Crimes Against Peace: The Chilcot Inquiry, Tony Blair and Iraq

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, July 07 2016

Yesterday night a premium congress hall in Kiev, Ukrainian House – Centre of National Idea, hosted a massive “installation”, dedicated to 75th anniversary of proclamation of the “Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State”. The event,designed by the Organization of the Ukrainian Nationalists, was attended by a number of politicians, autocephalous “Ukrainian church” clerics, media, Maidan activists and “war veterans”. The “installation” was titled “The will of Ukrainian people – against Hitler and Stalin” in full accord with the “politically correct” new European reading of the modern history. It was broadcast live in the Internet, but the video is currectly restricted for watching.

A brainwashed TV-viewer would of course be impressed or even moved to tears by revelations of an old Nazi collaborator about “sufferings of the Ukrainian people under despotic Stalin’s boot” and the overall performance. But those who are still in their right mind, would easily recall some contadicting historical facts.

The Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State was adopted in Lvov (Lviv) on June 30, 1941, days after the city was occupied by the Nazi troops rapidly advancing into the Soviet territory in accordance with the Barbarossa operational plan.  It was announced by Yaroslav Stetsko, then a leader of the Ukrainian nationalists (OUN) on the payroll of Abwehr, and soon published by Nazi propaganda leaflets in occupied Ukraine:

 The edition of “Independent Ukraine” newspaper with the text of the Act, dated July 10, 1941

The full text of the Act is as follows:

1. By the will of the Ukrainian people, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the direction of Stepan BANDERA proclaims the formation of the Ukrainian State for which have laid down their heads whole generations of the finest sons of Ukraine.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which under the direction of its founder and leader Yevhen KONOVALETS has undertaken in the past ten years a bloody battle with the Moscovite-Bolshevik enslavers in an energetic battle for freedom, calls all the Ukrainian people not to put down its weapons until all Ukrainian lands are united in a Sovereign Ukrainian Government.

The Sovereign Ukrainian Government will guarantee Ukrainian people order, multilateral development of all its energies and all its needs.

2. In the western lands of Ukraine a Ukrainian Government is formed, which is subordinate to the Ukrainian National Government that will be formed in the capital of Ukraine – KIEV.

3. The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its Fuhrer Adolf HITLER which is establishing a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian People to free itself from Moscovite occupation.

The Ukrainian People’s Revolutionary Army which has been formed on the Ukrainian lands, will continue to fight with the ALLIED GERMAN ARMY against Moscovite occupation for a sovereign and united State and a new order in the whole world.

Long live the Ukrainian Sovereign United Ukraine! Long live the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists! Long live the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian people – STEPAN BANDERA.

GLORY TO UKRAINE!

“Long live Adolf Hitler!” – a banner welcoming visitors to a Ukrainian village during occupation.

The marriage of convenience between German Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists was contracted in September 1939, when the leader of the OUN Andriy Melnik visited Berlin and was promised the position of the chief of a new Ukrainian state in the South-East Poland. According to the archive ofAdmiral Canaris, head of German military intelligence service, immediately after invasion in Poland Hitler tasked him to organize a Ukrainian uprising in Poland via his agents in the OUN. Hitler’s idea was to create a string of loyal quasi-states along the Soviet border, namely: “Ukraine” on the territory of Galicia and Volhynia, Polish protectorate and Lithuania. The Soviet archives evidence that Joseph Stalin was promptly informed about these plans and immediately sanctioned his Polish campaign to reinstall dominance over historical Russian lands, annexed by Poland after the WWI.

Late 1939 – early 1941 is the period of intensive training of the OUN underground in the Abwehr camps Zacopane, Krynitsy, Komanchi on the territory of occupied Poland and their subversive actions against the USSR. In February 1941 a head of OUN military wing Richard Yaryi was ordered by Abwehr to train 700 more nationalist fighters. At the same time Stepan Bandera discussed in Berlin with Canaris and von Brauchitsch the issue of establishing an allied to Wehrmacht Ukrainian army. The pioneer battalions, created soon thereafter, were named Roland and Nachtigall. These battalions entered Soviet territory with the first German armies and organized the bloodbaths in Lvov, Ternopol and Ivano-Frankovsk (then Stanislavov) regions.

On July 7, 1941 the incumbent “head of Ukrainian government” Yaroslav Stetsko wrote to the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Berlin:

As the deputy of Stepan Bandera, leader of the OUN, and acting head of the government, I stand for close cooperation and solid alliance with the Great German State which will guarantee our emancipation from slavery. We understand, appreciate it and well aware that this alliance is decisive for the future path of history and deepening bilateral ties between Germany and Ukrainian people.

Stetsko did not knew that Berlin was never serious about providing a statehood to their Ukrainian stooges. Nazis used OUN nationalists an a cheap cannon-fodder and for propaganda purposes. Once the war against the Soviet Union was started, they neutralized OUN leaders (Bandera was arrested in Berlin on July 5) and disavowed all documents stipulating an “independent Ukrainian state”. The Ukrainian population was only allowed to freely admire German placards on the walls:

Nazi propaganda placard “For the will of people!” on a Kiev’s street, 1941.

The intellectual inability of the European mythboosters to even invent a new motto (please scroll up to refresh the title of yesterday’s installation in Kiev) and dull semi-empty hall of the “Center of National Idea” suggest that the derisive attempts of the nationalists to fabricate a parallel historical reality in Ukraine are destined to fail again.

 

Justice isn’t blind. It works one way for privileged figures like Clinton, entirely another way for ordinary people.

Media reaction was mixed – despite clear criminality demanding indictment, prosecution and stopping her nomination as Democrat party standard bearer.

US law requires documents and other information pertaining to national security and defense not be removed from their “proper place of custody.”

Nor may they be tampered with, altered, destroyed, concealed, stolen or improperly transmitted.

Pro-Clinton New York Times editors reacted as expected to Comey’s announcement, saying his refusal to recommend criminal charges is “undoubtedly correct.”

Hard facts prove otherwise. Comey passing off her criminality as simply extreme carelessness undermines justice, obstructing it, making him complicit in her law-breaking – things rigged to assure her party nomination and likely November election, a known criminal to succeed Obama.

Washington Post editors agreed with their Times counterparts, calling Comey’s conclusion “sound,” absolving Clinton of crimes too serious to ignore, passing them off as poor judgment.

Los Angeles Times editors concurred, dismissively “hop(ing) that this episode has taught her a lesson about the importance of accountability” – rule of law principles be damned.

Wall Street Journal editors were less forgiving, saying “(o)ne standard exists for a Democratic (sic) candidate for President and another for the hoi polloi.”

(W)hat a depressing moment this is the American rule of law. No wonder so many voters think Washington is rigged for the powerful.

The Chicago Tribune highlighted “(t)he FBI’s damning non-indictment,” saying “(h)ere’s the campaign bumper sticker you won’t see: ‘Clinton in ’16 – Because No Charges Were Recommended.”

Hillary violated State Department rules and US statute laws – serious criminal offenses. “Would Americans trust her as their president,” asked Tribune editors?

Will they choose a known criminal – a neocon hawkish one with her finger on the nuclear trigger, perhaps eager to squeeze it?

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

Tony Blair has taken responsibility for the Iraq War but refused to accept that Britain’s toppling of Saddam Hussein could have anything to do with spreading instability in the region.

In a nearly two hour-long news conference, the former prime minister said he still believes he acted in “good faith” and that the decision was the“hardest, most momentous, most agonizing” one he ever took.

The Chilcot report, however, suggests the legal base for the move was “far from satisfactory” and attributes the PM’s decisions to stubbornness.

In his response to the publication of the inquiry into the Iraq War, Blair argued he had to be a “decision maker” as the country’s leader and that in his judgment the world is today “a better place without Saddam Hussein.”

He went as far as to regret that current MPs did not support intervention in Syria in 2013, saying the decision “really dealt a blow” to Britain’s relationship with the US.

But while Tony Blair argued the war was “the right thing to do,” Sir John’s report shows the call for intervention was based on “Mr. Blair’s determination to stand alongside the US.”

And while Blair insists Chilcot proves there was “no secret commitment to war” made during his meeting with George W. Bush in April 2002 in Crawford Texas, the report does show evidence of his continued support for the US president’s own resolutions.

In a 2002 private memo between the two leaders declassified on Wednesday along the Chilcot report, Blair wrote to the US president: “I will be with you, whatever.”

The UN weapons inspectors were at that point still working in Iraq, having failed to find weapons of mass destruction.

Commenting on words exchanged between Blair and Bush at Camp David, US later that year, the Chilcot report adds: “Although at that stage no decision had been taken on which military package might be offered to the US for planning purposes, Mr. Blair also told President Bush that, if it came to war, the UK would take a significant military role.

According to the document, it was also Blair’s idea to link the Afghanistan and Iraq military interventions as part of a wider campaign to prevent terrorism, “although there was no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.”

Families of soldiers killed in the Iraq War are planning to pursue legal action against the former prime minister.

US State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment when asked about Chilcot report by the Sputnik news agency.

“The Chilcot Committee was an independent body appointed by the Government of the UK. Questions about the inquiry or those who participated should be directed to the Committee,” Kirby said.

The death toll from the horrific recent Iraq bombings has risen over 250. If Blair had not been absolutely determined to attack Iraq on the basis of a knowing lie about WMD, they would be alive now, along with millions of other dead. ISIS would never have taken control of territory in Iraq and Syria. Al Qaeda would never have grown from an organisation of a few hundred to one of tens of thousands. We would not have a completely destabilised Middle East and a massive refugee crisis.

Sir John Chilcot

Member of the Butler Inquiry which whitewashed the fabrication of evidence of Iraqi WMD. The fact is that, beyond doubt, the FCO and SIS knew there were no Iraqi WMD. In the early 1990’s I had headed the FCO Section of the Embargo Surveillance Centre, tasked with monitoring and preventing Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement. In 2002 I was on a course for newly appointed Ambassadors alongside Bill Patey, who was Head of the FCO Department dealing with Iraq. Bill is a fellow Dundee University graduate and is one of the witnesses before the Iraq Inquiry this morning. I suggested to him that the stories we were spreading about Iraqi WMD could not be true. He laughed and said “Of course not Craig, it’s bollocks”. I had too many other conversations to mention over the next few months, with FCO colleagues who knew the WMD scare to be false.

Yet Chilcot was party to a Butler Inquiry conclusion that the Iraqi WMD scare was an “Honest mistake”. That a man involved on a notorious whitewash is assuring us that this will not be one, is bullshit.

Sir Roderick Lyne

A good friend and former jogging partner of Alastair Campbell.

Last time I actually spoke to him we were both Ambassadors and on a British frigate moored on the Neva in St Petersburg. Colleagues may have many words to describe Rod Lyne, some of them complimentary, but “open-minded” is not one of them.

If the Committee were to feel that the Iraq War was a war crime, then Rod Lyne would be accusing himself. As Ambassador to Moscow he was active in trying to mitigate Russian opposition to the War. He personally outlined to the Russian foreign minister the lies on Iraqi WMD. There was never the slightest private indication that Lyne had any misgivings about the war.

From Uzbekistan we always copied Moscow in on our reporting telegrams, for obvious reasons. Lyne responded to my telegrams protesting at the CIA’s use of intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers, by requesting not to be sent such telegrams.

Sir Lawrence Freedman

Lawrence Freedman is the most appalling choice of all. The patron saint of “Justified” wars of aggression, and exponent of “Wars of Choice” and “Humanitarian Intervention”. He is 100% parti pris.

Here is part of his evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution on 18 January 2006:

The basic idea here is that our armed forces prepared for what we might call wars of necessity, that the country was under an existential threat so if you did not respond to that threat then in some very basic way our vital interests, our way of life, would be threatened, and when you are looking at certain such situations, these are great national occasions. The difficulty we are now facing with wars of choice is that these are discretionary and the government is weighing a number of factors against each other. I mentioned Sierra Leone but Rwanda passed us by, which many people would think was an occasion when it would have been worth getting involved. There was Sudan and a lot of things have been said about Darfur but not much has happened…

…Iraq was a very unusual situation where it was not an ongoing conflict. If we had waited things would not have been that much different in two or three months’ time and so, instead of responding either to aggression by somebody else, as with the Falklands, or to developing humanitarian distress, as in the Balkans, we decided that security considerations for the future demanded immediate action.”

Sir Martin Gilbert (died in course of the Inquiry)

Very right wing historian whose biography of Churchill focussed on Gilbert’s relish for war and was otherwise dull. (Roy Jenkins’ Churchill biography is infinitely better). Gilbert was not only rabidly pro-Iraq War, he actually saw Blair as Churchill.

Although it can easily be argued that George W Bush and Tony Blair face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did – that the war on terror is not a third world war – they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill. Their societies are too divided today to deliver a calm judgment, and many of their achievements may be in the future: when Iraq has a stable democracy, with al-Qaeda neutralised, and when Israel and the Palestinian Authority are independent democracies, living side by side in constructive economic cooperation.

Baroness Prashar

A governor of the FCO institution the Ditchley Foundation – of which the Director is Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK Ambassador to the UN who presented the lies about Iraqi WMD and was intimately involved in the lead in to war. So very much another cosy foreign policy insider.

So, in short, the committee – all hand-picked by Gordon Brown – could not have been better picked to ensure a whitewash.

Over 50% of the British population were against the Iraq War, including for example many scores of distinguished ex-Ambassadors, many military men and many academics. Yet Brown chose nobody on the Inquiry who had been against the Iraq War, while three out of five were active and open supporters of the war.

Do not expect to see this truth reflected in any of the mainstream media coverage.

The Chilcot report that enquired into Britain’s decision to join US coalition that attacked Iraq which was released today finds that Britain decided to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on “flawed intelligence”. John Chilcot, the chair of the Iraq Inquiry said that the invasion went “badly wrong”.

The 2.6 million-word Iraq Inquiry – which took seven years to prepare – was published in full on Wednesday. It can be accessed online.

Chilcot said:

“The UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted.” Chilcot said that, despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. Investigators also found the planning and preparations for Iraq after Hussein was overthrown were wholly inadequate, said Chilcot, who had not been asked to rule on the legality of the invasion. “The people of Iraq have suffered greatly,” Chilcot said.

Responding to the report, former Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a press conference on Wednesday that he “accept full responsibility without exception and without excuse” for the decision to go to war in Iraq, but insisted that the world “is in a better place without Saddam Hussein”.

He said,

the decision to go to war in Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power in a coalition of over 40 countries led by the USA, was the hardest, most momentous, most agonising decision I took in 10 years as British prime minister.

For that decision today I accept full responsibility, without exception and without excuse. I recognise the division felt by many in our country over the war and in particular I feel deeply and sincerely – in a way that no words can properly convey – the grief and suffering of those who lost ones they loved in Iraq, whether the members of our armed forces, the armed forces of other nations, or Iraqis.

The intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong. The aftermath turned out to be more hostile, protracted and bloody than ever we imagined. The coalition planned for one set of ground facts and encountered another, and a nation whose people we wanted to set free and secure from the evil of Saddam, became instead victim to sectarian terrorism.

For all of this I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you may ever know or can believe..

Joshua Rozenberg writing for The Guardian opined:

Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry has not, in his words, “expressed a view on whether military action [in Iraq] was legal”. That question, he said, could be resolved only by a court. Still less does his report deal with the question of whether Tony Blair or others should face legal action.

