes against the Syrian government and, not surprisingly, doesn’t mention the U.S. airstrike that killed some 62 Syrian government soldiers just last month, delivering a death blow to the partial ceasefire.

Instead, you get a medley of the Times’ greatest anti-Russian propaganda hits while ignoring the U.S. role in destabilizing and overthrowing Ukraine’s elected government in favor of a harshly anti-Russian nationalist regime that then began slaughtering thousands of ethnic Russians who resisted the coup.

Nor does the Times mention that Russia is operating inside Syria by invitation of the sovereign government, while the U.S. has no such authority. And the Times leaves out how the U.S. government and its allies have covertly armed and funded jihadist rebels who have inflicted many of the hundreds of thousands of dead in Syria. Not everyone, including Syrian soldiers, was killed by Assad and the Russians, although that’s the impression the Times leaves.

A more nuanced account would reflect this murky reality in which sophisticated U.S. weapons, such as TOW missiles, have ended up in the possession of Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and its jihadist allies. It would acknowledge that many sides are at fault for these tragedies in Syria and Ukraine – not to mention all the bloodshed that has followed the U.S.-led and U.S.-enabled wars that have torn apart the Middle East over the past decade and a half.

The Times might also admit that Putin was helpful in resolving the 2013 sarin crisis in Syria and achieving a breakthrough on the Iran nuclear talks in 2014. But that would not fit the propaganda need to demonize Putin and ready the American people for another, even more terrifying “regime change,” this time in Moscow.

What we can now expect are a series of legal actions brought against Russia in connection with the MH-17 case and other controversies. The goal will be to further demonize Putin and to destabilize Russia, a process already underway with economic sanctions that have helped throw Russia’s economy into recession.

The neocon plan is to ratchet up tensions and pain so Putin’s elected government will somehow collapse with the neocons hoping that some U.S. lackey will take over and allow another round of “shock therapy,” i.e. the plunder of Russia’s resources to the benefit of a few favored oligarchs and their American consultants.

However, given the dreadful experience that the average Russian faced from the earlier round of “shock therapy” in the 1990s – including a stunning decline in life expectancy – the more likely outcome from even a successful neocon scheme of “regime change” would be the emergence of a much more hard-line Russian nationalist than Putin.

Whereas Putin is a calculating and rational leader, the guy who follows him might well be an ideologue ready to use nuclear weapons to protect Mother Russia’s honor. After all, it’s not as if one of these neocon “regime change” calculations has ever gone wrong before.

Yet, whichever way things go, Official Washington – and its complicit mainstream media – now appear determined to push Russia into a corner with military encroachments from NATO on Russia’s borders and with criminal accusations before biased international “investigations.” Any misstep in this dangerous game could quickly end life as we know it.

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

Russia has now managed twice to shame the U.S. into action against Jihadis by publicly demonstrating that the U.S. is not really committed to its promises.

During 2014 and 2015 the U.S. did very little to attack the Islamic State. U.S. strikes hit irrelevant targets like an “ISIS excavator” or some lone truck. Meanwhile ISIS was making millions per day from pumping oil out of the Syrian desert and selling it to Turkish contacts. Hundreds of Turkish tanker trucks assembled near the oil wells in south-east Syria waiting to load. No airstrike would hit them.

The Russians saw this and were appalled. The loudmouth U.S. spoke about its big coalition and attacking ISIS but did essentially nothing. The Russian President Putin then decided to shame the U.S. and Obama personally. On November 15 2015 at the G20 meeting in Turkey he walked around the table and showed satellite pictures to his international colleagues. Hundreds of trucks waiting in the Syrian desert for loading without fear that anyone would harm them:

“I’ve demonstrated the pictures from space to our colleagues, which clearly show the true size of the illegal trade of oil and petroleum products market. Car convoys stretching for dozens of kilometers, going beyond the horizon when seen from a height of four-five thousand meters,” Putin told reporters after the G20 summit.

The very next day on November 16 U.S. airplanes, for the first time, hit truck assemblies near ISIS oil wells in south-east Syria:

In the first wave of U.S. airstrikes since the Paris attacks, A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack aircraft and AC-130 gunships raked a convoy of more than 100 ISIS oil tanker trucks in Syria in a stepped-up effort to cut off a main source of terror funding, the Pentagon said Monday.

Putin had successfully shamed Obama into attacking ISIS’s oil revenue.

Something similar happened Friday and today. First the Russian Foreign Minister accused the U.S. of complicity with al-Qaeda:

The Russian foreign minister said Russia has “more and more reasons to believe that from the very beginning the plan was to spare Al-Nusra and to keep it just in case for Plan B or stage two, when it would be time to change the regime.”

At the daily State Department press briefing on Friday, State spokesman Toner was grilled by multiple reporters over Lavrov’s accusations and the lack of U.S. attacks on al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra aka Jabhat Fateh al-Sham):

QUESTION: In that interview with the BBC, Foreign Secretary – Foreign Minister Lavrov said what the Russians have been saying for a number of days now, which is that accusing the United States of having failed to disentangle the Nusrah from the opposition that you support.MR TONER: Yeah. […]

Once we felt that we were at that point, to the best of an agreed-upon ability to reach that point, then we would say, okay, we’re ready to move on to the next phase. At that point, as I said, then it’s – the moderate opposition who are integrated with al-Nusrah would have had a choice to make.

QUESTION: So in other words, are they making a fair point here —

MR TONER: So —

QUESTION: — the Russians? That they say you failed to do the disentangling?

MR TONER: No, because there wasn’t enough time. …
…
QUESTION: What – just a final question: And again, with the regards to the Russian suspicions, you haven’t really gone after Nusrah that much. Have you been holding back on going after Nusrah because they were mixed with the opposition? I mean, all we hear about is the strikes on ISIS.

MR TONER: Yeah, so —

QUESTION: We don’t hear about strikes on Nusrah.

MR TONER: So —

(For your amusement read the longer transcript excerpt below this post or read the full one at the State Department website.)

State spoks Mark Toner admits that no U.S. strike had hit Nusra since March this year. His excuses are paltry and in the end he punts to the Pentagon. He really got his balls squeezed.

But that pressure, initiated by the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, created results. The U.S. was shamed into action and today killed some Nusra number 2: Pentagon: US targets ‘core al-Qaida’ member in Syria strike.

Al-Qaeda confirmed the strike:

LBCI News English Verified account @LBCI_News_ENJabhat Fateh al-Sham, former Nusra Front, says Egyptian alQaeda cleric Abu al-Faraj al-Masri killed in #US led coalition strike in #Idlib

10:17 AM – 3 Oct 2016

This is the very first strike on al-Qaeda in Syria, a UN designated terrorist organization which the U.S. vowed to fight, since March 2016. It comes a weekend after Lavrov accused the U.S. of not striking Nusra and a grilling at the State Department briefing.

The Russian shaming has again worked.

But it is not yet clear if this U.S. reaction to the shaming is serious, if more strikes will follow.

Abu al-Faraj al-Masri was a high commander who has been on varous target list for a long time. But he was not near any U.S. proxy force fighting together with Nusra. One expert is somewhat skeptical:

Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlraiEx-Nusra (JFS) account announce the death of Egyptian Ahmad Salama Mabrouk, aka Abu Faraj al Masri, 2d in command of JFS & #AQ core leader pic

9:50 AM – 3 Oct 2016
…
Mabrouk was killed by a drone in Darkouch, #Idlib, #Syria, the HQ and gathering of #AQ/#Nusra/#JFS & Jihadists.
…
#JFS officially announce the death of Abu al-Faraj al-Masri, #AQ leader. Group still calming “we have nothing to do with Qaidat al-Jihad”.
…
This is the same group that the #USA is not willing to ask its proxies in #Syria to keep a distance from (#AQ).

While the shaming worked in that it provoked the U.S. into action it had long promised but always delayed other issues between the U.S. and Russia on Syria are not going well.

Russia announced the end of military-military discussions with the U.S. about delineating zones for a longer ceasefire in Syria:

Exchange of information between Russian and US military has stopped of late despite Moscow’s commitment, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said on Monday.

The U.S. responded in kind:

The United States is suspending its participation in bilateral channels with Russia that were established to sustain the Cessation of Hostilities.
…
The U.S. will also withdraw personnel that had been dispatched in anticipation of the possible establishment of the Joint Implementation Center. To ensure the safety of our respective military personnel and enable the fight against Daesh, the United States will continue to utilize the channel of communications established with Russia to de-conflict counterterrorism operations in Syria.

The U.S. blames Russia for destroying the ceasefire by “hitting civilians”. Meanwhile:

Syria Today @todayinsyriaAirstrikes by the US-led coalition reportedly killed 40 civilians in Marea, N.#Aleppo

10:30 AM – 3 Oct 2016

This ending of cooperation MAY be some crossing the Rubicon moment. The gloves are now off.

Russia has managed twice to shame the U.S. into action it had promised but not fulfilled. This will work only rarely and only when it comes at high levels (Putin, Lavrov) and with obvious evidence.

But its fun when it works and it proves that Russia, in both cases, has been right. The U.S. does not attack Jihadis but uses them for its own purpose. We will now likely see even more of this. It will continue until the U.S. is again shamed and embarrassed into following its public commitments to attack the terrorist instead of cooperating with them.

–End

Relevant excerpts of the Sep 29 State Department press briefing regarding U.S. attacks on Nusra:

QUESTION: In that interview with the BBC, Foreign Secretary – Foreign Minister Lavrov said what the Russians have been saying for a number of days now, which is that accusing the United States of having failed to disentangle the Nusrah from the opposition that you support.MR TONER: Yeah. …

Once we felt that we were at that point, to the best of an agreed-upon ability to reach that point, then we would say, okay, we’re ready to move on to the next phase. At that point, as I said, then it’s – the moderate opposition who are integrated with al-Nusrah would have had a choice to make.

QUESTION: So in other words, are they making a fair point here —

MR TONER: So —

QUESTION: — the Russians? That they say you failed to do the disentangling?

MR TONER: No, because there wasn’t enough time. …
…
QUESTION: What – just a final question: And again, with the regards to the Russian suspicions, you haven’t really gone after Nusrah that much. Have you been holding back on going after Nusrah because they were mixed with the opposition? I mean, all we hear about is the strikes on ISIS.

MR TONER: Yeah, so —

QUESTION: We don’t hear about strikes on Nusrah.

MR TONER: So —
…
[Second, different question-answer exchange]
…
MR TONER: […] In answer to your first question, which was, again, about?

QUESTION: We keep hearing about —

MR TONER: Yeah.

QUESTION: — striking ISIS, but never —

MR TONER: Oh.

QUESTION: — about striking Nusrah.

MR TONER: We did carry out strikes initially, back in 2014-2015, against Nusrah. But absolutely, you’re correct in that, as they became intermingled and as they became intermingled in civilian areas, we’ve always sought to limit the possibility of civilian casualties in any of our airstrikes. …
…
QUESTION: Could I just ask a follow-up?

MR TONER: Of course. I’ll get to you.

QUESTION: You hit Nusrah – I believe you described it as al-Qaida – maybe in March —

MR TONER: Affiliate, yeah.

QUESTION: — or something or – it was earlier this year.

MR TONER: Yep.

QUESTION: Since then, there hasn’t been any specific action against Nusrah, is that right? Military action.

MR TONER: No, but I’d have to double check.

QUESTION: Okay.
…
QUESTION: Why aren’t you attacking Nusrah anyhow if it’s in U.S. interest?

MR TONER: That’s what I was saying, is – but I – and I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear —

QUESTION: No, no. I understand what you’re saying, but how would that change by cooperating with Russia? You still wouldn’t attack civilian populations, buildings —

MR TONER: No, but I – but what we, again – and I’m – I would really encourage you to talk to someone at the Pentagon who can give you a much more detailed tactical view of this. …
…
QUESTION: If you had actionable intelligence against Nusrah senior leaders, as you describe them, would you —

MR TONER: Would we —

QUESTION: — be able to target them today or not? Because Aleppo and Idlib and a lot of these areas —

MR TONER: Yeah.

QUESTION: — are out of your – are they in the confliction zone?

MR TONER: I would – I don’t want to – so I would encourage you to talk to somebody —

QUESTION: Okay.

MR TONER: — from the Department of Defense, whether we would be able to – through our de-confliction mechanism be able to target them.

QUESTION: Okay.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced last Thursday a further dramatic expansion of the Pentagon’s “rebalance” or “pivot” to the Asia Pacific that will only heighten the already tense military confrontation with China in the region. He insisted that the Asia Pacific was “the single most consequential region for America’s future.”

Speaking on board the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in San Diego, Carter outlined what he called the “third phase” of the US military build-up and the strengthening of a “principled and inclusive security network” in Asia. While claiming that Beijing was not excluded from the “network,” every aspect of the “third phase” is aimed at preparing for a war with China.

The importance that Carter attached to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to “bind the United States more closely together with 11 other countries” underlines the real purpose of the “pivot:” to maintain American dominance and subordinate China to the interests of the United States. The very terms of the TPP ensure that Beijing will be excluded unless it accepts the rules set by Washington.

The defence secretary made clear US economic hegemony had to be underpinned by military might. In outlining the “third phase,” he declared that “the United States will continue to sharpen our military edge so we remain the most powerful military in the region and the security partner of choice.”

Carter indicated that the “first phase” of the “pivot” announced in 2011 involved a quantitative boost of the US military and the restructuring of its basing arrangements. Tens of thousands of American military personnel were redirected to Asia, with a commitment to station 60 percent of overseas naval and air assets in the region. The restructuring of US bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii was begun and new basing arrangements reached with Australia.

The “second phase” involved sending the “most advanced capabilities” to the Asia Pacific, including F-22 and F-35 stealth fighter jets, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft and the navy’s newest surface warfare vessels, as well as continuous deployments of strategic bombers. It also included a concerted effort to expand military ties throughout the region in an effort to encircle China with allies and strategic partners. Carter highlighted strengthened security relations with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, India, Singapore, Vietnam and New Zealand in particular.

In order to maintain the “military edge,” Carter outlined extensive plans to “qualitatively upgrade and invest in our regional force posture.” He provided a list of hi-tech projects that will be funded, starting this year, including:

* Making Virginia-class nuclear submarines “more lethal and more capable” by trebling their cruise missile payload.

* Increased funding for multiple types of undersea drones, as part of more than $40 billion in allocations over the next five years to maintain “the most lethal undersea and anti-submarine force in the world.”

* Providing $12 billion over five years for the new B-21 Raider Long-Range Strike Bomber.

* Spending $56 billion over five years to buy more than 400 stealthy F-35 joint strike fighters.

* Investing nearly $16 billion over five years to upgrade the aerial tanker fleet.

* Re-purposing the SM-6 missile “so that it can also strike enemy ships at sea at very long ranges.”

* Investing in improving the “range and accuracy for land attack and anti-ship missiles,” as well as new torpedoes.

* Making large new investments, to the tune of $34 billion next year alone, in cyber, electronic and space warfare.

Every one of these new weapons and upgrades is geared to fighting a war with China, premised on the Pentagon’s AirSea Battle strategy—a massive missile and air assault on the Chinese mainland supplemented by a crippling naval blockade.

Moreover, as Carter indicated, there were also “more surprises”—some “leap-ahead” investments—that will “keep our decades-old commitment to undergirding security in the Asia-Pacific, strong and unchallengeable.”

The “third phase” features the intensification of the “Asia-Pacific’s growing principled and inclusive security network,” which Carter declared was “not a formal alliance, nor is it an effort to contain or isolate anyone.” The use of the term “principled”—denoting “shared interests and values”—is designed to exclude China, by cynically and hypocritically contrasting a network of supposed “democracies” with the autocratic regime in Beijing.

Carter’s speech was delivered just before attending a meeting of the defence ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), in order to draw these countries into the US-led “security network.” It is worth noting that the 10 ASEAN members are: the Thai military junta, Stalinist police-state regimes in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, virtual one-party states in Malaysia and Singapore, the absolute monarchy of Brunei, the Philippines currently headed by the fascistic President Rodrigo Duterte, along with Indonesia and Myanmar, whose militaries continue to play a significant political role.

Carter nevertheless declared that the second informal dialogue with ASEAN defence ministers would “reflect on our shared interests and principles and identify new ways to partner together to realise them.” The real purpose of the gathering is to draw the ASEAN countries into an anti-China alliance and ramp up pressure on China over the South China Sea.

The meeting, which focussed on “maritime security,” came in the wake of the July 12 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in favour of a US-backed challenge by the Philippines to Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Washington is increasingly concerned that Philippine President Duterte is backing away from a confrontation with China over the issue and announced a loosening of military ties with the United States. In this context, Carter’s declaration that “our alliance with the Philippines is iron clad” is a thinly-veiled threat to Duterte not to move into Beijing’s camp.

Carter sought to impress the assembled defence ministers with a display of American military might with flyovers by F-22 Raptor fighters and a B-1B strategic bomber. Friday’s events concluded with a dinner on board the battleship USS Missouri, followed on Saturday by a tour of the destroyer USS Chung-Hoon.

The defence secretary outlined new maritime security initiatives, including an ASEAN maritime dialogue and a maritime domain awareness exercise. The Pentagon is already providing $425 million over five years in a Maritime Security Initiative to provide hardware and boost collaboration with some ASEAN members—the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

There is nothing innocent or peaceful about the Pentagon’s determination to rapidly roll out the “third phase” of its rebalance to Asia. In the name of maintaining regional security, US imperialism is rapidly and recklessly preparing for a showdown with China, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

In a highly provocative move, the United States announced yesterday it was breaking off bilateral talks with Russia on halting fighting in Syria’s civil war. The decision is only the latest indication that the US is preparing the ground for a major escalation of military operations in its war for regime-change in Syria.

With boundless hypocrisy, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement that Russia had failed to maintain its end of the bargain. “This is not a decision that was taken lightly,” Kirby said. “Unfortunately, Russia failed to live up to its own commitments, and was also either unwilling or unable to ensure Syrian regime adherence to the arrangements to which Moscow agreed.”

US officials added that contact between the two countries would continue to reduce the risk of clashes between US and Russian aircraft operating in Syrian air space. But this pledge cannot conceal the fact that both powers have mutually incompatible agendas in Syria and are perilously close to a direct military clash that could spiral out of control and trigger a wider war. As White House spokesman Josh Earnest bluntly put it, on Syria, there was “nothing more for the US and Russia to talk about.”

Washington’s attempt to pin the blame on Russia for the breakdown of diplomacy in Syria is thoroughly dishonest. The United States never had any intention of abiding by the ceasefire agreement struck between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last month. It exploited the week-long pause in fighting to enable its proxy Islamist “rebels” to regroup in the face of a Russian- and Iranian-backed offensive by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops in Aleppo, while continuing to provide its Al Qaeda-linked allies with arms. The US-backed anti-Assad forces never accepted the ceasefire.

Open differences emerged within the US political and military establishment over the ceasefire terms, with the Pentagon publicly rejecting military and intelligence cooperation with Moscow in the name of fighting terrorism. It is likely that a September 17 US air strike on a Syrian army outpost near the town of Deir ez-Zor, which helped ISIS fighters capture positions in the area, was deliberately launched by a faction of the US military opposed to intelligence-sharing with Russia, for the purpose of blowing up the ceasefire agreement.

The incident had the desired effect. The ceasefire collapsed several days later when a UN aid convoy came under attack. Washington and its European allies blamed the attack on Moscow and used it to demand that Russia and Syria ground their aircraft. Russia denied any involvement in the bombing of the aid convoy.

The US government and media have seized on the bombardment of “rebel”-held eastern Aleppo, controlled by the al-Nusra front, which Washington lists as a terrorist organization, to accuse Russia of war crimes and prepare the ground for an escalation of the war. Since intervening on the side of the Syrian government last September, Moscow has sought to advance its own interests by propping up its ally Assad. Syria is the site of Russia’s sole naval base outside of the former Soviet Union.

According to UN figures, at least 320 civilians have been killed in Aleppo since the end of the ceasefire. Civilians have been targeted by both sides, although the Western media has generally buried reports of the shelling of government-controlled areas by Islamist “rebels.” Up to 270,000 civilians, including 100,000 children, are trapped in the city.

The crocodile tears shed by US and Western politicians over the fate of Aleppo’s inhabitants are a transparent fraud, aimed at concealing the fact that primary responsibility for the catastrophe in Syria, where more than half a million people have lost their lives and over 50 percent of the population have fled their homes, lies with the US and its allies. Washington deliberately fomented the civil war with the aim of removing Assad, installing a puppet government, and asserting its hegemony in the energy-rich Middle East against its main rivals, Russia and China.

The Western powers’ humanitarian pretenses were further exposed by a leaked UN report which placed chief responsibility for the disastrous conditions in Syria on the US and European Union’s sanctions regime. The report, which was published in May but only released Sunday by the Intercept after it obtained a leaked copy, accuses Washington and Brussels of imposing since 2011 “some of the most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed.”

US prohibition on money transfers has made it almost impossible for aid groups to pay salaries and buy supplies, leaving the way open for ISIS and the al-Nusra Front to open unofficial avenues for the transfer of financial assistance. A separate letter from “a key UN official” in August described the sanctions as a “principal factor” in the collapse of the healthcare system.

The Obama administration never had any intention of reaching a deal with Russia to curb the violence in Syria unless it fully capitulated to US demands for the installation of a pro-Western puppet regime.

Moscow has instead made increasingly clear that it is unwilling to back down in the face of US threats to encourage Islamist terrorists to direct their attacks against Russia. After Kirby menacingly declared last week that extremists could attack “Russian interests” and even Russian cities, an ominous pronouncement given Washington’s long-standing collaboration with Jihadi terrorists, Russia shot back that any US escalation in Syria would lead to “total war” and cause “tectonic shifts” throughout the Middle East.

Earlier on Monday, President Vladimir Putin announced the suspension of the United States from an agreement regulating the disposal of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear weapons. Putin cited as reasons “the radical change in the environment, a threat to strategic stability posed by the hostile actions of the US against Russia, and the inability of the US to deliver on the obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under international treaties.”

On Syria, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Washington had failed to separate US-backed “moderate rebels” from the al-Nusra Front, which was to have been a first step under the ceasefire deal to the establishment of a joint implementation center from which Moscow and Washington would coordinate attacks on terrorists.

“We are becoming more convinced that in a pursuit of a much desired regime-change in Damascus, Washington is ready to ‘make a deal with the devil,’” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday. For the sake of ousting Syrian President Assad, the US appears to be ready to “forge an alliance with hardened terrorists.”

In truth, such an alliance has long been cemented. In 2011, the Obama administration exploited similar “humanitarian” concerns as those now being whipped up over Syria to justify the bombardment and destruction of Libya so as to overthrow the Gaddafi regime. This was combined with support to Islamist extremist forces, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands and plunging the North African country into a brutal civil war. Many of these same Islamists were then relocated to Syria, supplied with arms funneled through the CIA, the Gulf states and Turkey, and encouraged to wage war on the Assad regime. It was out of this environment that ISIS emerged and began to gain ground.

The US political and military establishment is fully prepared to risk an all-out conflict with nuclear-armed Russia to secure its geo-strategic ambitions in the Middle East and beyond. Less than two weeks ago, General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that extending US control over Syrian air space would mean war with Syria and Russia. He emphasized that the US military had no intention in establishing any kind of intelligence-sharing arrangement with Russia.

Last week, in another calculated provocation, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter delivered remarks at a nuclear base in North Dakota threatening nuclear conflict with Russia.

The escalation of tensions with Russia has the support of Washington’s Western allies, including Britain and France. The suspension of talks coincided Monday with reports that Paris is circulating a draft UN Security Council resolution demanding that the Assad regime halt its bombardment of Aleppo and warning that those responsible for war crimes will be held accountable.

The text also refers to the need to immediately halt all military flights over Aleppo, which in effect restricts only Syrian and Russian planes and could serve as the initial step to a “no-fly” zone enforced by US and allied aircraft. Diplomats expect Russia will veto the resolution if it comes to a vote, a move that French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has vowed would result in Moscow being labeled as complicit in war crimes.

The Clintons will break all rules and laws to seize White House power. This is amply proven by the manner in which they rigged and stole the first presidential debate.

The operation appears to have been planned in advance of the September 26, 2016 event, involving the Clintons and their operatives, the debate organizers, the broadcast media (NBC and “moderator” Lester Holt), the managers of the venue, and the security detail at the facility.

The rig was carried out with near-military precision.

It began with the building of a special podium for Hillary Clinton: one that was smaller than the podium designated for Donald Trump. The smaller podium gave Hillary the illusion of being bigger in physical stature. More importantly, the podium seems to have been built or adapted with some sort of electronic console or teleprompter.

Who oversaw the building and modification of this podium? Why did the Trump people not notice this immediately?

Prior to the debate, tape footage shows how a device meant to be installed into Hillary’s podium was smuggled in by the Clintons and their operatives. Also brought in was a stack of documents; perhaps the debate questions obtained in advance from someone inside. The behavior appears highly suspicious; they are clearly up to something.

Photos also lay waste to the lie that Lester Holt was not wired during the debate. He clearly was, and a technician even removed his jacket to install it. Hillary herself might also have been wired. To what, we do not know, but they were both wired.

During the debate, footage shows Hillary Clinton’s podium lighting up with a computer screen, while Trump’s podium stays dark. Hillary’s hand appears to be pressing or toggling controls on the podium to scroll through her teleprompter screen. Her motions have been interpreted by some as involuntary tremors from Parkinson’s disease, but they appear to be far more deliberate than involuntary.

Analysis shows Hillary apparently giving signals to Lester Holt several times at key moments during the debate. Each time she scratched her nose or touched her face, Holt promptly interrupted, attacked and derailed Trump.

.

The timing was too systematic to be coincidental. Holt also clearly let Clinton have a free pass to speak ad nauseum without “fact checking” and without interruptions throughout the debate. This in addition to the inane topics—which did not include any questions about Clinton’s track record—were already a setup that did not favor Trump.

The most damning evidence of the rigging involves what happened after the debate ended. Footage shows the Clintons and their operatives “doing a sneaky dance” on the stage after the debate to retrieve the device from Hillary’s podium while the crowds mill about.

Watch these breakdowns:

Hillary Clinton’s teleprompter at the debate caught on camera

Podiumgate 

Hillary’s teleprompter inside debate podium and Cleaner Man

Only Hillary’s podium light on and Cleaner Man Identified

The main Clinton operative—the white-haired mustached man wearing glasses— has been identified as Brady Williamson, a Democratic Party strategist and lawyer, and a man who has worked for the Clintons for decades. Williamson, the “Cleaner Man” darts around, with two others lurking nearby acting as lookouts. Their movements suggest that they are clearly up to no good. Finally the entire Clinton team, including Bill and Hillary, surround the secret podium to hide the retrieval of the object(s) out of the podium. These items are passed from Williamson to another operative, and then secreted out.

(Were it not for sharp-eyed observers who analyzed this footage and posted it on YouTube, we would not have caught the Clintons pulling this off. This is why the powers that be want to control and shut down the Internet to prevent citizen investigative work such as this.)

A clear difference in criminal experience

Criminal behavior on the part of the Clintons is no surprise. It is how they have always done things, and gotten away with all of it. Criminality, secrecy, and deception are the foundations of their political dynasty. Any seasoned observer expects the dirtiest dirty tricks from them.

What is baffling is that this blatant fraud occurred without the Trump camp noticing, or doing anything about it. Trump agreed to the terms and mechanics of the debate well in advance. What happened to Trump’s security detail? How did no one notice how Hillary’s podium lit up? Why was the stage controlled only by Clinton operatives? Didn’t anyone not aligned to Clinton check the podiums and the stage before the debate began? Why didn’t someone confront Williamson or the other suspicious characters? Why didn’t Trump cry foul during the fraud, or afterwards?

If the Trump forces are unable to counter or match the dirty tricks and psy-ops of the highly experienced Clinton machine, they will not survive.

Foolishness while the world burns

The world is facing unprecedented crisis.  Yet substantive issues are not addressed in these campaign events. If and when any real issues are approached, deception, lies and falsehoods dominate the rhetoric.

As expected, the Clinton faction is trying to reduce matters to the lowest common denominator, focusing attention on gossipy tabloid material, such as “rude things that Trump said or tweeted”, Trump’s “fat shaming” of women and Miss Universe contestants, and Trump’s tax returns. The Clintons have calculated, probably correctly, that the dumbed down American masses care much more about trivial matters than such real issues as world war, nuclear holocaust, collapsing economies and other realities.  The low road, familiar to the dirty Clintons, is their key to victory. They view the populace with utter contempt. Their goal is to seize power, and to hell with the rest.

Tragically, instead of turning matters to his advantage, Trump has so far taken the bait, falling into the Clinton trap, by reacting to the Clinton gossip. He has even added more hot air to the mix, blabbering about his own business affairs and matters of irrelevance. He himself is the embodiment of tabloid gossip and a reality show circus, and he has done a poor job changing this impression. Both Clinton and Trump are head cases.

Even when he has been given opportunities to drive the discourse, Trump has failed to articulate how he would be less of a New World Order neocon/war monger/corporatist than Clinton. He and Clinton argue about who is the better “anti-terrorist” and the tougher adversary against Russia and China, the more aggressive “law and order cop”.

Yes, Trump has criticized Clinton and Obama for some of their war policies, for “disasters” such as creating ISIS, etc.  But would Trump have ended the wars if he had been at the controls?

Does he intend to end them now? Would he stop the regime change agenda in Syria? Would he make peace with Russia and stop military operations aimed at Russian forces? Would Trump end the criminal reign of the CIA?  Would Trump do anything about the decades of crimes of the Clintons and Bushes, for which they deserve severe punishment? Would he prosecute the highest figures of the New World Order?  Would Trump dare expose the fact that Bush-Clinton/neoliberal-neocon is a charade that masks the united criminal reality  that is the New World Order? Unless the answer to all of these questions is yes, then Trump is no hero, either.

Trump will not pull the plug on the machine that put him on the map; the system that made him rich. It would be delusional to think he would.

“Not being Clinton” is not, by itself, a qualification. If Trump is backed by the Bush faction, and by neocons such as his vice presidential partner Mike Pence, and if Trump pushes ideas that appeal to right-wing extremists and the Religious Right, then he is simply a different path to the same holocaust, with slightly differences in style and timing.

Given her well documented penchant for war crimes and murder, Hillary Clinton is the larger threat to the planet. But a Trump/neocon/Republican administration would likely also result in continued chaos and suffering, and dangers of great magnitude.

The next circus moment

The second debate scheduled for October 9, 2016 promises nothing better for Trump. The last debate saw Hillary Clinton and Lester Holt ganging up on Trump. This next time, it will be three against one.

One of the “moderators” is CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was a CIA intern, who likely still functions as an intelligence asset.

CNN is so heavily skewed to the Clintons, and dominated by former Clintonites, that it is referred to derisively as the “Clinton News Network”. Cooper has pushed the lie that Lester Holt was deferential to Trump, when in fact Holt constantly interrupted Trump and bashed him every time Hillary asked him to. Cooper’s statements  suggest that he will attack Trump even more aggressively than Holt.

The other “moderator” will be ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who was White House correspondent in the George W. Bush administration. Raddatz is further proof that the corporate media is a revolving door through which Washington insiders slither and slime back and forth.

As long as the Clinton operatives continue to be allowed to get away with fraud and criminal shenanigans—-be it rigged podiums, rigged stage props, hidden teleprompters, hidden transceivers, cheat notes, and collusion with “moderators”—and as long as the corporate media continues to conspire with the Clintons without consequences, then Donald Trump will be toast again.

That is what the Clintons are counting on.

Introducción

A pesar del establecimiento de un diálogo histórico con La Habana el 17 de diciembre de 2014 y pese a la visita oficial del presidente Barack Obama a la isla en marzo de 2016, Washington sigue aplicando sanciones económicas contra la población cubana, suscitando la incomprensión de la comunidad internacional. Establecidas en 1960, en plena Guerra Fría, las sanciones perduran más de medio siglo después, ocasionan importantes dificultades a la economía cubana e infligen sufrimientos inútiles a las categorías más vulnerables de la población. Su costo elevado y su alcance extraterritorial motivan el rechazo unánime de la comunidad internacional. No obstante la resolución de este conflicto asimétrico depende del poder ejecutivo estadounidense, que dispone de las prerrogativas necesarias para desmantelar gran parte de la red de sanciones impuestas a la isla.

Costo de las sanciones económicas

El 13 de septiembre de 2016 Barack Obama volvió a renovar por un año la Ley de Comercio con el Enemigo, una legislación de 1917 utilizada por primera vez por el presidente John F. Kennedy en 1962 para imponer sanciones económicas totales a Cuba, que prorroga el estado de sitio contra la isla. Esta ley, prorrogada cada año por los nueve presidentes de Estados Unidos desde esa fecha, sólo se aplica contra La Habana.

Una vez más el impacto de las sanciones ha sido dramático para la economía y la sociedad cubanas. En un año, de abril de 2015 a marzo de 2016, costaron 4.680 millones de dólares a la isla según Bruno Rodríguez, ministro cubano de Relaciones Exteriores. En su informe anual sobre las sanciones económicas, las autoridades cubanas estimaron los daños causados a nivel nacional. Resultaron afectados particularmente tres sectores. Primero las exportaciones, ya que Cuba no puede vender bienes ni servicios a Estados Unidos. Luego el costo producido por la búsqueda de mercados alternativos geográficamente alejados de la isla. Y finalmente el impacto financiero, pues Cuba todavía no puede usar el dólar en sus transacciones internacionales, a pesar de las declaraciones del presidente Obama sobre la supresión de esta restricción. “No existe elemento en nuestras vidas en el que no esté presente su impacto”, concluyó Bruno Rodríguez. En total las sanciones económicas han costado 125.000 millones de dólares a Cuba desde su implementación en los años 1960.

Otros sectores vitales, como el de la salud, resultan afectados por las sanciones económicas. Sólo para citar un ejemplo, Cuba no puede adquirir los estimuladores cerebrales profundos, que permiten tratar las enfermedades neurológicas, que produce de modo exclusivo la empresa estadounidense Medtronic. Varios centenares de pacientes cubanos con la enfermedad de Parkinson, que podrían beneficiar de una mejor calidad de vida gracias a este equipo, se ven privados de él a causa de un diferendo político que opone Washington a La Habana desde hace más de medio siglo.

Aspecto extraterritorial de las sanciones

A pesar del acercamiento histórico de diciembre de 2014, varias entidades internacionales fueron fuertemente sancionadas después de esa fecha por realizar, en perfecta legalidad con el derecho internacional, transacciones financieras con Cuba. Así, en mayo de 2015, el banco francés BNP Paribas fue condenado a una multa record de 8.900 millones de dólares por mantener, entre otros, relaciones financieras con Cuba. En octubre de 2015 otro banco francés, Crédit Agricole, tuvo que pagar una multa de 1.116 millones de dólares por el mismo motivo. Conviene recordar que BNP Paribas y Crédit Agricole no violaron ninguna ley francesa y respetaron escrupulosamente el derecho europeo y el derecho internacional. Washington aplicó de modo extraterritorial, es decir ilegal, sus sanciones contra Cuba. Otras entidades financieras también fueron fuertemente sancionadas. Así el banco alemán Commerzbank tuvo que pagar una multa de 1.710 millones de dólares y puso término a todas sus relaciones con Cuba. El poder ejecutivo estadounidense tomó todas estas decisiones.

Margen de maniobra del presidente Obama

No obstante, el presidente Obama lanzó varios llamados al Congreso convidándolo a poner fin al estado de sitio anacrónico, cruel e ineficiente. Expresó varias veces su oposición al mantenimiento de medidas de retorsión económica que además de afectar gravemente el bienestar de los cubanos han aislado a Estados Unidos en la escena internacional. Durante su histórico viaje a Cuba admitió lo siguiente: “La política de Estados Unidos ha fracasado. Debemos tener la valentía de reconocer esta verdad. Una política de aislamiento elaborada para la Guerra Fría no tiene ningún sentido en el siglo XXI. El embargo sólo hace daño al pueblo cubano en vez de ayudarlo. Es una carga de otro tiempo que pesa sobre el pueblo cubano”. La comunidad mundial, favorable a la resolución pacífica de este conflicto, aplaudió este discurso marcado por la lucidez.

Sin embargo la retórica constructiva de Barack Obama no ha sido corroborada por hechos tangibles, a pesar de sus prerrogativas como jefe del poder ejecutivo. Es verdad que el presidente de Estados Unidos restableció el diálogo político con Cuba en diciembre de 2014, amplió el número de categorías de ciudadanos estadounidenses autorizados a viajar a la isla en enero de 2015, retiró a Cuba de la lista de los países patrocinadores del terrorismo en mayo de 2015, restableció los lazos diplomáticos con la reapertura de embajadas en Washington y La Habana en julio de 2015, autorizó la exportación de bienes y servicios en el campo de las telecomunicaciones en marzo de 2016 (sólo hacia el sector no estatal) y facilitó la reanudación del transporte marítimo de pasajeros entre ambas naciones en mayo de 2016 y de los vuelos comerciales en agosto de 2016.