These are highlights of the report

Military action

The UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before all peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort

Military action might have been necessary later, but in March 2003, it said, there was no imminent threat from the then Iraq leader Saddam Hussein, the strategy of containment could have been adapted and continued for some time and the majority of the Security Council supported continuing UN inspections and monitoring

On 28 July 2002, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair assured US President George W Bush he would be with him “whatever”. But in the letter, he pointed out that a US coalition for military action would need: Progress on the Middle East peace process, UN authority and a shift in public opinion in the UK, Europe, and among Arab leaders

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – or WMD – were presented with a certainty that was not justified
Intelligence had “not established beyond doubt” that Saddam Hussein had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons

The Joint Intelligence Committee said Iraq has “continued to produce chemical and biological agents” and there had been “recent production”. It said Iraq had the means to deliver chemical and biological weapons. But it did not say that Iraq had continued to produce weapons

Policy on the Iraq invasion was made on the basis of flawed intelligence assessments. It was not challenged, and should have been

The legal case

The circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were “far from satisfactory”

The invasion began on 20 March 2003 but not until 13 March did then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith advise there was, on balance, a secure legal basis for military action. Apart from No 10’s response to his letter on 14 March, no formal record was made of that decision and the precise grounds on which it was made remain unclear

The UK’s actions undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council: The UN’s Charter puts responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security in the Security Council. The UK government was claiming to act on behalf of the international community “to uphold the authority of the Security Council”. But it knew it did not have a majority supporting its actions

In Cabinet, there was little questioning of Lord Goldsmith about his advice and no substantive discussion of the legal issues recorded

Iraq’s aftermath

Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were “wholly inadequate”

The government failed to achieve the stated objectives it had set itself in Iraq. More than 200 British citizens died as a result of the conflict. Iraqi people suffered greatly. By July 2009, at least 150,000 Iraqis had died, probably many more. More than one million were displaced

FBI Director Comey’s announcement that he doesn’t think Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for sharing government documents on her private, unsecured email server is very troubling …

The FBI Re-Wrote 6 Criminal Laws to Let Clinton Off the Hook

Former FBI director Chris Swecker said Comey should have brought charges against Clinton:

He seemed to be building a case for that and he laid out what I thought were the elements under the gross negligence aspect of it, so I was very surprised at the end when he said that there was a recommendation of no prosecution and also given the fact-based nature of this and the statement that no reasonable prosecutor would entertain prosecution, I don’t think that’s the standard.

Andrew McCarthy – former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, obtaining convictions for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing – notes:

In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence. I would point out, moreover, that there are other statutes that criminalize unlawfully removing and transmitting highly classified information with intent to harm the United States. Being not guilty (and, indeed, not even accused) of Offense B does not absolve a person of guilt on Offense A, which she has committed. It is a common tactic of defense lawyers in criminal trials to set up a straw-man for the jury: a crime the defendant has not committed. The idea is that by knocking down a crime the prosecution does not allege and cannot prove, the defense may confuse the jury into believing the defendant is not guilty of the crime charged. Judges generally do not allow such sleight-of-hand because innocence on an uncharged crime is irrelevant to the consideration of the crimes that actually have been charged. It seems to me that this is what the FBI has done today. It has told the public that because Mrs. Clinton did not have intent to harm the United States we should not prosecute her on a felony that does not require proof of intent to harm the United States. Meanwhile, although there may have been profound harm to national security caused by her grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, we’ve decided she shouldn’t be prosecuted for grossly negligent mishandling of classified information. I think highly of Jim Comey personally and professionally, but this makes no sense to me. Finally, I was especially unpersuaded by Director Comey’s claim that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case based on the evidence uncovered by the FBI. To my mind, a reasonable prosecutor would ask: Why did Congress criminalize the mishandling of classified information through gross negligence? The answer, obviously, is to prevent harm to national security. So then the reasonable prosecutor asks: Was the statute clearly violated, and if yes, is it likely that Mrs. Clinton’s conduct caused harm to national security? If those two questions are answered in the affirmative, I believe many, if not most, reasonable prosecutors would feel obliged to bring the case.

Shannen Coffin – who served in senior legal positions in the U.S. Department of Justice – writes:

Comey simply ignored — or rewrote — the plain language of § 793(f), which does not require any showing of criminal intent. There is a reason that Congress did not require a showing of intent in this provision of the Espionage Act: to protect against even inadvertent disclosure or risk of disclosure of protected information where the perpetrator demonstrated gross disregard for the national security. How Comey could conclude that “no reasonable prosecutor” could make this case is inexplicable in light of his own words.

Even where the statutes prohibiting mishandling of classified information require intent, it is not exclusively intent to harm the national security (though that does play into some relevant statutes). Comey noted that his investigation looked at “a second statute, making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.” That statute is 18 U.S.C. §1924(a), which provides that any federal official who “becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, [and] knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both [emphasis added].” Section 1924(a) does not require an intent to profit, to harm the United States, or otherwise to act in a manner disloyal to the United States. It only requires “intent to retain” classified documents at an unauthorized location, something Comey’s own comments suggest was the case here. Again, the case for prosecuting in light of these facts was more than simply fairly debatable it was quite strong.

Indeed, the FBI rewrote 6 criminal laws in announcing that Clinton shouldn’t be prosecuted.

Prosecutors HAVE Indicted For MUCH LESS

Less than a year ago, the FBI prosecuted a naval reservist for  “unauthorized removal & retention of classified materials” … without any showing of malicious intent.

NSA whistleblower Kirk Wiebe told Washington’s Blog today:

I felt that the flame of “equal justice for all” in the US died today when Hillary is freed from prosecution having sent multiple, highly classified emails on a non-classified network, while [CIA whistleblower] Jeffery Sterling sits in jail having been prosecuted for contacting a reporter, and while [NSA whistleblowers] Ed Loomis, Bill Binney, Diane Roark, Tom Drake and I have our clearances suspended or revoked for simply blowing the whistle on non-Constitutional governmental activities, mismanagement, and widespread corruption.

John Kirakou – former CIA counterterrorism operations officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who blew the whistle on illegal torture by CIA officers, and was thrown in jail for it – points out:

In my very first hearing, my judge … said that she would not respect precedent from the Tom Drake case, saying that a defendant in a national security case had to have criminal intent to be prosecuted for espionage. That begged the question of whether a defendant could then “accidentally” commit espionage. “That’s exactly what it means,” the judge said. I didn’t stand a chance.

But in Hillary Clinton’s case, it seems that everything rests on the notion of criminal intent. Did Hillary, then, set up her email server specifically to subvert the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)? Did she set up her email server for the express purpose of passing classified information to people not entitled to receive it? … But that’s not the standard ….

***

I don’t care whether or not she had criminal intent. My own trial judge says that it doesn’t matter. But if Hillary didn’t have criminal intent, and that’s the reason the Justice Department uses to not prosecute her, then Tom Drake and I, at the very least, deserve a pardon. Otherwise, the system really is as corrupt as so many Americans say it is.

Kirakou also points out:

She revealed the names of undercover CIA officers by using her unclassified and unprotected personal email server. That may be a violation both of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Intelligence Identities Act of 1982 (IIPA).

Bill Binney – the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history – tells Washington’s Blog that Clinton and her staff took “the most sensitive intelligence … out of classified [NSA] reports and put excerpts in opensource on her server,”  and notes that the damage to U.S. intelligence is tremendous. And see this.

Clinton’s Security Clearance Should Be Revoked …

Diane Roark – a former top staff member on the House Intelligence Committee – explained to Washington’s Blog why Clinton should be disqualified from serving as president:

Though nothing was found against any of us [high-level whistleblowers on mass surveillance by the NSA] after an investigation of over four years, and [Pulitzer prize-winning] reporter Risen even said publicly several times that he had not known any of us, our clearances were never returned. Obviously one cannot be POTUS without clearances, so Hillary should be disqualified on that ground alone. Though the President is the chief intel consumer, I would think agencies would withhold particularly sensitive items given her clear subordination of security to the goal of keeping her records private so she cannot be criticized and to enhance her political career.

NEVER BEFORE Has the FBI Publicized Its Recommendation

Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker said:

I’ve been involved in the criminal investigation for the FBI of Congressmen, Senators, and officials of every description …. I cannot ever remember any FBI director – or any FBI official – coming out with a referral and the substance of a recommendation. So that it in itself is highly, highly unusual.

Alex Emmons notes:

Matthew Miller, who was a spokesman for the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder, called Comey’s press conference an “absolutely unprecedented, appalling, and a flagrant violation of Justice Department regulations.” He told The Intercept: “The thing that’s so damaging about this is that the Department of Justice is supposed to reach conclusions and put them in court filings. There’s a certain amount of due process there.”

Legal experts could not recall another time that the FBI had made its recommendation so publicly.

“It’s not unusual for the FBI to take a strong positions on whether charges should be brought in a case,” said University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. “The unusual part is publicizing it.”

The Rule of Law Is Dead In America

Bill Binney – the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history – told Washington’s Blog:

This shows our non existing justice system.

CIA whistleblower Kirakou notes:

Comey’s decision reflects the utter hypocrisy of the justice system in matters of national security.

***

If you are a whistleblower you can expect the entire weight of the US government to fall on your head. But if you are a well-connected political figure, or a friend of the president, you can violate the country’s espionage laws with impunity and know that you’ll get away with it.

Former top U.S. intelligence officials recently noted:

The contrast between the copious evidence – some of it self-admitted – of Secretary Clinton’s demonstrable infractions, on the one hand, and the very sketchy, circumstantial evidence used to convict and imprison Jeffrey Sterling, on the other, lend weight to the suspicion that there is one law for the rich and powerful in the United States and another for the rest of us.

NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake said a year ago:

I think [Clinton] is vulnerable, but whether she enjoys what I call “elite immunity,” we don’t know …. For much lesser violations people have lost their jobs. But when you get to the higher ranks, it’s like another set of rules.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

What happened here is glaringly obvious. It is the tawdry by-product of a criminal justice mentality in which – as I documented in my 2011 book With Liberty and Justice for Some – those who wield the greatest political and economic power are virtually exempt from the rule of law even when they commit the most egregious crimes, while only those who are powerless and marginalized are harshly punished, often for the most trivial transgressions.

Had someone who was obscure and unimportant and powerless done what Hillary Clinton did – recklessly and secretly install a shoddy home server and worked with Top Secret information on it, then outright lied to the public about it when they were caught – they would have been criminally charged long ago, with little fuss or objection. But Hillary Clinton is the opposite of unimportant. She’s the multi-millionaire former First Lady, Senator from New York, and Secretary of State, supported by virtually the entire political, financial and media establishment to be the next President, arguably the only person standing between Donald Trump and the White House.

Like the Wall Street tycoons whose systemic fraud triggered the 2008 global financial crisis, and like the military and political officials who instituted a worldwide regime of torture, Hillary Clinton is too important to be treated the same as everyone else under the law. “Felony charges appear to be reserved for people of the lowest ranks. Everyone else who does it either doesn’t get charged or gets charged with a misdemeanor,” Virginia defense attorney Edward MacMahon told Politico last year about secrecy prosecutions. Washington defense attorney Abbe Lowell has similarly denounced the “profound double standard” governing how the Obama DOJ prosecutes secrecy cases: “lower-level employees are prosecuted . . . because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back.”

The fact that Clinton is who she is undoubtedly what caused the FBI to accord her the massive benefit of the doubt when assessing her motives, when finding nothing that was – in the words of Comey – “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice.”

But a system that accords treatment based on who someone is, rather than what they’ve done, is the opposite of one conducted under the rule of law.

Indeed, there are two systems of justice in America … one for the fatcats … and one for everyone else.

After all, the government protects criminal wrongdoing by prosecuting whistleblowers. The Obama administration has sentenced whistleblowers to dozens of times the jail time of all other presidents COMBINED). And the government has framed whistleblowers with false evidence.

And yet the government goes to great lengths to protect the elites against charges of criminal wrongdoing.

As former prosecutor (and Clinton supporter) Chuck Hobbs puts it:

With Comey indicating that over 100 emails analyzed by his agents contained some level of classified information, and with him further indicating that Clinton used her private servers in areas where “hostile actors” could have easily accessed her account, as a former prosecutor, I would think that a prosecution should be forthcoming; such would be the logical conclusion considering the facts that Clinton agreed not to break the law and that she broke the law either knowingly or negligently.

Comey’s comments constitute a form of legal sophistry in that prosecutors did not need to prove that Clinton intended to commit a criminal act. Comey and staunch Clinton apologists keep providing cover by adding that element — intent — that simply is not needed. Indeed, under federal and state laws, negligence roughly means an “indifference” or careless attitude toward the proscribed conduct and with Comey calling the conduct “extremely careless,” an argument can be made that Clinton was grossly negligent in her acts.

But the fact that no prosecution is pending this day is so not because Clinton was right or has been vindicated, but because the Washington elites in both major political parties protect their own. Generally, I am not prone to conspiracy theories, but I do not find it coincidental that last week, former President Bill Clinton just happened to force a meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch — in private — on an airport tarmac in Arizona only days before Lynch’s employee, James Comey, announces his recommendation that no charges should be pursued. Or that on the same day that Comey announces his decision, that his big boss — President Obama — just happens to be campaigning with Clinton in Charlotte, North Carolina.

But even if each of the above were coincidental, we cannot ignore that any other career Foreign Service officer or governmental official with security clearances would have been charged with a criminal offense, fired or both. Most would have faced arrest and indictment by federal agents and prosecutors, not a public press conference where the head of the FBI makes arguments usually proffered by defense counsel that has been retained at great expense by the accused. If for no other reason, this is disconcerting because the only thing that keeps our nation of laws intact is belief that no person is above the law. But since the two major parties’ presumptive candidates — Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump — both have skeletons in their closets, ranging from public corruption to marital assault, and with neither ever having had to endure a peregrination through the justice system at any point in their adult lives, it becomes more obvious than ever that the rich and powerful seem to know instinctively that when accused of wrongdoing, absolutely nothing will come of it, no matter how serious the allegations.

On June 27th, I reported Hillary Clinton’s having privately told GMO industry lobbyists, on 25 June 2014, that the federal government should subsidize GMO firms in order to enable them to buy “insurance against risk,” and that without such federal subsidies, “this [insurance] is going to be an increasing challenge” for the industry to afford. I also reported that, in an interview she did immediately afterward with the GMO industry’s lobbying organization’s (the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s, or BIO’s) head, she compared the opponents of GMOs to the opponents of action in response to global warming; she said, in effect, that both environmental groups are ignoramuses who don’t know what scientists are saying about both the ’safety’ of GMOs and the dangers of global warming.

At the time when I wrote this news report (it was still news, even a year after the speech was given), the 15 June 2016 article in FORTUNE magazine, “Can Monsanto Save the Planet?” hadn’t yet come to my attention, but it importantly supplements the news that I had just reported, and so I now supplement the article I previously wrote on this.

The FORTUNE article argued that Monsanto is the world’s champion of environmentalism, by enabling the planet to provide food to an expanding population even as the planet will be getting hotter and hotter. It said that Monsanto, and other GMO firms, are the only hope for a planet that’s burning up. The FORTUNE article also assumed, as did Hillary Clinton’s presentation to GMO lobbyists and to their chief, the equal validity of the 97% of global warming scientists who believe that human-caused global warming is real, and of the GMO-corporate-funded bio-‘scientists’ who allege that GMOs have been proven to be safe long-term for human consumption and for the environment.

As regards the claim that the GMO-corporate funded ‘research’ proving GMOs to be safe is valid, there are many independently funded studies that have found GMOs not to be safe, and also not to be environmentally friendly. Funding of independent research on the question is sparse, but I tracked down the claimed main source of the funding of that meta-study (study of studies), and found it to be the Isvara Foundation, which seems to me likely to be independent of the GMO producers. Here is a summary of what that meta-study found: It found, for example, that, “A review that is claimed by pro-GMO lobbyists to show that 1,700 studies show GM foods are safe, in fact shows nothing of the sort. Instead many of the 1,700 studies cited show evidence of risk. The review also excludes or glosses over important scientific controversies over GMO safety issues. (p. 102),” and, “A review purportedly showing that GM foods are safe on the basis of long-term animal studies in fact shows evidence of risk and uses unscientific double standards to reach a conclusion that is not justified by the data. (p. 161).”

There is no comparison between the actual scientific consensus that global warming is real and man-made, and the phony ‘scientific’ ‘consensus’ that GMOs are safe. (And there’s more on that, and more.) Hillary Clinton, and the lobbyists know this, they can’t be so stupid as not to know, but they are paid to lie about it. The industry pays both them and their politicians (such as Clinton) to do this. (And Clinton wants to go even farther and have taxpayers help to fund the GMO firms, thus to subsidize those firms’ stockholders.)

Is it merely by coincidence that the puff-piece for the GMO industry (in the person of its main corporation, Monsanto) in FORTUNE magazine, and the secret statements that Hillary Clinton made at one of her $225,000+ speeches to (and interviews with) lobbying organizations, are almost carbon copies of each other?

You’ll have to decide that for yourself. But other voters won’t even be able to, because they read the standard ’news’ media, which hide such facts. (For example, the 27 June news report I did was rejected by virtually all newsmedia.) So, please pass along to other voters this news report, which is the third report that I’ve done about the only one of Hillary Clinton’s 91 speeches to lobbying organizations and to international corporations, which managed to have leaked out from behind her embargo against making public any of her corporate-funded speeches, for which she has received in total more than $21 million paid to her own account, not including any additional payments to her political campaign. Voters might think that Ms. Clinton ‘believes’ one way about an issue, when in fact she has actually been bought to impose as the future U.S. President the exact opposite. Her record shows: in public office, she does what her backers want, not what her voters might prefer. Ever since at least 1993, when she did what the HMO industry bought the Clintons to do in drawing up their healthcare plan (which plan the health insurers opposed strongly and successfully defeated), Hillary and Bill have both been on the take, being liberals or even ‘progressives’, who believe that their actual constituency is their paymasters — not their voters. They are similar to Barack Obama in this regard, no different — and no different from George W. Bush, and his father. (As regards Trump, he has no record at all in public office, so we can’t yet really know.)

And that’s why she continues to hide the transcripts and videos of her 91 corporate-paid speeches. But fortunately, the one speech she made to the GMO-producers, slipped away from her total control.

And the article in FORTUNE provides some evidence that the propaganda-campaign for the GMO industry is coordinated by their lobbying organization, the BIO, so that both one of their politicians, and one of their magazines, are singing the same song, even if different lyrics from it.

“The allegations are not only categorically false, but disgusting at the highest level and clearly framed to solicit media attention or, more likely, are politically motivated. To be clear, there is absolutely no merit to these claims and, based on our investigation, no evidence that the person who has made these allegations actually exists.” – Alan Garten, corporate attorney for Donald Trump, April 28, 2016

The federal lawsuit, titled Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein, accuses Trump and Epstein of rape and other sexual assaults during the summer of 1994, when plaintiff was 13 years old. Attorney Garten denied the accusations and cast doubt on the existence of the plaintiff.

Attorney Garten’s denial of rape claims against Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein dates from April 2016, when the case was filed by a “Katie Johnson,” a possible pseudonym, on April 26 in U.S. District Court in Riverdale, California (home of plaintiff). The case, apparently filed pro se by the plaintiff, acting without a lawyer, sought $100 million in damages from defendants for, among other things, violating her Civil Rights and “by making her their sex slave.” The case appears to have been first reported online by DailyMail.com, which included Garten’s denial as well as a sampling of the lurid details of the allegations. Other early coverage appears to have been limited to other online news sites including RADAR online, Winning Democrats, Sunday Express, AntiMedia.org, and NYDailyNews.com.

Less than a week after the case was filed under federal Civil Rights statutes, a federal judge ruled that it was a mistake and dismissed the case. On May 2, citing the Civil Rights basis of the suit, the judge wrote: “Even construing the … pleading liberally, Plaintiff has not alleged any race-based or class-based animus against her, and consequently, her … allegations fail to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.” The dismissal received even less coverage than the filing. RADAR online reported: “Judge Trashes Bogus Donald Trump Rape Lawsuit,” even though the judge had ruled only on the terms of the filing, not on any of the substance of the case as “bogus” or otherwise. Once dismissed, however, the case was over, at least for the moment. Plaintiff could have re-filed the complaint in correct form in California. Instead she apparently found a lawyer to file for her in New York, the home state of both defendants.

On June 20, seven weeks after the California dismissal, New Jersey attorney Thomas Francis Meagher filed the same case in revised form in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New Yorkon behalf of plaintiff “Jane Doe, proceeding under a pseudonym” and seeking a jury trial. The filing is titled:

“Complaint for rape, sexual misconduct, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, forcible touching, assault, battery, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, duress, false imprisonment, and defamation”

The complaint outlines central issues in the case succinctly:

“Plaintiff was subject to acts of rape, sexual misconduct, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, forcible touching, assault, battery, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, duress, false imprisonment, and threats of death and/or serious bodily injury by the Defendants that took place at several parties during the summer months of 1994. The parties were held by Defendant Epstein at a New York City residence that was being used by Defendant Epstein at 9 E. 71st St. in Manhattan [known as the Wexler Mansion]. During this period, Plaintiff was a minor of age 13….”

According to the complaint: Plaintiff Jane Doe came to New York in the spring of 1994 in hope of starting a modeling career. Professionally unprepared, she had little success and was headed home when she met Tiffany Doe, another pseudonym, who worked for Epstein from 1990 to 2000, recruiting young women to attend his parties and entertain his guests. Tiffany Doe, age 26 in 1994, promised Jane Doe that she would be paid to attend these parties at which she would meet people who could help her start her modeling career. Jane Doe attended at least four of Epstein’s parties at which she interacted with both Trump and Epstein sexually, as described graphically in the complaint and in attached affidavits of the two women. Tiffany Doe, in her affidavit, says she was a witness to the events described by Jane Doe. To compensate for this treatment, Jane Doe seeks unspecified “special damages, compensatory damages, and punitive damages” (previously requested $100 million).

The complaint makes several other requests of the court that have not yet been acted on:

• To proceed anonymously – where Jane Doe’s privacy outweighs any public interest and does not prejudice defendants.
• To waive any statute of limitations – on the basis that Defendants’ threats to harm plaintiff and/or her family effectively deprived plaintiff of the freedom to file her complaint earlier.
• To issue a protective order – to protect plaintiff “from harm and harassment from Defendants and their agents and associates.”
• To find that Defendants have defamed Jane Doe – in particular in attorney Garten’s April 28 statement (quoted above) because it “is libelous on its face, and clearly exposes Plaintiff to hatred, contempt, ridicule and obloquy.”

Defendants have not yet filed a response to the June 20 claim in court. Nor has there apparently been any public response from Attorney Garten, the Trump campaign, Epstein, or others associated with Defendants. While it remains possible that this version of the case may be dismissed like the California filing, the New York version has already survived twice as long, with less pushback from Trump representatives, and with some hints of more serious media attention (as well as satiric exposure on Redacted Tonight June 24).

Trump rape case has strange context, proving nothing, but … 

The first, fundamental question about this case is whether it’s credible, and the metaphorical jury is still out on that. But we’re looking at Trump rape allegations in the aftermath of the Bill Cosby multi-scandal, which serves as a caution for anyone wanting to rush to judgment. And with Trump, there’s already a context in in sharp contrast with what we thought about Cosby before we knew about Cosby.

Trump’s co-defendant, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, is a convicted sex offender who has served jail time, after pleading guilty to reduced charges. Yes, that’s guilt-by-association, but there’s little doubt that their association was lengthy and cordial. According to the Mirror.com:

Trump’s co-accused, Epstein, who was once a close friend of the Duke of York, pleaded guilty to two [Florida] state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution. He served 13 months after being sentenced in 2008.

Investigators suspected the former New York financier of abusing 34 underage girls but lawyers failed to charge him or any of his “co-conspirators” and instead offered him a secret plea bargain.

Epstein has dubiously defended himself by telling the N.Y. Post in 2011: “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender.’ It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel…. The crime that was supposedly committed in Florida is not a crime in New York.” The court has ruled that Epstein is a Level 3 offender, the highest level, who is a “high risk” to repeat his offense and “a threat to public safety.” Before his plea bargain, Epstein faced 10 years in prison on charges of statutory rape. He served 13 months. Now the Daily Beast is arguing (June 30) that “billionaire sicko Jeffrey Epstein” is a political time bomb “who could bring down Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.”

Trump has recently downplayed and minimized his relationship with Epstein, who once taught rich teenagers at the posh Dalton School in New York. A New York Magazine profile of Epstein in 2014 presented a different perspective:

Epstein likes to tell people that he’s a loner, a man who’s never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. And yet if you talk to Donald Trump, a different Epstein emerges. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

There’s also at least one other Trump sex case, dating from 1997 and reported on by Law Newz in February 2016. On April 25, 1997, Jill Harth, then in her early thirties, filed for $125 million in damages caused by Trump’s alleged sexual assaults (short of rape). She said that Trump told her he “would be the best lover you ever had.” At the time, her husband and Trump were in a breach-of contract dispute. Trump denied Harth’s claims, but she withdrew her suit after Trump settled his dispute with her husband. The record of the case has been sealed, but the detailed 12-page complaint offers a lurid portrait of Trump behavior. Harth has been ambiguous about the case recently, telling Law Newz in February: “Everything could be looked at in different way…. I have nothing but good things to say about Donald.” At about the same time, Harth told the Guardian that she stands by her allegations against Trump in the 1997 lawsuit.

That’s more or less what Trump’s ex-wife Ivana says now, too, though she accused him of raping her in 1989. A Trump spokesman said at one point, “You cannot rape your spouse,” although it’s illegal in 50 states. Ivana Trump made the allegation in a sworn deposition that was reported in 1993 in “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” by Harry Hurt III, who wrote that Ivana told friends that Donald “raped me.” But Trump had that covered, according to the Mirror:

Before Lost Tycoon was printed, Trump and his lawyers provided a statement from Ivana, published beneath the allegation of rape. It read: “During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me. I wish to say that on one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness which he normally exhibited toward me, was absent. I referred to this as a “rape,” but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense. Any contrary conclusion would be an incorrect and most unfortunate interpretation of my statement which I do not want to be interpreted in a speculative fashion and I do not want the press or media to misconstrue any of the facts set forth above. All I wish is for this matter to be put to rest.

Will the Trump rape lawsuit gain significant media traction? 

Since the June 20 filing in New York there has been some increase in considered coverage of the accusations against Trump, but the story remains a sideshow with little traction in early July. Snopes.com looked at the case (June 23) broadly but inconclusively and without new insight.

“Yes, Donald Trump was accused of raping a 13 year old, but this lawsuit has little chance of succeeding,” argued Law Newz on June 21, the day after the New York filing. Reporter Rachel Stockman noted that electronic summonses have been sent to co-defendants Trump and Epstein, but she devoted most of her article to speculative arguments that the lawsuit will fail, apparently reflecting the views of Trump’s attorney Alan Garten, who “is threatening to file for sanctions against [Attorney] Meagher if he even proceeds with the lawsuit.” Meagher was unavailable for comment. Calling the allegations “unequivocally false” and “politically motivated,” Garten told Law Newz: “I don’t know of any attorney — in this country worthy of being admitted by any bar — who would sign legal papers — attesting to such outrageous facts.”

The National Review (June 21) also minimizes the prospects for Jane Doe’s case, saying falsely that it is “without any sort of supporting evidence.” National Review omits, or suppresses, the eyewitness affidavit that confirms Jane Doe’s claims and is part of the June 20 filing. Able to exonerate Trump by denying evidence that exists, National Review’s defense is also circumstantially weak:

As a thrice-married admitted adulterer, Trump’s history doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in this area, from bragging about bedding married women to his comments to Howard Stern about watching Paris Hilton’s sex tape to his weird habit of commenting on the sex appeal of his own daughter to embracing convicted rapist Mike Tyson to defending Bill Clinton himself in his sex scandals in the 1990s, just to pick a few examples.

“Why the New Child Rape Case Filed Against Donald Trump Should Not Be Ignored” was the headline on attorney and NBC News analyst Lisa Bloom’s piece at the Huffington Post (June 29). Bloom wrote: “The mainstream media ignored the [June 20] filing. If the Bill Cosby case has taught us anything, it is to not disregard rape cases against famous men. Serious journalists have publicly apologized for turning a blind eye to the Cosby accusers for over a decade….”

Bloom outlined three factors that justify a closer examination of Trump’s behavior. First there is his ongoing disrespect for women including Rosie O’Donnell, Arianna Huffington, Bette Midler, and Megyn Kelly. “Decades of abusive language does not make him a rapist. But it does show us who the man is: a callous, meanspirited misogynist who no sane person would leave alone with her daughter,” Bloom wrote. A second factor that adds credibility to Jane Doe’s claim is the pattern suggested by Trump’s behavior with his ex-wife Ivana and his dealings with Jill Harth (both discussed above). Bloom reinforced Harth’s credibility:

Recently Donald Trump issued a statement that women’s claims of sexual harassment, documented in a lengthy New York Times investigation (May 15) which included Ms. Harth’s lawsuit, were “made up.” Jill Harth responded angrily on Twitter last week: “My part was true. I didn’t talk. As usual you opened your big mouth.” In other words, she is standing by her story.

The third factor adding credibility to the allegations against Trump, Bloom argued, was the internal consistency of Jane Doe’s complaint as well as its correspondence to verifiable facts outside the case. After analyzing Jane Doe’s complaint, her affidavit, and her witness affidavit – “it is exceedingly rare for a sexual assault victim to have a witness” – Bloom concluded:

… based on the record thus far, Jane Doe’s claims appear credible. Mr. Epstein’s own sexual crimes and parties with underage girls are well documented, as is Mr. Trump’s relationship with him two decades ago in New York City…. Powerfully, Jane Doe appears to have an eyewitnessto all aspects of her claim, a witness who appears to have put herself in substantial danger by coming forward, because at a minimum Mr. Epstein knows her true identity.

Bloom is almost alone in saying Jane Doe’s “claims merit sober consideration and investigation.” The Intercept (June 30) explores Trump’s frequent rhetorical use of rape imagery – the Trans-Pacific Partnership is “a rape of our country” – and wonders if he really understands what rape is. While the Intercept refers to Bloom’s article, it does not call for further examination of Trump’s actions, providing an ironic illustration of Bloom’s closing argument: “What do you call a nation that refuses even to look at sexual assault claims against a man seeking to lead the free world? Rape culture.”

Any court trial of Jane Doe’s claims, if there ever is one, will be much further in the future than the next presidential election. President Clinton’s ugly sexual history offers a stark warning to victims as to just how hard it is to get a fair hearing against sexual predators at the pinnacle of American power. Clinton’s abiding popularity is a measure of the extent to which the U.S. is a rape culture. Even if the child rape charges against Trump were proved beyond a reasonable doubt tomorrow, there’s no assurance that would hurt him in the polls.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

 

Britain is in political turmoil, but even prior to that, there was that old problem of why Her Majesty’s government went to war in a disastrous conflict that had no immediate, security related grounds. The reasons for invading Iraq were more ideological than scientific, more evangelical than rational.

One of the greater evangelists in this mission of folly was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Britain may well have been in search of a role after empire, and here it was by way of redux, a traditional stomping ground in the Middle East.  The hope was also personal. Ego, and the desperate sense of purchasing goodwill in Washington, seemed to preoccupy Blair.

The result of going into Iraq in a fit of moral outrage and strategic bravado was disastrous. Actually, it was more than disastrous. Virtually every murderous spin off in the Middle East has its provenance in the disturbances of the Coalition of the bungling willing in 2003.

That war suggested much about what was wrong with the Anglosphere, with its various satraps and misguided assumptions.  The United States was charging into a bloody engagement hoping its not too questioning followers, the UK and Australia, would join in. They were right, with Blair giving a pre-determined commitment of British forces on July 28, 2002, a good deal prior to the formal Parliamentary vote on whether military intervention against Iraq was warranted.

Sir John Chilcot as Chairman of the Iraq Inquiry was hoping to do much. The inquiry, he hoped, would give us lessons that would “help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country.”[1]

For all of that, the history of this inquiry is characterised by chronic, mind numbing delay.  Britain’s gift to the world was not merely a civil service but one of uncivil disservice when required.  Such pursuits have their own rationale and powers of justification.

While the inquiry’s process has been unsatisfactory, Chilcot’s findings are now the stuff of pure affirmation.[2]  There is noting new in it.  Iraq’s previously sponsored dictator Saddam Hussein posed no immediate threat to Western states in 2003. Peaceful options prior to the use of force, a grave decision in international relations, had not been exhausted.

When the UK Ministry of Defence had committed to the bloody effort, it found itself woefully underprepared. Its inventory was poor, lacking in essential equipment such as armoured patrol vehicles and helicopters.  The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the great deliverer of asymmetrical warfare, was not taken seriously.

The rest of the stage for the day was set by Blair’s apologetics.  “The report,” claimed Blair in a statement, “should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit.” This is standard Blair: muddle the issue, obfuscate the finding.  Regard sorrow and faith as forgivable faults.

Conveniently missed is a vital fact: fanatical, uninformed belief has been the basis of some of history’s most blood sodden decisions. And to say that deception was not part of it is to misread the report, which notes the desire on the part of President George W. Bush and Blair, to invade for reasons of regime change.

Few ever go to wars, legal or otherwise, without faith.  That hardly constitutes grounds for letting planners of the hook.  Crimes against peace, articulated by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, are arguably the gravest of crimes. Whatever the faulty evidence, the diplomatic option or a continued strategy of containment, none of these mattered with a decision taken well in advance, a common plan of aggression.