No obstante, más allá de estas medidas positivas pero muy limitadas, el presidente de Estados Unidos dispone de todo el margen de maniobra necesario para desmantelar la casi totalidad de la red de sanciones impuestas desde 1960, sin necesitar la autorización del Congreso. Barack Obama podría autorizar a las empresas cubanas a abrir cuentas bancarias en Estados Unidos para facilitar las transacciones comerciales y financieras. Podría también poner fin a la persecución financiera contra Cuba, de la cual han sufrido muchos bancos internacionales. En total la administración de Obama infligió multas por un importe total de 14.000 millones de dólares a diversas entidades bancarias del mundo por sus relaciones con la isla del Caribe. Del mismo modo, la Casa Blanca podría permitir el comercio bilateral entre las empresas cubanas y estadounidenses (importaciones/exportaciones). También podría consentir a los capitales estadounidenses la posibilidad de hacer inversiones en Cuba. Por fin, podría, por ejemplo, eliminar la restricción que impide que todo barco, cual fuere su origen, que transporte mercancía a Cuba, entre en un puerto estadounidense durante los siguientes seis meses.

Sólo hay cuatro sectores que el poder ejecutivo no puede tocar sin el acuerdo del Congreso. El Presidente Obama no puede autorizar el comercio entre las subsidiarias de las empresas estadounidenses ubicadas en el exterior y Cuba (Ley Torricelli de 1992). En cambio, puede permitir el comercio entre la empresa matriz instalada en Estados Unidos y las empresas cubanas, lo que hace que resulte de facto inútil toda transacción con una subsidiaria establecida en un tercer país.

Del mismo modo, Barack Obama no puede permitir el turismo ordinario en Cuba (Ley de Reforma de las Sanciones Comerciales de 2000). En cambio puede perfectamente multiplicar el número de categorías de ciudadanos autorizados a viajar a la isla y ampliar su definición. Así, la Casa Blanca podría redefinir la noción de “viaje cultural” e integrar por ejemplo la visita de un simple museo. De este modo todo ciudadano que se comprometa a visitar un museo durante su estancia en Cuba podría beneficiarse de la categoría “viaje cultural”.

Sin el acuerdo del Congreso, el presidente Obama tampoco puede autorizar la venta a crédito de materias primas alimenticias (Ley de Reforma de las Sanciones Comerciales de 2000). En cambio puede perfectamente consentir la venta a crédito de todo producto no alimenticio, lo que limitaría considerablemente el impacto de la sanción.

Finalmente la Casa Blanca no puede permitir las transacciones con las propiedades estadounidenses nacionalizadas en los años 1960 (Ley Helms-Burton de 1996). No obstante, puede abrir la vía a todo negocio que implique las demás propiedades de la isla.

Rechazo unánime de las sanciones

Todos los sectores de la sociedad estadounidense están a favor del levantamiento de las sanciones económicas. El mundo de los negocios, mediante la Cámara de Comercio de Estados Unidos, desea fuertemente su fin pues ve un mercado de 11 millones de habitantes a 150 kilómetros de las costas estadounidenses que acoge a otros inversionistas internacionales. La opinión pública favorece a más del 70 % la normalización completa de las relaciones bilaterales entre ambas naciones, pues no entiende por qué su gobierno le prohíbe viajar a Cuba para hacer turismo ordinario. Las autoridades religiosas, mediante el Consejo Nacional de Iglesias, han condenado las sanciones por el sufrimiento que infligen a la población de la isla. Los cubanoamericanos, con un 63 % según un sondeo de septiembre de 2016, también son partidarios del levantamiento de las sanciones, pues saben que las medidas económicas hostiles afectan a sus familiares en la isla. Por fin conviene recordar que en 2015, por vigesimocuarta vez consecutiva, 191 países sobre 193 pidieron el fin del estado de sitio contra la isla durante la reunión anual de la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas.

Un conflicto asimétrico

Algunos observadores consideran que Cuba debe responder a los gestos que realizó el presidente Obama con cambios de orden interno. Olvidan de hecho el carácter asimétrico del conflicto. En efecto, en el diferendo que opone Washington a La Habana, la hostilidad es unilateral. Cuba no impone sanciones económicas a Estados Unidos, no ocupa de modo ilegal una parte de su territorio soberano (Guantánamo), no financia abiertamente a una oposición interna con el objetivo de conseguir un “cambio de régimen”, no roba el capital humano como lo hace la Ley de Ajuste Cubano, no realiza transmisiones ilegales destinadas a fomentar la subversión interna –como es el caso con Radio y TV Martí- Por otra parte, Cuba es una nación independiente y según el derecho internacional y desde el Congreso de Westfalia de 1648, que reconoce la igualdad soberana entre los Estados, los cambios en la isla son competencia exclusiva del pueblo cubano, el único que puede decidir su sistema político y su modelo de sociedad.

Conclusión

Las sanciones contra Cuba son anacrónicas, crueles e ineficientes. Tienen un impacto desastroso sobre la economía cubana y afectan durablemente el bienestar de la población de la isla. A pesar de las declaraciones constructivas de la Casa Blanca a favor de un levantamiento de este estado de sitio, no se ha adoptado ninguna medida de envergadura para aliviar a los cubanos de este estrangulamiento económico que dura desde hace más de medio siglo y que la comunidad internacional condena de modo masivo. Desde luego, ninguna normalización completa de las relaciones será posible mientras esté en vigor esta política hostil.

 Salim Lamrani

Universidad de La Réunion

Doctor en Estudios Ibéricos y Latinoamericanos de la Universidad Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV, Salim Lamrani es profesor titular de la Universidad de La Reunión y periodista, especialista de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. Su último libro se titula Cuba, ¡palabra a la defensa!, Hondarribia, Editorial Hiru, 2016.

http://www.tiendaeditorialhiru.com/informe/336-cuba-palabra-a-la-defensa.html 

Contacto: [email protected] ; [email protected] 

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

Mentre i riflettori politico-mediatici sono puntati sulla  Siria, al centro di una colossale psyop per far apparire gli aggrediti come aggressori, resta in ombra ciò che avviene in altre parti del Medioriente e in Africa.

Stati uniti, Arabia Saudita, Qatar, Kuwait ed Emirati – che da cinque anni conducono la guerra in Siria con forze terroriste infiltrate e ora accusano il governo siriano di crimini di guerra sponsorizzando la mostra fotografica Caesar presentata domani a Roma – continuano a fare strage di civili nello Yemen. Alla guerra partecipa il Comando centrale Usa con attacchi «antiterrorismo», ufficialmente documentati, effettuati nello Yemen con droni e cacciabombardieri.

Ancora più in ombra, sui media, restano le operazioni militari Usa in Africa. Esse sono condotte dal Comando Africa  (Africom), che ha in Italia due importanti comandi subordinati.

Lo U.S. Army Africa (Esercito Usa per l’Africa), il cui quartier generale è alla caserma Ederle di Vicenza, «fornisce il comando di missione e impiega forze per il teatro operativo», fornendo allo stesso tempo assistenza militare ai partner africani per stabilire «sicurezza e stabilità» nel continente.

Le U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa (Forze navali Usa per l’Europa e l’Africa), il cui quartier generale è nella base di Capodichino a Napoli, sono costituite da sei task force formate dalle navi da guerra della Sesta Flotta basata a Gaeta. La loro «area di responsabilità» copre Russia, Europa e Africa (salvo l’Egitto che rientra in quella del Comando centrale), compresa metà dell’Atlantico dal Polo Nord all’Antartico. Sono agli ordini dell’ammiraglia Michelle Howard, che allo stesso tempo è a capo del Comando della forza congiunta alleata (Jfc-Naples) con quartier generale a Lago Patria (Napoli).

Con queste forze, compresi i caccia delle portaerei e i droni armati con base a Sigonella, gli Usa stanno intensificando le operazioni militari in Africa. I raid aerei, effettuati da agosto in Libia con la motivazione di fermare l’avanzata dell’Isis (la cui minaccia è stata ingigantita), servono in realtà al piano di riconquista e ricolonizzazione della Libia, dove operano da tempo forze speciali statunitensi ed europee.

Ma questa è solo la punta emergente del «grande gioco» africano. Tra le sue molte «missioni», l’Africom sta costruendo in Niger una base di droni armati, ufficialmente in funzione «antiterrorismo». Essa serve alle operazioni militari che gli Usa conducono da anni, insieme alla Francia, nell’Africa del Sahel, soprattutto in Mali, Niger e Ciad. Paesi tra i più poveri del mondo (con un tasso di analfabetismo che in Niger è del 70% tra gli uomini e del 90% tra le donne), ma ricchissimi di materie prime – coltan e oro in Mali, uranio in Niger, petrolio in Ciad – sfruttati da multinazionali statunitensi e francesi che temono la concorrenza delle società cinesi, le quali offrono ai paesi africani condizioni molto più favorevoli.

Un’altra operazione militare Usa, con droni e forze speciali,  è in corso in Somalia, paese di primaria importanza geostrategica.

Allo stesso tempo, lo U.S. Army Africa penetra nel continente con programmi di «cooperazione alla sicurezza» il cui vero scopo è formare élite militari al servizio degli Usa. Allo stesso scopo le navi da guerra delle U.S. Naval Forces Africa percorrono le coste africane per fornire «assistenza alla sicurezza marittima».

Non viene trascurata l’assistenza spirituale: il cappellano della nave da assalto anfibio Wasp ha celebrato in videoconferenza dal Mediterraneo la Santa Messa per i marinai della nave da guerra San Antonio impegnata in una missione in Africa.

Manlio Dinucci

The Israeli navy has been preparing to attack the Women’s Boats heading to break the ten-year-old siege on the Gaza Strip, Quds Press reported yesterday. The boats, which are part of the Freedom Flotilla Alliance, are expected to arrive in Gaza within three days if they are not impeded in any way.

According to a report on Israel’s Channel 2 TV, naval gunships have been waiting in the port of Ashdod ready to move and intercept the Zaytouna and Amal, the two boats making the bid. The TV report claimed that the activists on board the boats have been trained in order to know what to do if they are confronted by the Israeli navy.

Meanwhile, Channel 7 TV said that a group of right-wing Jewish settlers are planning their own flotilla off the coast of Gaza to intercept the Zaytouna and Amal, and oblige them to go to Syria. Refugees there, they argue, are in more need of their support than the Palestinians in Gaza.

Thirty international activists are on the humanitarian mission to Gaza, including the Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire from Northern Ireland, Swedish European Parliament Member Malin Bjork, Marama Davidson, a Green Party MP from New Zealand, and American screenwriter and playwright Naomi Wallace. Turkish athlete Cigdem Topcuoglu, who sailed on the Mavi Marmara in 2010 and whose husband was among the ten activists killed by Israeli commandos, is also on board the Women’s Boats to Gaza.

According to the UN, Gaza will be uninhabitable by 2020, said Canadian social worker, Wendy Goldsmith, adding that the WBG “declares that the illegal blockade of Gaza must end, so that every person can live with freedom and dignity.”

Pro-Palestinian Turks gather on the fourth anniversary of a deadly Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara ship, in Istanbul, Turkey

On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, the flagship of a flotilla crewed by an alliance of pro-Palestinian activists who had combined to deliver 10,000 tonnes of aid to Gaza.

The Israeli raid killed nine Turkish citizens and injured about 50 other people. A tenth Turkish national later succumbed to his injuries.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

The Tel Aviv regime has waged three wars on the coastal enclave since 2008, including the 2014 offensive, which left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead and over 11,100 others wounded.

State assets, including water and electricity utilities, are to be transferred to a new asset fund created by international creditors. The plans have sparked demonstrations and public sector strikes across the country.

Greece’s parliament passed new reforms on Tuesday night to cut pension expenditure and transfer control of public utilities to a new asset fund.

The reforms seek to unlock 2.8 billion euros ($3.14 billion) in financial loans as part of the country’s latest bailout program.

The reforms were passed by a narrow 152-141 majority vote in Greece’s 300-seat parliament, after 152 parliamentary members of the ruling Syriza-Independent Greeks coalition approved the reform bill. Only one member of the coalition voted against the bill, along with all opposition members.

The reforms will see public assets transferred to a new asset fund created by Greece’s creditors. Assets include airports and motorways, as well as water and electricity utilities. The holding company groups together these state entities with the country’s privatization agency, the bank stability fund and state real estate. It will be led by an official chosen by Greece’s creditors, although Greece’s Finance Ministry will retain overall control.

Public backlash

The reforms sparked significant backlash among demonstrators and public sector workers.

Ahead of the vote, protestors outside of the parliament in Athens chanted, “Next you’ll sell the Acropolis!”

Read Complete Article on Deutsche Welle

The honorary degree system at universities tends to be a rotten business, though Stephen Edward Epler, in his Honorary Degrees: A Survey of Their Use and Abuse (1943), regarded them as “perhaps the most important honorific in the nation.”

Left to lauding the achievements of the exceptional, notably those who might not have spent much time in the direct line of research or squirrel scholarship, such awards have their place.  But the modern honorary awards system reflects the modern university funding environment.  Awards follow the money – and the donor.

Corruption often gets a helping hand; officials long past their use as researchers or teachers find themselves in the trough of gratitude. Then comes the largesse given former political figures, be it in terms of professorial appointments or degrees that say more about the institution awarding it than them.

Universities have also shown themselves susceptible to bestowing honorary doctorates to the celebrity figure, a fairly nonsensical and utterly needless exercise that has done wonders to diminish institutional value.

Comedian Bill Cosby, to take a notable, flawed example, has received a whole stash over the years, though that number has declined of late.  Accusations of drugging and molestation led such universities as Marquette, Fordham and Brown to withdraw their ill-considered awards.

Brown’s president, Christina Paxson, said in a campus-wide email that the withdrawal was necessary, given that the award had been based on good university values: “honesty, fair play, love of family, and respect for humanity.”

Such statements seem spectacularly disingenuous when you consider that universities have even gone so far as to regard entities not deemed Homo sapiens eligible.  A moronic Kanye West might well qualify for the wooden spoon, but even that would be stretching it.

Ever wanting to surprise, the officialdoms of universities have engaged in a form of one upmanship, finding ever stranger recipients.  That Kermit the Frog somehow qualifies shows how the celebrity figure, notably fictionalised, trumps academic sobriety.  On May 19, 1996, the long-time figure of children’s program Sesame Street received an Honorary Doctorate of Amphibious Letters from Southampton College, New York.

This was hardly even daringly amusing but when the Oxford Union permits the puppet figure to give voice to the idea before 1,000 students that,  “The responsibility of representing an entire species rests on my shoulders, ”the world has truly been turned on its injudicious head.

Former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, was never as popular as Kermit, and the decision of Sydney University to award him an honorary doctorate was initially going to be one of those dull affairs. Other Australian prime ministers who had graduated from the institution had been similarly rewarded.

Last Wednesday, the institution stated that Howard’s doctorate acknowledged his achievements in instigating “world-leading gun law reform” while also providing leadership in East Timor and contributing to “economic reform”. How any of these categories would have merited a honorific is hard to say, but such institutions have form.

Protestors thought otherwise of the decision.  On Friday morning, some 150 gathered outside the Great Hall lead by academic of English and linguistics Nick Riemer.  There were also 50 agitated students who, according to The Guardian, “splintered off to lead chants of ‘Racist, sexist, and anti-queer – Howard is not welcome here’ and ‘John Howard, blood on our hands’.”[1]

Riemer’s points were cogent enough in describing a view alien to genuine academic practice.  Howard famously avoided the painstaking world of evidence and verifying the case for many of his policies. His Australia became a surlier, more mean spirited place, one suspicious of phantom threats of terror or refugees. The economy boomed, but reasoning fell sharply.

As a letter with more than 100 signatures of Sydney University staff and PhD students opined, “To confer a doctorate on him is an insult to Indigenous people, refugees, and anyone committed to multiculturalism, peace and social progress in this country and the world.”

Importantly, it was also an Australia that went to war in the Middle East in the absence of any credible evidence that a sovereign country posed a threat to its security interests, or for that matter the interests of any of its allies.  As his predecessor, Paul Keating, explained, “there was never any evidence that such weapons [in Iraq] existed and that fact was established following the exhaustive UN investigation led by Hans Blix”.[2]  Not one for evidence, old Howard.

In truth, there is something to be said about awarding the corrupt, the questionable, and the non-human with degrees that speak volumes about modern research and teaching institutions.  Howard’s abuses in office were exceptional by Australian standards, but university management has proven to be an indifferent beast to such achievement.

Notes

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/08/paul-keating-says-john-howard-should-hang-his-head-in-shame-over-iraq-war

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

Posing as a non-political solidarity organization, the Syria Campaign leverages local partners and media contacts to push the U.S. into toppling another Middle Eastern government.

On September 30, demonstrators gathered in city squares across the West for a “weekend of action” to “stop the bombs” raining down from Syrian government and Russian warplanes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Thousands joined the protests, holding signs that read “Topple Assad” and declaring, “Enough With Assad.” Few participants likely knew that the actions were organized under the auspices of an opposition-funded public relations company called the Syria Campaign.

By partnering with local groups like the Syrian civil defense workers popularly known as the White Helmets, and through a vast network of connections in media and centers of political influence, The Syria Campaign has played a crucial role in disseminating images and stories of the horrors visited this month on eastern Aleppo. The group is able to operate within the halls of power in Washington and has the power to mobilize thousands of demonstrators into the streets. Despite its outsized role in shaping how the West sees Syria’s civil war, which is now in its sixth year and entering one of its grisliest phases, this outfit remains virtually unknown to the general public.

The Syria Campaign presents itself as an impartial, non-political voice for ordinary Syrian citizens that is dedicated to civilian protection. “We see ourselves as a solidarity organization,” The Syria Campaign strategy director James Sadri told me. “We’re not being paid by anybody to pursue a particular line. We feel like we’ve done a really good job about finding out who the frontline activists, doctors, humanitarians are and trying to get their word out to the international community.”

Yet behind the lofty rhetoric about solidarity and the images of heroic rescuers rushing in to save lives is an agenda that aligns closely with the forces from Riyadh to Washington clamoring for regime change. Indeed, The Syria Campaign has been pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria that would require at least “70,000 American servicemen” to enforce, according to a Pentagon assessment, along with the destruction of government infrastructure and military installations. There is no record of a no-fly zone being imposed without regime change following —which seems to be exactly what The Syria Campaign and its partners want.

“For us to control all the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia. That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make,” said Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee this month.

While the military brass in Washington seems reluctant to apply the full force of its airpower to enforce a NFZ, The Syria Campaign is capitalizing on the outrage inspired by the bombardment of rebel-held eastern Aleppo this year to intensify the drumbeat for greater U.S. military involvement.

The Syria Campaign has been careful to cloak interventionism in the liberal-friendly language of human rights, casting Western military action as “the best way to support Syrian refugees,” and packaging a no-fly zone — along with so-called safe zones and no bombing zones, which would also require Western military enforcement — as a “way to protect civilians and defeat ISIS.”

Among The Syria Campaign’s most prominent vehicles for promoting military intervention is a self-proclaimed “unarmed and impartial” civil defense group known as the White Helmets. Footage of the White Helmets saving civilians trapped in the rubble of buildings bombed by the Syrian government and its Russian ally has become ubiquitous in coverage of the crisis. Having claimed to have saved tens of thousands of lives, the group has become a leading resource for journalists and human rights groups seeking information inside the war theater, from casualty figures to details on the kind of bombs that are falling.

But like The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets are anything but impartial. Indeed, the group was founded in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Office of Transitional Initiatives, an explicitly political wing of the agency that has funded efforts at political subversion in Cuba and Venezuela. USAID is the White Helmets’ principal funder, committing at least $23 million to the group since 2013. This money was part of $339.6 million budgeted by USAID for “supporting activities that pursue a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria” — or establishing a parallel governing structure that could fill the power vacuum once Bashar Al-Assad was removed.

Thanks to an aggressive public relations push by The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets have been nominated for the Nobel Prize, and have already been awarded the “alternative Nobel” known as the Right Livelihood Award. (Previous winners include Amy Goodman, Edward Snowden and Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.) At the same time, the White Helmets are pushing for a NFZ in public appearances and on a website created by The Syria Campaign.

The Syria Campaign has garnered endorsements for the White Helmets from a host of Hollywood celebrities including Ben Affleck, Alicia Keyes and Justin Timberlake. And with fundraising and “outreach” performed by The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets have become the stars of a slickly produced Netflix documentary vehicle that has received hype from media outlets across the West.

But making the White Helmets into an international sensation is just one of a series of successes The Syria Campaign has achieved in its drive to oust Syria’s government.

Targeting the UN in Damascus 

When an aid convoy organized by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs came under attack on its way to the rebel-held countryside of West Aleppo in Syria this September 18, the White Helmets pinned blame squarely on the Syrian and Russian governments. In fact, a White Helmets member was among the first civilians to appear on camera at the scene of the attack, declaring in English that “the regime helicopters targeted this place with four barrel [bombs].” The White Helmets also produced one of the major pieces of evidence Western journalists have relied on to implicate Russia and the Syrian government in the attack: a photograph supposedly depicting the tail fragment of a Russian-made OFAB 250-270 fragmentation bomb. (This account remains unconfirmed by both the UN and SARC, and no evidence of barrel bombs has been produced).

Ironically, the White Helmets figured prominently in The Syria Campaign’s push to undermine the UN’s humanitarian work inside Syria. For months, The Syria Campaign has painted the UN as a stooge of Bashar Al-Assad for coordinating its aid deliveries with the Syrian government, as it has done with governments in conflict zones around the world. The Guardian’s Kareem Shaheen praised a 50-page report by The Syria Campaign attacking the UN’s work in Syria as “damning.” A subsequent Guaridian article cited the report as part of the inspiration for its own “exclusive” investigation slamming the UN’s coordination with the Syrian government.

At a website created by The Syria Campaign to host the report, visitors are greeted by a UN logo drenched in blood.

The Syria Campaign has even taken credit for forcing former UN Resident Coordinator Yacoub El-Hillo out of his job in Damascus, a false claim it was later forced to retract. Among the opposition groups that promoted The Syria Campaign’s anti-UN report was Ahrar Al-Sham, a jihadist rebel faction that has allied with Al Qaeda in a mission to establish an exclusively Islamic state across Syria.

A Westerner who operates a politically neutral humanitarian NGO in Damascus offered me a withering assessment of The Syria Campaign’s attacks on the UN. Speaking on condition of anonymity because NGO workers like them are generally forbidden from speaking to the media, and often face repercussions if they do, the source accused The Syria Campaign of “dividing and polarizing the humanitarian community” along political lines while forcing humanitarian entities to “make decisions based on potential media repercussions instead of focusing on actual needs on the ground.”

The NGO executive went on to accuse The Syria Campaign and its partners in the opposition of “progressively identifying the humanitarian workers operating from Damascus with one party to the conflict,” limiting their ability to negotiate access to rebel-held territory. “As a humanitarian worker myself,” they explained, “I know that this puts me and my teams in great danger since it legitimizes warring factions treating you as an extension of one party in the conflict.

“The thousands of Syrians that signed up with the UN or humanitarian organizations are civilians,” they continued. “They not only joined to get a salary but in hopes of doing something good for other Syrians. This campaign [by The Syria Campaign] is humiliating all of them, labelling them as supporters of one side and making them lose hope in becoming agents of positive change in their own society.”

This September, days before the aid convoy attack prompted the UN to suspend much of its work inside Syria, The Syria Campaign spurred 73 aid organizations operating in rebel-held territory, including the White Helmets, to suspend their cooperation with the UN aid program. As the Guardian noted in its coverage, “The decision to withdraw from the Whole of Syria programme, in which organisations share information to help the delivery of aid, means in practice the UN will lose sight of what is happening throughout the north of Syria and in opposition-held areas of the country, where the NGOs do most of their work.”

Despite The Syria Campaign’s influence on the international media stage, details on the outfit’s inner workings are difficult to come by. The Syria Campaign is registered in England as a private company called the Voices Project at an address shared by 91 other companies. Aside from Asfari, most of The Syria Campaign’s donors are anonymous.

Looming over this opaque operation are questions about its connections to Avaaz, a global public relations outfit that played an instrumental role in generating support for a no-fly zone in Libya, and The Syria Campaign’s founding by Purpose, another PR firm spun out of Avaaz. James Sadri bristled when I asked about the issue, dismissing it as a “crank conspiracy” ginned up by Russian state media and hardcore Assadist elements.

However, a careful look at the origins and operation of The Syria Campaign raises doubts about the outfit’s image as an authentic voice for Syrian civilians, and should invite serious questions about the agenda of its partner organizations as well.

A creation of international PR firms

Best known for its work on liberal social issues with well-funded progressive clients like the ACLU and the police reform group, Campaign Zero, the New York- and London-based public relations firm Purpose promises to deliver creatively executed campaigns that produce either a “behavior change,” “perception change,” “policy change” or “infrastructure change.” As the Syrian conflict entered its third year, this company was ready to effect a regime change.

On Feb. 3, 2014, Anna Nolan, the senior strategist at Purpose, posted a job listing. According to Nolan’s listing, her firm was seeking “two interns to join the team at Purpose to help launch a new movement for Syria.”

At around the same time, another Purpose staffer named Ali Weiner posted a job listing seeking a paid intern for the PR firm’s new Syrian Voices project. “Together with Syrians in the diaspora and NGO partners,” Weiner wrote, “Purpose is building a movement that will amplify the voices of moderate, non-violent Syrians and mobilize people in the Middle East and around the world to call for specific changes in the political and humanitarian situation in the region.” She explained that the staffer would report “to a Strategist based primarily in London, but will work closely with the Purpose teams in both London and New York.”

On June 16, 2014, Purpose founder Jeremy Heimans drafted articles of association for The Syria Campaign’s parent company. Called the Voices Project, Heimans registered the company at 3 Bull Lane, St. Ives Cambridgeshire, England. It was one of 91 private limited companies listed at the address. Sadri would not explain why The Syria Campaign had chosen this location or why it was registered as a private company.

Along with Heimans, Purpose Europe director Tim Dixon was appointed to The Syria Campaign’s board of directors. So was John Jackson, a Purpose strategist who previously co-directed the Burma Campaign U.K. that lobbied the EU for sanctions against that country’s ruling regime. (Jackson claimed credit for The Syria Campaign’s successful push to remove Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s re-election campaign ads from Facebook.) Anna Nolan became The Syria Campaign’s project director, even as she remained listed as the strategy director at Purpose.

“Purpose is not involved in what we do,” The Syria Campaign’s Sadri told me. When pressed about the presence of several Purpose strategists on The Syria Campaign’s board of directors and staff, Sadri insisted, “We’re not part of Purpose. There’s no financial relationship and we’re independent.”

Sadri dismissed allegations about The Syria Campaign’s origins in Avaaz. “We have no connection to Avaaz,” he stated, blaming conspiratorial “Russia Today stuff” for linking the two public relations groups.

However, Purpose’s original job listing for its Syrian Voices project boasted that “Purpose grew out of some of the most impactful new models for social change” including “the now 30 million strong action network avaaz.org.” In fact, The Syria Campaign’s founder, Purpose co-founder Jeremy Heimans, was also one of the original founders of Avaaz. As he told Forbes, “I co-founded Avaaz and [the Australian activist group] Get Up, which inspired the creation of Purpose.”

New and improved no-fly zone

The Syria Campaign’s defensiveness about ties to Avaaz is understandable.

Back in 2011, Avaaz introduced a public campaign for a no-fly zone in Libya and delivered a petition with 1,202,940 signatures to the UN supporting Western intervention. John Hilary, the executive director of War On Want, the U.K.’s leading anti-poverty and anti-war charity, warned at the time, “Little do most of these generally well-meaning activists know, they are strengthening the hands of those western governments desperate to reassert their interests in north Africa… Clearly a no-fly zone makes foreign intervention sound rather humanitarian—putting the emphasis on stopping bombing, even though it could well lead to an escalation of violence.”

John Hilary’s dire warning was fulfilled after the NATO-enforced no-fly zone prompted the ouster of former President Moamar Qaddafi. Months later, Qaddafi was sexually assaulted and beaten to death in the road by a mob of fanatics. The Islamic State and an assortment of militias filled the void left in the Jamahiriya government’s wake. The political catastrophe should have been serious enough to call future interventions of this nature into question. Yet Libya’s legacy failed to deter Avaaz from introducing a new campaign for another no-fly zone; this time in Syria.

“To some a no-fly zone could conjure up images of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and illegal Western interventions. This is a different thing,” Avaaz insisted in a communique defending its support for a new no-fly zone in Syria. Sadri portrayed The Syria Campaign’s support for a no-fly zone as the product of a “deep listening process” involving the polling of Syrian civilians in rebel-held territories and refugees outside the country. He claimed his outfit was a “solidarity organization,” not a public relations firm, and was adamant that if and when a no-fly zone is imposed over Syrian skies, it would be different than those seen in past conflicts.

“There also seems to be a critique of a no-fly zone which is slapping on templates from other conflicts and saying this is what will happen in Syria,” Sadri commented. He added, “I’m just trying to encourage us away from a simplistic debate. There’s a kneejerk reaction to Syria to say, ’It’s Iraq or it’s Libya,’ but it’s not. It’s an entirely different conflict.”

Funding a “credible transition”

For the petroleum mogul who provided the funding that launched the Syria Project, the means of military intervention justified an end in which he could return to the country of his birth and participate in its economic life on his own terms.

Though The Syria Campaign claims to “refuse funding from any party to the conflict in Syria,” it was founded and is sustained with generous financial assistance from one of the most influential exile figures of the opposition, Ayman Asfari, the U.K.-based CEO of the British oil and gas supply company Petrofac Limited. Asfari is worth $1.2 billion and owns about one-fifth of the shares of his company, which boasts 18,000 employees and close to $7 billion in annual revenues.

Through his Asfari Foundation, he has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to The Syria Campaign and has secured a seat for his wife, Sawsan, on its board of directors. He has also been a top financial and political supporter of the Syrian National Coalition, the largest government-in-exile group set up after the Syrian revolt began. The group is dead-set on removing Assad and replacing him with one of its own. Asfari’s support for opposition forces was so pronounced the Syrian government filed a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of supporting “terrorism.”

In London, Asfari has been a major donor to former British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party. This May, Cameron keynoted a fundraiser for the Hands Up for Syria Appeal, a charity heavily supported by Asfari that sponsors education for Syrian children living in refugee camps. The Prime Minister might have seemed like an unusual choice for the event given his staunch resistance to accepting unaccompanied Syrian children who have fled to Europe. However, Asfari has generally supported Cameron’s exclusionary policy.

Grilled about his position during an episode of BBC’s Hardtalk, Asfari explained, “I do not want the country to be emptied. I still have a dream that those guys [refugees] will be able to go back to their homes and they will be able to play a constructive role in putting Syria back together.”

In Washington, Asfari is regarded as an important liaison to the Syrian opposition. He has visited the White House eight times since 2014, meeting with officials like Philip Gordon, the former Middle East coordinator who was an early advocate for arming the insurgency in Syria. Since leaving the administration, however, Gordon has expressed regret over having embraced a policy of regime change. In a lengthy September 2015 editorial for Politico, Gordon slammed the Obama administration’s pursuit of regime change, writing, “There is now virtually no chance that an opposition military ‘victory’ will lead to stable or peaceful governance in Syria in the foreseeable future and near certainty that pursuing one will only lead to many more years of vicious civil war.”

Asfari publicly chastised Gordon days later on Hardtalk. “I have written to [Gordon] an email after I saw that article in Politico and I told him I respectfully disagree,” Asfari remarked. “I think the idea that we are going to have a transition in Syria with Assad in it for an indefinite period is fanciful. Because at the end of the day, what the people want is a credible transition.”

For Asfari, a “credible” post-war transition would require much more than refugee repatriation and the integration of opposition forces into the army: “Will you get the Syrian diaspora, including people like myself, to go back and invest in the country?” he asked on Hardtalk. “…If we do not achieve any of these objectives, what’s the point of having a free Syria?”

The Independent has described Asfari as one among of a pantheon of “super rich” exiles poised to rebuild a post-Assad Syria — and to reap handsome contracts in the process. To reach his goal of returning to Syria in triumph after the downfall of Assad’s government, Asfari not only provided the seed money for The Syria Campaign, he has helped sustain the group with hefty donations.

Just this year, the Asfari Foundation donated $180,000 to the outfit, according to The Syria Campaign’s media lead Laila Kiki. Asfari is not The Syria Campaign’s only donor, however. According to Kiki, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also contributed $120,000 to the outfit’s $800,000 budget this year. “The rest of the funds come from donors who wish to remain anonymous,” she explained.

Shaping the message

Among The Syria Campaign’s main priorities, for which it has apparently budgeted a substantial amount of resources, is moving Western media in a more interventionist direction.

When The Syria Campaign placed an ad on its website seeking a senior press officer upon its launch in 2014, it emphasized its need for “someone who can land pieces in the U.S., U.K. and European [media] markets in the same week.” The company’s ideal candidate would be able to “maintain strong relationships with print, broadcast, online journalists, editors in order to encourage them to see TSC as a leading voice on Syria.” Prioritizing PR experience over political familiarity, The Syria Campaign reassured applicants, “You don’t need to be an expert on Syria or speak Arabic.” After all, the person would be working in close coordination with an unnamed “Syrian communications officer who will support on story gathering and relationships inside Syria.”

Sadri acknowledged that The Syria Campaign has been involved in shopping editorials to major publications. “There have been op-eds in the past that we’ve helped get published, written by people on the ground. There’s a lot of op-eds going out from people inside Syria,” he told me. But he would not say which ones, who the authors were, or if his company played any role in their authorship.

One recent incident highlighted The Syria Campaign’s skillful handling of press relationships from Aleppo to media markets across the West. It was August 17, and a Syrian or Russian warplane had just hit an apartment building in rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Sophie McNeill, a Middle East correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, received a photo from the Syrian American Medical Society, which maintains a WhatsApp group networking doctors inside rebel territory with international media.

The photo showed a five-year-old boy, Omran Daqneesh, who had been extracted from the building by members of the White Helmets and hoisted into an ambulance, where he was filmed by members of the Aleppo Media Center. The chilling image depicts a dazed little boy, seated upright and staring at nothing, his pudgy cheeks caked in ash and blood. “Video then emerged of Omran as he sat blinking in the back of that ambulance,” McNeill wrote without explaining who provided her with the video. She immediately posted the footage on Twitter.

“Watch this video from Aleppo tonight. And watch it again. And remind yourself that with #Syria #wecantsaywedidntknow,” McNeill declared. Her post was retweeted over 17,000 times and the hashtag she originated, which implied international inaction against the Syrian government made such horrors possible, became a viral sensation as well. (McNeill did not respond to questions sent to her publicly listed email.)

Hours later, the image of Omran appeared on the front page of dozens of international newspapers, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to the Times of London. CNN’s Kate Bolduan, who had suggested during Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip in 2014 that civilian casualties were, in fact, human shields, broke down in tears during an extended segment detailing the rescue of Omran.

Abu Sulaiman Al-Muhajir, the Australian citizen serving as a top leader and spokesman for Al Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot, Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, took a special interest in the boy. “I cannot get conditioned to seeing injured/murdered children,” Al-Muhajir wrote on Facebook. “Their innocent faces should serve as a reminder of our responsibility.”

Seizing on the opportunity, The Syria Campaign gathered quotes from the photographer who captured the iconic image, Mahmoud Raslan, and furnished them to an array of media organizations. While many outlets published Raslan’s statements, Public Radio International was among the few that noted The Syria Campaign’s role in serving them up, referring to the outfit as “a pro-opposition advocacy group with a network of contacts in Syria.”

On August 20, McNeill took to Facebook with a call to action: “Were you horrified by the footage of little Omran?” she asked her readers. “Can’t stop thinking about him? Well don’t just retweet, be outraged for 24 hours and move on. Hear what two great humanitarians for Syria, Zaher Sahloul & James Sadri, want you to do now.”

Sadri happened to be the director of The Syria Campaign and Sahloul was the Syrian American Medical Society director who partnered with The Syria Campaign. In the article McNeill wrote about Omran’s photo, which was linked in her Facebook post, both Sahloul and Sadri urged Westerners to join their call for a no-fly zone— a policy McNeill tacitly endorsed. (Sahloul was recently promoted by the neoconservative columnist Eli Lake for accusing Obama of having “allowed a genocide in Syria.” This September, Sahloul joined up with the Jewish United Federation of Chicago, a leading opponent of Palestine solidarity organizing, to promote his efforts.)

As the outrage inspired by the image of Omran spread, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (a friend and publisher of Syria Campaign board member Lina Sergie Attar) called for “fir[ing] missiles from outside Syria to crater [Syrian] military runways to make them unusable.” Meanhwile, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough waved around the photo of Omran and indignantly declared, “The world will look back. Save your hand-wringing…you can still do something right now. But nothing’s been done.”

As breathless editorials and cable news tirades denounced the Obama administration’s supposed “inaction,” public pressure for a larger-scale Western military campaign was approaching an unprecedented level.

Damage control for opposition extremists

The day after Omran made headlines, the left-wing British news site the Canary publicized another photograph that exposed a grim reality behind the iconic image.

Culled from the Facebook page of Mahmoud Raslan, the activist from the American-operated Aleppo Media Center who took the initial video of Omran, it showed Raslan posing for a triumphant selfie with a group of rebel fighters. The armed men hailed from the Nour Al-Din Al-Zenki faction. At least two of the commanders who appeared in the photo with Raslan had recently beheaded a boy they captured, referring to him in video footage as “child” while they taunted and abused him. The boy has been reported to be a 12-year-old named Abdullah Issa and may have been a member of the Liwa Al-Quds pro-government Palestinian militia.

This was not the only time Raslan had appeared with Al-Zenki fighters or expressed his sympathy. On August 2, he posted a selfie to Facebook depicting himself surrounded by mostly adolescent Al-Zenki fighters dressed in battle fatigues. “With the suicide fighters, from the land of battles and butchery, from Aleppo of the martyrs, we bring you tidings of impending joy, with God’s permission,” Raslan wrote. He sported a headband matching those worn by the “suicide fighters.”

Despite its unsavory tendencies and extremist ideological leanings, Al-Zenki was until 2015 a recipient of extensive American funding, with at least 1000 of its fighters on the CIA payroll. Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who has said his research on the Syrian opposition was “100% funded by Western govts,” has branded Al-Zenki as “moderate opposition fighters.”

This August, after the video of Al-Zenki members beheading the adolescent boy appeared online, Sam Heller, a fellow for the Washington-based Century Foundation, argued for restoring the rebel group’s CIA funding. Describing Al-Zenki as “a natural, if unpalatable, partner,” Heller contended that “if Washington insists on keeping its hands perfectly clean, there’s probably no Syrian faction—in the opposition, or on any side of the war—that merits support.”

This September 24, Al-Zenki formally joined forces with the jihadist Army of Conquest led by Al Qaeda-established jihadist group, Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham. For its part, The Syria Campaign coordinated the release of a statement with Raslan explaining away his obvious affinity with Al-Zenki. Sophie McNeill, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter who was among the first to publish the famous Omran photo, dutifully published Raslan’s statement on Twitter, acknowledging The Syria Campaign as its source.

Curiously describing the beheading victim as a 19-year-old and not the “child” his beheaders claimed he was, Raslan pleaded ignorance about the Al-Zenki fighters’ backgrounds: “It was a busy day with lots of different people and groups on the streets. As a war photographer I take lots of photos with civilians and fighters.”

Mahmoud Raslan may not have been the most effective local partner, but The Syria Campaign could still count on the White Helmets.

Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

At least 19 people lost their lives in encounters with police in the United States last week. The victims, all men, ranged in age from 18 to 53. Seventeen were shot to death, one tased, and one both tased and beaten and strangled. In only two of the cases were the victims shot while engaged in violent attacks on others. All the others were shot while fleeing or allegedly resisting police, or while experiencing mental health or emotional crises.

In several instances the police killings sparked protests. In El Cajon, California, a suburb of San Diego, there were protests over the death September 27 of Alfred Olango, an immigrant from Uganda who was tased and shot to death while unarmed. Olango was having an emotional breakdown after learning of the death of a friend.

In Pasadena, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, more than 100 people gathered to protest the killing of Reginald Thomas, father of eight children, after police were called to address a domestic dispute early Friday. The 36-year-old black man, who was reportedly bipolar, was said to be waving a knife and a fire extinguisher when police arrived.

Despite the claims by Democratic Party politicians and middle-class groups like Black Lives Matter that police violence is exclusively a matter of race, with white cops killing African-Americans, the 19 victims last week included at least eight white men, a Hispanic man and an Asian man.

The race of the police killers was usually not reported, but the killings took place in many cities with racially diverse police forces, including Newark, New Jersey; Houston, Texas; and Los Angeles and San Diego, California.

The geographic distribution of the killings included inner cities, suburbs and rural areas, and all regions of the country, from the Northeast to the Pacific Coast. By states, the killings fell as follows: Arizona, Arkansas, California (3), Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan (2), Minnesota, New Jersey (2), Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas (2), and West Virginia.

The death toll on a single day, Friday, September 30, gives a glimpse of the savage character of social relations in the US and the unrestrained brutality of the police, who serve as the first line of defense for capitalist property and the authority of the capitalist state. There were no less than seven victims.

These included, in addition to Reginald Thomas in Pasadena:

* Clayton Eugene Baker, a 24-year-old white man, shot to death by a Trinity County sheriff’s deputy in Groveton, Texas, a small town north of Houston, after the policeman arrived in response to a reported domestic dispute.

* Douglas Marrickus Rainey, a 32-year-old black man, shot to death by a SWAT team in rural Gowensville, South Carolina, hours after a reported armed robbery at a Dollar General which led to a general lockdown of the region.

* Richard Parent, a 37-year-old white man, shot by Michigan state police in Van Buren Township, in the western suburbs of Detroit, after a lengthy chase. Parent refused to pull over on a traffic stop, allegedly claiming to be a “sovereign citizen.”

* Najier Salaam and George Richards-Meyers, both 18 years old, shot to death by six Newark, New Jersey police, who claimed to be confronting a three-man gang responsible for a series of carjackings. None of the officers was injured despite claims of a wild shootout.

* Jacquarius M. Robinson, a 20-year-old black man, killed by a police SWAT team in Columbus, Ohio, 10 hours after police responded to the scene of a shooting death on the city’s east side. Robinson attempted to flee and police shot him dead. It was not known whether there was any evidence connecting him to the earlier killing.

Public attention has focused on the killings in southern California because these provoked angry protests, albeit on a limited scale and without further clashes with the police. Tensions rose again over the weekend after an 18-year-old black youth, Carnell Snell Jr., was shot to death by police about 1 p.m. Saturday in south Los Angeles, after police stopped a car on suspicion that it was stolen.

Two people fled from the car and police shot and killed one of them, later identified as Snell. Police claimed to have found a handgun at the scene, but there was no indication that the youth had the gun in his possession or had fired it. Police frequently place “throw-down” guns at the site of such shootings to provide retroactive justification.

There were protests from family members and other local residents, including one young woman who told the Los Angeles Times, “A police officer should not be the judge, the jury and the executioner.” Snell’s mother, Monique Morgan, said she had been told her son was shot five times in the back. Witnesses told the local CBS television station KCAL that Snell had his hands up and was telling police not to shoot him when they opened fire.

According to the grim tally kept by the web site killedbypolice.net, the week’s death toll, including the police shooting Sunday morning of an as yet unidentified man in Markham, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, brought the year’s total to 868 people. A separate tally, maintained by the Washington Post, found that whites comprised 46 percent of the victims of police killings this year, blacks 24 percent, and Hispanics 16 percent, with other races and undetermined accounting for the remaining 14 percent.

Blacks are killed by police at a much higher rate than their proportion in the population, an indication that racism plays a significant role, but the number of white victims demonstrates that class, not race, is the more fundamental issue. Nearly all the victims of police killings are from the working class, and usually its poorest sections. Police killings do not take place in Beverly Hills, Grosse Pointe or the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but in lower income areas, whether urban, suburban or rural.

That does not stop Democratic Party politicians from seeking to cover up the class character of police violence with rhetoric about “systemic racism.” Hillary Clinton did so during her debate with Republican Donald Trump last Monday and again during a visit Sunday morning to an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where 36-year-old Keith Scott was gunned down by police September 20.

Scott; the policeman who killed him, Brentley Vinson; and the Charlotte police chief in charge of whitewashing his death, Kerr Putney; are all African-American. That fact alone demonstrates that the struggle against police violence requires uniting workers of all races in the building of a political movement directed against the capitalist class and the police and politicians who serve it.

A decade ago left-wing governments, defying Washington and global corporations, took power in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador. It seemed as if the tide in Latin America was turning.

The interference by Washington and exploitation by international corporations might finally be defeated. Latin American governments, headed by charismatic leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, won huge electoral victories. They instituted socialist reforms that benefited the poor and the working class. They refused to be puppets of the United States. They took control of their nations’ own resources and destinies. They mounted the first successful revolt against neoliberalism and corporate domination. It was a revolt many in the United States hoped to emulate here.

But the movements and governments in Latin America have fallen prey to the dark forces of U.S. imperialism and the wrath of corporate power. The tricks long practiced by Washington and its corporate allies have returned—the black propaganda; the manipulation of the media; the bribery and corruption of politicians, generals, police, labor leaders and journalists; the legislative coups d’état; the economic strangulation; the discrediting of democratically elected leaders; the criminalization of the left; and the use of death squads to silence and disappear those fighting on behalf of the poor. It is an old, dirty game.

President Correa, who earned enmity from Washington for granting political asylum to Julian Assange four years ago and for closing the United States’ Manta military air base in 2009, warned recently that a new version of Operation Condor is underway in Latin America. Operation Condor, which operated in the 1970s and ’80s, saw thousands of labor union organizers, community leaders, students, activists, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, journalists and artists tortured, assassinated and disappeared. The intelligence chiefs from right-wing regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and, later, Brazil had overseen the campaigns of terror. They received funds from the United States and logistical support and training from the Central Intelligence Agency. Press freedom, union organizing, all forms of artistic dissent and political opposition were abolished. In a coordinated effort these regimes brutally dismembered radical and leftist movements across Latin America. In Argentina alone 30,000 people disappeared.

Latin America looks set to be plunged once again into a period of dictatorial control and naked corporate exploitation. The governments of Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, which is on the brink of collapse, have had to fight off right-wing coup attempts and are enduring economic sabotage. The Brazilian Senate impeached the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff. Argentina’s new right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, bankrolled by U.S. hedge funds, promptly repaid his benefactors by handing $4.65 billion to four hedge funds, including Elliott Management, run by billionaire Paul Singer. The payout to hedge funds that had bought Argentine debt for pennies on the dollar meant that Singer’s firm made $2.4 billion, an amount that was 10 to 15 times the original investment. The previous Argentine government, under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had refused to pay the debt acquired by the hedge funds and acidly referred to them as “vulture funds.”

I interviewed Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s minister of foreign affairs and human mobility, for my show “On Contact” last week. Long, who earned a doctorate from the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, called at the United Nations for the creation of a global tax regulatory agency. He said such an agency should force tax-dodging corporations, which the International Monetary Fund estimates costs developing countries more than $200 billion a year in lost revenue, to pay the countries for the natural resources they extract and for national losses stemming from often secret corporate deals. He has also demanded an abolition of overseas tax havens.

Long said the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s and ’90s were profoundly destructive in Latin America. Already weak economic controls were abandoned in the name of free trade and deregulation. International corporations and banks were given a license to exploit. “This deregulation in an already deregulated environment” resulted in anarchy, Long said. “The powerful people had even less checks and balances on their powers,” he said.

“Neoliberalism is bad in most contexts,” Long said when we spoke in New York. “It’s been bad in Europe. It’s been bad in other parts of the world. It has dismantled the welfare state. In the context where we already have a weak state, where institutions are not consolidated, where there are strong feudal remnants, such as in Latin America, where you don’t really have a strong social contract with institutions, with modernity, neoliberalism just shatters any kind of social pact. It meant more poverty, more inequality, huge waves of instability.”

Countries saw basic services, many already inadequate, curtailed or eliminated in the name of austerity. The elites amassed fortunes while almost everyone else fell into economic misery. The political and economic landscape became unstable. Ecuador had seven presidents between 1996 and 2006, the year in which Correa was elected. It suffered a massive banking crisis in 1999. It switched the country’s currency to the U.S. dollar in desperation. The chaos in Ecuador was mirrored in countries such as Bolivia and Argentina. Argentina fell into a depression in 1998 that saw the economy shrink by 28 percent. Over 50 percent of Argentines were thrust into poverty.

“Latin America,” Long said, “hit rock bottom.”

It was out of this neoliberal morass that the left regrouped and took power.

“People came to terms with that moment of their history,” Long said. “They decided to rebuild their societies and fight foreign interventionism and I’d even say imperialism. To this day in Latin America, the main issue is inequality. Latin America is not necessarily the poorest continent in the world. But it’s certainly the most unequal continent in the world.”

“Ecuador is an oil producer,” Long said. “We produce about 530,000 barrels of oil a day. We were getting 20 percent royalties on multinationals extracting oil. Now it’s the other way around. We pay multinationals a fee for extractions. We had to renegotiate all of our oil contracts in 2008 and 2009. Some multinationals refused to abide by the new rules of the game and left the country. So our state oil company moved in and occupied the wells. But most multinationals said OK, we’ll do it, it’s still profitable. So now it’s the other way around. We pay private companies to extract the oil, but the oil is ours.”

Long admitted that there have been serious setbacks, but he insisted that the left is not broken.

“It depends on how you measure success,” he said. “If you’re going to measure it in terms of longevity, and how long these governments were in power—in our case we’re still in power, of course, and we’re going to win in February next year—then you’re looking at, more or less in Venezuela 17 years [that leftist governments have been in power], in Ecuador now 10, and in Argentina and Brazil it’s 13.”

“One of the critiques aimed at the left is they’re well-meaning, great people with good ideas but don’t let them govern because the country will go bust,” he said. “But in Ecuador we had really healthy growth rates, 5 to 10 percent a year. We had lots of good economics. We diversified our economy. We moved away from importing 80 percent of energy to [being] net exporters of electricity. We’ve had big reforms in education, in higher education. Lots of things that are economically successful. Whereas neoliberal, orthodox economics was not successful in the previous decade.”

Long conceded that his government had made powerful enemies, not only by granting political asylum to Assange in its embassy in London but by taking Chevron Texaco to court to try to make it pay for the ecological damage its massive oil spills caused in the Amazon, where the company drilled from the early 1960s until it pulled out in 1992. It left behind some 1,000 toxic waste pits. The oil spills collectively were 85 times the size of the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico and 18 times the size of the spill from the Exxon Valdez. An Ecuadorean court ordered Chevron Texaco to pay $18.2 billion in damages, an amount later reduced to $9.5 billion. The oil giant, however, has refused to pay. Ecuador has turned to international courts in an attempt to extract the money from the company.

Long said that the different between the massive oil spills elsewhere and the Ecuadorean spills was that the latter were not accidental. “[They were done] on purpose in order to cut costs. They were in the middle of the Amazon. Normally what you’d do is extract the oil and you’d have these membranes so that it doesn’t filter through into the ground. They didn’t put in these membranes. The oil filtered into the water systems. It polluted all of the Amazon River system. It created a huge sanitary and public health issue. There were lots of cancers detected.”

Long said his government was acutely aware that Chevron Texaco has “a lot of lobbying power in the United States, in Wall Street, in Washington.”

“There are a lot of things we don’t see,” he said of the campaign to destabilize his government and other left-wing governments. “Benefits we could reap, investments we don’t get because we’ve been sovereign. In the case of [Ecuador’s closing of the U.S.] Manta air base, we’d like to think the American government understood and it was fine. But it was a bold move. We said ‘no more.’ We declared it in our constitution. We had a new constitution in 2008. It was a very vibrant moment of our history. We created new rules of the game. It’s one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It actually declares the rights of nature. It’s the only constitution that declares the rights of nature, not just the rights of man. We made Ecuadorean territory free of foreign military bases. There was no other way. But there are consequences to your actions.”

One of those consequences was an abortive coup in September 2010 by members of the Ecuadorean National Police. It was put down by force. Long charged that many of the Western NGO’s in Ecuador and throughout the region are conduits for money to right-wing parties. Military and police officials, along with some politicians, have long been on the CIA’s payroll in Latin America. President Correa in 2008 dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, commanders of the army and air force, and the military joint chiefs, saying that Ecuador’s intelligence systems were “totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA.”

“There is an international conspiracy right now, certainly against progressive governments,” he said. “There’s been a few electoral setbacks in Argentina, and Venezuela is in a difficult situation. The media frames it in a certain way, but, yes, sure, Venezuela is facing serious trouble. There’s an attempt to make the most of the fall of prices of certain commodities and overthrow [governments]. We just saw a parliamentary coup in Brazil. [President Rousseff had been] elected with 54 million votes. The Labor Party in Brazil [had] been in power for 13 years. The only way they [the rightists] managed to get rid of it was through a coup. They couldn’t do it through universal suffrage.”

Long said that even with the political reverses suffered by the left it will be difficult for the rightists to reinstate strict neoliberal policies.

“You have a strong, disputed political ground between a traditional right and a radical left,” he said. “A radical left, which has proved it can reduce poverty, it can reduce inequality, it can run the economy, well, it’s got young cadres that have been [government] ministers and so on. I reckon that sooner or later it will be back in power.”

Corporate leviathans and the imperialist agencies that work on their behalf are once again reshaping Latin America into havens for corporate exploitation. It is the eternal story of the struggle by the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, the powerless against the powerful, and those who would be free against the forces of imperialism.

“There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death,” Ernesto “Che” Guevara said. “We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us.”

A Russian actor claims the recent Sky News documentary about undercover Russian mercenaries in Syria was staged. RT spoke a man who claims to have impersonated one of the fighters the British outlet spoke to.

In a recently-aired Sky News investigation the channel claimed it uncovered facts about Russian mercenaries in Syria operating undercover.

One of the key pieces of evidence provided was an interview conducted by Sky News’ Moscow correspondent, John Sparks, who spoke to two males who allegedly comprised part of a secret Russian force, called “Wagner” operating in Syria.

One of them, named Dmitry said that some 500 to 600 people of the unit died while serving in the country. The faces of the men were hidden and voices changed “to protect their identities.”

Following the report, Russian television channel, NTV, aired its own investigation, claiming to have found Dmitry, who apparently turned out to be a Russian actor living in Moscow.

RT also contacted a man, whose real name is Aleksandr Agapov, and he said that he played the role of a “Wagner” fighter at the request of the Sky News.

“They said we have this information. You simply need to prepare yourself based on that information and make out you were in the military in Syria in a service of a private company,” Agapov told RT.

In the interview, Agapov said he had been told by the clip would be part of a movie. However after getting suspicious Agapov decided to record a conversation with Sparks that supposedly took place in a Moscow hotel. The recording was initially passed to NTV.

RT went on to check this claim as well. Our channel forwarded the recording to an acoustic analysis laboratory in Moscow for detailed information. Audio analyst Ivan Ursov said that the outcome clearly pointed to one of the voices belonging to Aleksandr Agapov.

“The results of the analysis demonstrate a 75.5 percent match between the recordings. That’s good enough to conclude they are indeed the same person,” Ursov said.

While analyzing the second voice the specialist found that with “85 percent certainty” it was that of Sky News correspondent John Sparks.

To clarify Agapov’s allegations we reached out to the Sky News representatives. Sky News maintained its journalistic integrity.

“Sky News stands fully behind the story which is the product of a detailed investigation over many months,” the media outlet said in an email.

Another request on social media addressed to Sky News as well as personally to John Sparks did not yield any results.

It’s not the first time that the media outlet has found itself in hot water over such a case.

Recently, the outlet triggered outrage in Romania after suggesting in one of its reports that there was a thriving illegal arms trade in the country. In that case a Sky News reporter Stuart Ramsay spoke to two masked men, who was selling a number of weapons, including semi-assault rifles.

According to Romanian officials, the outlet paid the men some £5,000 ($6,600) in what they called a “faked report”. Ramsay denied the allegations.

Romania’s Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos reacted to the case saying that it is “unacceptable to denigrate a country without proof.” Romania’s Secretary of State at National Audiovisual Council, Valentin Jucan, even vowed to bring Ramsay to court, posting a message on his Twitter feed.

by Jeff Clyburn

originally published by WhoWhatWhy

Those “drill baby drill” fanatics who still insist America is on the smooth road to energy independence might want to pump the brakes just a bit.

A look at the latest report by the US Energy Information Administration shows US oil production is down over one million barrels per day since its June 2015 peak of 9.6 million. As of September 9, 2016, US oil production is at 8.5 million barrels per day. That’s an 11.5% drop in production in a relatively short period of time, and it’s a downward slope with no end in sight.

OPEC did agree to a modest production cut of under 1 million barrels per day on Wednesday, Sept. 28, and prices quickly shot up 5%.

Two of the three biggest formations in the US — Eagle Ford, predominantly in Colorado, and Bakken, predominantly in North Dakota — are now producing 40% and 25% less, respectively, compared to this time last year. It is an alarming drop off that can’t be dismissed by merely blaming the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for “flooding markets” and awaiting a price rebound.

Skeptics suggest the long-predicted production decline is terminal. In their view, investment tricks can’t overcome the fact that this is a matter of resource depletion, where the deeper you have to dig, the more expensive the resource gets to extract, refine and deliver.

Those sounding the alarm insist the rate of borrowing within the industry has grown desperate, and was always unsustainable. They scoff at faith-based appeals to the wonders of technology, as US shale formations are not a new discovery, nor is the technology used to harvest the resource particularly new. What changed was years of sky-high oil prices between 2002 and 2014, making these unconventional reserves suddenly worth drilling. After overproducing for 3-4 years, we now remain very far from that kind of global oil price today.

That 5% increase Wednesday left Brent at $48.96 per barrel at the close of trading. During the fracking boom years of 2011-2013, Brent averaged $110.

Apologists for the oil industry, however — or just those who see US growth as inevitable — cite the depressed global price for oil as a temporary roadblock that will work itself out as soon as demand catches up to supply again and markets tighten.

Hydraulic fracturing site.
Photo credit: Joshua Doubek / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

They insist Saudi Arabia is pumping too much, and the resulting global oversupply is hurting US drillers who must endure much higher production costs. But that’s OK, they say, because when (not if) the price rises again, US production will boom once more and happy days will seamlessly return in short order for the US oil patch.

Of course, none of that rationalization accounts for three important questions: 1) Even if (not when) prices return to the level needed for US producers to maintain free cash flow, what happens when the oversupply inevitably returns and global prices dip all over again? 2) How can they be certain Wall St. investment dollars will return after the bloodbath the industry is currently enduring? 3) Why is Saudi Arabia, and OPEC in general, obliged to suddenly pump less just to make room for the new kids on the block?

The answer to the final question is easy: The Saudis, long a swing producer, are not obliged to cut production. Oil is a globally traded, fungible commodity. It is not compulsory for any nation to slice production volume just to make it easier for competitors who have higher costs.

This is especially true for a country like Saudi Arabia, which gets roughly 80% of its budgetary revenues from the petroleum sector, and has a number of expensive religious wars to fund to its immediate north and south. The Kingdom literally survives on oil exports, and isn’t about to make concessions for any new producer, ally or otherwise.

The reality is that the recent US oil “revolution” is made up of hydraulic fracturing companies who always needed the global oil price considerably higher than it has been since plummeting in late 2014. Drillers have borrowed billions of dollars in order to keep pumping, and the long-expected payoff never materialized. As a result, the wave of bankruptcies in the US oil patch the past two years has been relentless.

Diminished US production obviously means reduced US revenue and increased reliance on foreign imports in order to maintain our 19 million barrel per day appetite of consumption. It’s nice to point to expansion of renewable energy infrastructure as bridging that gap, but that’s a long process hindered by economic and political gridlock.

Further, believe it or not, there are roles that fossil fuels provide that green energy simply can not match. Moving an 18-wheeler full of goods, uphill and across vast distances, immediately comes to mind.

It is clear that US energy production is at a critical crossroads. While once-booming fracking cities like Williston, N.D., continue to go bust, the industry can continue to cut costs, hold its breath and hope and pray that global oil prices rise. Unfortunately, that says nothing about the average consumer’s capacity to afford those elevated prices — and the myriad costs associated with energy inflation — all over again. We all remember $3-4 gas and the strains it put on municipal and family budgets for five years.

If the sluggish economy has taught us anything the past nine years, it’s that when searching for a sweet spot on the acceptable price of oil, there is now a huge imbalance between what the public can afford and what the industry absolutely needs to make money. That gap is widening.

There’s really no wonder the oil and gas industry wants all talk of expanding renewables quashed. Turning to green energy solutions only hampers demand for their product, further denying oil prices ever return to the stratospheric levels they desperately require to keep their business model solvent.

In any event, the slow drawdown of the fossil fuel industry as a result of depletion is both a good thing and a bad thing for our extremely complex, modern society.

Four days after India conducted “surgical” military strikes inside Pakistan-held Kashmir, South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states continue to teeter on the brink of war.

There have been hours-long artillery and gun-fire exchanges across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates Indian- and Pakistani-held Kashmir each night since India sent troops and helicopters into Pakistan and inflicted “double-digit” casualties.

Late Sunday evening, India claimed that an army camp in Barmulla in the Kashmir Valley had come under terrorist attack and that at least one Indian solider had been killed and one injured.

India has repeatedly held Pakistan responsible for terrorist acts on its soil, most recently for the September 18 attack that anti-Indian Islamist militants mounted on the Uri military base in Jammu and Kashmir.

In anticipation of a possible Pakistani army counter-strike, or so as to facilitate their own war preparations, Indian authorities have ordered the evacuation of tens of thousands of people living near the border with Pakistan in the Indian states of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. According to Indian press reports, soldiers at garrisons near the border have also been instructed to send their families home.

On Saturday, as Indian Army Chief General Dalbir Singh visited its Northern Command headquarters in Jammu and Kashmir to review the military’s “operational preparedness,” the army ordered its troops to be “prepared for any eventuality.”

Wednesday night’s punitive raids were the first military action that India has publicly admitted to carrying out inside Pakistan in more than four decades.

In their wake, India’s political elite and media are boasting that New Delhi has thrown off the supposed shackles of “strategic restraint,” successfully neutered Pakistani “nuclear blackmail,” and demonstrated India’s prowess as an emerging great power.

Comparing India’s military to the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman who bounded across an ocean in a single stride after being reminded of his powers, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said, “The surgical strikes gave our forces an idea of what they were capable of doing.” Pakistan, he claimed, had been left “bewildered,” “not quite knowing how to react.”

India has claimed it has no immediate plans for further military action. But, referring to the Uri attack, Parrikar said, “If Pakistan continues with such conspiracies, we will give them a befitting reply again.”

India’s bellicose stance is being encouraged by Washington, which has forged an ever-closer military-security alliance with New Delhi as part of its drive to strategically encircle and prepare for war against China.

The strikes that India carried out on the evening of September 28-29 were illegal, highly provocative, and justified on a patently trumped-up claim that they were aimed at “terrorist launch pads” from which squads of Islamist gunmen were about to be sent into India.

Yet Washington has signaled its support for the Indian attacks. Obama administration spokesmen have studiously avoided criticizing the strikes and have invariably linked their calls for New Delhi and Islamabad to dampen down tensions to demands Pakistan take urgent action to prevent its territory being used as a “safe haven” by terrorists.

No mention is ever made of India’s concerted push under the 28-month old Hindu supremacist BJP government to “change the rules of the game” with Pakistan. This has included: instructing the military to take a more aggressive posture at the border, which led in 2015 to months of cross-border shelling; vehemently opposing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, on the grounds it will pass through parts of the former British Empire princely state of Kashmir that New Delhi claims are hers; and backing the Balochi ethno-nationalist insurgency, effectively threatening Pakistan with dismemberment.

Speaking Friday, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter emphasized that the Indian-US military relationship is the “closest it has been ever.”

Pakistan continues to publicly deny that Indian Special Forces penetrated beyond the LoC, claiming instead that two of its soldiers were killed and nine injured by Indian cross-border shelling. This stance is belied by the hurried series of high-level military and government meetings and the shrill statements being made by Pakistani military and political leaders.

Pakistan Chief of Armed Services General Sharif has vowed, “Any misadventure by our adversary will meet the most befitting response from Pakistan.”

Bellicose statements have also been made by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif. In recent weeks as tensions with India have mounted, Asif repeatedly warned that Pakistan will use its recently deployed “battlefield” or tactical nuclear weapons should India launch a large-scale attack. Just hours before last Wednesday’s Indian strikes, he declared in a television interview, “We will destroy India if it dares to impose war on us … We have not made [an] atomic device to display in a showcase. If such a situation arises we will use it [a nuclear weapon] and eliminate India.”

Pakistan has appealed to the United Nations to intervene. Pakistani envoy Malleha Lodhi met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon late last week to appeal for action. While maintaining that India’s claim of strikes inside Pakistan was “false,” Lodhi said that India by its own admission has “committed aggression.”

Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement Saturday offering UN mediation, calling on both countries to take “immediate steps to de-escalate the situation,” and urging them to address their differences, including over Kashmir, through dialogue.

It is highly unlikely the UN’s mediation offer will be taken up, both because New Delhi believes it has succeeded in isolating Pakistan diplomatically and because it wants to keep the door bolted to any third-party involvement in Kashmir.

On Friday, Pakistan was forced to cancel the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) which was due to be held in November in Islamabad, after Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Sri Lanka joined India in announcing they were going to boycott it.

Bangladesh and Afghanistan have also supported India’s military raid on Pakistan, with Kabul, which has been involved in its own border skirmishes with Pakistan in recent months, terming it an act of self-defence.

The Indian strikes have also been applauded by the Balochi separatists inside Pakistan. Some have even provocatively called for the Indian attacks to be continued, action that could easily plunge South Asia headlong into the abyss of the first-ever war between nuclear-armed states.

The growing Indo-US alliance has led China and Pakistan to tighten their longstanding close ties. But Beijing has been very cautious in the face of the escalating crisis, repeatedly urging both India and Pakistan to draw back from confrontation.

In an editorial, the Pakistan Express Tribune expressed alarm about Islamabad’s isolation. “Of immediate concern,” it wrote, “is that there has been a ringing silence in terms of the rest of the world, which has failed to condemn what India is admitting it has done which if true is a violation of sovereignty at least.”

In both countries, a foul chauvinist atmosphere is being whipped up which will be used not only to pursue the reactionary geo-political interests of the rival bourgeois cliques, but to suppress dissent and attack the working class.

In India, the Stalinist parliamentary parties have joined with the rest of the political establishment in supporting the Indian military attack on Pakistan. T. Sitaram Yechury, the general-secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, participated with the other main party leaders in an “all-party meeting” convened by the government last Thursday to show that India was united against Pakistan.

Speaking to reporters Saturday, Yechury again extended the Stalinists’ support to the military strikes, declaring, “It is our and the central government’s responsibility to ensure that our people are protected.” He added, “We urge upon the Government of India, from its position of strength, to continue with the diplomatic and political moves to defuse tension and eliminate the scorch of cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.”

For its part, the Communist Party of India (CPI) issued a statement applauding the military strikes and saying the government had had no choice but to bring South Asia to the brink of all-out war. “The [September 18] Uri incident,” said the CPI, had “made inevitable … action on cross border terrorism by the Indian Army. We appreciate the well-planned action of the Indian Army.”

There is an inverse relationship between public access to the Internet and the inability of governments and institutions to control information flow and hence state allegiance, ideology, public opinion, and policy formulation.

Increase in public access to the Internet results in an equivalent decrease in government and institutional power. Indeed, after September 11, 2001, Internet traffic statistics show that many millions of Americans have connected to alternative news sources outside the continental United States. The information they consume can be and often is contrary to US government statements and US mainstream media reporting. 

Information is a strategic resource vital to national security. US Government efforts to understand and engage key audiences to create, strengthen, or preserve conditions favorable for the advancement of USG interests, policies, and objectives through coordinated programs, plans, themes, messages, and products synchronized with the actions of all elements of national power: Diplomacy, Intelligence, Military, Economic, Finance, Law Enforcement, Information… The DOD must also support and participate in USG Strategic C communications activities to understand, inform, and influence relevant foreign audiences, including the DOD’s transition to and from hostilities, security, military forward presence, and stability operations. US Army Unconventional Warfare Manual, 2008

In the early 1990s scores of studies were conducted by the US government, think tanks, consulting firms, defense contractors, futurists and military thinkers on the likely threats to the US military’s electronic communications systems. Those analyses often encompassed commercial networked systems.

For example, in May 1993 Security Measures for Wireless Communications was released under the auspices of the US National Communications System. Not long after, the same office published The Electronic Intrusion Threat to National Security and Emergency Preparedness in December 1994. During June 1995 a conference, co-sponsored by the Technical Marketing Society of America, was held. That event was titled Information Warfare: Addressing the Revolutionary New Paradigm for Modern Warfare.

Then as now the most pernicious and non-life threatening cyber-attacks normally resulted in the theft of identities and, perhaps, intellectual property to which ‘experts’ would assign dollar values. Other network, computer assaults were visited upon databases containing personal information producing headaches for the individuals who had to get new credit cards or revise identities. Embarrassment was the penalty for commercial organizations too cheap to invest in robust electronic security systems.

I Love New York

Information Operations have not taken place (yet) resulting in large scale, life-threatening fallout, but the 1977 New York City blackout provides some clues as to what might result from a successful cyber assault on a power grid. Those initially responsible for the Black Out were bolts of lightning from a thunderstorm that repeatedly struck a Consolidated Edison facility. Redundancies built into the grid that did not function and aging equipment and operator error led to the loss of power.  Observers were already thinking about rudimentary network centric themes even then as The Trigger Effect from the 1978 series Connections by James Burke demonstrates.

It is difficult to say with any certainty if, over the last 23 years, competently secured US military networks have been successfully compromised by electronic intrusions by noted Information Warfare nations Russia, China and Israel seeking to steal classified, compartmented data or Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance technologies. That information is not likely to ever see the light of day, classified as it should be.

Certainly, US military websites and other government organizations have been hacked successfully over the years resulting in detrimental data spills and website defacement. But these do not rise to the level of national security threat; instead, they are clear cut cases of robbery and vandalism and should be viewed from a civilian law enforcement perspective.

Insiders Have Done More Damage to US National Security

It is worth noting that, to date, the most serious breaches of US national and military security have come at the hands of disillusioned US citizens like Jonathan Pollard (US Navy) and Richard Hansen (FBI) who lifted paper documents from secure facilities, and Edward Snowden (NSA & Booz Allen) who downloaded electronic files to his storage devices.

As far as anyone knows, the electromagnetic waves emanating from a computer display have not been remotely manipulated by a state or non-state actor to kill or maim a person looking at the display. But transmitting retroviral software at some distance, or using an intelligence operative to insert destructive code via a flash drive, is known to have been successful in the US-led operation against Iran as the Stuxent case demonstrated.

Recent electronic intrusions and theft of data/images from the non-secured private accounts of former NATO commander General Phillip Breedlove, USAF (Ret.); Andrew Weiner (sexting former politician from New York) or General Colin Powell, USA (Ret.) are generally served up by hackers and then picked up as news by US Big Media and Social Media. Humiliating as it is for the individuals involved, this nefarious CYBER-vandalism is not a national security matter, but it is used, gleefully, by any number of political interest groups and businesses for their own ends.

In like manner, the Sony, Democratic National Committee and Yahoo electronic break-ins, for example, are not national security incidents by any stretch of the imagination. Were they criminal actions and embarrassing for the victims? Yes. Did the information peddled by the hackers influence the public in some fashion? Sure. If sponsors of the hackers are from Russia, China, Iran, DPRK, Daesh, Israel or any other cyber-suspect, should they be exposed and brought to justice? Yes.

Should we nuke them or carpet bomb them? No.

It is problematic that politico-military strategists and tacticians, spurred on by any number of think tanks and CYBER hustlers in Washington, DC and New York (Atlantic Council, New York Times), have pushed the robbery of data/information and vandalism, or defacement of main-page websites into a crisis that threatens the nation’s stability. More’s the pity,  they have pasted CYBER over Information Warfare and have meshed it with Asymmetric Warfare and Unconventional Warfare not recognizing the differences and nuances.

CYBER Influence Peddlers: Pest Control Needed

CYBER enthusiasts at the Atlantic Council and the New York Times see foreign news agencies like Xinhua/People’s Daily, Press TV, RT, Sputnik News and Hezbollah, which all broadcast news and information with their brand of spin, as demonic CYBER influence peddlers who are corrupting the American national consciousness by engaging in perception management techniques in an attempt to electronically captivate American audiences and turn them, well, to the “dark side.”

Iran’s Press TV Internet traffic statistics show it is ranked 26,598 with 28 percent of its visits coming from the United States.  RT is ranked 446 in the world with 18 percent of its visitors from the US. Sputnik News is 1410 with 8 percent of its visitors from the US.  Xinhua is ranked 25,000 with about 3 percent visiting from the US and the People’s Daily does not even rank.

In this dark CYBER world, the unemployed and disaffected youth bulges (but why are they jobless and disenchanted), social miscreants and American citizens will populate evil foreign websites and after viewing assorted marketing/propaganda they will by Pepsi instead of Coke; whoops, I meant to say join the Islamic State or the Chinese Communist Party; move to Russia; or take in the Hezbollah website (no ranking on the Internet).

What this says, in part, is that those pushing CYBER fear have unwittingly indicted the United States and its people of idiocy. They seem to be saying that the American people have been ill served by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, educational institutions and the government and the citizenry is but a collective of dolts incapable of sorting through information pushed out of non-Western media outlets. In the United States, the First Amendment makes sure that all-points of view can be aired on the premise that the American people have the ability to harvest information and distinguish between info-crap and ‘actionable’ info that can be turned into positive knowledge for civil good.