Blair did make a feeble attempt to comb through the minute details by way of exoneration.  In an attempt to appease the British public, and his God, he asserts that Chilcot did not find “falsification or improper use of Intelligence (para 876 vol 4).”  He notes the finding that he did not deceive Cabinet (para 953 vol 5) and claims that Chilcot found against a “secret commitment to war whether at Crawford Texas in April 2002 or elsewhere (para 572 onwards vol 1).” There are lies, and then there are lies.

One can sense Blair’s relief that the inquiry did not make a finding on one of the most fundamental points that would make a prosecutor’s brief stick: whether the action to attack Iraq was itself legal.  He makes much hay out of the point of a “finding” by the Attorney-General that there was a lawful basis by March 13, 2003 for possible military action (para 933 vol 5).  On that score, Chilcot could have done much more.

Blair then gives us his reflection about consequences, which sound all too much like a defence before a future criminal tribunal – as well as it might.  He accepts the errors of his administration, treating them like desk job miscalculations, only to then claim that it was perfectly right to remove Saddam.  Forget the “underestimated” consequences, as Chilcot rather blandly calls them.

Furthermore, he continues in his refusal to accept that “the cause of terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world” had anything to do with this adventurous gamble.  Object and belief trumped procedure and execution.  Such reasons are as good any for a formal conviction.

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

Southeast Asia’s Thailand has been racked by political conflict for now over a decade. During the rise and fall of US-backed political proxy Thaksin Shinawatra, there have been numerous protests and counter-protests, two military coups aimed at dislodging the despot and his deep political and paramilitary networks, and episodes of violence involving heavily armed terrorists deployed by Shinawatra in a bid to cling to power.

During each and every episode of violence, Shinawatra – a convicted criminal and accused mass murderer – and his armed proxies, received various levels of support from his Western backers.

First, they received a virtual media blackout across Western news networks. There is one infamous news broadcast by CNN’s Dan Rivers in which he sets out to find Shinawatra’s armed gunmen, known locally as the “men in black” in an attempt to prove stories of their existence was manufactured by the Thai military as a pretext to crackdown on what he repeatedly referred to as unarmed protesters.

At one point during the broadcast, almost comically, he is forced to take cover as a 40mm grenade strikes nearby, launched by the militants he insinuates didn’t exist.

Similar charades have played out elsewhere around the world – particularly in Syria – where Western news services have played a direct role in concealing the existence, nature, and activities of terrorist groups operating on behalf of Western geopolitical objectives.

Second, the West’s extensive network of alleged “human rights” advocacy groups have been engaged in a politically-motivated, biased campaign to portray Shinawatra and his supporters as victims of human rights abuses, and those attempting restore peace and stability to the country as “human rights violators.”

This became particularly transparent during Thailand’s political crisis when between 2013-2014 hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest and call for the departure of Thaksin Shinawatra’s nepotist appointed sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, from office.

Over the course of 6 months, groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International condemned the protesters for obstructing “democracy.” Worse still, regular violence carried out by Shinawatra’s militants against the protests in an attempt to violently crush dissent was categorically ignored by these same “human rights” advocates.

In total, 20 would die, hundreds more would be maimed during what were almost nightly drive-by shootings, grenade attacks, and assassination attempts resulting in one protest leader’s death. To this day, responsibility has never been assigned to the Shinawatras or their political supporters.

Instead, the military-led government which eventually intervened to end the escalating violence and finally oust the Shinawatras from power, has been condemned continuously for reining in the remnants of Shinawatra’s political and paramilitary organizations.

Most recently, Thailand’s Bangkok Post in an article titled, “Amnesty calls for release of student activists,” would report:

Amnesty International has called on authorities to free a group of 20 activists, mostly students, arrested for political gatherings and distributing “inappropriate reading material” to people last week.

The organisation posted a message on its website, demanding authorities release the protesters.

Amnesty International Senior Research Adviser for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Champa Patel, wrote on the website: “These crude tactics represent the latest in series of attempts by Thai military authorities to muzzle dissent,” Ms Patel said.

Amnesty fails to mention that these “20 activists” are members of the so-called “New Democracy Movement,” and are in fact directly connected to the ousted regime of Thaksin Shinawatra.

The agitators had gathered to protest an upcoming referendum for a new national charter aimed at further stripping away the unwarranted wealth, power, and influence Shinawatra still wields in the country. Additionally, the agitators are blatantly violating laws put in place regulating both supporters and opponents of the charter, and regulating campaigning for or against the referendum.

Amnesty International, and other organizations that make up the US and Europe’s vast “human rights” racket, have made statements and protested the government of Thailand almost weekly since the coup in 2014. Up to and including the eve of the coup as violence unfolded, these same groups were silent as Shinawatra crushed dissenters.

This exposes groups like Amnesty International as hypocritical, politically motivated fronts designed to defend US-backed agitators, including criminals and terrorists, while undermining the efforts of legitimate political groups, institutions, and organizations attempting to restore the rule of law, peace and stability in any given nation.

Through Amnesty International’s transparently dishonest politically-motivated meddling, it is undermining, not upholding human rights advocacy – defending those who have done the most to trample human rights, and obstructing those who have worked toward confronting and stopping them.

While many may be aware of this abuse of human rights advocacy amid conflicts in Libya or Syria, Thailand proves that the West conducts similar efforts virtually everywhere across the globe.

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

With their government under the control of corporations and special interests, the People of the United States may think they have the right to vote, but, unfortunately, they do not. When the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written, the authors intentionally omitted this very significant detail. They failed to include the right to vote, and the error has never been corrected.

Most Americans are unaware that they, unlike the citizens of most other democracies, do not have a basic constitutional right to vote. The constitutions of Germany and Japan adopted after World War II include a specific right to vote. Even in nations, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—where Americans are fighting to impose democratic governments—the people already have a constitutional right to vote. Of 120 constitutional democracies in the world, only 11, including the United States, fail to explicitly guarantee a right to vote in their constitutions.

This critical omission from the Constitution was acknowledged by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, when a majority stated in Bush v. Gore: “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College.”

As the result of a series of amendments, people of color, women, and young people over the age of 18 cannot be deprived of the right to vote because of their status; however, nowhere in the Constitution does it say they have a fundamental right to vote in the first place.

Why the Right to Vote Was Omitted From the Constitution. Fearing an “excess of democracy,” a majority of those who gathered at the Constitutional Convention decided to replace the Articles of Confederacy with a central representative government that preserved the power of the economic and social elite and left voting matters up to the states.

James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution and the subsequent Bill of Rights, publically stated the electors of the new government would be “the great body of the people of the United States.” In private, however, he worried that, “In future times, a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of, property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case, the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands; . . .” John Adams was even more direct. In opposition to allowing electors other than property owners, he said “There will be no end of it. New claims will arise. Women will demand a vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man, who has not a farthing, will demand an equal vote. . . .”

The new constitution provided that members of the House of Representatives “shall be chosen every second Year by the People of the several States” and goes on to provide that the “Electors” shall have the same “Qualifications” as that for the “most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” In other words, each state determines who can vote for state and congressional representatives.

Composition of the Senate was even more closely controlled, in that Senators shall be “chosen by the Legislature thereof. . . .” Finally, the Constitution held that “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; . . .”

In electing the president and vice president, the Constitution imposed an even greater barrier between the “People” and the election of their principal representatives. The Constitution provides that “Each State shall appoint” presidential Electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct. Thus, it is these “Electors” who actually vote in the “Electoral College” for the president and vice president. The result has differed from the popular vote four times in history, the last being in 2000.

Participation by the People in presidential elections—even today—is almost entirely at the discretion of the legislature in each state. States have enacted legislation allowing for primary and general presidential elections, but it is still the Electors who actually elect the president. The state legislatures still have the power to directly appoint presidential Electors without elections, and there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent it.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights may not have included a specific right to vote; however, over the subsequent two centuries, the voting power of the People steadily increased and the United States republic gradually become more democratic.

Expanding the Suffrage. Initially, all states required voters to own property; however, Vermont began to allow all men to vote, and for a time, Tennessee provided universal male voting, including free blacks. Only New Jersey allowed the possibility of female suffrage; however, it was later revoked. Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Delaware, Georgia, and North Carolina soon expanded the franchise to all taxpayers, but in 1800, the New Hampshire and Massachusetts legislatures suspended elections and directly appointed their presidential electors.

With westward expansion, voting was extended to include non-property owners. By the presidential election in 1828, there were 24 states, and they had all adopted free white male suffrage. The new Democratic Party represented the farmers and artisans against the business and financial interests. The Democratic candidate, Andrew Jackson—who believed even the poorest white male should be allowed to vote—ran against President John Quincy Adams. Three times as many white men voted in the election as did four years earlier, and most voted for Jackson.

Following the Civil War—and to ensure the vote of freedmen in the South for the Republican Party—the Fifteenth Amendment was enacted. It held that: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The corresponding Fourteenth Amendment imposed penalties on states whenever “the right to vote at any election” was “denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State. . . .”

The new constitutional guarantees of a freedman’s right to vote, did not, however, improve the fundamental voting rights of all citizens. The states may not have been allowed to overtly discriminate on the basis of race; however, they could impose other restrictions on voting—which had the same effect. Democrats quickly regained political dominance in the southern states and passed “Jim Crow” laws effectively depriving African Americans of their right to vote or to hold office. These laws included discriminatory literacy tests, the imposition of poll taxes, and a “whites only” primary system.

Constitutional amendments calling for the popular election of U.S. senators were introduced, but it was not until 1913 when the Seventeenth Amendment allowed most men, and a few women, to directly vote for their senators.

Commencing in 1848, women activists began to agitate for their right to vote. Following the Civil War and ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, women were able to point to the failure of the Constitution to protect the voting rights of half of the people in the United States.

Women’s suffrage was first introduced in 1878, but the Nineteenth Amendment was not ratified until 1919. Profound in its simplicity, it says: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The Amendment implies that “citizens” have the right to vote. In reality, it only provided women the same voting rights as men, which continued to be denied or abridged by the states.

Beginning around the turn of the century, the states began to legislate in favor of replacing political party caucuses with the popular nomination of candidates in primary elections. By the first world war, the majority of states had direct primaries, and most included all state offices on the primary ballots. More and more states began to include the nomination of congressional representatives, senators, and presidential candidates in primary elections.

With the Twenty-fourth Amendment in 1964, which eliminated poll taxes, and the Twenty-sixth in 1971, which extended the right to vote to citizens over the age of 18, the Constitution took its present form in regards to voting. Its interpretation by the Supreme Court, however, regarding the acts of Congress and state legislatures in voting matters, continues to both define and restrict the right to vote.

Right or Privilege. One would think that in a democratic republic, the right to vote is elemental—paramount—beyond question. It should be; however, the reality is that because voting in the United States is left up to the states, it is more of a privilege than a right. The difference lies in the ease by which voting can be restricted. Absent an explicit constitutional right, the vote can be giveth or taketh away by state legislatures, Congress, and the state and federal courts.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 empowered the federal government to enforce voting rights in all of the states, but particularly in the South—which had experienced a century of racial and social disenfranchisement. In those states with the most overt racial discrimination, the Act required the preapproval of any legislative changes that affected voting. The effect was immediate: African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics, in ever growing numbers, were allowed to register to vote, to participate in elections, and to be elected to public office.

Most of the newly enfranchised minority voters registered with the Democratic Party—which became more liberal. At the same time, white voters began to switch to the Republican Party—which became more conservative. Today, generally, the larger Democratic Party supports increased registration and voting, while the smaller Republican Party seeks to impose restrictions on both.

Approximately one quarter of all qualified voters are not registered, and many state laws and administrative practices are aimed at blocking—rather than encouraging—their enrollment. These include the imposition of arbitrarily short deadlines for the submission of voter registration forms and imposing harsh penalties for administrative errors. Other schemes to suppress voting involve the unnecessary purging of registration rolls to remove qualified people; the deliberate misallocation of election resources resulting in long lines in low-income and college precincts; misleading voters regarding procedures and locations for voting; and “caging,” which involves sending certified letters to voters and striking registrations for those whose letters are returned as undeliverable.

There are millions of otherwise eligible voters in the United States who do not possess photographic identification. If the reason is a lack of money to pay the licensing fee, voter ID laws have the same effect as the Jim Crow poll tax did in the South. The laws disproportionately affect the young, disabled, seniors, minorities, and the poor and disadvantaged of every race. The reality is that voter fraud is very rare, and when it does occur, it would not be prevented by voter ID laws.

The partisan bias of suppression laws is indicated by the fact that more than half of all state photo ID legislation resulted from the efforts of the conservative, corporate-sponsored, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Sixty-two bills based on ALEC’s model Voter ID Act have been introduced in state legislatures. Of the 22 states in which new voting restrictions have been passed, 18 have Republican-controlled legislatures.

In 2008, a conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court approved an Indiana voter ID law—even though it had a partisan basis—because it was not “excessively burdensome” to most voters. The decision followed an earlier one in 2000 in which the Court affirmed that the Constitution “does not protect the right of all citizens to vote, but rather the right of all qualified citizens to vote.”

Another opinion by the Supreme Court immediately prior to the 2014 midterm elections reversed a Federal District Court in Texas, which had ruled the state’s voter ID law unconstitutionally prevented more than 600,000 registered Texans from voting. The lower court found the law was adopted “with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose” and it placed “an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.” The conservative majority of the Supreme Court disagreed—directly cutting off the access of more than a half million Texans to the polls and challenging the votes of millions of other Americans subject to similar laws in other states.

Previously, the Texas voter ID law had been blocked by the Voting Rights Act, which required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to obtain permission before changing voting procedures. That provision of the Act was earlier struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013, and Texas officials announced they would begin enforcing the state’s new voter ID law.
In her dissent to the 2014 decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “A sharply disproportionate percentage of those voters are African American or Hispanic.” She added that “racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact.”

De facto Disenfranchisement. The addition of a specific right to vote in the Constitution would help control the legislative and judicial assault on voting because restrictions would receive “strict scrutiny” to ensure they actually address compelling state interests. In effect, a basic constitutional right to vote would create a presumption against restrictions, such as voter ID laws; however, other factors, such as unrestrained campaign financing, gerrymandering, lobbying, conflicts of interest, and corporate personhood also diminish the quality and value of an individual’s vote.

The combination of these destructive political practices has resulted in an even more insidious disenfranchisement of American voters. Since both major political parties have come under the domination of a powerful oligarchy composed of corporations, special interests, and the financial elite, the candidates of both parties fail to offer effective solutions to the critical environmental, economic, personal liberty, and militarization problems that threaten the People of the United States.

The consequence is starkly apparent in the abominable 2016 election which features two of the most unpopular major presidential candidates in history. Declining to vote—or being forced to vote for the least threatening of two dangerous candidates—contributes nothing to successful governance and further erodes what little confidence Americans have remaining in their government.

Secretly handing out campaign contributions and paying outright bribes through lobbyists, the oligarchy effectively manipulates political processes beyond the presidency throughout Congress, the federal bureaucracy, state and local governments, and the courts. The net result is that—irrespective of who is elected—the People’s representatives refuse to take action on any issue that threatens the wealth or power of their true masters. A Rasmussen survey in February 2016 illustrates this abdication of governance. Sixty percent of likely U.S. voters believe that Congress is doing a poor job, and 61 percent believe it is likely that most members of Congress have sold their vote for either cash or a campaign contribution.

The failure of their representatives to offer solutions, or to act on their behalf, is yet another way in which the vote of the People has been devalued. As long as other anti-democratic practices are allowed to continue, the power of the People to control their government through voting will be corrupted, even if the right is enshrined in the Constitution. If, however, voters were also empowered to make their own policy, control the electoral process, and cast effective votes, Madison’s “great body of the people of the United States” could finally become the Electors (and masters) of their own government.

The Right to Cast Effective Votes. Voting in a free society has to be more than a privilege, which can be granted or taken away at the whim of government. By definition, voting is an integral part of a republican form of government, and, if a government is to be free and democratic, voting not only has to be a right, but it has to be effective as well.

Tying together the provisions that follow it, Section One of the U.S. Voters’ Rights Amendment (USVRA) simply provides that all citizens have the right to vote. Moreover, by specifying an effective vote, it incorporates the subsequent sections within its intent and purpose.

The right of all citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to cast effective votes in political elections is inherent under this Constitution and shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State.

The USVRA not only guarantees the individual right to vote, but it includes other remedies to ensure that the votes cast by the People are effective in defining what they want their government to do and how they want it done. These include defining equal rights for women; maximizing voter participation and prohibiting the suppression of voting; eliminating corporate personhood; controlling campaign contributions; guaranteeing freedom of the press; public funding of elections; prohibiting gerrymandering; increasing congressional representation; improving civic education and public information; articulating policy issues; deciding policy issues by voting; eliminating the Electoral College; curtailing lobbying; and prohibiting conflicts of interest.

The purpose of the USVRA is not to change the personal political beliefs of anyone. Rather, its mission is to provide individuals of every political persuasion with the power to effectively focus and communicate their thinking, and to persuade others of the validity of their convictions.

Transformation. Not one of the founders of the United States believed the Constitution was perfect, and all believed it could and should be amended as necessary. The failure of the Constitution to guarantee the right to vote and its abdication of voting rights to the states has resulted in the destructive political practices that currently undermine the liberty of the People and the effectiveness of their republic.

The United States government is no longer representative of those who elect it, nor is it the government the American People consented to. If the Republic is to continue, its constitution must be amended to empower the People, whose consent is essential to its legitimacy.

The USVRA is a voters’ bill of rights―in that it remedies the destructive practices that have eroded the tenuous voting rights granted to the People by Congress and allowed by the states. It is, however, far more than a set of constitutional amendments that would curtail these anti-democratic practices. Its ratification―and the movement that forces it to happen―would create a dramatic transformation of the United States government into finally becoming a true representative democracy.

Under the USVRA, the government will be reoriented to the People and their society; it will nurture—rather than endanger the People; and it will provide the means to make the government work for their benefit.

William John Cox is a retired public interest lawyer. He is the author of “Transforming America: A Voters’ Bill of Rights,” from which portions of this article were adapted. He can be contacted through his website, WilliamJohnCox.com.

U.S. intelligence veterans are calling on German Chancellor Merkel to bring a needed dose of realism and restraint to the upcoming NATO conference, which risks escalating the dangerous new Cold War with Russia.

MEMORANDUM FOR: Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: NATO Summit in Warsaw

REFERENCE: Our Memorandum to You, August 30, 2014

We longtime U.S. intelligence officers again wish to convey our concerns and cautions directly to you prior to a critically important NATO summit – the meeting that begins on July 8 in Warsaw. We were gratified to learn that our referenced memorandum reached you and your advisers before the NATO summit in Wales, and that others too learned of our initiative via the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which published a full report on our memorandum on Sept. 4, the day that summit began.

Wales to Warsaw

The Warsaw summit is likely to be at least as important as the last one in Wales and is likely to have even more far-reaching consequences. We find troubling – if not surprising – NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s statement at a pre-summit press event on July 4 that NATO members will agree to “further enhance NATOs military presence in the eastern part of the alliance,” adding that the alliance will see its “biggest reinforcement since the Cold War.”

The likelihood of a military clash in the air or at sea – accidental or intentional – has grown sharply, the more so since, as we explain below, President Obama’s control over top U.S./NATO generals, some of whom like to play cowboy, is tenuous. Accordingly we encourage you, as we did before the last NATO summit, to urge your NATO colleagues to bring a “degree of judicious skepticism” to the table at Warsaw – especially with regard to the perceived threat from Russia.

Many of us have spent decades studying Moscow’s foreign policy. We shake our heads in disbelief when we see Western leaders seemingly oblivious to what it means to the Russians to witness exercises on a scale not seen since Hitler’s armies launched “Unternehmen Barbarossa” 75 years ago, leaving 25 million Soviet citizens dead. In our view, it is irresponsibly foolish to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not take countermeasures – at a time and place of his own choosing.

Putin does not have the option of trying to reassure his generals that what they hear and see from NATO is mere rhetoric and posturing. He is already facing increased pressure to react in an unmistakably forceful way. In sum, Russia is bound to react strongly to what it regards as the unwarranted provocation of large military exercises along its western borders, including in Ukraine.

Before things get still worse, seasoned NATO leaders need to demonstrate a clear preference for statesmanship and give-and-take diplomacy over saber-rattling. Otherwise, some kind of military clash with Russia is likely, with the ever-present danger of escalation to a nuclear exchange.

Extremely worrisome is the fact that many second-generation NATO leaders seem blithely unaware – or even dismissive – of that looming possibility. Demagoguery like that coming from former Polish President Lech Walesa, who brags that he would “shoot” at Russian jets that buzz U.S. destroyers assuredly are not at all helpful. Walesa’s tone, however, does reflect the macho attitude prevailing today in Poland and some other NATO newcomers.

We believe Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was correct to point out that military posturing on Russia’s borders will bring less regional security. We applaud his admonition that, “We are well advised not to create pretexts to renew an old confrontation.”

A Need For Candor

Speaking of “pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” we believe the time has come to acknowledge that the marked increase in East-West tensions over the past two years originally stemmed from the Western-sponsored coup d’état in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, and Russia’s reaction in annexing Crimea.

Although we have a cumulative total of hundreds of years of experience in intelligence, we had never before seen planning for a coup d’état exposed weeks in advance – and then carried out anyway. Few seem to remember that in early February 2014, YouTube published a recording of an intercepted conversation between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, during which “Yats” (for Arseniy Yatsenyuk) was identified as Washington’s choice to become the new prime minister of the coup government in Kiev.

This unique set of circumstances prompted widely respected analyst George Friedman, president of the think tank STRATFOR, to label the Putsch in Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, “really the most blatant coup in history.”

If one listens only to Western politicians and the corporate media, however, their version of recent history in Eastern Europe begins on Feb. 23, 2014. A particularly blatant example of this came on June 30, when U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute spoke at a pre-summit press briefing:

“beginning in 2014 and still to this day, we’re moving into a new period in NATO’s long history. Why do I say that? Here’s the evidence I cite. So the first thing that happened in 2014 that marks this change is a newly aggressive, newly assertive Russia under Vladimir Putin. So in late February, early March of 2014, the seizing, the occupying of Crimea followed quickly by the illegal political annexation of Crimea. … Well, any notion of strategic partnership came to an abrupt halt in the first months of 2014.” (Emphasis added)

In view of the coup d’état and post-coup instability in Ukraine, what Ambassador Lute goes on to say about NATO’s professed desire for stability in Ukraine comes across as disingenuous. Far more important, it puts Russia on notice that – in the U.S. view, at least – meddling on the “periphery” between NATO and Russia will continue.

According to Lute, one of the “key themes” at Warsaw will be: “What do we do about the periphery.” Lute explains: “Here we talk about projecting stability. So we don’t have an obligation to defend states beyond NATO’s territory, but we realize it’s in our interest to make them as stable as possible.”

We suggest that it is past time for Western leaders to admit that there is not one scintilla of evidence of any Russian plan to annex Crimea before the coup in Kiev and the coup leaders began talking about Ukraine joining NATO. If senior NATO leaders continue to be unable or unwilling to distinguish between cause and effect, increasing tension is inevitable with potentially disastrous results – all of them unnecessary and avoidable, in our view.

Ukraine: Still Festering 

In our August 2014 memorandum, we suggested that you be “appropriately suspicious of charges made by the U.S. State Department and NATO officials alleging a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Actually, the gravity of the situation was considerably worse than we realized at the time.

We now know that U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, who was Supreme NATO Commander until two months ago, was pressing hard for confrontation with Russia and the anti-coup separatists in eastern Ukraine. This comes through clearly in Breedlove’s recently disclosed emails, which now confirm what we believed in 2014; namely, that everyone needed to examine closely Breedlove’s exaggerated claims, many of them based on fuzzy photos and other highly dubious “intelligence.”

Lobbying for approval to wage a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, Breedlove was highly critical of President Barack Obama’s policy, which Breedlove disparaged as simply: “Do not get me into a war.” (As though this were some kind of cowardly order!)

The emails show that behind Obama’s back, Breedlove kept trying to “leverage, cajole, convince or coerce the U.S. to react” to Russia. One of Breedlove’s email correspondents wrote back to him: “Given Obama’s instruction to you not to start a war, this may be a tough sell,” but this did not stop Breedlove from trying.

In 2015, as your own intelligence analysts were able to tell you, Breedlove went beyond hyperbole to outright fabrication with claims that “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of the most sophisticated air defense weapons, and battalions of artillery” had been sent to eastern Ukraine.

These were the kinds of faux claims Breedlove used in attempts to enlist help from the senior military and Congress in getting Obama to supply weapons to Ukrainian armed forces.

Lest we seem to be singling out Gen. Breedlove, his predecessor as Supreme NATO Commander, Adm. James Stavridis, was hardly provided good example. A year after the U.S. led some NATO countries in a Blitz of aircraft and missile strikes against Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, Stavridis and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder wrote in Foreign Affairs: “NATO’s operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention.”

The operation was just the opposite, of course. The chaos now reigning in Libya, with hundreds of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, offers abundant proof that your government’s decision to keep Germany at arms-length from that “model intervention” was a wise one.

While it is somewhat awkward for us to offer such candid comments on the character and caliber of the most senior U.S. generals and admirals – including those, like Ambassador Lute, who end up getting appointed to senior political positions at NATO – such a critique is unavoidable. The important reality to which we draw your attention pertains not only to their qualifications, but also to their dismissive attitude toward President Obama.

We observed in our Aug. 30, 2014 memorandum that President Obama “has only tenuous control over the policymakers in his administration.” That this includes senior military leaders can be seen in Obama’s failure to remove Gen. Breedlove, who – in addition to his intense maneuvering behind Obama’s back – made little effort to hide his open disdain for the cautious approach of his commander in chief toward the possibility of armed confrontation in volatile places like Ukraine.

An Appropriate “Nein!”

One factor encouraging us to write to you again is your proven record of insistence on tenacious diplomacy rather than saber rattling and provocation. We noted, for example, that at a press conference with President Obama in Washington on Feb. 9, 2015, you personally experienced Breedlove-type pressure for sending lethal weaponry to Ukraine – the kind of pressure still being applied to Obama himself. You stuck to your guns, so to speak, when the first designated questioner noted that the U.S. was considering providing lethal weapons to Ukraine and that your view was “very different.”

“I have given you my opinion on the export of arms,” was your unequivocal answer. Nor did you diverge from your insistent preference for diplomacy over arms, as you replied to a final, plaintive question: “Mrs. Merkel, … diplomacy, as you said yourself, has not brought much progress. Can you understand the impatience of the Americans when they say we ought to now deliver weapons?”

We believe your resolute “nein” to providing weapons to Ukraine was a key factor in scuttling that ill-conceived idea last year. And, as you know far better than we, your clearly expressed stance helped bring about a ceasefire that, however imperfect, was infinitely better than the escalation of fighting that would have inevitably resulted from sending weapons to Kiev’s government forces.

You stuck to your position, even though it put you in opposition to nearly all political, military, and media voices in the U.S., which were expressing disdain for diplomacy and preference instead for war.

It is inevitable that there will be more proposals to send weapons to the Kiev government, particularly in view of the continued hostilities in eastern Ukraine. We hope that unbiased scrutiny can be given to which parties are responsible for blocking full implementation of the Minsk accords that you, Foreign Minister Steinmeier, and your French and Russian counterparts have worked hard to offer as a plan for peace in Ukraine.

Secretary of State John Kerry is visiting Kiev on July 7, a day before the Warsaw summit opens. He might be asked to share his impressions on the stormy political events in Ukraine over the past few months.

In our view, things have gone from bad to worse there, with Andriy Parubiy now speaker of the Ukrainian parliament. Parubiy is one of the most conspicuous leaders of Ukrainian ultra-nationalist, and outright neo-Nazi, movements. In 1991 he founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine, together with Oleh Tyahnybok, another February 2014 coup plotter, who now leads the extreme right Svoboda party.

The name of Parubiy’s Social-National Party was chosen to identify it with Hitler’s National Socialist Party. Its official symbol is the somewhat modified Wolf’s Hook (Wolfsangel), used by the SS. Both parties blame Russia for the ills besetting Ukraine.

Parubiy as Parliament Speaker makes a mockery of NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg’s insistence that NATO has resolved to make sure that a law-abiding Kiev is “committed to democracy.”

On Monday, Parubiy stated on TV, “I have not supported the Minsk agreements from the very start,” adding that Moscow’s “plans on Ukraine may be stopped only by force and international sanctions.”

Also on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Ukraine has not made any new effort to facilitate implementation of the Minsk accords that call for a ceasefire, weapons withdrawal, local elections in eastern Ukraine, and constitutional reform.

Doing the Possible in Poland

Instead of muscle flexing and saber rattling, it would likely be more constructive if NATO leaders held a serious discussion regarding Kiev’s recalcitrance on the Minsk accords. An open discussion would mean avoiding the usual knee-jerk, wholesale identification with Ukraine’s long list of real and imagined grievances against Russia.

U.S. Ambassador Lute might be asked if knows anyone with the kind of influence with Kiev that it would take to break the logjam and move events toward implementation of the peace agreements so painstakingly worked out at Minsk.

Another worthwhile endeavor would be to establish a NATO working group to respond to Russia’s suggestion to devise organizational and technical measures to prevent close encounters or clashes of aircraft over the Baltic Sea.

Lastly, it would be highly constructive if NATO would take responsibility for assessing the fundamental factors behind the hideous outbreak of the terrorist acts that took so many lives over recent days in Istanbul, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Baghdad. In this context, as well as in central Europe, violence begets violence. It should not be beyond the capability of NATO to undertake a fresh, hard look at why terrorism continues to increase, and to attempt to come up with new, more imaginative, less violent ways to address the issues that ultimately fuel the curse of terrorism.

NOTE: As is our custom, we are sending the White House a copy of this memorandum. We would like you to know, however, that we rarely receive any acknowledgement that our memoranda get through to President Obama – or that the he pays them any heed if they do reach his desk. We suspect that the wide generation gap between his relatively young advisers and the longtime collective experience that we in VIPS bring to the table may, in part, account for this. Therefore, if you find our thoughts informative – perhaps even provocative – we suggest that, when you see the President on Friday in Warsaw, you urge the President to obtain and read his copy.

For the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

William Binney, former Technical Director, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
Daniel Ellsberg, former State Department and Defense Department Official (VIPS Associate)
Graham E. Fuller, Vice-Chair, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Mike Gravel, former special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps. former United States Senator from Alaska
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)
Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)
Brady Kiesling, Foreign Service Officer, Political Counselor, Embassy Athens, (ret.) (associate VIPS)
John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer
Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA (ret.)
Torin Nelson, Former HUMINT Officer, U.S. Department of the Army
Todd Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Scott Ritter, former Maj., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
Coleen Rowley, Division Counsel & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat

Compared to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton presents herself as the well-qualified steady hand to manage U.S. foreign policy over the next four years, yet she has associated herself with a series of failed strategies and now faces an FBI judgment that she was “extremely careless” in protecting national security secrets.

A partial list of her dubious and dangerous judgments include voting for the catastrophic Iraq War, pushing for a misguided counterinsurgency “surge” in Afghanistan, embracing an anti-democratic coup in Honduras, undercutting President Obama’s efforts to peacefully constrain Iran’s nuclear program, devising the disastrous Libyan “regime change,” advocating a new invasion of Syria under the guise of creating “safe zones,” likening Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler, and – now according to FBI Director James Comey – failing to protect classified material from possible exposure to foreign adversaries.

Clinton admits that some of her judgments were “mistakes,” such as believing President George W. Bush’s blatant falsehoods about Iraq’s alleged WMDs and using a personal email server to communicate regarding her duties as Secretary of State. But arguably even more troubling is the fact that she doesn’t regard other of her official judgments as mistakes. Instead, she holds to them still or spins them in deceptive ways.

For instance, Clinton has never expressed regret about her support for the ouster of progressive Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, or her siding with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus against President Obama in mouse-trapping him into a foolhardy counterinsurgency escalation in Afghanistan, or her sabotaging Obama’s plan in 2010 to use Brazil and Turkey to convince Iran to surrender much of its refined uranium, or her propagandistic justification for bombing Libya in 2011 and leaving behind what amounts to a failed state, or her similar scheming for “regime change” in Syria that helped expand terrorist movements in the Middle East and has now destabilized Europe, or her reckless demonizing of Russia’s Putin and encouragement of a dangerous new Cold War.