What is there to fear from comparatively small state backed-foreign news outlets? So they spin news or publish opinions contrary to the US narrative. So what? How is that any different from left and right wing publications in the United States that take down US civilian and military institutions? The American public can handle all of this. The CYBER Fear pushers further display their ignorance by assuming that the US national security machinery has not done enough to protect the enfeebled American public from opinions emanating from non-Western sources. The CYBER chicken-littles believe too, that the US military and those in charge of America’s critical infrastructure sets do not understand the gravity of the CYBER Danger.

Nonsense.

Sleep Well

As the US Army’s Unconventional Warfare Manual and scores of US military CYBER commands,  and doctrinal publications make clear, the US national security community has been pushing the CYBER matter hard. It has engaged in the less public relations friendly issues like mathematics and encryption, physically securing communications nodes and networks, creating honeypots to attract hackers, digital forensics (breaking into secure hard drives, software) and working with civilian counterparts, sometimes controversially, to secure communications networks.

For those worried about the US government’s ability to listen to adversaries, allies, the public, whomever,  the Snowden document dumps show just how deep the National Security Agency’s wormhole goes. Either you’re of the mind that this grossly oversteps the US government’s authority, or maybe the nation is better off with the NSA playing God, or, like most, you just don’t care.

The US capabilities to tap transoceanic communications cables or satellite communications are well known.

The seriousness with which the US national security community views CYBER can be noted in this comment from a Defense Science Board study on CYBER Existentialism

While the manifestation of a nuclear and cyber attack are very different, in the end, the existential impact to the United States is the same. Existential Cyber Attack is defined as an attack that is capable of causing sufficient wide scale damage for the government potentially to lose control of the country, including loss or damage to significant portions of military and critical infrastructure: power generation, communications, fuel and transportation, emergency services, financial services, etc.

And just a quasi authoritative US government body claims there is a real danger of an existential CYBER attack, the First Amendment allows a rapier like response from a former government official musing on the fallout from the collapse of electronically connected networks whether by CYBER Attack, lightening bolts or human error.

Cyber Warfare, Cyber Security and massive Cyber Attacks are alarmist and vastly overrated. Look at what went on in Cyprus in 2013. What could trigger a run on the banks in the United States? Something as simple as shutting down all the ATM’s for three days. The resulting panic and long bank lines could irrevocably shake confidence in banks and financial institutions, as Americans find out the significance of all the paperwork they signed when they established their banks accounts, fed by direct deposits. Since many in the country know what the country was like before personal computers and the Internet, they’ll do fine. Those people who have exchanged their hearts and brains for computer chips manufactured in Vietnam, and are tethered to Smart Phones and the Cloud, are due for a very rude awakening. You’ve heard of sleeper agents and moles haven’t you? I wonder how many sleeper programs are in the millions of computer chips that are now in every single facet of our lives.

John Stanton can be reached at [email protected]

A thoughtful analysis by Amanda Taub of the New York Times describes why some wars get more “western” public attention than others:

Conflicts gain sustained American attention only when they provide a compelling story line that appeals to both the public and political actors, and for reasons beyond the human toll. That often requires some combination of immediate relevance to American interests, resonance with American political debates or cultural issues, and, perhaps most of all, an emotionally engaging frame of clearly identifiable good guys and bad guys.
…
Yemen’s death toll is lower than Syria’s, and although Al Qaeda does operate there, Yemen’s conflict has not had the kind of impact on American and European interests that Syria’s has. There is no obvious good-versus-evil story to tell there: The country is being torn apart by a variety of warring factions on the ground and pummeled from the air by Saudi Arabia, an American ally. There is no camera-ready villain for Americans to root against.

Those are good observations. But they themselves are part of the process they describe. They artificially create “good” and “bad” and are driven by “interests”. (Side note: I doubt the sweeping claim “Yemen’s death toll is lower than Syria’s”. The famine in northwest Yemen is very severe. The number of dead is simply not known yet but like in the hundred-thousands.)

Reporting does not depend on the existence of good and bad or the existence of a compelling story. Such thinking is just idealized nonsense. It is the media that creates the (often artificial) sides of a war on behalf of the interests. Good and bad are not inherent, they are constructs. A real compelling story is not needed. One can be created any time though it will likely not be a true one.

It is the “interests” that designate the “good” and “bad” labels and inject the “compelling” story – specific economic interests but also pursuit of personal power or tribal advantages. The public relation firms and politicians working for the “interests” feed the reporters with the stuff they need to skillfully write the stories down. The well domesticated reporters of main-stream media will intuitively understand when the “interests” are on a roll. They will do their best to support them – or lose their lucrative jobs.

In the mid of of 2000s al-Qaeda in Iraq was the “bad” and the U.S. occupation force was the “good” that “saved the poor Iraqis”. But this was only a fake differentiation and “compelling” story the U.S. military wanted the media to tell. It provide this story to hide the rather obvious: Genuine Iraqis of all stripes were rising up against the occupation.

The U.S. military payed over $540 millions to the British public relation firm Bell Pottinger to create gruesome al-Qaeda videos:

Bell Pottinger’s output included short TV segments made in the style of Arabic news networks and fake insurgent videos which could be used to track the people who watched them, according to a former employee.The agency’s staff worked alongside high-ranking U.S. military officers in their Baghdad Camp Victory headquarters as the insurgency raged outside.

For $540 million one could create two Oscar winning movies in the most expensive films list. It is an enormous amount of money, enough for thousands of short, low budget “al-Qaeda terror” clips. In the Iraq war those clips created the new “bad” actor in the war and the “compelling” story that needed to be told to keep the military occupation “good”, justified and going.

“Western” governments pay more than 70 million dollars to the “White Helmets”, the fake “Syrian Civil Defense” created by the New Yorker PR company Purpose Inc., to make and distribute pictures and movies that show the Islamic insurgency in Syria as “good” and the Syrian government and its allies as “bad”. (Additional billions(!) per year go to weapon supplies and mercenary pay for the Jihadi side.)

The “western” media understand what the “interests” want. They eat the PR product up, digest it for form and spit it out towards the consumer. The “outrage” created by the daily “compelling” stories is then used by the “interests” to further their aims.

Below are recent examples of such manipulations picked from the daily diet the “western” public is fed.

Lousie Loveluck, a “reporter” for the Washington Post, is stenographing “moderate Jihadi” propaganda from east-Aleppo: Bombing in Aleppo puts another major hospital out of service

The largest hospital in eastern Aleppo was bombed Saturday for the second time in a week, killing and wounding more than a dozen patients as they recovered from earlier attacks.Doctors at the facility, known as M10, said the assault involved cluster munitions, barrel bombs and incendiary weapons, prompting mass panic and appeals for help.

She tweets:

Louisa Loveluck @leloveluckAttack on Aleppo’s main trauma hospital killed 2 patients, injured 13. 7 strikes, incl cluster munitions, barrel, incendiary & vacuum bombs.

8:38 AM – 1 Oct 2016

It seems that the “doctors” (likely all pediatricians, some “the last” and dead) are the only sources in Aleppo Loveluck has.

Seven attacks with cluster munitions, barrel bombs, incendiary weapons and vacuum bombs together (note: no nukes yet) “ON” an allegedly filled hospital and only two people dead??? There is still a recognizable building standing??? That is a bit curious. Putin and Assad are really bad at hitting their targets. Or maybe the hospital was not targeted at all. Maybe some Jihadi military headquarter or artillery position nearby was the real target. Mrs Loveluck shows no interest in finding that out. The “doctors”, paid by U.S. PR organization SAMS Foudation, are all she needs. “Good”, “bad”, a “compelling” story – all is already there, provide to her to “report”.

The National from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is generally a good newspaper. Its recent report on the background of the propaganda scam the “White Helmets” are is way better than the usual mainstream media piece. Its reporting by Phil Sands on south Syria is excellent. But sometimes it has to do its duty as a state subsidized outlet and ends up publishing “funny” stuff: Passengers rescued from Emirati aid ship targeted by Yemen rebel fighters:

Civilian passengers were rescued from an Emirati aid ship carrying medical and relief supplies to Yemen after it was targeted by Houthi militias.A rescue operation was launched in the early hours of Saturday after a civilian vessel owned by the UAE’s National Marine Dredging Company was intercepted in the Bab Al Mandab Strait during a journey to deliver emergency supplies to Aden.

The “aid-ship” was the fast military supply catamaran HSV-2 Swift. It is doing runs between Eritrea’s Assab port and Aden in south-Yemen transporting UAE military and mercenaries as well as their heavy weapons. Last year Janes analyzed satellite pictures of Assab harbor:

The 7 November image also shows that the high-speed roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) catamaran Swift 1 (IMO: 9283928) was also present.

(Janes errs with the name. The ship and IMO number is of HSV-2 Swift which is the one the UAE leased.)

Last month War on the Rocks took a deeper look into the UAE war on Yemen for which Assab port, rented from Eritrea, is the main base:

Over the last year, this port was built up from empty desert into a modern airbase, deep-water port, and military training facility.
…
By late July 2015, the buildup at Assab airfield was complete, with the base serving as a logistics support area and staging hub for the brigade-sized Emirati armored battlegroup that would spearhead the Aden breakout. This was composed of two squadrons of Leclerc main battle tanks, a battalion of BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, and two batteries of G6 howitzers. The Emirates also shipped a 1,500-man strike force of U.A.E.-trained Yemeni troops mounted in U.A.E.-provided armored vehicles after they were trained and equipped at Assab.

The obviously military ship was hit on September 28 at night. Yemeni army forces allied with the Houthis used a land launched, Chinese made C-802 anti-ship missile. The Houthi media published an excellent video showing the launch and the hit. The ship, a high powered large aluminum can, went completely up in flames. The “aid” and many “civilian passengers” have likely not survived.

Today the UAE military, led by the Australian general Mike Hindmarsh and his men, bombed Yemeni fishing boats along its western coast. The fishing boats, one of the few sources left for food supplies in Yemen, had nothing to do with the successful attack. The C-802 was launched and radar-guided from land. But no “western” main stream media will tell you those facts. “Good” and “bad” are not well assigned for them in this war. They probably would like to speak of the “good” underdog Yemenis and “bad” Saudis but are not allowed to do so. The “compelling” point of the story is not provided. The National tries to support its guiding “interests” but fails.

Another example of very biased “good” “bad” reporting, if not outright lying, comes from today’s Independent: Syrian swimmer and her 12-year-old brother killed by shelling in Aleppo

Student and sportswoman Mireille Hindoyan was seriously injured and later died after bombs fell on the Villi district of the city

“Bombs fell”, the Independent writes. Nowhere in piece does it says who’s “bombs fell” and killed the swimmer But the readers already know that only the Syrian and Russian forces have aerial bombing capabilities over Aleppo.

Villi is the Armenian quarter of Aleppo. Here is what Armenian media write:

ALEPPO. – Three Armenians are killed as a result of the shelling of the densely Armenian-populated Villi district of Aleppo, Syria.
..
Terrorists are shelling the densely Armenian-populated [..] Villi districts of Aleppo, since early Friday morning.

Villi district lies in the government held western parts of Aleppo. The swimmer were killed by shelling by U.S. supported Jihadis in east-Aleppo. But the Independent won’t tell you that. It insinuates that the “bad” Assad and Putin killed the swimmer. That the “good” Jihadis kill civilians on the government side is not a “compelling” story. It is not allowed to be told. Unless they are swimmers with a trophy such daily casualties do not exist.

Similar reporting, then with regards to Libya, was all over “western” media in early 2011. Gaddafi speech threatens to trigger “genocide” in Libya was one of the decisive headlines. Ghaddafi of course never threatened such. He only wowed to defeat the bloody, armed insurgency led by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, al-Qaeda aligned Jihadis financed by Qatar. They occupied Benghazi, suppressed its inhabitants and threatened the Libyan state. But the false reporting and “western” outrage created by it was the basis for a large scale NATO attack which then destroyed the Libyan nation. A British parliament inquiry now confirms that there never was any threat against civilians by Ghaddafi and all such assertions by the media and by “western” politicians were false and made without any evidence. Back then it was a “compelling” story told by the ruling “interests” – and a complete lie.

The “compelling” Ghaddafi genocide story only sold well with the “western” public because the media played the game on the side of the warmongers. It projected the Libyan government as “bad” and the Jihadis as “good”. Real reporting would have unveiled the facts, which prove the opposite, with very little efforts. But the “reporters” never tried. That hasn’t changed as we can see with regards to Syria. All claims by the “good” opposition are repeated as truth without any challenge. Attacks by “good” Jihadis on the government side, perceived as the “bad”, are not “compelling” and get no or only obfuscated reporting.

In the war on Yemen the media is on the side of the U.S. supported attackers from the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Only few stories can be found about the raging famine in north Yemen caused by the Saudi/U.S. blockade of all vital imports to the country. While that is really a compelling story driven awaking human interests and which could induce a public discussion it is not made “compelling”. Likewise the daily Saudi and UAE terror bombing of the Yemeni capital Sanaa finds no echo in “western” papers. The successful Houthi attack on the military ship will be sold as “terrorism” and justify a further escalation of the war.

It is only “interests” driving this. Not general “American interests” or the idealized “human interests” but way more specific ones. Amanda Taub and other “reporters” are working for those. But often they delude themselves and believe otherwise. The evidence though does not support such faith.

Global Research Editor’s Note: This story has not yet been fully corroborated. UPDATE: We have been informed that this story is fake. (See snope.com)

ORIGIN:On 30 September 2016, the Christian Times Newspaper (CTN) web site published an article reporting that “tens of thousands” of pre-marked ballots cast for Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates had been discovered stored in an Ohio warehouse:

There is no truth to the above-quoted story.

Christian Times Newspaper‘s report described the photograph as showing “Randall Prince” with his discovery of pre-marked Clinton ballots, but this picture was actually taken in 2015 in Birmingham, England, and simply captures a man unloading a truck of ballot boxes at a polling station. It appears that CTN altered the photograph (removing “Ballot Box” from some of the boxes and reversing the image) in an apparent attempt to make it difficult to find the original picture:

Although CTN presents itself as a legitimate publication (by imitating the name of the genuine Christian Times newspaper), the web site has invented and promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including false stories reporting that Donald Trump was removed from primary ballots, that Clinton said “Harambe” was a victim of racism,  that an African-American Trump supporter was killed in Chicago, and that the 4th of July had been cancelled due to fears of terrorism.

While the web site does not explicitly label their content as fiction, they do carry a disclaimer exempting themselves from responsibility for their efforts:

“Christian Times Newspaper is your premier online source for news, commentary, opinion, and theories. Christian Times Newspaper does not take responsibility for any of our readers’ actions that may result from reading our stories. We do our best to provide accurate, updated news and information.”

Snopes.com

The fake story is below:

Election officials in Franklin County, Ohio are reportedly stumped over what one maintenance worker found in a dilapidated downtown Columbus warehouse earlier this week.

Do you really believe that people are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? If so, you are totally irrational. No! You are deranged.

Since human beings evolved, they have been taking each other’s lives and enslaving others. And as for pursuing happiness? Whether you chase it until the end of your life, no one will ever care. Having a right to pursue it is irrelevant. Attaining it is what matters, and no one has even ever suggested that people have that right. When Jefferson put those sentiments into the Declaration of Independence, he knew they were pure propaganda.

Today it is myth. I’m sure there were some at the Court of George III who howled with laughter when the Declaration was first read there. The idea that people had unalienable rights was ludicrous. Is that idea ludicrous today? Some believe not, but believing something does not make it true. Even today, people, even Americans, are still taking the lives of others and enslaving them. If life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were ever rights, someone somewhere abolished them.

Then there’s the Gettysburg Address. Does anybody really believe that Lincoln believed that his description of America as “of the people, by the people, for the people” was accurate?

He knew that the nation had been founded by people who owned slaves that had no role in its creation, who could not vote or hold elective office, and for whom no benefits were pursued. He surely knew his pithy oration was pure propaganda. He might have hoped, but he didn’t know, it would become pure myth. But it has, because this nation never has had the “new birth of freedom” he envisioned. Just as Christians are still waiting for the Second Coming, Americans are still waiting for the “new birth of freedom” of the people, by the people, and for the people.

In reality, nations have never existed “for the people.” The people have always existed for the nation. J. F. Kennedy made this clear when he said, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” People have always been expected to do what was necessary to preserve the state. That’s what those who make the ultimate sacrifice consider their duty. One does not live for oneself or others, one lives and dies for God and country.

And then there’s the belief that this nation is uniquely a nation of immigrants as though Brazil or Canada or Australia or others aren’t. Mankind evolved as migratory. Human beings have always moved to what they thought were greener pastures. They still do, and they don’t all want to come to America. Furthermore Americans have not always wanted them to in spite of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

In fact, Americans have never really wanted these poor, huddled masses. The dispute between Clinton and Trump supporters is based on ignorance. The Congress has always favored some peoples and rejected others. In fact. Americans did not consider America to be “a nation of immigrants” until the latter part of the 19th century.

Massive migrations of people to the United States did not even begin until after 1880. The nation was then a century old. The few who came to America before then came from Northern European countries, especially Ireland, Germany, and the United Kingdom. But between 1880 and 1924, more than a million Eastern Europeans came to this country. Most of these were Jews and Roman Catholics. They were followed by Italians. The numbers peaked by 1910 at over two million. By 1924, the conservative Congress had had enough. In 1924, the National Origins Act (Johnson-Reed Act) was enacted, and it did not welcomed foreigners with open arms.

The National Origins Act was an exercise in discrimination on a world-wide scale. It attempted to control the number of “unfit” individuals allowed to enter the United Stated by imposing quotas on applicants from various parts of the world. But the quotas were fudged. The mass migrations to the United States began in the 1880s. By 1924, more than 30 years of migration had taken place. Since the quotas were to be based on the number of people from various places already in America, getting those base numbers was essential. But instead of basing those numbers on the latest census, that of 1920, Congress decided instead to base them on the census of 1890. But that census contained higher numbers of Northern than Eastern and Southern Europeans.

Since each quota was to be a percentage of the people from each nation already in America, the quotas for Northern Europeans were proportionally greater than those for people from Eastern and Sour ten Europe. The act’s purpose was to maintain the ethnic distribution of America at the time. It also limited immigration from East and South Asian and Africa. Even if Ellis Island was a doorway to liberty for some, it was never a doorway for all. The arguments proffered for the act held that the earlier admitted immigrants were skilled, thrifty, and hardworking while those from Southern and Eastern Europe were unskilled, ignorant, not Protestant, and not easily assimilated.

Also the Naturalization Act of 1906 provided that only white persons and persons of African descent or African nativity could become naturalized citizens, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court George Sutherland ruled that only Caucasians were white, In fact, it was not until 1965 that national origin considerations were abolished. America’s open door has not always been open. America became a nation of immigrants by necessity, not by choice. The New Colossus envisioned by Emma Lazarus in 1883 is also merely a myth. Would she have written, “Send the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door” if she had known what America really thought of immigrants? We shall never know.

The salient thing about the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty is that none of these documents has any legal status. The sentiments they contain have never been enacted into any law. Consequently no one, not an official, person, agency or institution has any responsibility to instantiate these lofty ideals. Everyone can say that they believe them without having to do anything to bring them to realization. It is no one’s fault that these lofty sentiments have never been realized. Simply stated, myths are unreal. Perhaps they aren’t meant to be real. They might merely express ideals that are idols of the mind. Objects to be worshiped but not to be acted upon. The realization is that people are not defined by what they claim to believe; they are defined by what they do.

“From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of bombs on the country of Laos to interdict traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The bombings destroyed many villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Lao civilians. . . . Up to a third of the bombs dropped did not explode, leaving Laos contaminated with vast quantities of unexploded ordnance. . . . Over 20,000 people have been killed or injured . . . since the bombing ceased. . . .

Nearly 40 years on, less than 1% of these munitions have been destroyed. . . .

In just ten days of bombing Laos, the U.S. spent $130M (in 2013 dollars), or more than it has spent in clean up over the past 24 years.”

When the United States withdrew its army from Viet Nam, it said almost nothing about what it had done in Laos. It didn’t even provide the Laotians with paper signs warning of the danger. Laotians are still being killed and maimed by those bombs and no American political or religious leader, to my knowledge, has ever uttered a single word of regret or sorrow.

The Laotians were not an enemy. The United States was not at war with Laos. It was no danger to the United States. It was not even an economic competitor. Why would the Americans do such a thing to innocent people? What kind of people would do such a thing to anyone?

Well, a kind, considerate, compassionate, and benevolent one, of course. Isn’t that what kind, considerate, compassionate, and benevolent people do? No? Isn’t that what Americans are? Kind, considerate, compassionate, and benevolent? No? What are they then? What kind of people are Americans? Isn’t it time that Americans and the rest of the world found out?

That any nation can kill so cavalierly without expressing regret or sorrow is shameful. That it evokes no howls of horror from the international community is astounding. Thousands and thousands of absolutely innocent Laotians have been maimed and killed and nobody cares—not the President nor the Pope, not the Secretary General of the United Nations nor the justices of the World Court, not any representative of a permanent member of the Security Council nor any country’s representative to the General Assembly, not the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the Dalai Lama. NOBODY!

What kind of people are we? Have human beings lost all vestiges of human decency? Have centuries of war, genocide, even the holocaust taught us nothing? Are we no better than the citizens of Ur were?

Apparently not!

Just as they did in the city of Ur, people today cherish their myths. But unless people can distinguish the mythical from the real, myths are monstrous.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage. 

“Russia suspected of election scheme. U.S. probes plan to sow voter distrust.”

That’s the Washington Post page-one lead headline of September 6. Think about it. The election that Americans are suffering through, cringing in embarrassment, making them think of moving abroad, renouncing their citizenship; an election causing the Founding Fathers to throw up as they turn in their graves … this is because the Russian Devils are sowing voter distrust! Who knew?

But of course, that’s the way Commies are – Oh wait, I forgot, they’re no longer Commies. So what are they? Ah yes, they still have that awful old hangup so worthy of condemnation by decent people everywhere – They want to stand in the way of American world domination. The nerve!

The first Cold War performed a lobotomy on Americans, replacing brain matter with anti-communist viral matter, producing more than 70 years of functional national stupidity.

For all of you who missed this fun event there’s good news: Cold War Two is here, as big and as stupid as ever. Russia and Vladimir Putin are repeatedly, and automatically, blamed for all manner of bad things. The story which follows the above Washington Post headline does not even bother to make up something that could pass for evidence of the claim. The newspaper just makes the claim, at the same time pointing out that “the intelligence community is not saying it has ‘definitive proof’ of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so.” But the page-one headline has already served its purpose.

Hillary Clinton in her debate with Donald Trump likewise accused Russia of all kinds of computer hacking. Even Trump, not usually a stickler for accuracy, challenged her to offer something along the lines of evidence. She had nothing to offer.

In any event, this is all a diversion. It’s not hacking per se that bothers the establishment; it’s the revelations of their lies that drives them up the wall. The hack of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the party’s convention disclosed a number of embarrassing internal emails, forcing the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

On September 12 we could read in the Post that a well-known physician had called for Clinton to be checked for possible poisons afer her collapse in New York. Said the good doctor: “I do not trust Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. With those two all things are possible.”

Numerous other examples could be given here of the Post’s near-juvenile anti-Russian bias. One of the most common subjects has been Crimea. Moscow’s “invasion” of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine in February 2014 is repeatedly cited as proof of Moscow’s belligerent and expansionist foreign policy and the need for Washington to once again feed the defense-budget monster. But we’re never reminded that Russia was reacting to a US-supported coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of Ukraine on Russia’s border and replaced it with a regime in which neo-Nazis, complete with swastikas, feel very much at home. Russia “invaded” to assist Eastern Ukrainians in their resistance to this government, and did not even cross the border inasmuch as Russia already had a military base in Ukraine.

NATO (= USA) has been surrounding Russia for decades. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov captured the exquisite shamelessness of this with his remark of September 27, 2014: “Excuse us for our existence in the middle of your bases.”

By contrast here is US Secretary of State, John Kerry: “NATO is not a threat to anyone. It is a defensive alliance. It is simply meant to provide security. It is not focused on Russia or anyone else.”

NATO war games in these areas are frequent, almost constant. The encirclement of Russia is about complete except for Georgia and Ukraine. In June, Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, shockingly accused NATO of “war-mongering” against Russia. How would the United States react to a Russian coup in Mexico or Canada followed by Russian military exercises in the same area?

Since the end of Cold War One, NATO has been feverishly searching for a reason to justify its existence. Their problem can be summed up with this question: If NATO had never existed what argument could be given now to create it?

The unmitigated arrogance of US policy in Ukraine was best epitomized by the now-famous remark of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary at the State Department, reacting to possible European Union objection to Washington’s role in Ukraine: “Fuck the EU”, she charmingly declared.

Unlike the United States, Russia does not seek world domination, nor even domination of Ukraine, which Moscow could easily accomplish if it wished. Neither did the Soviet Union set out to dominate Eastern Europe post-World War II. It must be remembered that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union to wipe out Bolshevism forever; and that the Russians in World Wars I and II lost about 40 million people because the West had twice used this highway to invade Russia. It should not be surprising that after World War II the Soviets were determined to close down the highway.

The Washington Post’s campaign to depict Russia as the enemy is unrelenting. Again, on the 19th, we could read in the paper the following: “U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.”

Nothing, however, compares with President Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly (September 24, 2014) where he classified Russia to be one of the three threats to the world along with the Islamic State and ebola.

A war between nuclear-powered United States and nuclear- powered Russia is “unthinkable”. Except that American military men think about it, like Cold-War US General Thomas Power, speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the US: “The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.”

Notes

1. Washington Post, December 3, 2015
2. Various online sources, see for example Thomas Power’s wikipedia entry
3. Democracy Now!, June 9, 2016

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova issued a stark warning to Washington Saturday, declaring that any move by the US to directly attack Syrian government forces could result in “total war” and produce “tectonic shifts” in the country and throughout the Middle East.

Russia’s warning came almost a year to the day after the Kremlin initiated air strikes against Islamist targets in Syria. Moscow intervened to prop up the Assad regime, which hosts Russia’s only naval base outside of the former Soviet Union. The intervention drew immediate condemnation from Washington, the country that bears responsibility for initiating the Syrian civil war in 2011 to bring about regime change in Damascus.

A year on, Zakharova raised the prospect of the eruption of a much wider war with incalculable consequences. Noting Washington’s preference to pursue its policy goals with the use of force, she stated, “It usually ends with one thing—a full-scale war.” She then proceeded to warn of the impact on the broader region, adding, “If the US starts a direct aggression against Damascus and the Syrian army, this will lead to scary, tectonic shifts not only on the territory of Syria, but in the whole region as well.”

These comments reflect the growing concern about Washington’s increasingly provocative and aggressive stance towards Russia over Syria, expressed recently in veiled threats to unleash CIA-sponsored terrorists against Moscow and a willingness among senior political and military circles to contemplate all-out war. At the same time, they show that the Kremlin’s attempt to defend the interests of Russia’s oligarchy by propping up its sole ally in the Middle East offers no counterweight to this war drive, but only exacerbates the danger of a military clash between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.

Chief responsibility for this danger, however, lies with the United States. Zakharova’s comments were undoubtedly a response to the Obama administration’s ever more aggressive stance towards Moscow in recent days.

On Friday, the New York Times, which only a day earlier branded Russia an “outlaw state,” released a transcript of a closed-door discussion it had obtained between Secretary of State John Kerry and a collection of US-aligned Syrian activists on the sidelines of last month’s UN General Assembly. In it, Kerry said he and many others in the Obama administration had pushed for military action and were frustrated by the adherence to diplomatic avenues with Russia and Syria. “I think you’re looking at three people, four people in the administration who have all argued for use of force, and I lost the argument,” Kerry told his audience, before adding, “You have nobody more frustrated than we are.”

Kerry’s remarks were released only two days after he threatened to end all bilateral cooperation with Russia over Syria and in the midst of a presidential campaign in which Russia is being routinely demonized. They provide yet more confirmation that the ceasefire deal he struck with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last month, which collapsed after the US bombed a Syrian army position, was nothing more than a tactical maneuver. The aim was to buy time for Washington’s proxy Islamist forces to regroup and rearm, while allowing the US to prepare for a major escalation of the Syrian war.

Zakharova’s comments also were a reaction to those of State Department spokesman John Kirby, who menaced Moscow last Wednesday with the potential unleashing of Islamist extremists against Russian interests, not just in Syria, but within Russia’s own borders.

“Extremist groups will continue to exploit the vacuums that are there in Syria to expand their operations, which could include attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities. Russia will continue to send people home in body bags, and will continue to lose resources, perhaps even aircraft,” Kirby said. Given Washington’s long record in collaborating with Jihadi terrorist groups going back to the 1980s, the meaning of such comments was unmistakably clear.

Russian aircraft continued to support a brutal offensive by Syrian government forces over the weekend with repeated air strikes on Aleppo. One of the city’s main hospitals, known as M10, was struck for a third time in a week Saturday, killing two patients, injuring many more and putting the facility out of service. According to UN figures, at least 320 civilians have been killed in eastern Aleppo and hundreds more have been injured since the collapse of the ceasefire. Allegations of the use of bunker-buster bombs, cluster munitions and phosphorus have been made.

Pro-government forces gained control of northern districts of Aleppo Sunday and the Syrian military command announced that it was prepared to give safe passage guarantees to rebels who left the city. Up to 10,000 government soldiers and aligned militias from Lebanon’s Hizbollah and Iraqi Shia fighters are reportedly preparing to launch an offensive on Aleppo’s eastern districts.

The attempts by the US and its Western allies to seize on the casualties caused and destruction wrought by Syrian and Russian bombardments are utterly hypocritical. US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and his British counterpart Boris Johnson have all accused Russia of “war crimes” or “barbarism” while blithely ignoring the atrocities perpetrated by the so-called moderate opposition. Extremist militias shelled government-held areas of Aleppo over recent days, killing 18 and injuring over 60 on Friday and injuring a further 13 on Saturday. No outcry has been heard in the mainstream media on behalf of these civilians killed, likely by US-supplied munitions.

More fundamentally, US imperialism is to blame for fomenting the Syrian conflict through its systematic promotion and financing of forces aligned to al-Qaida, which have formed the backbone of the rebel forces since 2011. The Obama administration, its Gulf allies and Turkey have recklessly stoked the civil war with the aim of bringing about regime change in Damascus, even as the casualties have mounted and surpassed half a million by many estimates. Last month, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Joseph Dunford explicitly told Congress that achieving the US goal of controlling air space over Syria and establishing a “no-fly” zone would require war with Damascus and Moscow.

This makes clear that Washington will stop at nothing to secure the consolidation of its hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East, a critical component of its broader strategy of establishing unchallenged domination over the Eurasian land mass.

In Syria, Washington has stoked ethnic and religious divisions by backing competing and even directly hostile groups in its desperate bid to secure its predatory interests. In northern Syria, the US is continuing to supply weapons to Kurdish fighters aligned with the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Democratic Union Party (PYD), forces which have been coming under attack since late August from a Turkish incursion to which Washington has also provided assistance.

But there are indications that tensions between Ankara and Washington are growing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized Washington last week for its latest shipment of arms to the YPG and suggested that Ankara’s support in fighting ISIS was conditional on the US abandoning the Kurds. Referring to the future offensive to seize control of Raqqa, ISIS’s capital, Erdogan said, “Of course, if the United States wants to do the Raqqa operation with the YPG and the Democratic Union Party, we as Turkey will not take part in this operation; but if they exclude the YPG and PYD from this affair, then of course we will conjoin this struggle together with the United States.”

Senior Turkish military officials are reportedly discussing crossing the Euphrates River, which the US considers to mark the limit of Kurdish control. Reports have also raised the possibility of talks on a Turkish-Russian agreement on Syria when Russian President Vladimir Putin possibly visits Turkey October 11.

Erdogan noted last week that Turkish troops had already established a “safe zone” of 900 square kilometers in Syria, an area that could be massively expanded to 5,000 square kilometers.

One of the next targets identified by Turkey is the ISIS-controlled city of Al-Bab, which US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has urged Turkey to avoid because Washington wants Kurdish control to be established there. Al-Bab is considered key for the offensive on Raqqa, meaning that whoever holds power there could significantly influence the operation to conquer the ISIS capital.

A quick review of Ukraine,  Zbig’s Grand Chessboard – How the West Was Checkmated is simple – this amazing work should be in everyone’s reading library.  Anyone who cares to understand the situation of what has happened, and is happening in Ukraine needs to read this book.  It covers the history of the dissolution of the USSR, the resulting creation of Ukraine, and the history of the U.S.’ attempts through various government and non-government organizations (e.g. Soros) towards the first failed colour revolution (Orange, 2004), then on towards the second attempt resulting in the successful installation of the noenazi puppet regime of Poroshenko/Yatsenuk.

Beyond that, it has deeper implications for all global U.S. imperial adventures and the manner in which they are arranged and delivered.  The chaos that ensues serves the purpose of stabilizing the US$ hegemony of the petrodollar as the global reserve currency.  This latter point is presented at the end of this work, and is notable as it is the first time I have read of that connection so clearly presented within a book oriented towards what is normally considered an historical and/or current events perspective of U.S. imperial affairs.

Zbigniew Brzezinski (right)

As indicated above, Ukraine, Zbig’s Grand Chessboard begins with conditions in the USSR, the efforts of Gorbachev vis a vis Reagan’s politics.  The rise of the neoconservatives, the Wolfowitz doctrine, the collapse of the USSR, the years of dictatorial autocratic/oligarchic rule under the drunkard Yeltsin, NATO’s moves eastward, the “shock doctrine” of IMF/World Bank austerity accompanied by U.S. corporate alliances with Russian criminal oligarchs (e.g. Khodorkovsky) lays the groundwork for the efforts to turn Ukraine into a U.S./NATO/EU puppet state.  The ultimate goal as per Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard was the subjugation and disruption of Russia and the allocation of its resources to friendly corporate/political cronies.

After the more historical items are described and placed into context (context is lacking in many current attempts to validate the depredations of the U.S. empire)  the current events surrounding Ukraine and the manipulations which led to the Maidan and the success of the neonazi coup are described within the full context of U.S. interests and activities.

What becomes obvious from the author’s research is that the U.S. finally met up with a government, and a personality, Vladimir Putin, that had strengthened Russia.  Another strengthening factor, ironically, have been the U.S.’ attempts to isolate Russia, one of the most unsuccessful foreign policies attempted by the U.S.  Certainly the puppets of the EU/NATO have fallen into line, sort of, and U.S. anglo-allies Canada and Australia, but the majority of the world has been able to see the U.S. for what it is – a narcissistic, power hungry, and violent country.

As noted by the authors, the media plays a significant role in the domestic ignorance and demonization of Vladimir Putin – creating the requisite ‘evil other’ for the controlling powers to distract the masses from the reality of  U.S. intentions for global hegemony manner of overt and covert military power combined with economic manipulations through the institutions of the Washington consensus (IMF, World Bank, WTO, BIS, et al).

The book went to press in 2015, as the second attack by Ukraine against the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk commenced.  The results of the second round proved even more disastrous for Poroshenko/Yatsenyuk as they suffered a strong military defeat within the Debaltsevo cauldron, leading the U.S.’ European puppet leaders, Hollande and Merkel, to cry ‘uncle’ and create the Minsk II agreements.

What I find even more significant is the generalizations that can be made from this narrower historical story to the many violent actions created by the U.S. since the end of WW II.  Ukraine is not an isolated event, but is one in a long succession of attacks, overthrows, coups, and jihads created, made, and managed by the U.S’ political-military establishment.  The parallel war in Syria is part and parcel of the overall chessboard – it is fortunate that Putin and his advisors have successfully stopped the incursions of ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and the many disparate bands of jihadis supported by the U.S. directly, covertly, and through their Saudi/Qatari allies.

The best ending for all this is for the U.S. to accept the multipolar world, perhaps not within its domestic hubris and arrogance as the ‘indispensable’ nation, but through a less militaristic approach to world affairs, and perhaps, not be left behind while the rest of the world overcomes the chaos – military and financial – created by the empire.

The worst ending would be that the empire recognize that it is checkmated, and simply knock the chessboard over – the nuclear option.  No one anywhere wins with that option, but the megalomania and ignorance of the neoconservative/Wall street alliance might simply be unaware of the consequences of initiating a third world war.

To understand this more comprehensively, Ukraine, Zbig’s Grand Chessboard – How the West Was Checkmated is an excellent source.  The arguments presented are well supported, concisely described, and through the lense of the Ukraine debacle, effectively demonstrate the intransigence of U.S. geopolitical efforts around the world.  This book should and must be added to all contemporary reading lists for global current affairs.

Recent protests held across North America and Europe staged by supporters of armed militants in Syria have staged scenes in Western streets eerily similar to those featured in the photos and videos of the US-European funded “Syrian Civil Defence” also known as the “White Helmets.” 