In many of those cases, Clinton has not been called on to apologize or admit error because Washington’s neoconservative/liberal interventionist foreign-policy establishment marched in lock-step with the former Secretary of State. It turns out that if you move with the pack, you do enjoy relative safety even if your collective judgment is unsound. Usually, the people picking up the messy and blood-spattered pieces left behind by foolhardy policies are American soldiers and taxpayers whose opinions don’t matter much in the rarefied atmosphere of Officialdom.

The Worst News

Arguably, Comey’s July 5 statement terming Clinton’s use of an unsecured email server as “extremely careless” but not criminal was the worst possible news for the Democratic Party. A recommendation to indict Clinton might have compelled her to step aside and let the party nominate someone more likely to defeat Republican Donald Trump, but the lack of an indictment probably means that Clinton will persevere through the Democratic convention and go into the general election as damaged goods.

That outcome means she will be viewed by many voters as a privileged politician who was let off the hook while more poorly connected Americans would likely have ended up in prison.Assessing Clinton’s sloppy use of a private email server – a process that she justified as a matter of personal convenience so she could keep her beloved Blackberry – Comey said laws may well have been broken and national security secrets may have been jeopardized to foreign governments though he couldn’t say for sure that her server was successfully hacked.

Explaining his reasoning, Comey said, “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no responsible prosecutor would bring such a case.” Despite Comey’s recommendation, the ultimate decision still rests with Justice Department prosecutors.

But the impression that many Americans will get is that there is one set of rules for the “great and powerful” and another set for the rest of us, an extraordinarily damaging message in a political year of obvious voter discontent with the Establishment.

While there will be enormous pressure on responsible Americans not to elect the loose cannon known as Donald Trump, there are serious worries that Hillary Clinton may present her own enormous risks as President.

Will she surround herself with neocons and liberal hawks who will be eager to jam the American people into new and even more dangerous wars, including possibly the most reckless “regime change” of all, in Moscow?

Will she turn U.S. policies in the Middle East over to Israel’s right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu as she has implied in her desire to take the relationship to “the next level”? Will she display the same faulty warmongering judgment that she has demonstrated again and again, but without the temporizing influence of President Obama?

These are legitimate questions that Americans have the right to consider as they weigh which of the two highly unpopular standard-bearers to pick between. Even as Clinton has shifted her rhetoric toward a more populist style and given at least lip service to some of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s social issues, she has shown no moderation of her hawkish foreign policies.

That’s either because she’s trying to reel in the Republican neocons in the general election or because she truly believes in an interventionist approach toward the world. Either way, pro-peace Americans have reason to be concerned

The release of the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry, examining the feeble reasons for launching a war against a sovereign state in 2003, did not merely land former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the soup.  It suggested that other leaders should keep him in drowning company.

The most obvious culprit was the person who led it all, US President George W. Bush.  The other was former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The 12 volumes and 2.6 million words do little to exonerate either.[1]

Evident in the apologetics over the Iraq War lie are notions of pure belief, detached from foundations of reason.  There was no intention to deceive (this, being palpably untrue); there was a genuinely held sense that war was necessary.  The show, in other words, was being run by fanatics.

The evidence (is there such a thing post-Iraq?), certainly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, was the overwhelming desire to rechart the Middle East and affect regime change in Iraq. Blair and Howard complied with the Bush agenda, neither ever keen to go too much into the detail.

The few times that greater inquiry took place, it was grim, as Blair’s own meditation on possible consequences shows.  “Suppose it got militarily tricky… suppose Iraq suffered unexpected civilian casualties… suppose the Arab Street finally erupted.”  The law of unintended consequences indeed.

Howard had little time to dwell on the idea of mendacity, claiming it had nothing to do with the deployment of troops to Iraq.  Rather awkwardly, he resorted to a familiar tactic: blaming the intelligence community for getting it wrong.  Never mind the actual decision maker who needed to see such intelligence in total context.  “There was no lie.  There were errors in intelligence, but there was no lie.”[2]

Ever the Pilate washing his hands, Howard cherry picked from the Chilcot Inquiry to add a bit more soap to his cleansing wash.  One fact stood out for him: the lack of evidence suggesting that intelligence dossiers had been doctored, or sexed-up, as it was then termed.

“The joint intelligence committee, which is the broad equivalent in the United Kingdom of the Office of National assessments in Australia, accepted ownership of the dossier and agreed its content.”

This also shows the inability, or perhaps refusal, of Howard to have made his own decisions on the subject without further verifying what was, even then, a shoddy case.  “I can’t put myself in Tony Blair’s mind. I have no reason to disbelieve what he’d said. I always found him a thoroughly honourable and honest person to deal with.”

Even by the standards of the day, such an assessment on Howard’s part was astonishing, relegating the Australian decision making process to the sovereign realm of Washington and London.  It was sufficient to accept that the dossier was not unduly corrupted by the addition of improper material or that “Number 10 improperly influenced the text.”

For all that, there were Cassandras within Australia, and fellow traveller Britain, worried that too much certainty, spurred on by “belief”, was replacing genuine intelligence.

One such figure was Andrew Wilkie, now a returned independent member of the Australian parliament.  Having been an intelligence officer within the Office of National Assessments and subsequent whistleblower on the dubious intelligence practices he bore witness to, the Tasmanian MP insisted that Australia needed its own variant of Chilcot.

“Until we have an effective inquiry into the invasion of Iraq… then people like John Howard and [former foreign minister] Alexander Downer and others won’t be properly scrutinised and held to account.”[3]

One crucial loss in this entire affair is evident.  Instead of offering wise restraining counsel, holding back that “crazy man Bush,” as Paul McGeough described him, Howard and Blair applied the varnishing reassurance.  “By not restraining the US president, each was an enabler in Washington’s worst ever foreign policy blunder.”[4]

They were more than that. Both became fellow buccaneers and adventurers, the very type of war makers scorned by the US Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, a key figure in the prosecution at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1945.  Never again, urged Jackson, should war be treated in a chivalric or romantic fashion.   Instead, it could be deemed conspiratorially murderous, a slight against civilization itself waged by bandits.

While the Chilcot Inquiry does not purport to generate legal implications (its greatest weakness), it sets the groundwork for potential legal proceedings that might be launched not merely in Britain, but participating countries. Lawyers representing former servicemen who died in the conflict are pouring over the details, wondering whether command responsibility can be discerned.

Wilkie insists on a specific international court, one that would compel the defendants to “try to prove their innocence because all of those people who do accuse them of war crimes I think make a pretty compelling case.”

Doing so in the International Criminal Court would be a difficult thing, given its limitations relative to the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. But the crime against peace remains a burning issue, recognised as part of international law, and prosecutable locally. None of the leaders are out of the woods of judicial inquiry just yet.

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

After seven years, the Chilcot report has delivered a damning verdict on Tony Blair’s role in the war on Iraq, but British Prime Ministers playing a destructive role in Iraq is a centuries old practice.

Britain has used its military might and commercial prowess to subjugate Iraq and control its oil resources for over one hundred years.

Churchill invented Iraq. The end of World War I left Britain and France in command of the Middle East and the allies carved up the region as the defeated Ottoman Empire fell apart. Winston Churchill convened the 1912 Conference in Cairo to determine the boundaries of the British Middle Eastern mandate. After giving Jordan to Prince Abdullah, Churchill, gave Prince Abdullah’s brother Faisal an arbitrary patch of desert that became Iraq.

Historian Michael R. Burch recalls how the huge zigzag in Jordan’s eastern border with Saudi Arabia has been called “Winston’s Hiccup” or “Churchill’s Sneeze” because Churchill carelessly drew the expansive boundary after a generous lunch.

Churchill’s imperial foreign policy has caused a century of instability in Iraq by arbitrarily locking together three warring ethnic groups that have been bleeding heavily ever since. In Iraq, Churchill bundled together the three Ottoman vilayets of Basra that was predominantly Shiite, Baghdad that was Sunni, and Mosul that was mainly Kurd.

Britain set up a colonial regime in Iraq. British oppression in Iraq intensified and an uprising in May 1920 united Sunni and Shia against the British. Winston Churchill, the responsible cabinet minister, took almost a decade to brutally quash the uprising leaving 9,000 Iraqis dead.

Churchill ordered punitive village burning expeditions and air attacks to shock and awe the population. The British air force bombed not only military targets but civilian areas as well. British government policy was to kill and wound women and children so as to intimidate the population into submission.

Churchill also authorized the use of chemical weapons on innocent Iraqis.

In 1919 Churchill remarked, “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes… It will cause great inconvenience and spread a lively terror”.

Churchill, saw Iraq as an experiment in aerial technological colonial control as a cheaper way to patrol the over-extended empire. Almost one hundred years since Churchill sought the use of aerial technology to cling onto influence over a restive Iraq, Blair’s government began flying deadly drones over Baghdad and Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

To Britain’s imperial Prime Ministers, aviation has always promised to be the trump card, the guaranteed way of keeping native peoples and their resources under control. Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who was to lead the aerial bombardment of Germany 20 years after bombing Iraq, boasted that he had taught Iraqis “that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or wounded”.

The British Royal Air Force maintained its military control over Iraq until World War II, even after Iraqi independence in 1932. Despite formal independence, British political and economic influence in Iraq barely receded.

Britain’s relationship with Iraq has always revolved around the issue of oil. Churchill viewed Iraq as an important gateway to Britain’s Indian colony and oil as the lifeblood for Britain’s Imperial Navy.

Britain established the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) as the vehicle through which Iraqi oil would be exploited. British Petroleum (BP), or the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as it was known back then, was also heavily involved in plundering Iraqi oil.

British oilmen benefited incalculably from Iraq’s puppet regime until the Iraqi masses rose up against British influence. This led to the Iraq revolution of 1958 and the rise and eventual Presidency of Saddam Hussein.

British and US intelligence helped Saddam’s Ba`ath Party seize power for the first time in 1963. Ample new evidence shows that Saddam was on the CIA payroll as early as 1959, when he was part of a failed assassination attempt against Iraqi leader Abd al-Karim Qassem. During the 1980s, the United States and Britain backed Saddam in the war against Iran, providing Iraq with weapons, funding, intelligence, and even biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

In 2003 the Guardian reported that a chemical plant, which the United States said was a key component in Iraq’s chemical warfare arsenal, was secretly built by Britain in 1985 behind the backs of the Americans. Documents show British ministers knew at the time that the $14 million dollar British taxpayer funded plant, called Falluja 2, was likely to be used for mustard and nerve gas production.

British relations with Saddam Hussein only began to sour when Hussein nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1972. As a result of Iraq’s oil revenues finally flowing directly into the Iraqi Treasury, the nation experienced a massive windfall when oil prices quadrupled in 1973.

The Iraqi nation grew increasingly wealthy, as oil revenues rose from $500 million in 1972 to over $26 billion in 1980, an increase of almost 50 times in nominal terms.

During the 1990’s, Britain supported severe economic sanctions against Iraq because of Saddam’s increasing resource nationalism. The United Nations estimated that 1.7 million Iraqis died as a result of the sanctions. Five hundred thousand of these victims were children.

The British and American sanctions on Iraq killed more civilians than the entirety of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons used in human history.

Glaring similarities between Britain’s 1917 occupation of Iraq and the modern military debacle in Iraq are too salient to dismiss or to ignore.

They told us that Iraq was a nuclear threat; Iraq was a terrorist state; Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda. It all amounted to nothing. Since the 2003 invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died and over a million have been displaced because of this lie.

Prior to 2003, Iraq had zero recorded suicide bombings. Since 2003, over a thousand suicide bombs have killed 12,000 innocent Iraqis.

Tony Blair recently admitted to CNN that the 2003 invasion of Iraq played a part in the rise of the Islamic State militant group, and apologized for some mistakes in planning the war.

It is important to note that Al Qaeda in Iraq did not exist prior to the British-American invasion and that terror organization eventually became ISIS.

Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally an American computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

Blair’s legacy in Iraq is ISIS. Blair has recently called ISIS the “greatest threat” faced by Britain.

Shortly after British general Stanley Maude’s troops captured Baghdad in 1917, he announced, “our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.”

Almost a century later in 2003 Tony Blair said, “Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors. They will not stay a day longer than is necessary”.

History has a habit of repeating itself, albeit with slightly different characters and different nuances. Iraq may well go down in history as Britain’s greatest longstanding foreign policy failure.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on [email protected]

Hillary Clinton is under federal investigation for using her private, insecure email server for classified State business. Anybody else handling classified official material on a private server would have at least lost their job and would likely be indicted. But Clinton is not anybody else. She has strings to pull. She has offers to make. And she is successfully doing such. Let’s follow the trail.

Loretta Lynch held private talks with Bill Clinton aboard a plane in Phoenix while her department investigates Hillary

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, whose agency is investigating Hillary Clinton’s email practices, spent about 30 minutes meeting with President Clinton while both of them were separately passing through Phoenix.Clinton had landed ahead of the nation’s top law enforcement officer, and waited for her arrival, a local affiliate ABC15 reported.

Lynch was in town for an event on community policing.

Clinton learned of her arrival, and decided to wait so they could meet, sources told the station.

‘I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport as he was leaving and spoke to myself and my husband on the plane,’ Lynch said at a press conference when asked about the prolonged chat, which took place aboard a jet on the tarmac.

Clinton claimed he was in Phoenix for playing golf. It was some 106 degree Fahrenheit in Phoenix that day. Having been in and around Phoenix in such weather I am sure no one went for any longer walk during that day, or played golf.

After some media outrage Lynch tried to wiggle herself out of the calamity:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Friday that she will accept the decision of career prosecutors, investigators and FBI Director James Comey on whether to bring criminal charges in the ongoing investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State.The unusual public announcement during an event in Aspen, Colo., comes as the attorney general faces a storm of criticism related to an awkward encounter with former president Bill Clinton after the two crossed paths earlier this week at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport.

Then, two days ago, the NYT had a piece on Clinton that mentions in passing a renewed job offer for Loretta Lynch should Clinton become president:

Democrats close to Mrs. Clinton say she may decide to retain Ms. Lynch, the nation’s first black woman to be attorney general, who took office in April 2015.

One and one is two. Lynch read that message and the director of the FBI, which is responsible to the Attorney General for its operations, received appropriate signals. The result:

F.B.I. Recommends No Charges Against Hillary Clinton for Use of Personal Email

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, on Tuesday said the F.B.I. is recommending no charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a personal email server while secretary of state.The statement by Mr. Comey concluded an investigation that began a year ago when the inspector general for the intelligence agencies told the Justice Department that he had found classified information among a small sampling of emails Mrs. Clinton had sent and received.

Comey also said this, which makes it clear that this is a very “special case” that would not pass the usually used criteria:

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

Clinton broke the law, but the FBI finds “no intent” of her doing so. Willfully setting up a private email server for state business is against laws and regulations. Clinton did so for purely egoistic reasons. But that is not “intent” says Comey.  Knowingly sending and receiving Top Secret information through it is not “intent” as the FBI defines it in this case. Other knowledgeable people differ. Destroying her State Department schedules must also have been without Clinton’s “intent”. Sure. As some Clinton once said, “it depends on what the meaning of the word is is.”

The Clinton campaign is currently trying to smear Donald Trump as antisemitic because of some graphic his intern handling his Twitter account sent around. It depicted Clinton as bribable with money in the background and it included a red star. Now a red star is the insignia of the 6th Infantry Division, or just a red star from a clip art library, but the Clinton campaign and its followers alleged that the red star was signaling that Jews are bribing Clinton, which they do, after the yellow star used to mark Jews in the Nazi area. It is a typical smear campaign against Trump or anyone who does not prostate enough at relevant altar. But is that graphic really antisemitic and its misinterpretation Trump’s fault?

Make no mistake about it, the Trump campaign has a serious antisemitism problem. But the question is, how much of it is Trump and how much of it is his supporters, and how much is torched off courtesy of Clinton, Trump’s myriad other political enemies, and a hostile media.Is Trump the active impresario of an anti-Semitic movement?

The evidence seems to indicate otherwise.

Clinton’s arrogant email handling and the string-pulling that saved her from indictment can not be attributed to some Trumpian antisemitism issue. Bringing that up was a diversion.

If the Trump campaign has some serious marketing players they will hammer home from now to November that Clinton’s lax handling of message security is a danger to the nation and that her and her husband’s seemingly crocked manipulations to escape indictment is disqualifying her for any higher job. Additionally a judge ruled today that Clinton’s “private” emails will be open to FOIA requests. Some dirt will be found in them.

I find it quite possible that such a campaign would turn away enough voters from her to let her lose the general election.

According to Chilcot, “no imminent threat” justified war on Iraq, his conclusions saying:

“(T)he UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.”

“The judgments about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s (alleged) weapons of mass destruction – WMD – were presented with a certainty that was not justified.”

“Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate.”

“The government failed to achieve its stated objective.”

No Nuremberg-style judgment followed nor will it, Chilcot merely “conclud(ing) that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory.”

Complicit with George Bush, Blair decided on war, not his government, legal advisors or ministers – based solely on geopolitical considerations, flagrantly violating international law.

He, Bush and their complicit officials waged naked aggression against a nonbelligerent country based on lies, damn lies and Big Lies – a media-supported drumbeat ahead of shock-and-awe devastation, followed by invasion, occupation, current violence and chaos at a cost of millions of civilian lives.

Blair remains defiant and duplicitous, turning truth on its head, saying Chilcot’s report “should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies and deceit.”

“Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein, I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country.”

Short of apologizing for complicity in committing mass slaughter and destruction, he merely said “I will take full responsibility for any mistakes (sic) without exception or excuse.”

Hard facts contradict his claiming Saddam’s “remov(al)” isn’t “the cause of terrorism…in the Middle East or elsewhere…”

“(E)xpress(ing) profound regret at the loss of life (of British soldiers and) grief it has caused the families is standard hegemonic practice:

Wage war based on lies and deception. Then apologize to grieving families, ignoring ones in countries attacked and horrors of current aggression elsewhere.

On July 6, coincidentally with Chilcot’s publication, the White House was silent. State Department press releases covered a surprising 16 separate topics – nothing on Chilcot.

When asked to comment, spokesman admiral John Kirby refused to address its findings, saying “(t)hat’s really for the government of the UK to talk to, and I’m certainly not going to relitigate the decisions that led to the Iraq war here from the podium in July of 2016. I’m just not going to do that.”

“(W)e’re not going to make a judgment one way or the other about this report…We’re not going to go through it.”

“We’re not going to examine it. We’re not going to try to do an analysis of it or make a judgment of the findings one way or the other.”

He tried shifting focus to Syria and Washington claiming to help (sic) prime minister Abadi “do the things he needs to do in Iraq and to defeat (US-supported) Daesh.

War on Iraq, of course, was planned and orchestrated long before Washington launched it in March 2003 along with Britain and other “coalition” partners.

Blair signed on early. In a July 28, 2002 memo to Bush, he said “I will be with you, whatever.” Claiming removing Saddam from power was “the right thing to do” omitted explaining why war was waged in the first place.

It’s part of Anglo-Zionist aims for regional dominance, eliminating independent governments, puppet regimes replacing them, and controlling the region’s immense hydrocarbon resources.

What Chilcot didn’t explain matters more than what was covered in 12 volumes.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.  

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

Critics of American foreign policy love to point out instances where our policy reeks of hypocrisy. No current issue in international affairs affords a better illustration of our inconsistent sanctimoniousness than the dispute over competing claims to insular territories (whether to call them “islands” or “rocks” is of great significance, as we shall see) in the South China Sea.

Symptomatic of our hypocrisy on this issue, we protest Chinese “aggressive” actions in the area by sailing the Seventh Fleet through the territorial waters of atolls turned into landing-strips to demonstrate our commitment to protecting freedom of navigation. Yet we refuse to sign the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the international effort to formalize the rules governing freedom of navigation on the high seas. The convention, which has been around since 1982, has been ratified by over 160 UN member states, including China, but not by the U.S. of A.

Opponents of the UNCLOS, like Senators Portman and Ayotte, contend that the convention infringes on US sovereignty, in particular with regard to its provision for international arbitration of disputes (keep that in mind when the Permanent Court of Arbitration rules on a suit brought by the Philippines over China’s claims in the South China Sea). But I believe the main reason for our unwillingness to ratify the UNCLOS lies elsewhere.

The convention makes a distinction between “islands”, which can support human habitation, and “rocks”, which cannot. The territorial waters around either type of sea-bound outcrop can be claimed up to 12-miles out, but a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) can only be claimed around an island, not a rock.

We have a number of possessions in the Pacific, formally called US Minor Outlying Islands, around which we claim EEZs. Here’s a map showing them:

Most of these possessions were acquired in the late 19th century under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. There was a gold rush, so to speak, for guano deposits at the time as the phosphate-rich bird poop was much sought after as a fertilizer. The act authorized any American captain who stumbled on an uninhabited, unclaimed island covered in guano to claim it in the name of the United States. Under the act dozens of islands came into America’s possession, most of which we gave up once an island had been stripped clean, literally. Currently, none of our outlying islands have permanent residents.

As can be seen, the EEZs around these outlying “islands” cover a sizeable area. In fact, the projection used causes the EEZs in the South Pacific to look smaller than they actually are compared to zones in more northern latitudes. Just one of the equatorial EEZs, that around the Howland and Baker Islands, is larger than the EEZ off the California coast.

Under UNCLOS, many of these “islands” would be deemed mere rocks, not entitled to EEZs. The same is probably true of some of the “islands” in the Aleutian Islands chain. Hence, ratification of the Convention on the Law of the Sea would result in a significant diminution of our Exclusive Economic Zones, something our world-beaters are not likely to agree to readily.

Despite the rocky grounds for many of our own claims, we pooh-pooh Chinese claims based on similar grounds. I recently heard a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, belittle China’s claim to the Scarborough Shoal because it is almost underwater at high tide (see this videoat the 2:55:26 minute mark); yet we claim not only the territorial waters but also an EEZ around a reef in the Hawaiian Islands chain, Maro Reef, which is entirely submerged, even at LOW tide.

As mentioned previously, the Philippines has taken China to court over its claims in the South China Sea. The court in question, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, is often referred to in the press as a “UN tribunal” to give it greater cachet, but, in fact, it is not part of the UN, being a body created in 1899 when imperialism ruled the waves. No wonder China refuses to participate in the proceedings (a Palestinian in an Israeli court stands a better chance) and will no doubt ignore an adverse ruling. If so, you can count on our media howling about China flaunting the rule of law, how outraged the “the international community” (read “NATO”) is, and the like.

Perhaps some courageous, soon-to-be-unemployed journalist will be brave enough to point out that when Nicaragua took us before the International Court of Justice – an actual UN body – over our mining of their harbors and other offenses, we refused to participate in the proceedings, claiming the court did not have jurisdiction. When the court ruled against us, we blocked enforcement of the ruling through our veto in the Security Council. Embarrassingly, in light of current posturing, one of the charges levelled against us was interrupting peaceful maritime commerce – this by the self-proclaimed protector of freedom of navigation in the western Pacific.

To the uninformed (read “Kathleen Hicks”), it will seem obvious to whom sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal belongs. Just look at how close they are to the Philippines and how far from China.

Ms. Hicks has probably never heard of Navassa Island, another Guano Islands Act possession of ours (see the map of US EEZs above). It lies far from our shores but just off the coast of Haiti, which also claims it. We’ve shown no willingness to give up the former El Dorado of avian defecation simply based on geography.

Similarly, when bemoaning how far China’s nine-dash-line delineating its claims in the South China Sea (shown as a solid red line above) extends from the Chinese mainland, we should consider what a line encompassing our own far-flung possessions would look like. Our line, like China’s, would reflect past naval exploits, not proximity to ours or someone else’s coast, and our line would extend much farther from our mainland than China’s does from theirs.

Adopting a conveniently faulty memory, we call for peaceful resolution of the disputes and require all disputants (read “China”) to refrain from aggressive actions, like populating disputed territories, but in 1935 we secretly started placing settlers on Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Islands, former Guano Islands Act possessions long forgotten and by then of lapsed and uncertain ownership. After a year of surreptitious colonizing, President Roosevelt revealed the sneaky scheme and proclaimed the islands American territory. That sort of behavior would not be condoned under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, another reason our wily buccaneers will not sign it.

Ken Meyercord is the author of The Ethic of Zero Growth. He is a retiree who lives in the Washington, DC area where he heads up The Iconoclast’s Book Club. He can be reached at: [email protected].

As the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports, a money-laundering alarm was triggered at AmBank in Malaysia, a bank part-owned by one of Australia’s “big four” banks, ANZ. What had triggered the alarm? Money had poured into the personal account of one of the bank’s customers, a certain Mr. X, in truly staggering amounts.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were paid into the account of Mr. X by a Saudi prince described as “mysterious”, and two British Virgin Island companies characterized as “shadowy”.

Overall, more than $1.05 billion landed in Mr. X’s private account in a little over two years. This was bound to raise eyebrows, considering Mr. X’s official salary only amounts to approx. $100,000 per year. Not a bad salary to be sure, but even if he were to save half of it every year, it would take him 210,000 years to save up $1.05 billion, not just two.

Then the head of a government-owned Malaysian company put millions of ringgit into Mr. X’s credit card accounts, which had been a tad overdrawn (by slightly over $ 1m.), due to Mr. X’s wife splurging a bit on jewelry in 2014.

Apparently Mr. X was not shy about spending some of his new-found wealth either. Apart from his wife’s predilection for expensive jewelry and other luxury items, he himself occasionally displayed a yen for fancy cars and reportedly also favored swanky accommodation. Friends and partners of Mr. X also enjoyed a windfall.

Thy “mysterious Saudi Prince” who wired sums ranging from $25 million to $50 million in one fell swoop into  Mr. X’s account was one “Prince Faisal bin Turki bin Bandar Al-Saud”. These deposits were accompanied by letters penned by yet another Saudi prince, “HRH Prince Saud Abdulaziz Al-Saud”, pledging quite generous “gifts” to Mr. X. One promise of $375 m. was accompanied by the following reassuring words:

“This is merely a token gesture on my part but it is my way of contributing to the development of Islam to the world. You shall have absolute discretion to determine how the Gift shall be utilized. This letter is issued as a gesture of good faith and for clarification, I do not expect to receive any personal benefit whether directly or indirectly as a result of the Gift. The Gift should not in any event be construed as an act of corruption since this is against the practice of Islam and I personally do not encourage such practices in any manner whatsoever.”

The title “HRH” (“his royal highness”) implies that the man is either a son or a grandson of King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, the first king of modern Saudi Arabia. Given that Ibn Saud had 22 wives, 45 sons and approximately 1,000 grandchildren, all of whom are “Al-Sauds”, with a great many “Abdulazizes” among them, this could really be anyone. It was nice of him though to provide Mr. X with this get-out-of-jail card (“there’s absolutely no corruption involved, honestly!”).

Obviously, with such convincing assurances accompanying the big deposits, there was little reason to suspect Mr. X of any wrongdoing. Malaysia’s central bank governor assured ABC though that there is still an “ongoing investigation”, even after the (new) prosecutor-general shut down a corruption probe of Mr. X in January (his predecessor planned to lay criminal charges against Mr. X and was removed from office a few days before he could do so).

The Virgin Island companies, “Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners” and “Tanore Finance” were no slouches either, with the latter wiring $680 million into the account of Mr. X in a single month. We imagine that any normal tax serf would have been visited by nosy government minions for a little quality inquisition time shortly after receiving the first of this series of large deposits – exonerating letters from mystery princes notwithstanding.

Mr. X – the codename that has actually been assigned to him at AmBank – has evidently been spared such indignities. The reason is that he is otherwise known as Najib Razak and has been Malaysia’s prime minister since 2009.

State of Fear

The revelations about the prime ministers account are connected to the so-called 1MBD scandal involving Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund. The fund has been an utter disaster, “mislaying” some $4 billion in total – and its advisory board is chaired by none other than Najib Razak.

Two things have piqued our interest: for one thing, we were beginning to wonder about the fact that Najib Razak actually remains in office and has so far successfully deflected all attempts to unseat him over the scandal, including massive public protests (however, the air is clearly getting thinner now).

Secondly, ABC has recently sent a team of investigators to Malaysia, who were briefly arrested after attempting to ask the prime minister a few questions. For a while it looked like they may actually face jail time, but that was probably considered one step too far and they were let go after two weeks. They were in Kuala Lumpur while filming a documentary on the still burgeoning scandal.

The documentary – “State of Fear: Murder and Money in Malaysia” – is truly fascinating. As the blurb at ABC’s web site says:

“It’s a story of intrigue, corruption and multiple murders, stretching from the streets of Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, to Switzerland, France and the US as well as Hong Kong and Singapore, all the way to Australia’s doorstep.”

Pater Tenebrarum is an independent analyst and economist and social theorist. He has been involved with financial markets in various capacities for about forty years and currently writes economic and market analyses for independent research organizations and a European hedge fund consultancy as well as being the main author of the acting-man blog.

Burying Ferdinand E. Marcos alongside our nation’s heroes who fought for our freedom is an affront to the thousands of lives tortured and murdered during his reign. A hero does not take away freedom, he campaigns for it and fights for its survival for the sake of others. Laying him to rest at the Heroes’ Cemetery is a disdainful act that will send a message to the future of our nation – our children – that the world we live in rewards forceful and violent hands.

Several other reasons why Ferdinand E. Marcos should not be buried in the Philippine’s Heroes’ Cemetery:

1. According to you, President Duterte: “The issue on the burial of Ferdinand E. Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani has long created divisions among our people,” – This is not what’s causing the division. It will in fact further sever the opportunity for unity since this is an injustice to the victims of Martial Law and the families they left behind.

2. It is a known historical fact that Ferdinand E. Marcos proclaimed Martial Law in 1972 which stayed in effect until 1981. Under Martial Law 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed.

3. The United States Army concluded after World War II that claims by Ferdinand E. Marcos that he had led a guerrilla resistance unit during the Japanese occupation of his country were ”fraudulent” and ”absurd.” Blatant lies of manipulation is not a heroic act.

4. Only two of 33 war medals were received by Marcos during the 2nd World War. Fabricating stories about war accomplishments for political gain is not heroic.

5. His gross plunder and mass murder trumps his status as a soldier. Serving one’s country in war does not warrant heroism if they place that same country in ruin. Foreign debt increased from $355 million in 1962 to $28.3 billion in 1986. The peso value to the dollar decreased from 3.90 in 1966 to 20.53 in 1986.

6. According to you, President Duterte: “I will allow the burial of President Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani not because he is a hero. He was a Filipino soldier, period.” –  Not all soldiers were buried in Libingan ng mga Bayani. Burying him there will label him a hero whether he was a Philippine soldier or not. “Those who were dishonorably separated, reverted, or discharged from the service, and those who were convicted of an offense involving moral turpitude cannot be buried at the cemetery.” Marcos was ousted from power. On these grounds alone, he is not qualified.

Ferdinand E. Marcos is not a hero. Only heroes are buried in the Heroes’ Cemetery as the name so literally states.

Please reconsider your position in the matter.

To sign the petition demanding that the President of the Republic of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte stop his plans to bury former dictator Ferdinand Marcos as a hero please click here.

MANILA, Philippines – It’s often said that young people have become clueless about Martial Law. If the protest on a holiday is any indication, however, then it can be said that some millennials have not forgotten.

Student leaders from different universities gathered in front of the oblation statue in the University of the Philippines – Diliman on Wednesday, July 6, to oppose the planned burial of former president Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Marcos’ son, defeated vice presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, said that he had met with President Rodrigo Duterte who was eyeing a September burial for the late president at the Libingan.

Student representatives from University of the Philippines Diliman, Manila and Cebu, Ateneo De Manila University, Far Eastern University and Polytechnic University of the Philippines held pictures of young Martial Law activists who either disappeared or died while remembering the battles they fought for during the said era.

Included in the lineup of people commemorated were Jun Quimpo, Cristina Catalla, Emmanuel Alvarez, Rizalina Ilagan, Leo C. Alto, Juan Escandor, Nona Del Rosario, Gerardo Faustino, Ronald Quimpo, Bobby Dela Paz and Ma. Leticia Ladlad, all victims of Martial Law.

Martial Law is blamed for at least 3000 executions and 35,000 torture cases, according to military historian Alfred McCoy.

“Patuloy nating pangangaralan ang buhay ng mga bayani na nag-alay ng kanilang buhay para sa kalayaang tinatamasa natin ngayon,” fresh Ateneo graduate Yesu Hernandez said while holding the photo of Emmanuel Alvarez.