The stalling talks between international powers on Syria – with Russia ramping up its air raid campaign – has ignited worldwide protests calling for an end to the horror in Aleppo.

Protestors in Turkey, France, Netherlands, America and Canada took to the streets opposing Bashar al-Assad’s and Russia’s crimes in Aleppo, carrying posters that read “Stop bombing Aleppo” and “Save Aleppo”.

Image: This is not Aleppo, Syria, but rather the streets of Europe where a recent “save Aleppo” protest was staged. Actors posing in fake dust and blood proved just how easy it is for anyone to create “war victims” anytime, anywhere.

Al Arabiya’s ironic hand-wringing over Syria as Riyadh devastates Yemen with its own aerial bombardment and ground incursion, attempts to portray eastern Aleppo as a horrific cauldron where“where more than 250,000 civilians are trapped without food or clean water.”

And while undoubtedly war is raging in eastern Aleppo, it should be noted that the vast majority of Aleppo’s population – 1.75 million in fact – live in the government-controlled majority of Aleppo.  But despite this reality, the West and its allies – including Saudi Arabia – have attempted to use their sway over international public opinion to exaggerate Syrian security operations and fabricate a “humanitarian catastrophe” to serve as yet another pretext for wider Western intervention.

Central to this appeal to public opinion has been the so-called “White Helmets,” also referred to as the “Syrian Civil Defence” despite the nation of Syria already having a legitimate, professional civil defense force.

Posing as an impartial rescue force, the “White Helmets” are transparently auxiliaries serving exclusively side-by-side armed militants including US State Department, UN, and EU designated foreign terrorist organizations. Their primary function is not “rescuing” anyone, but to manage a public relations campaign aimed at swaying public and political opinion, leveraging “humanitarian” sympathy worldwide.

Their primary means of doing this is publishing photos and videos of their members – wearing elaborate, matching uniforms and driving brand new ambulances – pulling dust and blood covered victims from rubble allegedly brought down upon them by Syrian and Russian airstrikes.

The veracity of their photos, videos, and many claims have never been independently verified, and in many cases, evidence suggests that much of what they present to the public across their extensive, well-funded social media presence has been fabricated.

The recent coordinated “save Aleppo” protests held across Europe and North America, perhaps revealed just how transparently fabricated and fictional the “White Helmet’s” work really is. During one protest, photos retweeted by the official “White Helmet’s” Twitter account showed actors dressed up as “war victims,” covered in fake dust and blood, appearing almost indistinguishable from the alleged “victims” the “White Helmets” regularly “save” in Syria.

The protest, staged in European streets far from the Syrian conflict, even included children – likewise covered in fake dust and blood – cradled in the arms of adults, posing with despondent looks upon their faces.  Also part of the staged scene were actors dressed like the “White Helmets” themselves.

Image: The only difference between admittedly staged scenes in European streets during a recent “save Aleppo” protest, and the daily output of the Western created and funded “White Helmets” acting  troupe in Syria is that in Syria, the devastation of war provides a much more convincing “set” for the actors to perform on.

While the acting troupe that organized this protest may have thought they were cleverly “bringing the conflict to the streets of Europe” to invoke global sympathy for their cause, what they really proved was just how easy it really is for the “White Helmets” to create “war victims” anytime, anywhere.

In Syria, where years of US-backed violence has left many parts of the country devastated, such staged scenes playing out with the devastation of war as a backdrop become all the much more convincing. With “White Helmet” videos heavily edited before reaching the public, they are able to create tragic scenes of war, anytime, anywhere – even in the streets of Europe thousands of miles away from where Syrian and Russian warplanes are operating.

Their primary goal and that of the special interests funding them tens of millions of dollars, is to manipulate the hearts and minds of the global public in support of Western-backed armed militants – not “save lives” nor bring peace to Syria.

Representatives for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry (EMERCOM) said that all bomb shelters and underground shelters in Moscow meant for the evacuation of people in case of a nuclear attack or other emergencies, “were prepared and will be able to accommodate the entire population of the capital.”

“As a result of the introduction of new approaches to civil defense, an inventory of underground facilities of the city was conducted. The Moscow underground facilities will be able to protect  100% of the population of the city,” deputy head of EMERCOM of Russia in Moscow, Andrei Mishchenko said.

He also added that the department takes urgent measures to enhance civil defense. The department updates the legal framework and modernizes control and alarm systems.

Source: REX

“We work to improve the public training system in the field of civil defense,” he said.

Noteworthy, the Ministry for Communications, the Finance Ministry, the Ministry for Industry, the Russian State Reserve and the Bank of Russia earlier took part in a sudden inspection of the Russian army. The above-mentioned departments worked in a “war-time” mode to test their systems for a possible war.

The Washington Free Beacon wrote citing US intelligence that Russia suddenly started building super bunkers. According to the publication, “dozens” of such bunkers are being built across the country.

Experts point out that their creation is associated with the introduction of a prospective integrated automated command and control system of the fifth generation into Russian missile forces.

To crown it all, according to services responsible for the organization of civil defense and emergency response, a special program was launched in Moscow in 2015 , within the scope of which bomb shelters and fallout shelters were built or renewed in every district of the Russian capital.

Two years ago, Russia conducted drills to repulse a nuclear attack on Moscow and strike a massive retaliatory blow. Reportedly, President Putin used the “nuclear suitcase” during the drills.

In 2015, both Russian and American generals said for the first time that a nuclear war between the United States and Russia was close like never before.

“Despite the fact that the majority of Russians, including Muscovites, do not know where bomb shelters are located in their neighborhoods, there is a list of addresses of bomb shelters. The shelters are now maintained accordingly to give people an opportunity to go through several days of a man-made emergency or a nuclear attack,” EMERCOM officials said.

Translated from Russian

Politonline 

Read article in Russian

Star Wars: US afraid of Russia’s attack in space

Donald Trump’s remarkable comments about American blacks never being worse off demonstrated a stunning ignorance of or callousness toward the grotesque evils of slavery and Jim Crow, writes Marjorie Cohn.

The almost daily reports of police killings of African-Americans and resulting community outrage have shined a light on persistent racism in the United States. Yet, in the first presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked what he would do to heal the racial divide and replied: “Bring back law and order.”

He added that the use of stop-and-frisk in New York and Chicago “worked very well” and “brought the crime rate way down.”

Post card photo of the lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie in Duluth, Minnesota, June 15. 1920.

But, as reported in the New York Times, “about 90 percent of the people who were stopped were young black or Latino men who had committed no crime whatsoever, according to police data. Of those few who were arrested, the vast majority were charged with nothing more serious than possession of marijuana, not having guns.”

When debate moderator Lester Holt noted that stop-and-frisk had been ruled unconstitutional in New York because it “largely singled out black and Hispanic young men,” Trump disagreed.

In fact, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled in the 2013 case of Floyd v. City of New York that New York’s stop-and-frisk program violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures since they were conducted without reasonable suspicion. It also violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because the stops and frisks were racially discriminatory, the judge found.

Darius Charney, lead attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights in Floyd, said, “Stop-and-frisk, as practiced by the NYPD up until 2014, was at its root about equating blackness with criminality and dangerousness, which is exactly the same kind of thinking that has led to all of the horrific and avoidable police shootings of people of color that have captured the nation’s attention over the past few years.”

Before the debate, Trump had said at a rally that “African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they’ve ever been in before. Ever. Ever. Ever.”

Trump apparently forgot about slavery and Jim Crow. In her 1861 slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs wrote, “Various were the punishments [of slaves] resorted to. A favorite one was to tie a rope round a man’s body, and suspend him from the ground. A fire was kindled over him, from which was suspended a piece of fat pork. As this cooked, the scalding drops of fat continually fell on the bare flesh.”

When a slave ran away, Jacobs added, bloodhounds tracked him, then “literally tore the flesh from his bones.” If a slave resisted going with his new master, Jacobs noted, “The whip is used till the blood flows at his feet; and his stiffened limbs are put in chains, to be dragged in the field for days and days!”

‘Insulting’ Ignorance

NAACP president Cornell William Brooks said on CNN that Trump’s comments that blacks are worse off now than ever demonstrated “an insulting degree of ignorance and/or insensitivity,” ignoring the lynching of African-Americans, separate drinking fountains, forced seating at the back of the bus, and slavery. Brooks added that Trump’s remarks revealed “a profound insensitivity to what we are going through at this very moment.”

A photograph showing the whipping scars on the back of an African-American slave.

The head of the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent compared police killings of African-Americans in the United States to lynchings.

“Contemporary police killings, and the trauma they create, are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching,” Ricardo Sunga III said. He attributed the “current human rights crisis” to “impunity for state violence,” noting the working group “is convinced that the root of the problem lies in the serious lack of accountability for perpetrators of such killings despite the evidence.”

Human rights experts from New York University Law School, University of Virginia School of Law, and St. Louis University School of Law concur. In a submission to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for a hearing on “Excessive Use of Force by the Police against Black Americans in the United States,” they wrote that in 2015, police officers killed at least 1,139 people in the U.S. More than 25 percent of the victims of police violence were black, which is “grossly disproportionate” to their numbers in the national population.

“Impunity and the lack of accountability lie at the heart of a cycle of police violence and discrimination against Black Americans,” the legal experts noted. They added that the legal framework regulating the use of force in the U.S. “does not conform to the requirements of international human rights law or international best practices,” which require law enforcement to “apply nonviolent means before resorting to the use of force.”

If force is “unavoidable,” officers must “exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offense.” In all circumstances where force is used, police must “minimize damage . . . and respect and preserve human life” and dignity. “Intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”

We see repeated situations in which officers respond to a scene and use deadly force as a first, not a last, resort. Police are trained to shoot to kill, not to incapacitate. They often opt to shoot rather than using tasers, although there is also overuse of tasers.

Officers in San Diego County’s El Cajon knew that Alfred Olango had mental illness. Yet instead of calling the Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams, which is trained to defuse these types of situations, the police responded to Olango’s sister’s call for help earlier this week by shooting him while his hands were in the air.

Three days after Olango was killed, a black man with bipolar disorder was shot and killed by Los Angeles County police following his call for help.

Inherent Police Bias

The IACHR report charged that “deferring to the views of officers” about what constitutes a lawful use of force “runs the risk of allowing their biases – whether explicit or implicit – to define the parameter of the lawful use of force.”

A screen-shot from a video showing Walter Scott being shot in the back by a North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer Michael Slager on April 4, 2015. (Video via the New York Times.)

Implicit bias describes unconscious prejudices, attitudes and stereotypes. Researchers at the Yale Child Study Center concluded that implicit bias determines the way teachers deal with African-American male students beginning at four years of age.

“The problem of discriminatory police violence is not simply one of inadequate training,” the IACHR report continued. “It cannot be separated from systemic racism and inadequate accountability mechanisms.”

“Aggressive police practices are deeply rooted in a history of discrimination against Black Americans and are part of a system of racial and social control,” the report noted. Its authors identify “broken windows” policing, which targets petty crime; racial profiling, in which people of color are “stereotyped as violent criminals or drug abusers”; increasing militarization of police, who use military equipment even when responding to non-violent crime; and “for-profit policing,” where law enforcement raises considerable revenue from fines and criminal and civil forfeiture.

Three sociology professors from Harvard, Yale and Oxford determined that 911 calls decreased by 17 percent in Milwaukee during the year after the 2004 beating of Frank Jude Jr. They found that African-Americans were less likely to call the police after learning that officers “boot-stomped [Jude’s] face, snapped his fingers and pressed pens into his ear canals” because they suspected him of stealing a police badge.

Matthew Desmond and Andrew Papachristos, two of the professors who conducted the Milwaukee study, wrote in the New York Times: “Each new tragedy contributes to and reawakens the collective trauma of black communities, which have been subjected to state-sanctioned assaults – from slave whippings and lynching campaigns to Jim Crow enforcement and mass incarceration – for generations.”

Clinton’s Proposals

Hillary Clinton has called for police training programs to eliminate implicit bias and proposed a plan “to restore bonds between communities and law enforcement.” She vowed to bring law enforcement and communities together to develop national guidelines on the use of force by police officers, support legislation to end racial profiling, dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, and provide greater transparency and accountability for officer-involved shootings.

Dashcam video of Chicago police shooting Laquan McDonald.

All police shootings should be investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted by an independent and impartial special prosecutor. Citizens police review boards should have independent investigators, independent legal counsel, and subpoena power.

“We need an investigative model rather than a review model, where the board does its own investigations rather than just reviewing what the police have done,” Kate Yavenditti, from the National Lawyers Guild and Women Occupy San Diego, told me.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the Black Lives Matter movement across the country, which has exposed the way in which local, state and federal governments, the corporate media, and the judicial system actively participate in exonerating the police and demonizing the victim.

The U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, comprised of top human rights lawyers from around the world, told the U.N. Human Rights Council last week that the United States owes reparations to African-Americans as compensation for “the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality.”

The working group concluded that U.S. slave labor would be worth about $5.9 trillion today. But reparations could be provided in the form of “a formal apology, health initiatives, educational opportunities . . . psychological rehabilitation, technology transfer and financial support, and debt cancellation.”

Our society continues to be plagued by the legacy of slavery – the “peculiar institution” – as well as Jim Crow and continuing, pernicious racism. Calls for “law and order” and stop-and-frisk will not heal the wounds, and will only exacerbate the tensions. Yet, that is what Donald Trump has prescribed.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is a frequent writer, lecturer and commentator about civil rights and civil liberties. Visit her website at http://marjoriecohn.com/and follow her on Twitter @marjoriecohn.

Pundits have declared a “New Cold War.” If only! The Cold War was a time when leaders focused on reducing tensions between nuclear powers. What we have today is much more dangerous: Washington’s reckless and irresponsible aggression toward the other major nuclear powers, Russia and China.

During my lifetime American presidents worked to defuse tensions with Russia. President John F. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Richard Nixon negotiated SALT I and the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and Nixon opened to Communist China. President Carter negotiated SALT II. Reagan worked with Soviet leader Gorbachev and ended the Cold War. The Berlin Wall came down. Gorbachev was promised that in exchange for the Soviet Union’s agreement to the reunification of Germany, NATO would not move one inch to the East.

Peace was at hand. And then the neoconservatives, rehabilitated by the Israeli influence in the American press, went to work to destroy the peace that Reagan and Gorbachev had achieved. It was a short-lasting peace. Peace is costly to the profits of the military/security complex. Washington’s gigantic military and security interests are far more powerful than the peace lobby.

Since the advent of the criminal Clinton regime, every American president has worked overtime to raise tensions with Russia and China.

China is confronted with the crazed and criminal Obama regime’s declaration of the “pivot to Asia” and the prospect of the US Navy controlling the sea lanes that provision China.

Rand Corporation Study on Behalf of US Army: Scenario of a US war on China

Russia is even more dangerously threatened with US nuclear missile bases on her border and with US and NATO military bases stretching from the Baltics to the Black Sea.

Russia is also threatened with endless provocations and with demonization that is clearly intended to prepare Western peoples for war against “the Russian threat.” Extreme and hostile words stream from the mouth of the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who has called the president of Russia “the new Hitler” and threatened Russia with military force. Insouciant Americans are capable of electing this warmonger who would bring Armageddon upon the earth.

Yesterday, Israel’s voice in the US, the New York Times, added to Hillary’s demonization of the most responsible leader in the world with this editorial: “Vladimir Putin’s Outlaw State.” This irresponsible and propagandistic editorial, no doubt written by the neoconservatives, blames all the troubles in Ukraine and Syria on Putin. The NYT presstitutes know that they have no case, so they drag in the US-orchestrated false report on MH-17 recently released by Washington’s Netherlands vassal.

This report is so absurd as to cast doubt on whether intelligence exists anywhere in the Western world. Russia and the now independent Russian provinces that have separated from Ukraine have no interest whatsoever in shooting down a Malaysian airliner. But despite this fact, Russia, according to the orchestrated report, sent a surface-to-air missile, useful only at high altitude, an altitude far higher than the Ukrainian planes fly that are attacking Russians in the separated republics, to the “rebels” so that the “rebels” could shoot down a Malaysian airliner. Then the missile system was sent back to Russia.

How insouciant does a person have to be to believe this propaganda from the New York Times?

Does the New York Times write this nonsense because it is bankrupt and lives on CIA subsidies?

It is obvious that the Malaysian airliner was destroyed for the purpose of blaming Russia so that Washington could force Europe to cooperate in applying illegal sanctions on Russia in an attempt to destabilize Russia, a country that placed itself in the way of Washington’s determination to destabilize Syria and Iran.

In a recent speech, the mindless cipher, who in his role as US Secretary of Defense serves as a front man for the armaments industry, declared the one trillion dollars (1,000 billion dollars or 1,000,000 million dollars, that is, one million dollars one million times) that Washington is going to spend of Americans’ money for nuclear force renewal is so we can “get up in the morning to go to school, to go to work, to live our lives, to dream our dreams and to give our children a better future.”

But Russia’s response to this buildup in Washington’s strategic nuclear weapons is, according to Defense Secretary Aston B. Carter, “saber rattling” that “raises serious questions about Russia’s leaders commitment to strategic stability.”

Do you get the picture? Or are you an insouciant American? Washington’s buildup is only so that we can get up in the morning and go to school and work, but Russia’s buildup in response to Washington’s buildup upsets “strategic stability.”

What the Pentagon chief means is that Russia is supposed to sit there and let Washington gain the upper hand so Washington can maintain “strategic stability” by dictating to Russia. By not letting Washington prevail, Russia is upsetting “strategic stability.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been broken and tamed by the neoconservatives, recently displayed the same point of view with his “ultimatum” to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In effect, Kerry told Lavrov that Russia must stop helping Syria resist the jihadist forces and allow the US-supported ISIS to regain the initiative and reduce Syria to the chaos in which Washington left Libya and Iraq. Otherwise, Kerry said that the agreement to cooperate is off.

There can be no cooperation between the US and Russia over Syria, because the two government’s goals are entirely different. Russia wants to defeat ISIS, and the US wants to use ISIS to overthrow Assad. This should be clear to the Russians. Yet they still enter into “agreements” that Washington has no intention of keeping. Washington breaks the agreements and blames Russia, thus creating more opportunities to paint Russia as untrustworthy. Without Russia’s cooperation in setting themselves up for blame, Russia’s portrait would not be so black.

On September 28, 2016, the New York Times gave us a good example of how Washington’s propaganda system works.

The headline set the stage: “Russia’s Brutal Bombing of Aleppo May Be Calculated, and It May Be Working.” According to the NYT report, Russia was not bombing ISIS. Russia was “destroying hospitals and schools, choking off basic supplies, and killing aid workers and hundreds of civilians.”

The NYT asks: “What could possibly motivate such brutality?”

The NYT answers: Russia is “massacring Aleppo’s civilians as part of a calculated strategy . . . designed to pressure [moderates] to ally themselves with extremists,” thereby discrediting the forces that Washington has sent to overthrow Syria and to reduce the country to chaos.

When America’s Newspaper of Record is nothing but a propaganda ministry, what is America?

Pundits keep explaining that Washington’s 15 year old wars in the Middle East are about controlling the routing of energy pipelines. Little doubt this is a factor as it brings on board powerful American energy and financial interests. But this is not the motive for the wars. Washington, or the neoconservatives who control the US government, intend to destabilize the Russian Federation, the former Soviet Central Asian countries, and China’s Muslim province by adding Syria and then Iran to the chaos that Washington has created in Iraq and Libya. If Washington succeeds in destroying Syria as it succeeded in destroying Libya and Iraq, Iran becomes the last buffer for Russia. If Washington then knocks off Iran, Russia is set up for destabilization by jihadists operating in Muslim regions of the Russian Federation.

This is clear as day. Putin understands this. But Russia, which existed under Washington’s domination during the Yeltsin years, has been left threatened by Washington’s Fifth Columns in Russia. There are a large number of foreign-financed NGOs in Russia that Putin finally realized were Washington’s agents. These Washington operatives have been made to register as foreign-financed, but they are still functioning.

Russia is also betrayed by a section of its elite who are allied economically, politically, and emotionally with Washington. I have termed these Russians “America Worshipers.” Their over-riding cause is to have Russia integrated with the West, which means to be a vassal of Washington.

Washington’s money even seems to have found its way into Russian “think tanks” and academic institutions. According to this report, two think tanks, one Russian one American, possibly funded by Washington’s money, have concluded that “US,Russia ‘Have far more common interests than differences’ in Asia-Pacific.”

This “academic report” is a direct assault on the Russian/Chinese alliance. It makes one wonder whether the report was funded by the CIA. The Russian media fall for the “common interest” propaganda, because they desire to be included in the West. Like Russian academics, the Russian media know English, not Chinese. Russia’s history since Peter the Great is with the West. So that is where they want to be. However, these America Worshipping Russians cannot understand that to be part of the West means being Washington’s vassal, or if they do understand the price, they are content with a vassal’s status like Germany, Great Britain, France, and the rest of the European puppet states.

To be a vassal is not an unusual choice in history. For example, many peoples chose to be Rome’s vassals, so those elements in Russia who desire to be Washington’s vassal have precedents for their decision.

To reduce Russia’s status to Washington’s vassal, we have Russian-US cooperation between the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations and the US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. These two co-conspirators against Russian sovereignty are working to destroy Russia’s strategic alliance with China and to create a US-Russian Pacific Alliance in its place. One of the benefits, the joint report declares, is “maintaining freedom of navigation and maritime security.”

“Freedom of navigation” is Washington’s term for controlling the sea lanes that supply China. So now we have a Russian institute supporting Washington’s plans to cut off resource flow into China. This idiocy on the part of the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations is unlikely to reassure China about its alliance with Russia. If the alliance is broken, Washington can more easily deal with the two constraints on its unilateralism.

Additionally, the joint report says that Moscow could cooperate with Washington in confidence-building measures to resolve territorial disputes in the Asia-Pacific region. What this means is that Russia should help Washington pressure China to give up its territorial claims.

One cannot but wonder if the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations is a CIA front. If it is not, the CIA is getting a free ride.

The foreign policy of the United States rests entirely on propagandistic lies. The presstitute media, a Ministry of Propaganda, establishes an orchestrated reality by treating lies as fact. News organizations around the world, accustomed as they are to following Washington’s lead, echo the lies as if they are facts.

Thus Washington’s lies–such as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasions–become the reality.

Russia’s very capable spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, understands that Washington uses the Western media to control explanations by shaping public opinion. She terms it a “reality show.” However, Zakharova thinks the problem is that Washington misuses “international relations and international platforms for addressing internal issues.”

By this she means that Obama’s foreign policy failures have made him hysterical and impudent as he strives to leave a legacy, and that American/Russian relations are poisoned by the US presidential campaign that is painting Trump as a “Putin stooge” for not seeing the point of conflict with Russia.

The US presstitutes are disreputable. This morning NPR presented us with a report on Chinese censorship of the media as if this was something that never happens in the US. Yet NPR not only censors the news, but uses disinformation as a weapon in behalf of Washington and Israel’s agendas. Anyone who depends on NPR is presented a very controlled picture of the world. And do not forget German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte, who admits he planted stories for the CIA in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitnung and says that there is no significant European journalist who doesn’t do the same thing.

The situation is far more serious than Zakharova realizes. Russians seem unable to get their minds around the fact that the neoconservatives are serious about imposing Washington’s hegemony on the rest of the world. The neoconservative doctrine declares that it is the principal goal of US foreign policy to prevent the rise of any country that would have sufficient power to serve as a check on American unilateralism. This neoconservative doctrine puts Russia and China in Washington’s crosshairs. If the Russian and Chinese governments do not yet understand this, they are not long for this world.

The neoconservative doctrine fits perfectly with the material interests of the US military/security complex. The US armaments and spy industries have had 70 years to entrench themselves with a huge claim on the US budget. This politically powerful interest group has no intention of letting go of its hold on US resources.

As long ago as 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned that the Cold War confronted Americans with a new internal danger as large as the external Soviet threat:

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

President Eisenhower’s warning that our liberties were equally at stake from the military/security complex as from the Soviet Threat did not last 24 hours. The military/security complex buried Eisenhower’s warning with extraordinary hype of the Soviet Threat.

In truth, there was no Soviet threat. Stalin had buffered Russia from the West with his control of Eastern Europe, just as Washington controlled Western Europe. Stalin had eliminated Trotsky and his supporters who stood for world revolution. Stalin declared “socialism in one country.”

Stalin terminated international communism. But the American military/security complex had much money to gain from the Amerian taxpayers in order to “protect America from International Communism.” So the fact that there was no effort on the part of the Soviet Union to subvert the world was ignored. Instead, every national liberation movement was declared by the US military/industrial complex to be a “falling domino” of the Communist takeover of the world.

Ho Chi Minh begged Washington for help against the French colonialists in Vietnam. Washington told him to go to hell. It was Washington that sent Ho Cho Minh to seek communist support.

The long Vietnam war went on for years. It enriched the military/security complex and officers’ pensions. But it was otherwise entirely pointless. There were no dominoes to fall. Vietnam won the war but is open to American influence and commerce.

Because of the military/security complex more than 50,000 Americans died in the war and many thousands more suffered physical and psychological wounds. Millions of Vietnamese suffered death, maiming, birth defects and illnesses associated with Washington’s use of Agent Orange.

The entire war was totally pointless. It achieved nothing but destruction of innocents.

This is Washington’s preferred way. The corrupt capitalism that rules in America has no interest in life, only in profit. Profit is all that counts. If entire countries are destroyed and left in ruins, all the better for American armaments industries.

Yes, please, a new Cold War. We need one desperately, a conflict responsibly managed in place of the reckless, insane drive for world hegemony emanating from the crazed, evil criminals in Washington who are driving the world to Armageddon.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

Washington’s quest for perpetual world power is underwritten by systematic and perpetual propaganda wars. Every major and minor war has been preceded, accompanied and followed by unremitting government propaganda designed to secure public approval, exploit victims, slander critics, dehumanize targeted adversaries and justify its allies’ collaboration.

In this paper we will discuss the most common recent techniques used to support ongoing imperial wars.

Propaganda Techniques of Empire

Role Reversal

A common technique, practiced by the imperial publicists, is to accuse the victims of the same crimes, which had been committed against them.  The well documented, deliberate and sustained US-EU aerial bombardment of Syrian government soldiers, engaged in operations against ISIS-terrorist, resulted in the deaths and maiming of almost 200 Syrian troops and allowed ISIS-mercenaries to overrun their camp.   In an attempt to deflect the Pentagon’s role in providing air cover for the very terrorists it claims to oppose, the propaganda organs cranked out lurid, but unsubstantiated, stories of an aerial attack on a UN humanitarian aid convoy, first blamed on the Syrian government and then on the Russians.  The evidence that the attack was most likely a ground-based rocket attack by ISIS terrorists did not deter the propaganda mills.  This technique would turn US and European attention away from the documented criminal attack by the imperial bombers and present the victimized Syrian troops and pilots as international human rights criminals.

Hysterical Rants

Faced with world opprobrium for its wanton violation of an international ceasefire agreement in Syria, the imperial public spokespeople frequently resort to irrational outbursts at international meetings in order to intimidate wavering allies into silence and shut down any chance for reasonable debate resolving concrete issues among adversaries.

The current ‘US Ranter-in-Chief’ in the United Nations, is Ambassador Samantha Power, who launched a vitriolic diatribe against the Russians in order to sabotage a proposed General Assembly debate on the US deliberate violation (its criminal attack on Syrian troops) of the recent Syrian ceasefire.  Instead of a reasonable debate among serious diplomats, the rant served to derail the proceedings.

Identity Politics to Neutralize Anti-Imperialist Movements

Empire is commonly identified with the race, gender, religion and ethnicity of its practioners.  Imperial propagandists have frequently resorted to disarming and weakening anti-imperialist movements by co-opting and corrupting black, ethnic minority and women leaders and spokespeople.  The use of such ‘symbolic’ tokens is based on the assumption that these are ‘representatives’ reflecting the true interests of so-called ‘marginalized minorities’ and can therefore presume to ‘speak for  the oppressed peoples of the world’.  The promotion of such compliant and respectable ‘minority members’ to the elite is then propagandized as a ‘revolutionary’, world liberating historical event – witness the ‘election’ of US President Barack Obama.

The rise of Obama to the presidency in 2008 illustrates how the imperial propagandists have used identity politics to undermine class and anti-imperialist struggles.

Under Obama’s historical black presidency, the US pursued seven wars against ‘people of color’ in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.  Over a million men and women of sub-Saharan black origin, whether Libyan citizens or contract workers for neighboring countries, were killed, dispossessed and driven into exile by US allies after the US-EU destroyed the Libyan state – in the name of humanitarian intervention.  Hundreds of thousands of Arabs have been bombed in Yemen, Syria and Iraq under President Obama, the so-called ‘historic black’ president.  Obama’s ‘predator drones’ have killed hundreds of Afghan and Pakistani villagers.  Such is the power of ‘identity politics’ that ignominious Obama was awarded the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’.

Meanwhile, in the United States under Obama, racial inequalities between black and white workers (wages, unemployment, access to housing, health and educational services) have widened.  Police violence against blacks intensified with total impunity for ‘killer cops’.  Over two million immigrant Latino workers have been expelled – breaking up hundreds of thousands of families– and accompanied by a marked increase of repression compared to earlier administrations.  Millions of black and white workers’ home mortgages were foreclosed while all of the corrupt banks were bailed out – at a greater rate than had occurred under white presidents.

This blatant, cynical manipulation of identity politics facilitated the continuation and deepening of imperial wars, class exploitation and racial exclusion.  Symbolic representation undermined class struggles for genuine changes.

Past Suffering to Justify Contemporary Exploitation

Imperial propagandists repeatedly evoke the victims and abuses of the past in order to justify their own aggressive imperial interventions and support for the ‘land grabs’ and ethnic cleansing committed by their colonial allies – like Israel, among others. The victims and crimes of the past are presented as a perpetual presence to justify ongoing brutalities against contemporary subject people.

The case of US-Israeli colonization of Palestine clearly illustrates how rabid criminality, pillage, ethnic cleansing and self-enrichment can be justified and glorified through the language of past victimization.  Propagandists in the US and Israel have created ‘the cult of the Holocaust’, worshiping a near century-old Nazi crime against Jews (as well as captive Slavs, Gypsies and other minorities) in Europe, to justify the bloody conquest and theft of Arab lands and sovereignty and engage in systematic military assaults against Lebanon and Syria.  Millions of Muslim and Christian Palestinians have been driven into perpetual exile.  Elite, wealthy, well-organized and influential Zionists, with primary fealty to Israel, have successfully sabotaged every contemporary struggle for peace in the Middle East and have created real barriers for social democracy in the US through their promotion of militarism and empire building.  Those claiming to represent victims of the past have become among the most oppressive of contemporary elites.  Using the language of ‘defense’, they promote aggressive forms of expansion and pillage.  They claim their monopoly on historic ‘suffering’ has given them a ‘special dispensation’ from the rules of civilized conduct:  their cult of the Holocaust allows them to inflict immense pain on others while silencing any criticism with the accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ and relentlessly punishing critics.  Their key role in imperial propaganda warfare is based on their claims of an exclusive franchise on suffering and immunity from the norms of justice.

Entertainment Spectacles on Military Platforms

Entertainment spectacles glorify militarism.  Imperial propagandists link the public to unpopular wars promoted by otherwise discredited leaders.  Sports events present soldiers dressed up as war heroes with deafening, emotional displays of ‘flag worship’ to celebrate the ongoing overseas wars of aggression.  These mind-numbing extravaganzas with crude elements of religiosity demand choreographed expressions of national allegiance from the spectators as a cover for continued war crimes abroad and the destruction of citizens’ economic rights at home.

Much admired, multi-millionaire musicians and entertainers of all races and orientations, present war to the masses with a humanitarian facade. The entertainers smiling faces serve genocide just as powerfully as the President’s benign and friendly  face accompanies his embrace of militarism.  The propagandist message for the spectator is that ‘your favorite team or singer is there just for you… because our noble wars and valiant warriors have made you free and now they want you to be entertained.’

The old style of blatant bellicose appeals to the public is obsolete:  the new propaganda conflates entertainment with militarism, allowing the ruling elite to secure tacit support for its wars without disturbing the spectators’ experience.

Conclusion

Do the Imperial Techniques of Propaganda Work?

How effective are the modern imperial propaganda techniques?  The results seem to be mixed.  In recent months, elite black athletes have begun protesting white racism by challenging the requirement for choreographed displays of flag worship. . . opening public controversy into the larger issues of police brutality and sustained marginalization.  Identity politics, which led to the election of Obama, may be giving way to issues of class struggle, racial justice, anti-militarism and the impact of continued imperial wars.  Hysterical rants may still secure international attention, but repeated performances begin to lose their impact and subject the ‘ranter’ to ridicule.

The cult of victimology has become less a rationale for the multi-billion dollar US-tribute to Israel, than the overwhelming political and economic influence and thuggery of billionaire Zionist fundraisers who demand US politicians’ support for the state of Israel.

Brandishing identify politics may have worked the first few times, but inevitably black, Latino, immigrant and all exploited workers, all underpaid and overworked women and mothers reject the empty symbolic gestures and demand substantive socio-economic changes – and here they find common links with the majority of exploited white workers.

In other words, the existing propaganda techniques are losing their edge – the corporate media news is seen as a sham.  Who follows the actor-soldiers and flag-worshipers once the game has begun?

The propagandists of empire are desperate for a new line to grab public attention and obedience.   Could the recent domestic terror bombings in New York and New Jersey provoke mass hysteria and more militarization? Could they serve as cover for more wars abroad . . .?

A recent survey, published in Military Times, reported that the vast majority of active US soldiers oppose more imperial wars.   They are calling for defense at home and social justice.  Soldiers and veterans have even formed groups to support the protesting black athletes who have refused to participate in flag worship while unarmed black men are being killed by police in the streets.   Despite the multi-billion dollar electoral propaganda, over sixty percent of the electorate reject both major party candidates.  The reality principle has finally started to undermine State propaganda!

“Since 2011, the Assad regime has been intentionally striking civilian targets with horrifying, predictable regularity….And yet in the face of none of these atrocities has Russia expressed outrage nor has it demanded investigations nor has it ever called for a Saturday night emergency consultation in the Security Council …” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power[1]

“In all my years in international life, which is over forty years, I’ve never seen such an extraordinary display of American heavy-handedness as we are witnessing today.” Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin[2]

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While the attention of the American public has been diverted by the Trump-Clinton presidential soap opera, events of historic, perhaps even world-ending magnitude have been erupting in Syria.

In the month of September, Russia and the U.S. helped broker a cease-fire agreement which would have halted the violence between the Syrian military and armed-rebel insurgents, allowing for humanitarian aid to be transferred to the embattled city of Alleppo. The same agreement was also to have enabled joint action by Russian and U.S. forces in crushing ISIL and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (known until late July as the Al-Nusra Front). [3][4]

Barely a week into the cease-fire, the U.S.-led coalition forces struck Syrian government forces’ positions near Deir Ez-Zor killing 62 troops and injuring 100 others. [5]The U.S. Central command claimed that the attack on Syrian troops was accidental, even though an ISIS offensive launched within 7 minutes on Syrian army positions in the city suggested coordination between the U.S. and the militants. [6]An audio recording provided by Syrian intelligence revealing a conversation between the ISIS militants and the U.S. military would appear to confirm this suspicion. [7]

A hastily called emergency meeting of the UN Security Council the same night as the Deir Ez-Zor attacks saw a further breakdown in diplomatic relations. U.S. representative Samantha Power chastised her Russian counterpart for calling the meeting describing it as ‘cheap point scoring’ and ‘grandstanding.’ Each Ambassador walked out on the other’s speeches before the Council. [8]

Quickly changing the channel on this international incident, news comes two days later of a 31 truck convoy transporting humanitarian aid through Alleppo province being struck by warplanes. Moscow is being blamed for this attack. Footage of the bombed aid vehicles has been provided by a ‘humanitarian’ group known as the White Helmets, which operates in rebel-controlled areas of the country. [9]

With accusations and counter-accusations mounting, peace initiatives in Syria being torn to shreds and acrimonious rhetoric between U.S. and Russian officials reaching proportions unprecedented since the height of the Cold War, is it possible that a major powers conflict, even a nuclear confrontation, could be triggered?

This is the question at the centre of this week’s Global Research News Hour.

In the first half hour, we hear Rick Sperling in conversation with Chris Cook of CFUV 101.9FM’s Gorilla-Radio program. In this repeat broadcast, which originally aired on CFUV September 28^th, Sperling, researcher, writer and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement outlines his group’s concerns about the above mentioned ‘White Helmets’ organization, and about efforts to rescind the award it received from the Right Livelihood Foundation.

In the second half hour we hear from Canadian Mark Taliano about what he observed during his recent visit to Syria. Taliano is a retired High School teacher in the Niagara Valley region who has devoted himself to writing and research on contemporary political subjects including the military conflict in Syria. Much of his writing appears on the Global Research website.

Finally, Stephen Lendman provides an overview of the Western propaganda campaign against Syria and Russia and where it seems to be heading. Lendman is a Chicago-based writer and blogger, he is host of the Progressive News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network, and a frequent contributor to the Global Research website.  

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Length (59:26)

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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://english.cntv.cn/2016/09/18/VIDE5G3igrCCdjVSVlKR2yUi160918.shtml
2. ibid
3. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/syria-ceasefire-deal-explained-160910111132967.html
4. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36924000
5. https://www.rt.com/news/359678-us-strikes-syrian-army/
6. http://www.globalresearch.ca/leaked-source-reveals-coordination-between-us-isis-in-attacking-syrian-army/5546355
7. https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/reports-audio-recording-isis-us-deir-ezzor-massacre-found/
8. http://en.news-original.ru/churkin-and-power-refused-to-listen-to-each-other-at-a-meeting-of-the-un-security-council.html
9. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/suspends-syria-aid-convoy-bombed-160920080213025.html

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– The Israeli occupation navy has received instructions to intercept women’s boat to Gaza and arrest onboard activists, Israeli daily Maariv reported Sunday.

The Israeli naval forces have received orders to intercept al-Zaytouna ship and arrest activists as soon as they reach Gaza shores.

The boat is reportedly to be towed to the Ashdod Harbor wile female activists will be deported to their mother countries after they sign pledges to never return.

Zaytouna ship is expected to reach Gaza shores in the next three days following a stopover in the Greek Island of Crete to fix a sudden breakdown.

Amal and Zaytouna, a flotilla of two boats with all-women crews and passengers, set sail from Barcelona en route to besieged Gaza in another maritime attempt to break Israel’s illegitimate blockade on the Palestinian coastal enclave.

There are 11 women in each boat, including Malin Bjork, the European Parliament member, Mairead Maguire, the Nobel peace laureate from Northern Ireland, Fouzia Hassan, a doctor from Malaysia, and retired US army colonel Ann Wright.

The Gaza Strip is a place where around two million Palestinians have been locked up for nearly a decade in what many describe as the “world’s largest open air prison.”

It was a day of quiet on the India-Pakistan front except for the sporadic gunfire exchanged between the two sides in the Akhnoor sector of the international border in Jammu and Kashmir.

On the other hand, it is a worrying sign to see no diplomatic efforts being taken up by both the sides to diffuse the tension. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit to have been held in the Pakistan in November was cancelled after India boycotted the summit. The announcement came after Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangaladesh too boycotted the summit on Friday. Sri Lanka too had expressed its reservations.

Politicians on both sides of the border are still making some chest thumping statements. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today compared Pakistan’s condition to an “anaesthetised patient” after a surgery and said like Hanuman Indian Army has recognised its prowess. Comparing the Indian Army to Hanuman, he made a reference to the Ramayana in which the monkey god crossed an ocean in a single stride after he was reminded about his extraordinary powers by Jamwant. “Indian troops were like Hanuman who did not quite know their prowess before the surgical strikes,” Parrikar said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Terming warned that Pakistan is also capable of executing surgical strikes and will not allow anyone to “cast an evil eye” on it.

All Indian channels have been banned in Pakistan. The order of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) will come into effect on October 15.

Pakistan has stopped showing Indian films in Pakistan theatres.

There is clamour for Pakistan artists working in Indian film industry to leave the country.

There are some people to people peace initiatives emerging. There is a petition campaign going on asking to bring peace between the two nations.

There is also a poster campign on Facebook. Admiral L. Ramdas, a former chief of Indian Navy, and his wife Lalita Ramdas, a former chairperson of Greenpeace international posted a photo asking for peace between the two neighbours.

Tensions between nuclear armed India and Pakistan rose after terrorists attacked an Indian military camp in Uri in Jammu & Kashmir.

In retalliation India conducted surgical strikes across the Line of Control on 28th September.

Millions of people have been evacuated from the border districts of India.

Two decades after the 1994 genocide, journalist Anjan Sundaram watched leader Paul Kagame crush press freedom and political opposition. But why are the international community still supporting his regime? And could their support be sowing seeds for more bloodshed?

“Rwanda has two worlds,” explains journalist and author Anjan Sundaram. “There is a world in which most diplomats and ex-pats live in, in which Rwanda looks really peaceful.” But there is also a darker side to the country, which Sundaram documented movingly in his bookBad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship.

Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, in which one million people were killed in just one hundred days, still casts a shadow over the country. But in the decades since, Rwanda has gone from massive devastation and being the poorest country on earth to be held up as a model of development. International aid agencies have ploughed billions of dollars into the country and helped it achieve the greatest progress on the United Nation’s Human Development Index.

However, since president Paul Kagame led the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) to capture the capital, Kigali, in 1994 and bring the genocide to an end, he has moved to crush press freedom, democratic institutions and political opposition. As Kagame’s grip over the country has increased, the international community have maintained their support – and continued to funnel aid dollars to his regime. Observers, such as Sundaram, worry this complicity is increasing the risk of further violence in years to come.

Paul Kagame visits George W. Bush at the White House, April 2005. Photo by Krisanne Johnson

Sandaram arrived in Kigali in 2009 to teach a class of a dozen local journalists – none of whom remain working. Before he left in 2013, he saw firsthand many of the reasons why Reporters Without Borders have ranked Rwanda 161st out of 180 countries on its authoritative Press Freedom Index, below Egypt and Kazakhastan and just above Saudi Arabia.

“The consistent harassment of journalists has had a chilling effect in Rwanda, where there is no space for dissenting narrative at all, today,” he explains. “A colleague of mine was shot dead on the same day he criticised Paul Kagame. Another was beaten into a coma after bringing up the harassment of journalists at a press conference with the president. Others joined the presidential propaganda team out of fear. In my book I document over 60 cases of journalists who have been killed, disappeared, arrested, imprisoned, tortured or forced to flee the country, fearing for their lives after criticising the Rwandan government.”

Cyclists in the capital, Kigali

Following the genocide, the international community’s presence has been huge – providing the government with half its annual budget. The rapidly developing capital is littered with shiny embassies and foreign development agencies, whose white SUVs are ubiquitous on its roads. With all this attention, how has Kagame been able establish his dictatorship?

“The Rwandan government is very sophisticated in its propaganda,” Sundaram explains. “I think of it as an example of how the dictatorship is evolving in the 21st century. With a few exceptions we’ve moved past the North Korea-style dictatorships of the Cold War era.”

“The modern dictatorship is shiny and new, you have multi-party elections,” he continues. “Even as the press is crushed, you have a dozen new newspapers opening up – all pro-government of course. So they present a facade that looks very much like democratic countries, which can be quite difficult to pierce.”

Butaro, a small town in northern Rwanda

Kagame has maintained the charade of representative elections, but has tightened his grip with each vote. Sandaram sees the 2010 election as a pivotal moment. “The election was a masterpiece of authority,” Sundaram writes in Bad News.

“The vote passed in an ambience of total serenity. No negative incidents were reported in the country: there were no protests, no complaints, no boycotts or demonstrations. […] By the end of the election, the old guard of news journalists had been done away with: killed, imprisoned, exiled or, by fear, converted into [supporters].”

“Destroying the local press is a very effective way of exporting propaganda because foreign correspondents are increasingly reliant on local journalists for their stories,” Sundaram explains. ”Another strategy that the government has used very effectively is to craft a narrative of a country that has risen from the ashes of genocide. It’s a very compelling story, one that many want to hear. But the reality is that many of the structures that were in place prior to the genocide and that were used to execute the genocide are still in place.”

Rural houses on Rwanda’s famed rolling hills, Musanze province

The December 2015 referendum on constitutional reform passed with a yes result of over ninety per cent and the amendment could see Kagame in power until 2034. His announcement to stand once again in the 2017 presidential election drew criticism from the US and the EU, who said Kagame should allow a new generation of leaders to emerge.

Yet the money keeps flowing. Sandaram highlighted abuses to foreign embassy officials, who acknowledge they knew what was happening, but came back with the excuse: ‘If we mention the repression, the government will throw us out.’ Sandaram is unconvinced, and argues that their huge financial support gives them considerable leverage.

“I think the international community has knowingly financed a dictatorship whose repression they have been acutely aware of,” he explains. “Unfortunately by financing and supporting dictatorship, a government that is very clearly not democratically elected, they are essentially playing a kind of neocolonial role. They are supporting a government that the people did not freely choose.”

Young mothers at a health centre in rural Rwanda

Despite commitments to support democracy from the international community and aid agencies, they are happy to overlook problems because Kagame is a reliable ally. “Foreign aid has found a very convenient partner in Rwanda,” Sundaram explains. “The world of foreign aid has had a lot of problems finding success stories and they’ve found that Rwanda’s repressive system can execute aid plans remarkably efficiently.” Participation rates in Rwanda often hit 90%, while they struggle to hit 40% in countries like India, for example.

“Rwanda is like a paradise for aid officials who can come in, get their programmes executed remarkably efficiently and present these as evidence of their aid programme’s success,” Sundaram continues. “I’ve seen many aid officials get promotions on the back of their alleged success in Rwanda. So there is no incentive on the part of the international community to reveal Rwanda’s repression, indeed they benefit from it.”

Ivuka Arts Centre, one of the examples of Rwanda’s cultural resurgence

But this self interest could have profound consequences in the years to come. Kagame’s destruction of democratic institutions has contributed to the academic consensus that any transfer of power will be accompanied by violence. In the BBC documentary Rwanda’s Untold Story, academic Filip Reyntjens, explains that without true peace, reconciliation between all social and ethnic groups, as well as full democratic participation, “Rwanda is a volcano… with the RPF sitting on top.”

Without the support of an effective local media, international media’s overstretched foreign operations rarely unearth abuses by the government. Instead, they frequently report only on the good news stories of Rwanda’s cultural, technologic and economic resurgence. “That world certainly exists in Rwanda,” Sundaram explains. “The question I ask myself is will all those talented and entrepreneurial works stand to last if the country sees new violence again. How much of that progress will remain?”

This is an edited version of an interview with Katehon, a Russian-based geo-political think tank.

I gave an historical overview of the evolution of U.S.-Russian relationships from the Cold War era to the present detailing how the previous emphasis on diffusing tensions through a succession of international treaties has been replaced by one of antagonism largely stemming from American policy in the post-Cold War which is largely shaped by the Wolfowitz and Brzezinski doctrines.

American militarism as exemplified by its interventions in countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria as well as by its abrogation of anti-ballistic missile treaties and its deployment of nuclear shields is imperiling world peace. The American-backed coup in Ukraine along with its sponsorship of the insurrection against the Assad government in Syria have created the circumstances which could lead to conflict with the Russian Federation and potentially to a nuclear war.

The world is already in a very tumultuous situation, which is close to a situation that historically had been avoided at the height of the Soviet Union’s conflict with America. That is, we are on the verge of a nuclear war.

After the end of the Soviet Union, there were those ideas of the “end of the history”, and how America had won, and everybody would then be like America as a capitalist entity.

The point though is that once the Cold War ended, it made NATO a redundant institution. If you have no enemy to fight, how do you justify your existence? It seems that a part of American policy has been predicated on this idea of creating enemies and sustaining enmities. This is not a criticism of the United States, but it is a criticism of American foreign policy, as it is dictated by the Wolfowitz Doctrine and the Brzezinski Doctrine.

In other words, NATO survived. And the part of this survival mechanism, in a way what President Eisenhower referred to as the Military Industrial Complex, is this idea of war and conflict. It began in Yugoslavia and has continued to the present through Iraq, Libya and now Syria.

It is a very dangerous situation, because Russia has interests in Syria, it has a naval base there. It also has an interest in combating radical Islam through ISIS and Al-Nusra, which threatens Russia and its borders, it threatens the whole world.

It is a very disturbing fact, that the US has now developed a policy, which is based on militarism. Because the Wolfowitz Doctrine is predicated on the notion that America must be a hegemon, it must dominate the world economically and militarily. And in doing so, America reserves the right to not abide by international treaties and multinational obligations. This is very specifically mentioned.

So, when you put that into the context of Syria, you find that this recent ceasefire was not observed mainly because the United States was against it. They didn’t give it a chance to succeed. And in the same way, the recent massacre of 62 Syrian soldiers was not accidental. It makes particular sense from the American perspective. They are fighting a proxy war. Their goal is to overthrow the secular regime of Bashar Al-Assad and create a balkanized Syria, consisting of separate states that are based on ethnic and religious nationalities.

This whole idea of NATO and its role in the Middle East, in Syria is very counterproductive.

Adeyinka Makinde is a London-based writer

Nuffield Council on Bioethics finds materials to perform basic experiments are now available to “garage scientists”, but soft-pedals on better regulation

The free short version of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ report on gene editing notes that there are “concerns” about “garage scientists” doing gene editing outside of regulated environments – see the article below.

But the report doesn’t contain any clear recommendations for stricter regulation that would, for example, restrict or ban sales of the home kits that are now available to buy on the internet. It only makes a lacklustre suggestion that “controls on access to certain materials, and policies for monitoring and recording research… may need to be enhanced”. In the conclusion it names “private experiments by community groups or individuals” as one of several “issues” that “should be kept under review”.

Clearly, if you need a licence to own a gun, you should have a licence to do gene editing. It shouldn’t be too hard to organise the necessary systems and it’s a way of governments making money.

The only reasons not to tighten regulation in this field appear to be that:

1. doing so could impact on the profits of companies that market gene editing kits
2. doing so would increase public alarm about the risks of gene editing at a time when the UK government wants to reassure people of the safety of the technology as applied to crops, livestock, and (increasingly) humans.

No doubt the second reason is viewed as more important than the first.

Gene drives

The report soft-pedals on gene drives, a highly controversial technology that would enable the reduction or eradication of a wild species by permanently and irreversibly altering the genome in the lab. While it does mention “fears about unexpected or unintended consequences”, highlighted and more prominent on the page are several positive-sounding “potential applications”, including malaria control, wildlife conservation, and reintroduction of extinct species.

And the report doesn’t recommend a ban on gene drives; it only advocates that they should be approached “with caution”.

Priority areas for ethical consideration

The report recommends two priority areas which require urgent ethical consideration: human reproduction and livestock. Both could offer enormous economic opportunities for companies operating in this field.

Let’s hope that the Council does a proper job of looking at the serious problems with human germline (inheritable) genetic engineering and redesigning our livestock animals – as well as considering alternatives that don’t involve genetic tinkering.

Closed-door comments by US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal much about US involvement in Syrian crisis, Dr. Jamal Wakeem, professor of history and international relations at Lebanese University in Beirut, told RT.

The Syrian Defense Ministry is convinced that the airstrike on the UN humanitarian convoy near Aleppo was planned by the US side in order to divert attention from the incident with airstrikes on positions of the Syrian Army near Deir ez-Zor.

The Syrian Defense Ministry announced the true purpose of the US in the attack on the UN humanitarian convoy near Aleppo. The Defense Ministry of the Middle Eastern republic is convinced that the airstrike was planned in order to divert attention from the incident with airstrikes, carried out by the coalition’s Air Force on positions of the Syrian Army near Deir ez-Zor.

Syrian President Bashar Assad (center) stands next to Syrian Defense Minister Gen. Dawoud Rajha (right) and Chief of Staff Gen. Fahed al-Jasem el-Freij (left) during a ceremony to mark the 38th anniversary of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, in Damascus, Syria, 2012 (Photo: AP / SANA)

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is behind the attack on September 19, the press service of the Ministry said. And the main purpose of the air raid was an attempt to hide the “blatant attack of the US coalition forces on positions of the Syrian Army in Deir ez-Zor,” and to divert an attention of media and the world community from disapproval of this act, “which openly demonstrates support for Islamic State’s [IS] terrorists by the US.” In addition, the Syrian Defense Ministry noted that the attack was planned to help the IS to take control of new areas in response to the success of the Syrian army in Aleppo.

“This fact eliminates any involvement of the Russian Aerospace Forces to the attack, and especially statements of one of the leaders of the Jabhat al-Nusra [also known as the Al-Nusra Front or the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham], which confirm that terrorists, supported by Washington, had carried out this immoral act,” Syrian military stressed.

A week ago, on Monday, September 26, the 1st Presidential debate was held. 84 million watched the two most disliked candidates in perhaps more than a century square off and debate.

The one, Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed billionaire wheeler-dealer real estate developer backed by billionaire economic advisers and campaign contributors like sleazy Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, hedge fund vultures Robert Mercer and John Paulson, private equity king Stephen Feinberg and at least a dozen other billionaires that constitute Trump’s current ‘economic team’; the other, Hillary Clinton, a mere multimillionaire worth a paltry $200 million (not counting her foundations valued at around $400 million), who has accumulated her wealth in just the past decade by means of her (and her husband Bill’s) close connections to investment bankers like Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, billionaire hedge fund managers like George Soros and James Simons, multinational tech company CEOs, and billionaire corporate media families like the Sabans, Katzenbergs, and Coxes.

The major economic issues raised in the debates included jobs, trade, taxes and the $20 trillion US government debt. On domestic policy, the focus was racism and gun violence. On foreign policy—Isis, Iraq, NATO, China, first use of nuclear weapons, and Russia.

Taxes and Jobs

Trump proclaimed his plan would cut taxes by $12.5 trillion. He proposed to pay for the cuts by repatriating $5 trillion of cash US corporations continue to hoard offshore. The incentive to repatriate the $5 trillion would be to reduce the corporate tax rate to 5% to 7%, instead of the current 35. But Trump conveniently ignored pointing out this repatriation trick was already played in 2005-06 under George W. Bush. US corporations had accumulated $2 trillion offshore, were given by Congress a ‘pass’ and a lower rate of 5.25% to repatriate so long as they created US investment and jobs with remainder of the repatriated funds. They brought it back, all right, but did not create jobs and instead used the excess profits they realized to buy up companies and pay out dividends to shareholders.

But Clinton carefully did not pick up this issue and use it against Trump in the debate. Why? Because Democrats in Congress are currently proposing the same tax repatriation scam as Trump and Clinton admitted she too supported ‘repatriation’ business tax cuts.

While talking in generalities about ‘taxing the wealthy’, Clinton carefully avoided mentioning that tax cuts for business under Obama have been even more generous than they were under George W. Bush. Bush tax cuts from 2001-2008 amounted to approximately $3.7 trillion—of which it is estimated 80% accrued to businesses and wealthiest households. Obama extended the Bush tax cuts for two years from 2008 to 2010, at a cost of another $450 million, then provided another $300 million in his 2009 bailout package, and then struck a deal with Congress to cut taxes another $4 trillion in January 2013 by again extending Bush’s tax cuts another decade through 2022.

And conspicuously missing in the debate was that neither candidate commented on whether they supported the further major tax cuts for corporations being planned to passage right after the November elections. That’s because both no doubt will support it when it comes up for voting in Congress soon following the election.

Both candidates avoided responding directly to the moderator’s question: ‘Would you support raising taxes or reducing taxes on the wealthy”. Instead of substance, the debate on taxes focused on whether Trump personally paid taxes and why he refuses to release his tax returns. Clinton kept pressing the subject, scoring points repeatedly as Trump fumbled the issue of his personal taxes. He finally responded to why he hasn’t paid taxes or released his tax records with “I guess that makes me smart”—a remark that will no doubt cost him significant votes.

In the debate, both candidates supported the myth that tax cuts create jobs. The only difference between them is which cuts. Trump meant corporate tax cuts. Clinton meant a mix of business and non-business. But the historical record shows clearly there is no relation between tax cuts in general, and business tax cuts, and job creation in the 21st century. US manufacturing employed 18 million workers in 2000. After nearly $10 trillion in tax cuts, it now employs 12 million. Construction employment has similarly declined. While service jobs have increased since 2000, so too have the ranks of the part time, temporary, and those employed in the underground economy. Together with these ranks of partially employed, more than 6 million more have left the labor force in the US—a net poor return in jobs for the nearly $10 trillion in tax cuts.

NAFTA, TPP and Trade

Trump’s business constituency of real estate and financial interests is less concerned with trade deals than Clinton’s. Trump is also targeting small businesses, which typically don’t export but are harmed by imports, as well as white working class in the Midwest whose incomes have been devastated by free trade deals like NAFTA. However, unlike before the debate, he didn’t declare he would discontinue the existing trade deals. He promised first to stop the further offshoring of US jobs —without explaining how he would do this—and also left unexplained how he proposed to get the millions of jobs previously offshore back to the US. Clinton too provided no details how to get the jobs back or what she would do to stop future bloodletting of US jobs offshore.

While declaring NAFTA as ‘defective’, Trump simply added “we need to renegotiate trade”—a position little different from Clinton’s that we “need to take a new look at trade”. The debate thus talked in generalities that leave the door open after the election for either to support the TPP and undertake token reforms at best regarding NAFTA. More revealing of Clinton’s true intentions perhaps was her off the cuff comment that she’d vote again for CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) if given the opportunity.

Debt and Defense Spending

Trump several times during the debates referred to the nearly $20 trillion in US national debt. But what he failed to mention is that studies show about 60% of that debt is due to tax cuts and declining US tax revenues. Another $3 trillion at least is due to US war spending since 2003. Yet in the debate Trump called for accelerated war spending, while Clinton said nothing about whether she would increase war spending or reduce it. Her silence spoke volumes on that topic, however, as did her repeated references to the need to confront Russia and China. While Trump directly indicated he would not use nuclear weapons first, Hillary avoided answering the moderator’s question, implying perhaps she would, which has been the US official position to date.

The Silly Subjects

Much of the time of the debate was also consumed by extensive discussion of such silly issues as whether Obama was born in the US, whether Hillary had the ‘stamina’ to be President or Trump the ‘temperament’, Trump’s personal bankruptcies, and whether each would accept the outcome of the vote.

The Missing Debate

More important perhaps than what was said was what was ignored and not discussed by the candidates during the debate—like the stagnating and declining incomes of tens of millions of working and middle class Americans since 2000, the simultaneous approximate 10 trillions of dollars in capital gains, dividends and interest income obtained by the wealthy 1% over the same period, the collapsing pension and retirement systems today in the US, the increasingly unaffordable rents and healthcare insurance costs, US drug companies’ price gouging and unraveling of Obamacare, the US central bank’s policy of low interest rates destabilizing the economy, the consistent violation of regulations by bankers, the new US military adventures now being prepared for Russia’s east Europe border and China’s coast, the militarization of US police forces, what to do about racism and gun violence besides meaningless calls to ‘improve community-police relations’. Nothing was said about global climate crisis by either candidate; nor about the opaque manipulations, by both candidates, of their personal foundations for political use.

The Aftermath

In the days immediately following the debate, the general consensus was that Trump’s rambling and unfocused responses to Clinton meant he had clearly performed poorly and had lost the debate. Clinton recovered in the polls, pulling even or just a few points ahead in national polling and assuming a slight lead in several of the ‘swing states’. But with 87% of voters having already decided, national poll results are largely irrelevant, and the margin of error in the polling in the swing states still remains so narrow, post-debate, that it is insignificant in most of the swing states.

How is it that Trump could have performed so poorly in the TV debate and the race still remain so close? What the past week does show is that despite Trump doing all he can to put his foot in his mouth, and help Clinton with outrageous sexist and racist statements, there still remains a large, widespread and hardened discontent with Clinton. The first debate should have clearly ‘put Trump away’, and locked in an eventual November victory for Clinton, but it hasn’t. Which candidate turns out its traditional base to vote in November in the swing states still remains the key element for who wins the election.

Given that strategic reality, it’s not surprising that Clinton in the past week has intensified efforts toward trying to convince millennials to turn out to vote for her. A Democrat Party ‘full court press’ has been launched targeting the under-35 voters, many of whom had defected to Sanders in the primaries as well as to the Libertarian candidate, Johnson, and Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.

In synch with this effort, this past week the anti-Trump mainstream corporate media has stepped up its critique and efforts to marginalize both Johnson and Stein, pressing the old theme that ‘a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump’. The past week Clinton campaign thus began mobilizing Sanders and liberal darling, Elizabeth Warren, having them tour college campuses pitching the theme to millennials to ‘get out and vote’. Simultaneously, Clinton herself has begun to prioritize themes of college tuition and child care more in her speaking engagements and in her media advertising. In the remaining weeks before the election, watch for the Clinton camp to launch new initiatives as well to shore up her weak base among white working class voters in the Midwest swing states, and among Latinos there and in Florida, Virginia-Carolinas, Colorado-New Mexico-Nevada.

The Clinton campaign has clearly not yet turned out the defections of the youth, under-30 vote, lost during the primaries. Nor has it been able to excite Hispanics and Latinos as did Obama in 2008 and 2012 with false promises of Dream Acts and Immigration justice. And the white, non-college educated working class in key Midwest states remains all but lost to Trump for good.

The continuing hard core discontent with Clinton has its roots not only in her own political record on war, trade, and her intimate ties to the banking and corporate elite, but in the poor economic legacy left by Obama policies and programs over the past eight years. Clinton presses her point the US economy has not been as bad as Trump claims, but for many constituencies—especially youth, minorities, and non-college educated white workers—it is not believable. In fact, for many it has been a disaster. But you won’t hear that truth from the mainstream corporate media or the Clinton camp.

Behind Clinton’s troubles in this election is the ‘gray eminence’ of failed Obama economic and social policies that Democrats refuse to own up to—i.e. creation of only low pay, part-time, temp and ‘gig’ service jobs with no benefits, crushing levels of student debt, escalating rents and health insurance costs under Obamacare, declining savings for tens of millions of retirees after eight years of near zero interest rates by the Federal Reserve under Obama, continuing free trade destruction and offshoring of US manufacturing, millions of homeowners still ‘under water’ on their mortgages, chronically rising household debt, perpetual wars in the middle east, intensifying racism and police violence throughout the US, record levels of immigrant deportations, etc.—in other words, the ‘legacy of Barack Obama’, which hangs like a thick political fog over the Clinton campaign threatening key constituency voter turnout while holding up support for Trump despite his best efforts to scuttle his own campaign with his mouth.

Jack Rasmus is the author of “Looting Greece” and “Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy”, by Clarity Press, 2016. He blogs at jackrasmus.com

Here’s your economics quiz for the day:

Question 1– What do you think would happen if you put $3 trillion into the financial system?

a–Stock prices would rise

b–Stock prices would fall

c–Stock prices would stay the same

Question 2– What do you think would happen if you put $3 trillion into the economy? (Via fiscal stimulus for infrastructure projects, extended unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc)

a–Activity would increase and the economy would grow

b–Activity would slow and the economy would shrink

c–Activity would stay the same, so growth would remain unchanged

If you picked “a” for both questions, then pat yourself on the back because you got the right answers.

Now try to answer this one, last “bonus” question:

Question 3– If adding money to the financial system boosts asset prices, and adding money to the economy boosts growth, then why did the Fed add $3 trillion to the financial system expecting the economy to grow?

Is the Fed confused about how the economy works? Is the Fed confused about how the financial system works?

Probably not. There’s probably some other explanation altogether, after all, why would someone put gas in their radiator when the gas-tank is empty. That’s not going to provide fuel for the engine, is it? The same rule applies to stimulus.  The only way stimulus can work is if its put where it’s needed. And we can now say with 100 percent certainty, that the Fed’s stimulus wasn’t put where it was needed which is why it hasn’t worked.

How do we know that?

Just take a look at GDP. Second Quarter GDP came in at a dismal 1.2 percent even though interest rates are still locked at near-zero and the Fed is still recycling the cash from maturing bonds into more government debt.

Do you know what 1.2 percent GDP means?

It means that spending is weak, business investment is anemic, personal consumption is in the toilet and credit growth is kaput.  It means that the economy has basically stopped breathing, been taken off the respirator and is being rushed  to the morgue for embalming before rigor mortis sets in. It means that the people who are assigned the task of managing the system either don’t know how the system works or have an ulterior motive for the policies they’re using.

So, which is it? Is the Fed a moron or a liar?

Now we’ve all heard the expression, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result”.

Well, the Fed has been doing the same thing for the last seven years — dumping money into the financial system while predicting stronger growth. That would seem to suggest that the Fed is insane, but is the Fed insane?

No, in fact, the members of the FOMC are extremely-bright, well-educated professionals who have a solid grasp of the economy and the many intricacies of the financial system. These are smart guys, real smart. So, maybe they have an ulterior motive. Maybe that’s why they’ve stuck with the same failed policies all these years.

But if they have an ulterior motive,  then what is it?  What are they trying to achieve?

The easiest way to answer that question is by simply following the money. We’ve already seen that QE and zero rates have done nothing for growth, so –the question is– where have these policies had the greatest impact?

Why, the stock market, of course!

Did you know that the Dow Jones Industrials (DJIA) bottomed on March 9, 2009 at 6,507.  As of Thursday (9-15-16), the Dow finished the day at 18,211 nearly three times higher.  The same goes for the S and P 500 which slipped to 676 in March 2009, but rebounded to 2,147 as of yesterday afternoon. Then there’s the Nasdaq which fared even better bouncing back from an abysmal 1,268 in 2009 to a lofty 5,249 yesterday.

Now if stocks rise due to fundamentals, then that’s just great because it means the underlying strength of the economy is driving prices higher.  But if stock prices rise because the people who are supposed to be the  referees (The Fed) are gaming the system by printing up trillions of dollars and sticking it in the financial markets so their crooked friends can send their kids to Ivy League schools and drive around in Lamborghinis, then it’s not so great.

When the Fed pumps liquidity directly into the financial system, that liquidity cannot accurately be called “monetary stimulus”.  It’s not stimulus anymore than if the Fed put a billion bucks into your fledgling-Podunk  landscape business.  It’s a subsidy, a gift, a handout.  Even so, $3 trillion is a lot of money, enough money to light a fire under stocks and send them into the stratosphere. Which it has.  But let’s not kid ourselves,   stocks didn’t triple because production, earnings and growth are all going great-guns. That’s not it at all, in fact, they’re all unusually weak.  Stocks are in record territory because the Fed’s relentless interventions have kept them elevated, which has propped up the insolvent banking system and generated gigantic profits for Wall Street.

And while rising stock prices don’t necessarily prove that the Fed has an ulterior motive; identifying the people who benefit from those inflated prices certainly does. After all, who owns stocks and bonds?

We can break these people up into three separate groups; The pretty rich, the very rich and the filthy rich.  These are the people who own stocks and who benefit from the Fed’s policies.

So what does this tell us about the Fed’s “full employment, price stability” mandate?

It tells us its baloney. It tells us its public relations-hype designed to bamboozle the sheeple who can’t see what’s going on right beneath their noses.. It tells us the Fed has a secret mandate to assist the profit-accumulation process for the Kleptocrat class of  ivy league moochers. (Wall Street) It tells us that the Fed’s real job is implement the policies that best facilitate the upward distribution of wealth.  It tells us that the Fed’s so called “independence” is a complete and utter fraud  and that if Janet Yellen or any of her meat-puppet-colleagues on the FOMC ever veered as much as a centimeter to the left of her corporate marching orders– they’d find themselves wrapped in plastic-sheeting and gasping for air at the bottom of the East River in a pair of cement booties.

The whole idea that the mousy Ms Yellen is calling the shots for the world’s most powerful financial institution is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Does anyone actually believe that rubbish?

Yellen is a public relations invention, a small but critical part of a larger charade that is intended to conceal the manner by which the vast bulk of the nation’s wealth is transferred from one class to another. Let’s call it The Great Central Bank Policy Swindle, because that’s what it is. The Fed is merely an apparatchik agency that keeps its thumb on the scale to make sure all the loot goes to its bloodsucking constituents. That’s how the system works.  Here’s a little background from an article at the WSWS:

“A new report issued by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse finds that global wealth inequality continues to worsen and has reached a new milestone, with the top 1 percent owning more of the world’s assets than the bottom 99 percent combined.

Of the estimated $250 trillion in global assets, the top 1 percent owned almost exactly 50 percent, while the bottom 50 percent of humanity owned collectively less than 1 percent. The richest 10 percent owned 87.7 percent of the world’s wealth, leaving 12.3 percent for the bottom 90 percent of the population.” (“Top 1 percent own more than half of world’s wealth“, World Socialist Web Site)

But it’s not just the fact that half of everything is owned by a handful of obscenely-wealthy, money-grubbing loafers. This same voracious crew of miscreants is pulling down the lions-share of the yearly income too.  Check it out:

“The census data also reveals that income inequality in America remained virtually unchanged from 2014, with the wealthy in the top fifth of the population taking in about half of all household income, while the bottom fifth earned only 3.4 percent.”  (“Despite increase in 2015, US household income still lags behind pre-recession levels“, Kate Randall, World Socialist web Site)

So –not only do the plutocrats own half of everything on planet earth– their share of the booty is actually increasing every year. Nice, eh?

The point is,  none of this is accidental. These outcomes are the direct result of policy, the Fed’s policies.  And the Fed is not alone either. This greatly-accelerated class war is a now global phenom.  Just look at this tidbit I picked up  from an article at CNBC:

Data from JPMorgan shows that the top 50 central banks around the world have cut rates 672 times since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a figure that translates to an average of one interest rate cut every three trading days. This has also been combined with $24 trillion worth of asset purchases. (“QE Infinity: Are we heading into the unknown?“, CNBC)

$24 trillion!

$24 trillion represents the biggest freaking bank heist in human history, and what do we have to show for it?

A big fat nothing, that’s what! All the data is sagging and global growth has slowed to a crawl. It’s like all the dough that was supposed to strengthen the fictitious recovery just vanished into thin air. Poof!

So why hasn’t that  $24 trillion had more of an impact?  Why isn’t their more inflation, more activity, more spending, more consumption and more growth???

It’s because everywhere the global bank cartel has its tentacles, the same policies of austerity and QE have been adopted. (Japan, UK, EU, US etc) Everywhere you look it’s caviar and Dom Perignon for the investor class and thin gruel and table scraps for everyone else. Everywhere economies are being gutted, looted, hollowed out by financial parasites who seek greater gain by holding down wages, slashing benefits and retirement, and eviscerating standards of living for ordinary working slobs while the big money honchos are living the life of Riley. Everywhere it’s starve the beast but gorge the rich.

This is political economy writ large. Trump is right, the Fed is the most political institution in government. It IS the government, and it has an absolute stranglehold on the economy.

Is it any wonder why owners of wealth are no longer using their money to invest in future production or growth or retooling or building factories or anything. Instead, they’re buying back their own shares, issuing fat dividends on droopy earnings, and shrinking their businesses in the relentless pursuit of short-term gain.

This type of destructive behavior didn’t just appear out of the ether. Heck, no. The Fed’s easy money policies created irresistible incentives for this reckless, suicidal behavior. That means the Fed is 100 percent responsible for the fragile condition of the financial system and the ginormous asset-price bubble that’s headed lickety-split for the powerlines.

But now it’s all coming to a head. Now all the bigtime global institutions (IMF, BIS, WTO, OECD) are warning that a “Hard Rain’s a-gonna Fall” and that the day of reckoning may be at hand. According to a recent report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), GDP-per-capita will grow only 1% in 2016, “which is half the average in the two decades preceding the crisis.”

As it happens, the OECD report is no more apocalyptic then the others, it’s just more explicit in what it expects to transpire.   Here’s more on the report from Wolf Street:

“Financial instability risks are rising, including from exceptionally low interest rates and their effects on financial assets and real estate prices.”…

Share prices have risen significantly in recent years in advanced economies, notably in the United States. By contrast, the growth of profits for non-financial companies has recently slowed to a modest pace, following a post-crisis recovery…

A reassessment in financial markets of interest rates could result in substantial re-pricing of assets and heighten financial volatility even if interest rates were to remain below long-term averages….”

(“OECD Warns Fed, BOJ, ECB of Asset Bubbles, “Risks to Financial Stability,” Pinpoints US Stocks & Real Estate “, Wolf Street)

Okay, let’s summarize: The global economy is slowing, corporate profits are tanking, monetary stimulus has lost its mojo, and financial instability risks are rising.

Oh, and did you catch the part about “a substantial re-pricing of assets”.  That’s financial jargon for “a crash”, a big, thundering, cataclysmic, earth-shattering CRASH.  The author is simply stating the obvious, that Central Banks have brought us to the brink of another gut-wrenching downward spiral followed by another excruciating financial crisis.

And it’s all by design, the unavoidable result of the Fed’s destabilizing, wealth-shifting policies.

How many times are we going to go through this drill before we disband the Fed and start from scratch?
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MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

The Conservation Law Foundation has just filed the first lawsuit against ExxonMobil for violations under the Clean Water Act and other laws, committed in its deliberate, reckless and deceitful cover-up of it’s true knowledge of the dangers of climate change.

The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) filed a lawsuit today against ExxonMobil for its endangerment of communities along the Mystic River.

It’s the first lawsuit of its kind in the nation since revelations last year about the corporation’s decades-long campaign to discredit climate science.

Today’s filing comes several months after CLF submitted a formal letter of intent to sue ExxonMobil, a development that was announced at a press conference in May.

The suit focuses on Exxon’s violations of both the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), laws designed to protect the health and safety of waterfront communities in the face of climate change.

Exxon ‘put communities in danger’ for profit

“For more than three decades, ExxonMobil has devoted its resources to deceiving the public about climate science while using its knowledge about climate change to advance its business operations”, said CLF president Bradley Campbell.

Communities were put in danger and remain in danger, all to cut costs for one of the most profitable corporations in the world. It’s time to make Exxon answer for decades of false statements to the public and to regulators and ensure that its Everett facility meets its legal obligation to protect thousands of people and the Boston Harbor estuary from toxic water pollution.

CLF’s trial team for the case will include nationally renowned attorney Allan Kanner of the Louisiana-based Kanner & Whitely, whose firm has represented states and other plaintiffs in landmark cases against major oil companies, including claims arising from BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill.

Damali Vidot, Chelsea City Councilor-At-Large, commented: “As a mom and a representative of my community, I feel I have a responsibility to protect my kids and those I serve against the impacts of pollution in our water. I’m standing with CLF today because I believe Exxon must be held accountable for its actions.”

More actions certain to follow

In March of this year, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey joined a coalition of 17 attorneys general seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for campaigns to deceive customers, shareholders, and the public about climate risk.

While CLF is the first organization officially to begin a civil lawsuit against ExxonMobil for this deceit, many other legal actions are likely to follow – and not just against ExxonMobil, says Gillian Lobo, a lawyer with London-based legal charity ClientEarth working on energy and climate issues:

The impacts of climate change, particularly from storm surges, are increasingly clear. Companies with high-risk operations must make sure their safety planning is robust and follows the latest science on climate impacts.

Reducing risks to human health, local communities and the environment is the only way to avoid legal action, and protect people and the planet.

Oliver Tickell is contributing editor at The Ecologist.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s controversial Act 13 is unconstitutional, calling it a special law that benefits the shale gas industry. The massive Marcellus Shale formation, which underlies a large area of Western Pennsylvania, provides more than 36 percent of the shale gas produced in the U.S.

The Pennsylvania State Legislature passed Act 13 in 2012 and it was almost immediately challenged by seven of the state’s municipalities along with the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and a private physician. The onerous law enabled natural gas companies to seize privately owned subsurface property through eminent domain, placed a gag order on health professionals to prevent them from getting information on drilling chemicals that could harm their patients, and limited notification of spills and leaks to public water suppliers, excluding owners of private wells that supply drinking water for 25 percent of Pennsylvania residents. Act 13 also pre-empted municipal zoning of oil and gas development.

“The decision is another historic vindication for the people’s constitutional rights,” stated Jordan Yeager, lead counsel on the case representing the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Bucks County municipalities on the case. “The court has made a clear declaration that the Pennsylvania legislature cannot enact special laws that benefit the fossil fuel industry and injure the rest of us.”

On Dec. 19, 2013, the state Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling on the grounds that the law violated the Environmental Rights Amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution. That ruling returned local zoning rights to municipalities. It also ordered the state Commonwealth Court to reconsider other provisions. The ruling by the Supreme Court issued Wednesday addresses those rulings and should end the litigation.

Protestors march earlier this year for clean energy.Delaware Riverkeeper Network

The state Supreme Court held that the gag order and exclusion of private wells from notification were all unconstitutional. The ruling prohibits the state Public Utility Commission from having oversight on local ordinances and from withholding certain payments from municipalities that limit shale gas drilling.

In its ruling, the state Supreme Court wrote that the eminent domain provision of Act 13 “is unconstitutional on its face, as it grants a corporation the power of eminent domain to take private property for a private purpose, in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Sections 1 and 10 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

“A majority of our state legislators joined with the oil and gas industry in placing corporate desires and profits over the constitutional rights of Pennsylvania citizens,” said John Smith, the attorney who represented four Western Pennsylvania municipalities in the case. “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court correctly found that the constitution is not a document to be ignored.”

The gas industry appeared to shrug it off. “It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things,” saidenergy attorney Michael Krancer, referring to the court’s decision. Krancer was secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection when the law was passed.

The industry-side Marcellus Drilling News pulled no punches in its reaction to the ruling. They called the plaintiffs “seven selfish towns” (twice in one paragraph) and blamed the ruling on “four left-wing Democrat judges.” But even they admitted that, for all practical purposes, Act 13 is now dead.

Carefully researched video production by Syrian Girl.

Reveals the lies and fabrications of the US State Department and the Western media (as well as segments of the “Progressive Left” alternative media).

“A little bit about why the madmen in the State Department are pushing it to the brink of war with Russia and Syria.”

“John Kerry wants to protect Al Qaeda.”

GR Editor’s Note: American across the land must view this video by Syrian Girl:

The US government is lying to you. The unspoken truth is that your government is supporting the terrorists.

Video 

In an interview on September 11, 2001 swaggering-real estate mogul Donald Trump and present Republican presidential candidate remarked that the World Trade Center Twin Towers were likely brought down through controlled demolition.

This prescient observation has been intentionally overlooked by major media in the wake of 9/11’s fifteenth anniversary.

Many corporate news outlets chose instead to single out a off-handed comment by Trump early on in the exchange where he momentarily ‘bragged’ that he ‘owned the tallest building’ in Manhattan next to the WTC– while failing to recognize and highlight his much more important expert opinion a few moments later concerning the World Trade Center’s fate alongside those of its inhabitants.

Standing to a model called Twin Towers II, Trump in 2005 said plans to build the Freedom Tower should be scrapped. PHOTO: The Age

“At one point during the nearly 10-minute interview,” Washington Post political reporter Jenna Johnson writes, “Trump mentioned that his building in the Financial District was now the tallest.

“Forty Wall St. actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was, actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest,” Trump said in an interview with WWOR-TV in New York when asked whether his building had been damaged. “And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest.”

The Huffington Post likewise took the statement out of context to carry on the now-routine Trump-bashing campaign.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been widely criticized for bragging, after the collapse of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, that his building at 40 Wall Street was now the tallest skyscraper in lower Manhattan.

Not only was Trump’s boast despicable, coming as it did just hours after nearly 3,000 people lost their lives ― it was also a lie, according to architectural reports reviewed by The Huffington Post.

The above suggests an effort to mislead and confuse political reportage in an attempt to suppress any meaningful discussion of and plea for a true investigation of the most significant historical and geopolitical event in the past half century.

Trump’s ‘boast’ took place at around the two-minute mark. Yet here is Trump’s key remark from that discussion that begin at 5:30, following the interviewer’s suggestion that explosives may have been the cause of the WTC Towers’ destruction and Trump explaining his understanding of the buildings’ architectural components:

I happen to think they had not only a plane but bombs that exploded almost simultaneously, because I can’t imagine anything being able to go through that wall. Most buildings are built where the steel is on the inside around the elevator shaft. This one was built from the outside, which is the strongest structure you can have, and it [came down] almost just like a can of soup. 

Americans live in the ‘United States of Amnesia,’ as Michael Eric Dyson once put it, largely because of deceptive media and educational institutions, both of which airbrush history for the Inner Party, much as in  Soviet Russia or Orwell’s 1984.

In fact, Trump’s September 11, 2001 observation eerily corroborates the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth version of the World Trade Center towers free fall. Trump recognized from first hand knowledge the Towers “very strong structures” and maintained only powerful explosives could have taken them down in such a fashion. He dismissed cartoon physics and remarked that an aluminum plane could not have sliced through the steel-girded exterior.

Foreign journalists are hoping that China can draw the world’s attention to economic growth and developing countries during the G20 Summit as they prepared for the coverage of the event on Thursday.

Carla Stea, a journalist at the Centre for Research on Globalization, an independent research and media organization in Montreal, Canada, said she hopes most that China can persuade other countries to adopt win-win cooperation as opposed to the zero sum game.

“I hope China will be effective in convincing other countries to invest more money in human development and less money in military and nuclear weapons,” said Stea on the opening day of the media center. “The more the developed world invests in underdeveloped countries, the more interest the underdeveloped countries have to pay on the debt, as well as interest on the interest. This has to stop, and we need to restructure the foreign debt for these underdeveloped countries.”

Global Research’s Carla Stea’s in the media center at the G20 Summit venue in September. Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily

Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Ming said the Hangzhou G20 Summit will focus more on developing countries than previous summits did. The development of African countries in particular will be an important issue.

Walter Michael, a CCTV journalist, said China’s emphasis on the developing world is a welcoming move.

“It is great that China has invited a lot of developing countries to the summit. Inclusivity is a big theme of this summit. The developing countries deserve a spot at the table. It’s good for world leaders to hear what they have to say,” he said.

Joao Netto, a reporter for Brazil’s NBR Television, said sustainable development is his key concern as the world leaders get together and come up with strategies to spur the sluggish economy. “The main points of my reporting will include sustainable development and global economic recovery because Brazil is in an economic crisis,” said Netto.

Nearly 5,000 journalists from some 70 countries have registered for the Hangzhou summit. A 15,000-square-meter media center has been built to help them. The center is equipped with Chinese and English phones that provide real-time simultaneous interpretation service of 14 languages spoken at the event.

There are 500 personal computers at service in the hall and 1,500 seats for journalists in the center. More than 40 agencies from China and abroad have moved in the office rooms.

Wang Xi’ning, head of the G20 Summit’s press center, said 24-hour nonstop service will start on Saturday to better serve reporters.

“First-tier technology and equipment at the center has been prepared to help reporters immediately spread text, pictures, audio and video. … China has always been proactive in providing information of various types to journalists from around the world,” Wang said.

What’s in the bag? Reporters find out

As the media center of the G20 Summit opened its doors on Thursday, Hangzhou, the host city, gave every registered reporter a backpack containing three of the city’s most popular souvenirs: an umbrella, a silk scarf and a folding fan.

The umbrella brand – Paradise – has been around for more than three decades and is well known in China. Produced by Hangzhou Paradise Umbrella Group Co, one of the largest umbrella manufacturers in China, the gift sports a “G20 2016 CHINA” logo and promises protection against the ample rain and strong late-summer sunshine characteristic of Hangzhou.

Reporters were also surprised to find a silk scarf, a Hangzhou trademark for thousands of years. Its climate is ideal for the growth of mulberries and silkworms which lead to high-quality silk products.

The folding fan, created by Hangzhou Wangxingji Fan Co, represents the literary culture and graceful lifestyle of the city. Since the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) when the imperial family settled in Hangzhou, craftsmen and artists also moved there and brought the art of fan making.

The backpack itself is branded Hedgren, a bag and suitcase maker formerly from Belgium that was acquired in 2011 by League Co in Hangzhou’s Tonglu county.

Also inside, reporters found stationery, souvenirs and other small items, all made in Zhejiang.

[email protected]

Just when you thought the takeover of the global food supply couldn’t get a whole lot worse, it did.

Monsanto recently announced it has accepted Bayer AG’s $56 billion takeover offer (a deal totaling $66 billion if you take into account Monsanto’s debt),1,2,3 which will make the new entity the largest seed and pesticide company in the world.

The merger is expected to be finalized by the end of 2017. Should the deal end up being blocked by regulators, Bayer will pay Monsanto $2 billion.

“As we look at the future, we think the combination of taking the Monsanto stable: biotechnology, seeds and data science, and combining that with chemistry, we unlock future innovations growers desperately need at the moment,” Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant said.4

Warning: Troubled Times Ahead

The news has generated deep concerns, and Global Justice Now is calling on anti-competition regulators to investigate the takeover bid.

Bernie Sanders has also gone on record saying the takeover is “a threat to all Americans” and needs to be blocked.5 He also wants the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to “reopen its investigation of Monsanto’s monopoly over the seed and chemical market.”

If the merger goes through, we’ll be left with just four companies providing 59 percent of the global seeds and 64 percent of the world’s pesticides.6,7 Aisha Dodwell with Global Justice Now summarized it well when, on September 14, she said:8

Today’s announcement of Bayer’s takeover of Monsanto is a disaster for the world’s food system.

The creation of this mega-agribusiness would mean that a single terrifying corporate behemoth is now the world’s biggest company for both seeds and pesticides, putting them firmly in control of the world’s farming inputs.

In an industry that was already dominated by only six big agribusinesses, this latest news will lead to even further market concentration as more mergers and takeovers will now become inevitable.

We’re speeding towards a situation where our global food system is controlled by a very few giant corporate entities who will have complete control of our food — what we eat and how it is grown.

Farmers Worry Bayer-Monsanto Behemoth May Ruin Them

In a recent New York Times article,9 Kentucky farmer Don Halcomb reveals he fully expects his profits to disappear by year’s end due to the combination of rising costs and dwindling crop prices. Halcomb, who grows corn, soy, wheat and barley on 7,000 acres, is already producing these commodities at a loss.

Over the past 10 years, the price of a bag of seed corn has risen from $80 to $300 — a price hike he attributes to the consolidation of seed companies, which reduces competition.

The latest merger between Bayer and Monsanto is only likely to make matters worse, no matter how Bayer and Monsanto executives try to frame it as a boon for famers.

Bayer AG’s CEO, Werner Baumann, claims “it is not our plan or our ambition or our intent to prevent farmers from having choice.”10 But the history of Monsanto and Bayer both suggest it would be naïve in the extreme to believe him.

Additionally, several other major seed companies are also in takeover or merger negotiations, including ChemChina and Syngenta, and DuPont and Dow Chemical. If either of those go through, the market will be even more consolidated.

Many Farmers Now Reconsider Use of GE Seeds

On a positive note, the ever-increasing costs are causing many farmers to reconsider their use of genetically engineered (GE) seeds. It has become increasingly difficult to justify the higher prices for seeds, while crop prices diminish.

Part of the problem is that farmers are simply growing too much GE corn and soy, which makes it difficult to recoup their investment. The threat of even higher prices for GE seeds and chemicals makes their future even more uncertain. As noted by The Wall Street Journal:11

The dominance of genetically modified crops is under threat.
Since their introduction to U.S. farms 20 years ago, genetically engineered seeds have become like mobile phones — multifunctional and ubiquitous … 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates this year that 94 percent of soybean acres were planted with biotech varieties, and 92 percent of corn acres. Today, farmers are finding it harder to justify the high and often rising prices for modified, or GMO, seed, given the measly returns …

Spending on crop seeds has nearly quadrupled since 1996, when Monsanto Co. became the first of the companies to launch biotech varieties. Yet major crop prices have skidded lower for three years, and this year, many farmers stand to lose money.

GE Seeds Fail to Live Up to Promises

The development of “superweeds” resistant to the herbicides so generously doused on GE crops are another factor giving farmers pause. As farmers must work harder to combat the weeds and spend more money on chemicals, many see their profits vanishing at an ever faster pace.

Ohio farmer Joe Logan echoes Halcomb’s sentiments, saying the price of biotech seeds prevents him from making a profit. Today, the soybean seed Logan uses costs him nearly five times more than what he paid 20 years ago.

To save money, he plans on sowing mostly non-GE soybeans next year. Kyle Stackhouse, who grows corn and soybeans in Indiana, quit planting GE crops and is now making a profit.

After turning his soybean fields and nearly three-quarters of his corn fields to biotech varieties, Stackhouse decided about 10 years ago that biotech seeds weren’t delivering harvests big enough to justify their price.

‘The [genetic] traits weren’t putting dollars in our pocket,’ he said,” The Wall Street Journal reports.12

Stackhouse estimates he typically spends about $53 per acre on soybean seeds and $40 on pesticides, versus $83 he would have spent on biotech soybean seeds [and] an additional … $24 on related crop chemicals. That puts him ahead about $14 per acre on costs.

Monsanto — A Destroyer of the World

In addition to GE seeds and its flagship product, the herbicide Roundup, Monsanto has also been a leading producer of Agent Orange, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) and aspartame — the history of which is summarized in “The Complete History of Monsanto, ‘The World’s Most Evil Corporation,’”13 originally published by Waking Times in 2014.14

Monsanto also made its mark on history by participating in the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb, thereby becoming a “war horse” ally to the United States government — an alliance that still holds today. As noted in “The Complete History,” article:

To add insult to world injury, Monsanto and their partners in crime Archer Daniels Midland, Sodexo and Tyson Foods write and sponsor The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009: HR 875.15 This ‘act’ gives the corporate factory farms a virtual monopoly to police and control all foods grown anywhere, including one’s own backyard, and provides harsh penalties and jail sentences for those who do not use chemicals and fertilizers. President Obama … gave his approval.

With this Act, Monsanto claims that only GM [genetically modified] foods are safe and organic or homegrown foods potentially spread disease, therefore must be regulated out of existence for the safety of the world … As further revelations have broken open regarding this evil giant’s true intentions, Monsanto crafted the ridiculous HR 933 Continuing Resolution,16aka Monsanto Protection Act, which Obama robo-signed into law as well.

This law states that no matter how harmful Monsanto’s GMO crops are and no matter how much devastation they wreak upon the country, U.S. federal courts cannot stop them from continuing to plant them anywhere they choose. Yes, Obama signed a provision that makes Monsanto above any laws and makes them more powerful than the government itself.

Bayer Also Has a Long, Dark, Destructive History of Genocide

Bayer AG is no different. Founded in Germany in 1863 by Friedrich Bayer and Johann Wescott, the company is perhaps most well-known for being the largest producer of aspirin and other commonly used drugs. But it too has a long, sordid history of creating poisons and mass destruction.17 During World War II, Bayer (then I.G. Farben) produced Zyklon B gas, used in the Nazi gas chambers to eradicate 11 million people whose only crime was to be born a Jew.

According to AHRP.org, the company was also “intimately involved with the human experimental atrocities committed by Mengele at Auschwitz.”18 In one case, Bayer purchased 150 healthy female prisoners from the camp commander of Auschwitz for use as test subjects for a new sleep drug. All the test subjects died, and another order for prisoners was promptly placed.

While some of its board members ended up being arrested and tried for their crimes against humanity, others escaped and helped create the Federal Reserve.19 If you think the passing of time might have made this corporate entity kinder, safer and gentler, think again.

In 2003, it was revealed Bayer sold blood-clotting medicine tainted with the HIV virus to Asian, Latin American and Europe in the mid-1980s.20 The drug, Factor VIII concentrate, was worth millions of dollars, and the company continued to sell the tainted drug for a year after the contamination was discovered. In Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs contracted HIV and died after using the medicine.

More Bayer Atrocities and Malfeasance

Bayer’s drug Trasylol — used to control bleeding during surgery — was eventually found to be responsible for at least a thousand deaths each month for the 14 years it was on the market.21 In 2006, documents proved Bayer hid evidence showing unfavorable results from the drug in order to continue selling it. Lawsuits have also been filed against Bayer for the untimely death of 190 young women taking their birth control pill Yaz, which raises your risk of blood clots by 300 percent.

Its top-selling Flintstones Vitamins for kids is another piece of evidence suggesting the company has no clue or concern about health, as it contains a number of questionable if not outright toxic ingredients, including aspartame, cupric oxide, aluminum, coal tar, hydrogenated soybean oil (trans fat; associated with heart disease), zinc oxide, ferrous fumarate and GE corn starch.

Between 2006 and 2007, Bayer was also responsible for contaminating U.S. rice imports with three unapproved varieties of GE rice under development by Bayer CropScience. Bayer also makes neonicotinoid pesticides, suspected of being responsible for mass die-offs of bees around the world, thereby threatening the global food supply, and made the plastic chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), now known to have a dangerous impact on the human endocrine system.

In short, Bayer’s history is just as dark and unethical as Monsanto’s, if not more, and some are rightfully referring to the merger of these two destructive behemoths as a “marriage made in hell.”22

Billions Against Bayer

The Bayer-Monsanto merger will make the subsequent entity all the more powerful to bully farmers into paying more and pressuring and manipulating governments into accepting the unacceptable risks involved. In response, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is calling for consumers everywhere to boycott Bayer in a new campaign called “Billions Against Bayer” — the continuation of the successful “Millions Against Monsanto” campaign. In a recent press release, OCA says:23

Two of the world’s most foul corporate criminals will be one. Monsanto will pack up its headquarters and head overseas. The much-maligned Monsanto name will be retired. But a corporate criminal by any other name — or size — is still a corporate criminal.

This merger only heightens the urgency, and strengthens our resolve, to hunt down the corporations that are poisoning everything in sight. We will follow them to the ends of the earth, if need be. We will expose their crimes. We will end the toxic tyranny. We will become the Billions Against Bayer. And we will need your help. Monsanto (and Bayer) are on trial. You be the judge.

It is tough to fight any real war. And it takes true guts, discipline and determination to win it.

For years and decades, the so-called ‘left’ in the West has been moderately critical of North American (and sometimes even of European) imperialism and neo-colonialism. But whenever some individual or country rose up and began openly challenging the Empire, most of the Western left-wing intellectuals simply closed their eyes, and refused to offer their full, unconditional support to those who were putting their lives (and often even the existence of their countries) on the line.

I will never forget all those derogatory punches directed at Hugo Chavez, punches coming from members of the ‘anti-Communist left’, after he dared to insult George W. Bush at the United Nations in 2006, calling him a “devil” and choking, theatrically, from the sulfur that was still ‘hanging in the air’ after the US President’s appearance at the General Assembly.

I will not be dropping names here, but readers would be surprised if they knew how many of those iconic leaders of the US left described Chavez and his speech as ‘impolite’, ‘counter-productive’, and even ‘insulting’.

Tens of millions of people have died because of Western imperialism, after WWII. Under the horrid leadership of George W Bush, Afghanistan and Iraq have been reduced to ruins… But one has to remain ‘polite’, ‘objective’ and cool headed?

Well, that is not how real revolutions have been ignited. This is not how the successful anti-colonialist wars are fought. When the real battle begins, ‘politeness’ is actually mostly unacceptable, simply because the oppressed masses are endlessly pissed off, and they want their feelings to be registered and expressed by the leaders. Even the search for ‘objectivity’ is often out of place, when still fragile revolutions have to face the entire monumental hostile propaganda of the regime – of the Empire.

But the question is: do most of the Western leftists really support revolutions and anti-colonialist struggles of the oppressed world?

I believe they don’t. And this is clearly visible from reading most of the so-called alternative media in both North America and Europe.

Whoever stands up, whoever leads his nation into battle against the Western global dictatorship, is almost immediately defined as a demagogue. He or she is most likely christened ‘undemocratic’, and not just by the mass and ‘liberal’ media, but also on the pages of the so-called ‘alternative’ and ‘progressive’ Western press. Not all, but some, and frankly: most of it!

Chavez actually received very little support from Western ‘left-wing’ intellectuals. And now when Venezuela is bleeding, the ‘Bolivarian Republic’ can only count on a handful of revolutionary Latin American nations, as well as on China, Iran and Russia; definitely not on the robust, organized and militant solidarity from Western countries.

Cuba received even less support than Venezuela. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, no attempt was actually made by Western leftists to bail the heroic nation out. It was China, in the end, which ran to its rescue and saved Cuban socialism. (When I wrote about it, I got hundreds of Western leftists at my throat, and in the end it took Fidel to confirm, in his ‘Reflections’, what I was saying, to get them off my back). Then, when the Obama administration began making dangerous advances on Havana, almost everyone in the West began screwing those cynical grimaces: ‘you see; now everything will collapse! They will buy Cuba!’ They didn’t. I travelled to the beloved green island, and it was so clear from the first moment there, that the ‘revolution is not for sale’. But you will not read it often in the Western ‘progressive’ media.

*

It is of course not just Latin America that is ‘disliked’ by the progressives in the West. Actually, Latin America is still at least getting some nominal support there.

China and Russia, two powerful nations, which are now standing openly against Western imperialism, are despised by virtually all ‘liberals’ and by most of the Western ‘left’. In those circles, there is total ignorance about the Chinese type of democracy, about its ancient culture, and about it’s complex but extremely successful form of Communism (or calls it ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’). Like parrots, the Western leftists repeat ‘liberal’ propaganda that ‘China is being capitalist’, or that it is being ruled by ‘state capitalism’. The internationalism of Chinese foreign policy is constantly played down, even mocked.

The hostility of the Western ‘left’ towards China has disgusted many Chinese leaders and intellectuals. I only realized the extent of this revulsion, when I spoke, last year, at the First World Cultural Forum in Beijing, and mingled with the thinkers at the China Academy of Social Sciences, the right (intellectual) arm of the government and the Party.

China can count on its allies in Russia, Latin America, Africa and elsewhere, but definitely not in the West.

It is pointless to even mention Russia or South Africa.

Russia, ‘the victim’ during the horrid Yeltsin years was ‘embraced’ by the Western left. Russia the warrior, Russia the adversary to Western imperialism, is, once again, loathed.

It appears that the ‘progressives’ in the United States and Europe really prefer ‘victims’. They can, somehow, feel pity and even write a few lines about the ‘suffering of defenseless women and children’ in the countries that the West is plundering and raping. That does not extend to all countries that are being brutalized, but at least to some…

What they don’t like at all, are strong men and women that have decided to fight: to defend their rights, to face the Empire.

The Syrian government is hated. The North Korean government is despised. The President of the Philippines is judged by Western liberal media measures: as a vulgar freak who is killing thousands of ‘innocent’ drug pushers and consumers (definitely not as a possibly new Sukarno who is willing to send the entire West to hell).

Whatever the Western ‘left’ thinks about North Korea and its government (and in fact, I think, it cannot really think much, as it is fully ignorant about it), the main reason why the DPRK is hated so much by the West regime, is because it, together with Cuba, basically liberated Africa. It fought for the freedom of Angola and Namibia, it flew Egyptian MIGs against Israel, it struggled in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as well as in many other countries, and it sent aid, teachers and doctors to the entire continent devastated by the Western colonialist barbarity.

Much good it received in return! At best, indifference, at worse, total spite!

*

Some say that the Western ‘left’ doesn’t want to take power, anymore. It lost all of its important battles. It became toothless, impotent, and angry about the world and itself.

When in January 2016 I spoke at the Italian Parliament (ending up insulting the West for its global plunder, hypocrisy), I mingled a lot with the 5 Star Movement, which had actually invited me to Rome. I spent time with its radical left wing. There are some great people there, but overall, it soon became clear that this potentially the biggest political movement in the country is actually horrified of coming to power! It does not really want to govern.

But then, why call those weak bizarre selfish Western entities – the ‘left wing’? Why confuse terms, and by that, why discredit those true revolutionaries, those true fighters, who are risking, sacrificing their lives, right now, all over the world?

*

Wars are all extremely ugly. I have covered many of them, and I know… But some of them, those that are fought for the survival of humanity, or for survival of the particular countries, are inevitable. One either fights, or the entire Planet ends up being colonized and oppressed, in shackles.

If one decides to fight, then there has to be discipline and single-mindedness; total determination. Or the battle is lost from the very beginning!

When the freedom and survival of one’s motherland is at stake, things get very serious, ‘dead-serious’. Battle is not a discussion club. It is not some chat.

If we, as ‘leftists’, have already once decided that imperialism and colonialism (or ‘neo-colonialism’) are the greatest evils destroying our humanity, then we have to show discipline and join ranks, and support those who are at the frontline.

Otherwise we will become an irrelevant laughingstock, and history will and should judge us harshly!

*

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.  Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

A new review of the safety of France’s nuclear power stations has found that at least 18 of EDF’s units are are “operating at risk of major accident due to carbon anomalies.”

The review was carried out at the request of Greenpeace France following the discovery of serious metallurgical flaws by French regulators in a reactor vessel at Flamanville, where an EPR plant is under construction.

The problem is that parts of the vessel and its cap contain high levels of carbon, making the metal brittle and potentially subject to catastrophic failure. These key components were provided by French nuclear engineering firm Areva, and forged at its Le Creusot.

“The nature of the flaw in the steel, an excess of carbon, reduces steel toughness and renders the components vulnerable to fast fracture and catastrophic failure putting the NPP at risk of a major radioactive release to the environment”, says nuclear safety expert John Large, whose consultancy Large Associates (LA) carried out the Review.

His report examines how the defects in the Flamanville EPR reactor pressure vessel came about during the manufacturing process, and escaped detection for years after forging. It then goes on to investigate what other safety-critical nuclear components might be suffering from the same defects.

Steam generators at 28 EDF nuclear sites at risk

After several months of investigation LA found that critical components of a further 28 nuclear plants were forged by Le Creusot using the same process. These are found in the steam generators – large, pod-like boilers – that have been installed at operational EDF nuclear power stations across France.

The conclusion is based on documents provided by IRSN (the independent French Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire) that reject assurances given by both EDF and Areva that there is no safety risk from steam generators containing the excess carbon flaw.

In August 2016, IRSN warned the French nuclear safety regulator Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) that:

• EdF’s submission was incomplete;
• there is a risk of abrupt rupture which could lead to a reactor core fuel melt; and
• immediate “compensatory” measures need to be put in place to safeguard the operational NPPs involved.

“As a result of Areva’s failures, a significant share of the French nuclear reactor fleet is at increased risk of severe radiological accident, including fuel core meltdown”, said Large. “However, there is no simple or quick fix to this problem.

“The testing and inspection regime currently underway by Areva and EDF is incapable of detecting the extent and severity of the carbon problem and, moreover, it cannot ensure against the risk of rapid component failure. It is most certain that the IRSN finding will equally applies to replacement steam generators exported by Areva to overseas nuclear power plants around the world.”

EDF reactors face protracted closure, credit rating falls

EDF stated yesterday that it will carry out further tests on 12 nuclear reactors during their planned outages in the coming months – and that extended periods of outage are to be expected. “There are outages that could take longer than planned”, an EDF spokesman told Reuters.

“In 2015, we discovered the phenomenon of carbon segregation in the Flammanville EPR reactor. We decided to verify other equipments in the French nuclear park to make sure that other components are not impacted by the phenomenon.”

In anticipation of the nuclear closures, year-ahead electricity prices rose in the French wholesale power market, forcing power rises across Europe up to a one-year high.

Meanwhile Moody’s has downgraded EDF credit ratings across a spectrum of credit instruments. EDF’s long-term issuer and senior unsecured ratings fell from A2 to A3 while perpetual junior subordinated debt ratings fell to Baa3 from Baa2. Moody’s also  downgraded the group’s short-term ratings to Prime-2 from Prime-1.

According to Moody’s,

“the rating downgrade reflects its view that the action plan announced by EDF in April 2016, which includes government support, will not be sufficient to fully offset the adverse impact of the incremental risks associated the Hinkley Point C (HPC) project on the group’s credit profile.

“Moody’s believes that the significant scale and complexity of the HPC project will affect the group’s business and financial risk profiles. This is because the HPC project will expose EDF and its partner China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN, A3 negative) to significant construction risk as the plant will use the same European Pressurised reactor (EPR) technology that has been linked with material cost overruns and delays at Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto 3 in Finland. In addition, none of the four plants using the EPR technology currently constructed globally is operational yet.”

Once rating agencies have had time to evaluate the seriousness of EDF’s current problems with reactors packed with unsafe crirical components, further downgrades may follow. “The ratings could be downgraded if (1) credit metrics fall below Moody’s guidance for the A3 rating; or (2) EDF were to be significantly exposed to AREVA NP’s liabilities”, the agency warns.

Flamanville EPR heading for the scrapheap

The Review also shows that the reactor pressure vessel of the Flamanville EPR, which is already installed, does not have a Certificate of Conformity issued by ASN. This means that it does not comply with the European Directive on Pressure Equipment, nor does it meet the mandatory requirement of the ASN, which since 2008, stipulates that any new nuclear reactor coolant circuit component has to have a Certificate of Conformity before its production commences.

“Without a Certificate of Conformity the reactor pressure vessel and steam generators currently installed in Flamanville 3 will almost certainly have to be scrapped”, said Roger Spautz, responsible for nuclear campaign at Greenpeace France.

The review, he added, “reveals evidence that at the Creusot Forge plant, Areva did not have the technical qualifications required to meet exacting nuclear safety standards. The plant was not under effective control and therefore had not mastered the necessary procedures for maintaining the exacting standards for quality control in the manufacture of safety-critical nuclear components.”

Areva has now acknowledged that ineffective quality controls at le Creusot Forge were mainly responsible not only for the flaws in the Flamanvile 3 EPR, but across other operational nuclear power plans – and that the technical failures date back to 1965.

Moreover, ASN has indicated that in the nuclear components supply chain three examples of Counterfeit, Fraudulent and Substandard Items (CFSI) have occurred in the year ending 2015.

The recent ASN publication (24th September 2016) of a list of the NPPs affected by the AREVA anomalies and irregularities demonstrates that the phenomenon not only has reached alarming proportions but is continuing to grow under scrutiny.

The number of components affected by irregularities and installed in NPPs in operation increased by 50 in April 2016 from 33 to 83 by 24th September this year. Irregularities affecting the Flamanville EPR increased from two to 20 over the same period.

Also at risk: Sizewell B, Hinkley C finance, Taishan EPRs

LA’s Review also relates these developments in France to the UK, specifically: the currently operating Sizewell B NPP in Suffolk; and the now contracted construction programme for the Hinkley Point C NPP.

Sizewell B which includes a number of components sourced from Le Creusot which need urgent examination and / or replacement in order to prevent unsafe operation. The fact that this could escape the UK’s nuclear regulators also indicates, says Large, that “the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) did not delve deep enough into the situation as now revealed by ASN.”

As for For Hinkley Point C, it now appears inevitable that the Flamanville reactor will not be completeted by its target date of the end of 2020, indeed it may very well never be completed at all. Under the terms of agreement for the plant’s construction accepted by the European Commission, this would render the UK government unable to extend promised credit guarantees to HPC’s financial backers.

“Now that ASN has deprioritized efforts on the under-construction Flamanville 3 NPP because of its pressing urgency to evaluate the risk situation for the operating NPPs”, says Large, “there is a greater likelihood that Flamanville 3 will not reach the deadline for operation and validation of its technology by the UK Credit Guarantee cut-off date of December 2020.”

Also at risk are the two EPRs that Areva and EDF are currently constructing at Taishan in China. These are now at the most advanced stage of any EPR projects in the world, however there are increasing fears that they contain faulty components.

The vessels and domes at Taishan were also supplied by Areva, and manufactured by the same process as that utilised by Le Creusot. It is suspected that Chinese nuclear regulators may have decided to overlook this problem and hope for the best. However if they discover that the steam generators, which along with the reactor vessels have already been installed, are also at risk of catastrophic failure, that might prove a risk too far – even for China.

The danger for EDF and Areva is that the massive commercial liabilities they may be accruing for faulty reactors supplied to third parties, together with the tens of billions of euros of capital write-downs for projects they have to abandon, and the loss of generation revenues due to plant outages, could easily exceed their entire market capitalisation.

In other words: for EDF, Areva, their shareholders and the entire French nuclear industry, the end really could be nigh.

Oliver Tickell is contributing editor at The Ecologist.

And why the military censors don’t want you to know about it.

Published in partnership with Tikun Olam תיקון עולם..

You will read much hagiography in the Peres obituaries published in Israeli and world media. Here is a perfect example in the NY Times of the half-truths and undeserved admiration that is being heaped upon his memory:

He was consistent in his search for an accommodation with the Arab world, a search that in recent years left him orphaned as Israeli society lost interest, especially after the upheavals of the 2011 Arab Spring led to tumult on its borders.

In an especially vain moment, Shimon Peres is pictured mimicking the pose of his political mentor, David Ben Gurion.

This is at best only partially true.  Peres was intermittent in his search for peace with the Arabs.  True, in 1993, he led the effort that culminated in the Oslo Accords.  But subsequent Israeli governments abandoned them and they eventually came to be discredited entirely both on the left and right.

After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Peres had an opportunity to call a snap election which would’ve confirmed his mandate to solidify the gains from those Accords.  Instead, he temporized and waited until it was too late.  By the time he called elections a year later, Palestinian militants had engineered a series of savage terror attacks inside Israel which discredited Peres’ leadership and brought Bibi Netanyahu to power for his first term as prime minister.  Though there were subsequent opportunities for Israeli governments to negotiate peace deals, especially with Ehud Barak, another Labor prime minister, all of them were squandered.  Regardless, Peres’ accession to the position in 1995 and the cataclysm that followed, was a pivotal moment that led to the political stagnation which has lasted ever since.

Much of what you will read about Peres is either outright false or only partially true. A certain portion of what you read may even be true. But Shimon Peres is one of those Israeli leaders like Ben Gurion, his mentor, and Ariel Sharon, who built a myth around themselves. Part political hype, part astute branding, and part a need in Israelis and the rest of the world to believe the myth they were sold of Israel as the miracle in the desert, the people which made a barren land bloom, which drained swamps and turned them into thriving kibbutzim. The little State that could.

So in assessing Peres’ legacy it’s important to keep this in mind; to separate fact from fiction; myth from reality.

Prime Minister David Ben Gurion with his chief aide, Shimon Peres. In background: defense minister Moshe Dayan and Ben Gurion aide, Teddy Kollek.

Shimon Peres had a severe stroke two days ago and while his health has improved since he entered the hospital, at age 93, he is in the twilight of his years.  It’s appropriate to take stock of his legacy as an epochal figure who spans the founding of the State to the present day.  I can’t think of another active Israeli politician with that length of service or span of history.

When Peres dies, an entire nation will mourn him as a founding father of the state.  Someone who served it faithfully and diligently for nearly seven decades.  The accolades will pour forth.  Newscasters will show historic footage of him with his political mentor, David Ben Gurion, and intone solemnly about the deeds of the Great Man.

But, as is often the case in these matters, the truth lies elsewhere.  Peres began his career as Ben Gurion’s errand boy.  He was diligent and inventive.  What the boss needed done, he always figured out a way to accomplish.  Eventually became his chief fixer.  That’s how he was assigned the monumental task of getting Israel the Bomb.  Such a task is no small feat and it required immense amounts of grit, determination, invention, and even outright thievery.  Peres was more than up to the task.

Uncensored version of Wall story which describes Peres’ bluff which enabled French to circumvent international nuclear prohibition against selling uranium to Israel.

From almost the first moment after the State was founded Ben Gurion aspired to create a nuclear weapon.  He saw it as his Doomsday device.  The ace he could draw from the deck if all the cards were stacked against him.  Though Israel’s actual strategic strength was quite robust, Ben Gurion suggested otherwise.  In a famous episode of that era, he’s reputed to have looked at a map of the Middle East spread upon the wall of his study and exclaimed to those around him: “I didn’t sleep a wink last night because of this map.  What is Israel?  A single tiny speck.  How can it survive amidst this Arab world?!”

This was part and parcel of the Israeli strategy of portraying itself as the eternal victim, the weaker party to every conflict, who required moral and military support to prevent its destruction.  None of it was true.  But in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world felt it couldn’t to take a chance that it might happen again.  That’s how Israel became little David to the Arab Goliath in the eyes of much of the world after 1948.

Though the conventional Israeli belief is that Israel’s  WMD was meant to protect Israel from imminent destruction should  it suffer a catastrophic defeat, that theory is wrong either in whole or in part.  In actuality, Israel never faced such a threat.  It always maintained military superiority over its enemies in every war from 1948 through 1967 (and after).

Ben  Gurion’s real goal in obtaining nukes was political.  He wanted to ensure Israel would never have to negotiate away the gains it made on the battlefield.  He wanted a weapon he could hold over the heads of any enemy, that would ensure he never had to renounce anything that was rightfully Israel’s (in his mind at least).  So Israel’s Bomb has enabled it to reject virtually every peace initiative offered going all the way back to 1967.  Israel’s leaders knew that the U.S. would never gamble that it wouldn’t use WMD if it had to.  So American presidents already had one hand tied behind their backs in such negotiations.  In a card game, when one party holds the ace of spades in his pocket and everyone else playing knows this, it’s not much of a game, is  it?

Israeli Opponents of the Bomb

It would be a misnomer to believe that Ben Gurion and Peres were lionized by their peers for their visionary project.  Opposition to an Israeli Bomb was strong and crossed party lines.   Among those who were against were future prime minister Levi Eshkol, Pinchas Sapir, Yigal Alon, Golda Meir, and Israel’s leading weapons developer, Yisrael Galili.  Even then IDF chief of staff Chaim Leskov opposed the Bomb.  Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, in his typically prophetic fashion created an NGO that called for making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone (it was called in Hebrew “the Public Committee to Demilitarize the Middle East of Nuclear Weapons”).  It was probably the first such call anywhere in the world.  In one matter, he turned out to be wrong.  He predicted that by building the nuclear reactor Israel would tempt its enemies to bomb and destroy it.  Afterward, Lebowitz predicted, they would call Dimona: “Shimon’s Folly.”

The sheer chutzpah that Peres employed to get what he wanted was astonishing.  He played on the heartstrings of German guilt to obtain funding for the  nuclear arms project.  He recruited Arnon Milchanas a covert operative to organize a conspiracy to steal highly enriched uranium from the U.S. depository where it was stored.  Peres negotiated with the French a complex deal to build the Dimona plant, which to this day produces the plutonium for Israel’s WMD arsenal.

Shimon Peres visits an Israeli police counter-terrorism unit, 2011.

The defense ministry director general traveled extensively to France in those days and cultivated the entire political leadership in pursuit of the necessary agreements to build the Dimona plant.  On the very day he flew to France to sign the final deal, the government in Paris fell.  Though Ben Gurion saw Peres’ trip as wasted, the latter refused to give up.  He went to the resigning prime minister and suggested that they back-date the agreement to make it appear as if it had been signed before the resignation.  The French leader agreed.  And so, Israel’s Bomb was saved by an audacious bluff.  When someone asked Peres afterward how he thought he could get away with such a stratagem, he joked: “What’s 24 hours among friends?”

Peres facilitated outright theft as well.  If Israel waited to produce the highly enriched uranium it would need to create a Bomb on its own, it would’ve taken years longer than it did.  If it could procure the uranium by other means it would immensely speed the process.  That’s how the father of the Israeli Bomb recruited future Hollywood film producer Milchan to steal hundreds of kilos of nuclear materials from a warehouse in Pennsylvania with the connivance of American officials who were pro-Israel Jews recruited to the task.

Roger Mattson recently published a book on the subject, Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel.  This article summarizes his findings. Among them, are that a group of American Jewish scientists and engineers founded the company which likely embezzled and transferred to Israel enough material to make six nuclear bombs. Several officers of this company later became national officers in the Zionist Organization of America. A founder of the company fought in the Haganah during the 1948 War and was a protege of future Israeli intelligence chief, Meir Amit. Key figures in U.S. intelligence even suggested that the company itself was established by Israeli intelligence in order to steal U.S. materials and technological expertise in the service of Israel’s nuclear weapons project. All of this means that leaders of one of the key organizations in the Israel Lobby aided and abetted a huge national security breach which gave Israel the bomb.

If you’re a pro-Israel advocate you likely see such figures as heroes. If so, consider this: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1956 for doing far less harm to America’s nuclear program than these individuals did.

Israel Lobby’s Covert Fundraising Program

The WMD project was extraordinarily expensive.  The new State, saddled with huge expenses to feed and house millions of  new immigrants, had no budget to fund it.  That’s where Peres turned to wealthy Diaspora Jews like Abe Feinberg to covertly raise funds for the Israeli bomb.  Feinberg spearheaded a fundraising campaign which raised $40-million, equivalent to $260-million in today’s dollars.  Feinberg also conspired through his Democratic Party connections to secure from Pres. Johnson Israel’s right to refuse to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation pact.

The Israeli news portal Walla describes the brilliant stratagem Ben Gurion and Peres concocted that drew France to Israel’s side in the effort to make a Bomb.  It began in 1956 with a secret meeting at a French villa outside Paris with a high-level British and French contingent.  The goals of the French and British were aligned with those of Israel, but not completely so.  The British and French wanted to give Egypt’s new firebrand leader, Gamal Nasser a black eye for nationalizing the Suez Canal and offering aid to the Algerian resistance.  They hatched a plan to attack Nasser and carve up Egypt’s strategic assets for themselves.  Israel was happy to go along for the ride.  But it had a separate goal–to garner European support for its nuclear effort.

After getting the go-ahead sign from Ben Gurion, Peres approached his French counterparts and announced Israeli agreement to join in the attack which later came to be known as Operation Kadesh.  But Israel, he told them, faced far more danger in the venture than either the British or French.  If Israel lost, its very existence could be threatened.  That’s why it needed a strategic weapon that could prevent its annihilation in the event of a disastrous defeat.

As negotiations proceeded with the French, they warned the Israelis that there were prohibited from selling them uranium under international agreements.  Peres came up with a typically brilliant and devious solution: “Don’t sell it to us, lend it to us,” he said.  “We will return it to you after our mission is completed.”  So began the real effort to build an Israeli Bomb.  The reactor was completed in 1960 and by 1967 Israel had its first primitive nuclear weapon to use in case it lost the 1967 War.

For some strange reason, the Israeli military censor disapproved of Walla talking about Peres’ “bluff” regarding back-dating the French-Israeli nuclear agreement. In the censored version, you won’t find any reference to it. Nor will you find the story about Peres’ suggestion that the French “lend” the uranium to Israel, since it was illegal to sell it.  My guess is that with Peres’ demise likely, they preferred not to tarnish the Old Man’s reputation any more than necessary. Which raises the question: why is a censor stooping to protect Israeli politicians’ reputations rather than protecting the security of the state, which is its putative mission?”

Richard Silverstein is a MintPress analyst who has written the Tikun Olam blog since 2003, specializing in Israeli politics and US foreign affairs. He earned a BA from Columbia University, a BHL from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and MA in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Follow Richard on Twitter: @Richards1052 

Here we go again. In yet another Pentagon precision strike, a residential building in Achin district of Nangarhar province was hit as a crowd welcomed home a tribal leader returning from the Hajj. 

At least 13 civilians were turned into «collateral damage». The Pentagon of course does not «discuss the details of counter-terror operations», but it’s «currently reviewing all materials related to this strike».

Nothing obviously will come out of it – adding the civilian dead to the non-stop mounting toll of Operation Enduring Freedom (Forever).

Someone that actually is bound to endure his freedom in full splendor is former warlord, head of Hezb-i-Islami and «Butcher of Kabul» Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The Pentagon does not detain the monopoly of shelling civilians in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar also did it with relish in the early 1990s – besides running an underground torture prison in neighboring Pakistan.

In Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s, I talked to many residents during the civil war who were allied with Tajik commander and «Lion of the Panjshir» Ahmad Shah Massoud – assassinated two days before 9/11 – as they recalled Hekmatyar’s forces relentlessly shelling civilian neighborhoods.

Hekmatyar has been in hiding for almost two decades now – since 1997. He has not yet returned to Kabul. In 2002, in Kunar province in Afghanistan, I was trying to track him – as well as Osama bin Laden – with my Peshawar fixer, and we kept running into US Marines asking us for information. After Osama disappeared, Hekmatyar quickly became the number one «dead or alive» Bush II target in Afghanistan, branded as a «global terrorist» by Washington and blacklisted by the UN in 2003.

Now he’s up to amass political power, after being pardoned by the government of president Ashraf Ghani. His outfit, Hezb-i-Islami, is a spent military force for years now. Politically it’s another story. With the deal, Hezb militants will now be able to run for office.

It was a hard nut to crack. Hekmatyar has always refused to sign any deal as long as US- / NATO troops de facto occupy Afghanistan. The final deal establishes Hezb and US / NATO agree to disagree – as long as Hekmatyar refuses to support terrorism. And Ghani’s people have to do the paperwork to remove Hezb-i-Islami from the UN’s list of terrorist organizations.

Whether incorporating Hezb into the fragile government in Kabul will intimidate the Taliban remains an open question.

CIA rat line in effect

Afghanistan for all practical purposes continues to be occupied by foreigners; in this aspect Hekmatyar’s logic happens to mirror the Taliban’s logic – even though the successors of Mullah Omar won’t be admitted to the power table in Kabul.

A Western covert intel operative with knowledge of how Afghanistan was handled at the highest levels in Washington lays down the case:

Osama bin Laden was a failed CIA asset that was used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan to restart the heroin trade, which is a trillion-dollar business. Mullah Omar was our ally against the Soviets, and a most honorable man, who shut down all the heroin plantations in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over as they considered the over 300,000 dead who died from heroin overdoses per year immoral. We turned on him and betrayed him. Osama was a guest of Mullah Omar, and he merely asked for evidence of Osama’s involvement in 9/11. Since there was none, as he was not involved, none could be furnished. Bush II ridiculed on television even the thought that he would be required to give evidence to a bow and arrow Mullah Omar.

It gets much juicier when the operative details what few have had the courage to spell out; the CIA’s real agenda in Afghanistan:

The CIA used the heroin proceeds for external operations and so their revenue had been cut off when the Taliban were in power. This way they could always circumvent the US Congress. Heroin; that is why we are still there. Terrorism is engineered through Operation Gladios as this is being used to justify these interventions. Most Western intel agencies are connected to this trade. 93 % of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan. After the US invasion heroin growing was immediately restarted. The military convoys from the Pakistan ports to Afghanistan carried back as backhaul the heroin for world distribution. The Taliban and Osama had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11.

Hekmatyar by the way was never connected to the heroin trade.

Kabul as it stands remains in control of the large population centers and roughly 70% of the country. The rest is Talibanistan. There’s no chance of Kabul winning the war. According to the numbers deployed by Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon and its allies have 14,000 troops in Afghanistan. The US contingent – 9,800 – will drop to 8,400 by the end of 2016.

Everyone remembers NATO «handing over control» – as in being ignominiously defeated by the Taliban – in 2014. Those remaining US troops on the ground euphemistically provide «training» and «air support» to the Afghan Army, and are themselves supported by hordes of military contractors. In parallel, deep in the shades, contractors keep moving the CIA heroin to the West.

The US-NATO combo has just pledged «to help fund Afghan security forces to the tune of around $1 billion annually over the next three years». Few will be aware that offers splendorous extra incentive to CIA-run heroin traders plying their wares across the EU.

Here we go again. In yet another Pentagon precision strike, a residential building in Achin district of Nangarhar province was hit as a crowd welcomed home a tribal leader returning from the Hajj.

At least 13 civilians were turned into «collateral damage». The Pentagon of course does not «discuss the details of counter-terror operations», but it’s «currently reviewing all materials related to this strike».

Nothing obviously will come out of it – adding the civilian dead to the non-stop mounting toll of Operation Enduring Freedom (Forever).

Someone that actually is bound to endure his freedom in full splendor is former warlord, head of Hezb-i-Islami and «Butcher of Kabul» Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The Pentagon does not detain the monopoly of shelling civilians in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar also did it with relish in the early 1990s – besides running an underground torture prison in neighboring Pakistan.

In Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s, I talked to many residents during the civil war who were allied with Tajik commander and «Lion of the Panjshir» Ahmad Shah Massoud – assassinated two days before 9/11 – as they recalled Hekmatyar’s forces relentlessly shelling civilian neighborhoods.

Hekmatyar has been in hiding for almost two decades now – since 1997. He has not yet returned to Kabul. In 2002, in Kunar province in Afghanistan, I was trying to track him – as well as Osama bin Laden – with my Peshawar fixer, and we kept running into US Marines asking us for information. After Osama disappeared, Hekmatyar quickly became the number one «dead or alive» Bush II target in Afghanistan, branded as a «global terrorist» by Washington and blacklisted by the UN in 2003.

Now he’s up to amass political power, after being pardoned by the government of president Ashraf Ghani. His outfit, Hezb-i-Islami, is a spent military force for years now. Politically it’s another story. With the deal, Hezb militants will now be able to run for office.

It was a hard nut to crack. Hekmatyar has always refused to sign any deal as long as US- / NATO troops de facto occupy Afghanistan. The final deal establishes Hezb and US / NATO agree to disagree – as long as Hekmatyar refuses to support terrorism. And Ghani’s people have to do the paperwork to remove Hezb-i-Islami from the UN’s list of terrorist organizations.

Whether incorporating Hezb into the fragile government in Kabul will intimidate the Taliban remains an open question.

CIA rat line in effect

Afghanistan for all practical purposes continues to be occupied by foreigners; in this aspect Hekmatyar’s logic happens to mirror the Taliban’s logic – even though the successors of Mullah Omar won’t be admitted to the power table in Kabul.

A Western covert intel operative with knowledge of how Afghanistan was handled at the highest levels in Washington lays down the case:

Osama bin Laden was a failed CIA asset that was used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan to restart the heroin trade, which is a trillion-dollar business. Mullah Omar was our ally against the Soviets, and a most honorable man, who shut down all the heroin plantations in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over as they considered the over 300,000 dead who died from heroin overdoses per year immoral. We turned on him and betrayed him. Osama was a guest of Mullah Omar, and he merely asked for evidence of Osama’s involvement in 9/11. Since there was none, as he was not involved, none could be furnished. Bush II ridiculed on television even the thought that he would be required to give evidence to a bow and arrow Mullah Omar.

It gets much juicier when the operative details what few have had the courage to spell out; the CIA’s real agenda in Afghanistan:

The CIA used the heroin proceeds for external operations and so their revenue had been cut off when the Taliban were in power. This way they could always circumvent the US Congress. Heroin; that is why we are still there. Terrorism is engineered through Operation Gladios as this is being used to justify these interventions. Most Western intel agencies are connected to this trade. 93 % of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan. After the US invasion heroin growing was immediately restarted. The military convoys from the Pakistan ports to Afghanistan carried back as backhaul the heroin for world distribution. The Taliban and Osama had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11.

Hekmatyar by the way was never connected to the heroin trade.

Kabul as it stands remains in control of the large population centers and roughly 70% of the country. The rest is Talibanistan. There’s no chance of Kabul winning the war. According to the numbers deployed by Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon and its allies have 14,000 troops in Afghanistan. The US contingent – 9,800 – will drop to 8,400 by the end of 2016.

Everyone remembers NATO «handing over control» – as in being ignominiously defeated by the Taliban – in 2014. Those remaining US troops on the ground euphemistically provide «training» and «air support» to the Afghan Army, and are themselves supported by hordes of military contractors. In parallel, deep in the shades, contractors keep moving the CIA heroin to the West.

The US-NATO combo has just pledged «to help fund Afghan security forces to the tune of around $1 billion annually over the next three years». Few will be aware that offers splendorous extra incentive to CIA-run heroin traders plying their wares across the EU.

Righteousness is rarely endearing, and when concocted in a brew of hypocrisy, it becomes noxious. US political campaigning tends to overflow in it, a mixture of rights, noisily championed liberties and supposed exceptionalism.

To that end, Donald Trump is enigmatic. He does, to a large extent fit that bill, only in so far as he assumes making money is a patriotic duty. But in being macho and prone to the business side of things, he shows how capitalism lacks a country.

That sentiment has its advantages.  A world where Russia’s Vladimir Putin would be shaking the hands of a US president warmly is a hard one to contemplate, though it might be better for peace.  Trump has promised that, were he to snatch victory come November, that would happen.

This point has meant that Putin is figuring more than he generally would in a US election.

Editorials regularly feature Cold War re-runs, pointing the finger at business interests that would place Trump at odds with the dictates of US foreign policy were he to charge into the White House.“It is unclear,” suggested University of New Haven professor Matthew Schmidt, “there wouldn’t be a continuing stream of conflict of interest either directly from his own holdings or his advisers if he had to deal with Russia in a place like Syria, for instance.”[1]

Given that US politicians have, during the course of the republic’s history, linked money interests to those of serving the US people, the point is hardly worth mentioning.

Casting a warm glance the way of the Kremlin has tickled the entire Hillary Clinton campaign.  “We’re trying elect a president,” proclaimed Clinton at a rally in California, “not a dictator.”  Advisors have busied themselves meeting various leaders in swing states of “Eastern European descent” in an effort to stir the pot of anti-Russian resentment.[2]

As Katie Glueck, writing for Politico, explains, the Clinton effort is part of a ploy to get deep into traditional Republican territory, one historically sympathetic to GOP causes and suspicious of the Russian Bear.  Trump’s pro-Putin talk, accompanied by lukewarm backing for NATO had “alarmed voters with close ties to Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia and other Eastern European countries”.

With a misplaced sense of purity, the Clintons insist on the idea that Trump’s lust for business, notably with the unwashed, makes him somewhat less that patriotic, following the money when he should be following the Stars and Stripes.

One would have thought that a voracious appetite for the bank account made him quintessentially American.

The Clinton critique does not get away from the obvious issue that every age, every period, finds its authoritarian figure to do business with.  For decades, US international interests were, and continue to be, aligned with the ruthless and anti-democratic.  The only question worth asking there is which dictator was preferred over another.The world of money, the eternal drive of transactions, continues with unmitigated enthusiasm, indifferent to the vices of strong men, the authoritarian bugbears.

Chile’s ruthless Augusto Pinochet and Milton Friedman are forever linked in a discourse of monetary bliss, the former thrilled by the economic advice dished out by the Chicago School, with Washington’s blessing.What does matter for the Clinton side of the argument is that democrats must at least put up some pretence for respecting human rights, as long as they worship before the crudely crafted effigy of Realpolitik.

The Clintons were never been immune to the world of the shady deal and backing characters of ill-repute. Goldman Sachs is hardly a saintly corporation, but is very much part of the Clinton fan club, having paid her ample sums for a string of speeches.  Does that put her at odds with making decent regulatory policy on rapacious banking practices?  Not in Clinton’s moral universe, where corruption takes place in open sight.The now deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, along with his wife, were openly described as “friends of my family” despite a ruthless military rule that collapsed before the flood of the Arab Spring.  The current strong man, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has been doing his best to butter relations with the Clintons, despite a spate of forced disappearances and instances of torture.[3]

Then there is the nasty matter of Saudi Arabia, going about its good business of bombing Yemen with US supplied fighter jets. During Clinton’s time as Secretary of State, weapons transfers worth billions found their way to the kingdom.  The favour has been repaid in the form of donations to the Clinton Foundation.  One person’s authoritarian is another person’s calculating donor.

While Trump is hardly cherubic on this score, he is distinctly aware that any glass house in this matter is broken.  All is shattering, and it is time to shatter more. Making deals with dictators, if they be called that, took place before, as it will in future. Moral sanctimony from any side in US politics will hardly hide that point.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/2016/09/expert_trump_does_himself_no_favors_complimenting_putin

[2] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donald-trump-russia-vladimir-putin-swing-states-228930

[3] https://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/egypt-officially-you-do-not-exist-disappeared-and-tortured-in-the-name-of-counter-terrorism

‘We have to knock the hell out of ISIS, and we have to do it fast,’ Donald Trump urged in the first presidential debate, but after almost 55,000 bombs it might be time for a new strategy.

Despite dropping 54,611 bombs and missiles in 15,362 airstrikes across the Middle East, the U.S.-backed coalition seems no closer to stamping out terrorism than when it began.

That figure comes from Airwars, a nonprofit that keeps track of the aerial campaign against Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group commonly known in the West as ISIS or ISIL) and other groups in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

Since the air war on Daesh began on Aug. 8, 2014, the U.S.-backed coalition has carried out 9,996 airstrikes in Iraq and 5,366 airstrikes in Syria.

Thick smoke and flames erupt from an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Kobani, Syria, as seen from a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, at the Turkey-Syria border.

Airwars also attempts to track all civilian casualties caused by the U.S.-backed coalition and Russian bombs. These figures are unreliable, as official government sources routinely underestimate the number of civilians killed while generously inflating the numbers of combatants killed. To combat this bias, the NGO uses eyewitness accounts and local media to more accurately report on the civilian death toll.

According to the most recent report on the site, between three and seven civilians were killed, and 47 were injured in airstrikes carried out by the coalition on Mosul in northern Iraq during the early morning hours of Sept. 21. In a translation from a video published by NRN, a local Arabic-language news source, one eyewitness suggests the high body count from the airstrikes makes the coalition look even more brutal than Daesh:

When you see this bombing no one can blame Islamic State when they kill a spy with a bullet to his head. Innocent family members were killed by this bombing.

Airwars estimates that at least 1,612 civilians have been killed by the U.S.-backed coalition since 2014, though that figure could be as high as 2,437.

An aircraft lands after missions targeting the ISIS in Iraq from the deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf. For weapons manufacturers, the nonstop pace of airstrikes targeting ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria, as well as Saudi-led bombing of Yemen’s Shiite rebels and their allies, means billions of dollars more in sales.

Despite the loss of Fallujah, which was declared “liberated” from the terrorists in June, Daesh maintains a strong presence in Syria and Iraq, and continues to take credit for terrorist attacks abroad.

Mosul, currently under heavy bombardment by the coalition, is forecast to be the next target for Iraqi forces. In a Sept. 17 report from Politico, retired U.S. Army Col. Daniel L. Davis quoted a Kurdish commander who estimated there are still some 20,000 Daesh troops in and around Mosul, suggesting that even a victory in Mosul could be short-lived. Military experts Davis interviewed speculated that retaking the city from Daesh could trigger a new Iraqi civil war similar to the current conflict in Syria.

The air war began over two years ago under President Barack Obama, but both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have indicated that they intend to intensify the conflict against Daesh.

During Monday’s presidential debate Clinton said:

We’re working with NATO, the longest military alliance in the history of the world, to really turn our attention to terrorism. We’re working with our friends in the Middle East, many of which, as you know, are Muslim-majority nations.

In his response, Trump noted:

I think we have to get NATO to go into the Middle East with us, in addition to surrounding nations, and we have to knock the hell out of ISIS, and we have to do it fast, when ISIS formed in this vacuum created by Barack Obama and Secretary Clinton.

Responding to the candidates on Tuesday, Robert Fisk, an award-winning journalist who covers the Middle East for the Independent, expressed frustration at both candidates’ eagerness to continue the same, failing strategies. He wrote:

[H]aven’t we all been knocking the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, even Lebanon (a few years ago), and achieving the constant rebirth of ever more vicious warriors, of which Isis – heaven spare us the thought – may soon generate another, even worse progeny?

Fisk, who is based in Beirut, also noted that Washington’s so-called “friends” in the Middle East include “[t]hose fantastic Saudis who gave us 15 of the 9/11 hijackers,” and suggested it will be America’s fault when the air war on Daesh inevitably creates more terrorism through blowback.

He concluded:

About the only nonsense left unuttered by Trump and Clinton was that Isis was born outside the United States. There they would have been on safe ground. Or would they? For I suspect there may be a growing number of Arabs who believe that Isis is indeed a child born in America.

State Department spokesman John Kirby warned Russia on Wednesday its radical Salafist terrorists in Syria may soon attack Russian cities.

“Extremist groups will continue to exploit the vacuums that are there in Syria to expand their operations, which could include attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities. Russia will continue to send troops home in body bags, and will continue to lose resources, perhaps even aircraft,” Kirby said.

Because the “extremist groups” in Syria are supported by the United States and its Gulf Emirate partners, this remark can only be interpreted as a threat against Russia by the State Department.

Russia said as much.

“We can’t assess those statements as anything else but a call, a directive for action,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov added the statement by Kirby amounted to “the most frank confession by the U.S. side so far that the whole ‘opposition’ ostensibly fighting a ‘civil war’ in Syria is a U.S.-controlled international terrorist alliance.”

“What makes Kirby’s statement particularly shocking is that the scale of direct U.S. influence on terrorists’ activity is global and reaches as far as Russia,” he said.

CBS News tried to downplay the comments by Zakharova and Konashenkov:

The remarks by Russian officials have shown a degree of mistrust and strain between Moscow and Washington after the collapse of the U.S.-Russia-brokered truce and the Syrian army onslaught on Aleppo backed by Russian warplanes. The growing friction makes it increasingly unlikely that the cease-fire could be revived.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that Washington is “on the verge” of ending Syria talks with Moscow because of days of deadly bombings of Aleppo by Russian and Syrian planes.

In other words, Kerry is threatening to shut down the truce in response to Syria’s effort to fight against US and Saudi-backed terrorists destroying its country.

Konashenkov’s remarks are prescient. The Russians are well aware this “international terrorist alliance” (created by the CIA, Pakistani intelligence, and the Saudis) was imported into the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union following the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan. “Despite its anti-American ideology, Islamic fundamentalism was largely serving Washington’s strategic interests in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and the Middle East,” writes Michel Chossudovsky.

Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab, rebel leaders fighting in the renegade Chechen autonomous region of the Russian Federation, were trained and indoctrinated in CIA-sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The CIA has exploited Islam to destroy secular institutions in the Russian Federation. “The enforcement of Islamic law in the largely secular Muslim societies of the former Soviet Union has served America’s strategic interests in the region. Previously, a strong secular tradition based on a rejection of Islamic law prevailed throughout the Central Asian republics and the Caucasus, including Chechnya and Dagestan (which are part of the Russian Federation),” Chossudovsky adds.

The Saudis imported their radical Wahhabist creed into Chechnya, Dagestan, and Tajikistan in the late 1980s following the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Islamic Djamaat of Dagestan and Chechen separatists established an independent Islamist state in the Caucasus. The CIA asset Ibn Al-Khattab organized raids against the Russian army.

The establishment media portrays the Russian response to Kirby’s statement as intransigence and unwillingness to participate in a proposed truce calling for an end to attacks on jihadists attempting to overthrow al-Assad and establish a Wahhabist principality in Syria.

The Russians have a direct interest in stopping terrorism in Syria and Kirby provided an additional rationale with his remark.

It is one year since the beginning of a Palestinian youth-driven, anti-colonial revolt characterised by protests and attacks on Israeli forces and settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), along with brutal violence and punitive measures by Israeli authorities.

The timeline is not precise; by October 1, 2015, anti-occupation violence by Palestinians had been gradually on the rise, with ebbs and flows, for a few years. Some have dubbed it the ‘Jerusalem Intifada’. Others have described it as “less than an Intifada and more than a popular blow-up.”

According to a Quds News Network article published this week, 246 Palestinians have been killed over the last year, and a further 18,500 injured. Other sources cite 230 fatalities (Ma’an News Agency) or “more than 225” (Amnesty International).

The majority of Palestinians were killed while conducting attacks, or alleged attacks; in July, for example, the Palestine Red Crescent said that 139 of the then-total 218 fatalities were assailants or alleged assailants (just under two-thirds).

However, as Associated Press noted earlier this month, “Palestinians have frequently accused Israelis of using excessive force against assailants and said in many cases, alleged assailants were not even attackers.” Such vital information is, regrettably, rarely included in many news agencies’ articles.

Certainly, a number of Palestinians – typically young adults – have carried out attacks over the last year, the overwhelming majority of which have targeted uniformed Israeli occupation forces or settlers in the OPT. Some of these assailants were executed after they no longer posed a threat.

But Israeli forces – including in incidents where the military changed its version of events a number of times – have also killed Palestinians falsely labelled as assailants, as well as Palestinians shot in the context of arrest raids or during the suppression of demonstrations.

It is instructive to note that, even according to the Israeli authorities, the number of Palestinians killed purely in the context of protests and raids over the last year (71) isdouble the total number of Israelis killed by Palestinians (33, plus two foreign nationals).

Palestinians killed by Israeli armed forces are rarely humanised in the West. In the media, their deaths merit – at best – a couple of paragraphs that always includes the Israeli military spokesperson’s version of events (and often only their version). And then everyone moves on.

Here then, is a snapshot of the human cost of Israel’s apartheid regime, and a few of the stories of those Palestinians who lost their lives over the past year.

Obeidallah was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in Aida refugee camp, northern Bethlehem. He was standing, observing clashes between residents and occupation forces some 70 metres away, when he was struck with one live bullet to the chest. Obeidallah was one of five children, and his 17-year-old brother Muhammad described him as his “closest friend.” According to his mother Dalal, the young teen had “always dreamed of visiting” an aunt in Jerusalem, but, she added, “we are deprived of visiting Jerusalem.” The Israeli army subsequently claimed that the killing of Obeidallah was “unintentional.” A criminal investigation has been opened by the Israeli Military Advocate General (MAG) into the shooting, but a year on, there is no indication of any conclusion.

Shadi was killed when Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators throwing stones at army watchtowers along the border fence east of Gaza City. Six Palestinians werekilled that day, and 145 injured, as well-protected Israeli soldiers cut down unarmed protesters with live ammunition.  Shadi worked with his father as an electrician, and according to his younger brother, was planning to get married. “[Shadi] wasn’t just my brother”, he said, “he was a good friend. We were always together. We always talked to each other and asked each other for advice.” More than 20 Palestinians, including a child aged 10, have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza fence protests over the last year. No Israeli investigations have been opened into any of their deaths.

Nur Hassan, five months pregnant at the time, was killed alongside her three-year-old daughter Rahaf, in an Israeli airstrike on their family home in the a-Zeitun neighbourhood of the Gaza Strip. The house suffered a direct hit, and was completely destroyed. The bombing, which took place in the middle of the night as the family slept, was described by the Israeli military as an attack on “weapon production sites.” The Hassan home was located in a farming area, surrounded by olive and fruit orchards, with which the family made their living. In a widely-viewed video, the surviving father, Yihya, held Rahaf’s body, saying repeatedly, “Wake up, my daughter.” The second child, five-year-old Muhammad, also survived the bombing. There has been no Israeli investigation.

Ershied was killed at a checkpoint in front of Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, in what was reported by Israeli authorities to have been an attempted stabbing by a “terrorist.” Eyewitness accounts reported by human rights groups contradict this, however. During a second inspection, Border Police officers began shouting at her to show her knife. According to Amnesty International, “warning shots were fired at her feet, prompting her to step back and raise her hands in the air. She was shouting at the police that she did not have a knife and still had her arms raised when police again opened fire, shooting her six or seven times.” Dania was a pupil at Al-Rayyan Girls’ High in Hebron, and was killed in her school uniform. There is no investigation into her death.

Jaradat was killed after attacking Israeli occupation forces outside Beit Einun village near Hebron. He stabbed one soldier before being repeatedly shot, including after he was lying motionless on the ground. Jaradat was an accounting student at Al-Quds University, and hailed from Sair, another Hebron area village. After the killing of Dania Ershied (see above), Jaradat wrote on Facebook: “Imagine if this were your sister!” His bereaved father toldjournalists: “We live well; my son needed nothing. But the only thing missing in the lives of these youths is freedom.”

Al-Sharawi was shot dead by Israeli occupation forces as she approached a petrol station in Hebron. The Israeli military claimed that the mother of six had attempted a car-ramming attack. Yet a video of the incident reveals that the car was going slow enough for soldiers to easily move out of the way – before they opened heavy fire on the vehicle as it entered the station forecourt. The gunfire, which continued well after she had passed the soldiers, alsoinjured a petrol station employee. Al-Sharawi’s son said his mother was on her way to lunch at her sister’s house. According to Amnesty International, the Israeli forces’ use of lethal violence was illegal even if the grandmother had been carrying out an attack. However, Israel’s MAG decided that no criminal investigation will be opened.

Abdullah Shalaldah was killed in a hospital room by Israeli occupation forces disguised as Palestinian civilians (including one pretending to be a pregnant woman in a wheelchair). The soldiers entered a room on the hospital’s third floor, with the intent of arresting a patient, Azzam Shalaldah. As they burst into the room, they shot the patient’s cousin, Abdullah, three times in the head and upper body. The Israeli army claimed he had attacked soldiers, but witnesses said he had been unarmed, and was killed as he came out of the bathroom where he had been washing for prayers. Thousands attended Shalaldah’sfuneral in Sair. There is no Israeli military investigation into his death.

Awad was killed during a demonstration at the Separation Wall in Budrus. After Friday prayers, residents marched towards the Wall, built on village land, where Israeli forces awaited them. After a few hours of clashes, a smaller group of youths approached the Wall, only to be ambushed by soldiers. Awad was grabbed and assaulted, but managed to free himself. As he ran away, an Israeli soldier shot him in the back. Other Israeli soldiers prevented his friends taking him the quickest route to hospital. The Israeli army claimedthat a “rioter” tried to grab a soldier’s weapon.  Lafi was one of eight children. In 2013, he was arrested and detained for 17 months for helping to destroy surveillance cameras in the hated Wall. No criminal investigation is being opened into his killing.

Abu Khalaf, from Kafr Aqab in Occupied East Jerusalem, was shot and killed by Israeli forces outside Damascus Gate, after stabbing and wounding two Border Police officers. In videofootage captured by an Al Jazeera camera crew who happened to be on the scene at the time, Israeli forces opened heavy fire on Abu Khalaf even once he was lying motionless on the ground. The Israeli authorities held Mohammad’s body for 200 days, only returning him to his family for burial on September 6, 2016. “Today, the pain from the unhealed wound was renewed when we received his body and buried it”, his mother Rula told journalists. Israeli authorities subsequently decided that no charges would be filed against the officers involved.

Al-Salaymeh was shot to death by Israeli occupation forces as he drove with his friends in a-Ram in the West Bank. The Israeli military claimed that soldiers only opened fire in order to thwart an attempted car-ramming. The surviving passengers, however, said that they had been heading to a bakery and were unaware of the presence of Israeli forces in the area, a version of events supported by evidence gathered by human rights group B’Tselem. Al-Salaymeh, who had got married three months before his death, was on his way to get cookies for his pregnant wife when he was killed. According to his father, Al-Salaymeh “really helped with supporting the family – this is why he left high school and went to work.” There is no investigation being conducted into his killing.

Tabakhi was struck by a so-called black sponge round, fired by Israeli Border Police officers in a-Ram, Occupied East Jerusalem. He died shortly afterwards in hospital. Confrontations between local youths and Israeli forces in the area are common, owing to work being done on the Separation Wall. Shortly before Tabakhi was shot, some youths were throwing stones at a Border Police jeep, prompting an officer to exit the vehicle and give chase. The 10-year-old was shot in the chest from a distance of around 30 metres. An adult who went to his aid was also shot in the hand. An Israeli police spokesperson merely noted that no ‘live fire’ had been used.

Abu Hashhash was killed by Israeli occupation forces during a brutal, day-long raid of al-Fawwar refugee camp, near Hebron. He was shot in the back the moment he stepped out of his front door, by an Israeli sniper concealed in a Palestinian home about 30-40 metres away. Israeli soldiers had made a small hole in the wall of the house, through which the teenager was shot. Abu Hashhash was a keen football player, in a camp of some 9,500 residents. During that same raid, Israeli forces injured a further 52 other residents, including with live ammunition. At the time of writing, there is no news of an Israeli military investigation into his death.