(We will continue to commend the heroes who gave up their lives for the freedom that we have right now.)

Not a golden era

The protest, titled #BawatBato, is a youth-organized event that follows the same initiative done on June 26 where human rights victims under Martial Law went to the heroes’ cemetery to lay stones at the grave site supposedly assigned for the dictator. (READ: Building a foundation of dissent vs Marcos dynasty)

The stones laid below the Oblation statue, just like the ones in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, had written in them names of people kidnapped, tortured and murdered during those times.

Aida Santos, a Martial Law survivor who joined the Diliman Commune when she was a student, said in the event: “Sinasabi nila na golden years ang Martial Law. Kami ang buhay na patunay na hindi ‘yan totoo. Sinasabi nila, ‘kunin niyo na lang ang pera niyo, huwag na kayong umangal, move on’. Hindi ito issue ng pera; ito’y isyu na kami’y nakilaban bata pa kami, binigay na namin ang buhay namin sa aming paniniwala na ito ang tama.”

(They say that Martial Law are golden years. We are the living proof that such is not true. They say, “just get the money and move on”. It’s not an issue of money, it is the fact that we fought for this when we were young and that we fought for this knowing that this is the right thing to do.)

She added that they might be wrong in many things, but they were not wrong in opposing Martial Law.

“Maaaring nagkamali kami sa Diliman Commune, maaaring marami kaming pagkakamali, pero ang hindi ho kami nagkamali, kami ho ay naninindigan para sa kalayaan at para sa demokrasya, at hanggang ngayon, tatayo kami hanggang huling hibla ng aming hininga,” Santos added.

(We might be wrong in the Diliman Commune, we might be wrong in many things, but we are sure that we are not wrong that we stood up for freedom and democracy, and we will stand for it until our last breath.)

Meeting of different generations

Rafaela David, chairperson of Akbayan Youth, understands that opposing a Marcos burial at the national heroes’ cemetery would be difficult.

“Ito ‘yung importanteng panahon para magsama-sama, iba’t ibang henerasyon mula sa Martial Law activists mula pa noong 1970s, 1980s. Ngayon, ‘yung mga kabataang lider naman ng henerasyon ngayon, ‘yung tinatawag nating millennials,” she said.

(This is the important time for people of different generations, from Martial Law activists in the 70s and 80s to the youth leaders – the millennials – that we have today)

She added that the protest aims to fight the historical revisionism of the pro-Marcos groups.

“This is a meeting of different generations to make sure that the fight for democracy and human rights, the fight to to make sure that the history of martial law is told truthfully, at the end of the long struggle, will still win,” David added.

Activist Clara Balaguer echoed the challenges that comes with the opposition and confirmed reports that security forces at the heroes’ cemetery has restricted people from visiting the site.

“We were approached by two military personnel, they took our stones, escorted us into the office, and we were given a ‘friendly lecture’. Our IDs were taken, photographs taken, and we were given a convoluted lecture on why we were not allowed to do our protest there,” she narrated.

She said, however, that the guards lied. “I said, I looked up at malacanang.gov.ph and Libingan ng mga Bayani is listed as a tourist attraction along with Manila North Cemetery… We’ve been to the site many times as tourists, cameras, no problem, whatsoever’,” she added.

While Balaguer said that they were not scared with how they were treated, she found it alarming “to hear the lies, and the lies to your face.”

Education in schools

Former Commission on Human Rights chairperson Etta Rosales, the keynote speaker of the event, said that the agency under her term has collated oral histories of the human rights violations during the Martial Law era, including the Palimbang Massacre in 1974.

“Kailangan kasama ng event na ito ang pananaliksik. Ang gawin ninyo, himay-himayin niyo with your social science teachers – the students and the teachers. Likhain natin yung alyansa ninyo. So ‘yung social science teachers will look into this and will make some human rights education modules para dito,” she said.

(This event should also call for research. What you should do is expound on the topic with your social science teachers. Forge the alliance between teachers and students. So that your social science teachers will look into this and will make some human rights education modules on Martial Law)

Rosales added that she has talked to former education secretary Bro. Armin Luistro and they both discussed the project with newly appointed secretary Leonor Briones,whom she said is their “dear friend.”

Quoting Vice President Leni Robredo, she said: “Remember, ‘The powers of bringing the nation together are much more powerful than the powers that divide the nation and keep them apart.”

Dwight Angelo De Leon is the president of DZUP Radio Circle, the official student organization arm of the University of the Philippines Diliman’s official AM radio station, DZUP 1602. He is also currently an intern for Rappler.

On June 14 a group of Americans were deported after the authorities deemed their actions to be sufficiently suspicious. Two of them worked for US Customs and Border Protection and tried to «inspect» the work of the Nicaraguan customs agency without permission from the Nicaraguan government. They had also taken steps to obtain information about shipments of military equipment from Russia, including plans to import T-72 tanks. The US embassy in Managua protested the expulsions and explained that their «inspectors» were interested in restricted-access sites simply as part of their mission to combat international terrorism.

Also deported from the country was Evan Ellis, a professor at the US Army War College, who had arrived in Nicaragua at the same time as the «inspectors» and, like them, had been staying at the Hilton Princess hotel. Judging by the number of his published papers, Ellis’s level of academic productivity is unusually high. His research, which usually employs the confrontational terminology of the Cold War, primarily focuses on the inroads made by China and Russia into Latin American and Caribbean countries.

In Nicaragua, Ellis was interested in the transoceanic canal being built there. The professor claims to have prepared for his visit to Managua as a private citizen and that he held preliminary discussions of the schedule for his trip with Nicaragua’s ambassador to the United States, the chairman of the Grand Canal Authority – Manuel Coronel Kautz, and a number of other relevant Nicaraguan officials. Meetings were planned with government functionaries, businessmen, diplomats, journalists, and social activists for the purpose of gathering information about the canal.

However, the professor did not even manage to stay in Nicaragua for 24 hours. Before being deported, Ellis had only time to visit an exhibition of photos sponsored by the National Council for the Defense of the Land, Lake, and Sovereignty – an NGO that is protesting the construction of the canal. That very evening, immigration agents came to Ellis’s hotel room and informed him that since he did not have official permission to conduct an investigation of the transoceanic canal he must leave the country immediately. The American ended up on the next flight to the US.

After his expulsion, Ellis lost his temper and sounded off on the Internet. His accusations all echoed Washington’s position, which is hostile to the construction of the Nicaragua Canal, a likely competitor to the one in Panama that is unofficially under US control.

Ellis is primarily questioning the feasibility of the project, stating that «the Nicaraguan government has managed the canal project behind a cloak of secrecy, possibly to conceal the personal benefits accruing to those involved on the Nicaraguan side».

To Ellis, the deportation of the US diplomats is an indication that the «strategy of constructive, respectful engagement with the Nicaraguan regime is not working». Therefore, on the eve of the November elections in Nicaragua, the US administration «has both the right and the moral obligation to work with civil society groups to advance meaningful democracy». For Ellis, the refusal to allow observers from the US government or the Carter Center to monitor the elections in Nicaragua is an act that «undermines democracy». So now he calls for the United States to intervene in order to prevent Nicaragua from ultimately degenerating into a «Venezuela-style» authoritarian regime. Pointing to the possible «criminal behavior» of Nicaragua’s leaders, Ellis cites the need for them to be continuously monitored by US law enforcement agencies. His report includes some threatening overtones: «Those connected to transnational organized crime, or enriching themselves at the expense of the Nicaraguan people, will not escape justice to live with their ill-gotten gains once they leave office».

There is a good reason that Ellis is proposing this sort of oversight: the Sandinista leaders are an unending irritant for the Obama administration. It is common knowledge that US intelligence services conduct intensive surveillance of Daniel Ortega. But he takes a blasé attitude toward this – as Hugo Chávez once did – because he has neither secret foreign accounts nor kleptocratic inclinations. Another motive for the attack on «Ortega’s regime» is Nicaragua’s military and technical cooperation with Russia. This is another area where Ellis stresses the need for continued vigilance. For example, the Marshal Zhukov Training Center: what is its actual purpose? Is it merely being used to train army servicemen? Or another example – the shipment of two missile boats and four patrol cutters to Nicaragua. Why so many? Russia has clearly launched an arms race of unprecedented magnitude in the waters of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean! Ellis is also concerned about deliveries of updated T-72B1 tanks to Nicaragua. Twenty arrived in the first shipment, and Nicaraguan tank operators can expect a total of 50 armored vehicles by the end of the year. Ellis recommends working more actively with Nicaragua’s neighbors like Costa Rica. It is not entirely clear what the American professor is specifically referring to in this instance. Does he mean helping the traditionally peace-loving nation of Costa Rica to develop a full-scale standing army? Or building the Pentagon’s next military base within that country?

Last December the work on Nicaragua’s transoceanic canal was suspended until August of this year. The postponement was precipitated by the financial difficulties of the primary contractor, a Hong Kong-based consortium known as HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. [APR editor’s note: more properly called the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Group/ HKND Group, MDN]. Ellis notes that this mega-project has not progressed very far since the construction of the initial infrastructure began: two deepwater ports have not been built, nor have the warehouses or factories to produce the construction materials, the completion of which was scheduled for April 2016. In addition, environmental NGOs are working ever more vigorously, encouraged by the Americans to egg on the protests by farmers who are suddenly distressed about the clear-cutting of the forests near Lake Nicaragua and the Brito and Las Lajas rivers.

With the assistance of experts like Ellis, the pro-American media is trying to persuade Nicaraguans that the canal is «Sandinista propaganda» and its construction dauntingly complex. For the same reason, the US mass media, as well as the Latin American media under American control, give prominence to their coverage of the efforts to update the Panama Canal. The leitmotif is clear: no alternative canals are needed in the Western hemisphere because the one in Panama is capable of «solving almost all the problems» of Asian-US trade, which includes the capacity to accept ships up to 14,000 TEU. Then the corresponding picture pops up: the Cosco Shipping Panama, a Chinese container ship that has successfully navigated through the new locks of the Panama Canal.

On the eve of the Nicaraguan elections, Washington is doing all it can to undermine the position of Daniel Ortega, who has once again been nominated for the presidency by the Sandinista National Liberation Front party. This explains why all sorts of emissaries and experts are being dispatched to that country.

Nicaragua’s fifth column is isolated and needs support. And the citizens of Latin American countries are often used to provide this support. For example, Viridiana Ríos, a Mexican staffer with the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, fled Nicaragua in panic after the Americans were deported because she felt she was being followed. She claims to have been gathering information about the issues of public safety and violence. Several of her studies are being used by the CIA, DEA, and FBI, so she did have some cause for her panic and subsequent flight. A group of Latin American student environmentalists who were detained in southern Nicaragua were also at the center of some suspicious incidents. Apparently, these «environmentalists» were teaching the native Indians how to use explosives.

The expulsion of these foreign provocateurs is a sign that the Sandinistas will not permit the destabilization of their country. Hence the hysterical campaign in the international media about «Ortega’s dictatorship».

Nicaragua’s socioeconomic progress, Nicaraguans’ improved standard of living, and the stability and security there (compared to the increase in crime in most Central American countries) can all largely be credited to President Ortega. He is a faithful defender of Nicaragua’s interests on the international stage and enjoys the support of the vast majority of Nicaraguans. This is why the subversive activities of the US intelligence services and their «strategy of chaos» will not work in Nicaragua.

This report was first published in December 2015. No criminal charges against Hillary in relation to her emails. The FBI has also been investigating the Clinton Foundation.

By David Sirota and Andrew Perez 

Even by the standards of arms deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia, this one was enormous. A consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to the United States’ oil-rich ally in the Middle East.

Israeli officials were agitated, reportedly complaining to the Obama administration that this substantial enhancement to Saudi air power risked disrupting the region’s fragile balance of power. The deal appeared to collide with the State Department’s documented concerns about the repressive policies of the Saudi royal family.

But now, in late 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was formally clearing the sale, asserting that it was in the national interest. At a press conference in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an assistant secretary of state, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.”

These were not the only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing — the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 — contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found.

Under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of State Department and foundation data. That figure — derived from the three full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to September 2012) — represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed salesto those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.

Read complete article at ibtimes 

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187

This incisive WSWS article (originally posted on Global Research in March 2015) confirms the racketeering charges of the FBI against the Clinton Foundation

Several press reports [late February 2015] highlight details of the major donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, including right-wing Persian Gulf monarchies, big defense contractors, and an array of corporations and governments seeking influence with the US political establishment—and potentially in the next White House.

Founded in 2001 after the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president, the Foundation has raised and distributed huge amounts of money, reaching nearly $2 billion. After a brief drop in fundraising coinciding with Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, when most foreign donations were discouraged because of conflict-of-interest concerns, donations jumped $100 million in 2013, reaching $262 million.

The list of the Foundation’s largest donors, available on the Foundation’swebsite, is a virtual who’s who of the super-rich and major corporations. The largest donors, having given over $25 million since 2001, include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, well known for its leading role in the dismantling of public education, Chicago multimillionaire and top Democratic Party donor Fred Eychaner, and, strangely, the Dutch national lottery.

Major corporations appear in spades in the list of 168 individuals and organizations that have given more than $1 million. Defense contractors such as Boeing and Booz Allen Hamilton, both gave between $1 and $5 million, joined by Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and the American Federation of Teachers.

The reactionary Persian Gulf monarchies have poured tens of millions into the Clinton Foundation, including Saudi Arabia ($10 to $25 million), Kuwait, ($5 to $10 million), Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates ($1 to $5 million). In addition, several groups and individuals close to the Saudi government have also made tens of millions in contributions.

The Clinton Foundation made an agreement with the Obama administration not to accept new donations from foreign sources during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, a policy which has now expired. However, tens of millions of overseas dollars continued to flow into the Foundation through an exemption which allowed existing donors to continue making contributions at a similar level.

Claims by Clinton Foundation donors that they were genuinely interested in charity are belied by the circumstances of many of the donations. For example, the Wall Street Journal cited an incident in 2009 in which Hillary Clinton convinced Russia to purchase 50 Boeing 737s; seven months later, Boeing made its first-ever donation to the Clinton Foundation, $900,000 to help “rebuild” Haiti’s school system. Perhaps admitting more than she intended, a Boeing spokeswoman said in a written statement, “Secretary Clinton did nothing for Boeing that former US presidents and cabinet secretaries haven’t done for decades.”

In another case, the Foundation received a $500,000 donation from the government of Algeria for its pro-market “relief” effort in Haiti. TheWashington Post notes that the donation, which violated the Foundation’s earlier agreement with the Obama administration, came in the midst of a particularly heavy lobbying push from Algeria in Washington in the aftermath of a report by Clinton’s State Department condemning Algeria’s human rights record. The donation was more than the Algerian government spent on lobbying for the entire year.

Two years later, Secretary of State Clinton lobbied successfully on behalf of GE in its bids to construct power plants in Algeria, described by the company as “some of its largest power agreements in company history.” A month later, GE donated from $500,000 to $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

The focus in the media, especially from Journal and other ultra-right outlets, has been on the fact that foreign countries, companies and individuals comprise a third of the foundation’s major donors, implying that they are purchasing political influence through the Clintons. While there is a degree of truth to this, this is also a two-way street, as the Clinton Foundation is fully integrated into the political apparatus as an instrument of American imperialist foreign policy.

Instructive in this regard is their role in the “rebuilding” of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, in which some 300,000 died. The Clinton Foundation played a major role, with Bill Clinton himself co-chairing the panel that distributed all international aid to Haiti. The entire aid effort was used to ram through pro-market restructuring, while American and then UN “peacekeepers” patrolled the country to prevent any opposition from the population. The Obama administration made no objection to the Algerian donation to the Clinton Foundation for the simple reason that it was entirely in line with American foreign policy in Haiti.

The Clinton Foundation’s version of “charity” also involves imperialist intrigue. This included secret maneuvers last year against Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse, which ultimately led to his electoral defeat last month. The country’s former president Chandrika Kumaratunga, who joined the Clinton Foundation in 2005, played the major role in backroom deals that led to Maithripala Sirisena’s sudden departure from the government and announcement that he would be the “common opposition candidate.” Earlier this month Kumaratunga admitted that unnamed “foreign governments” had urged her to maneuver against Rajapakse.

During her time as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton took the lead in denouncing the Sri Lankan government’s “human rights record” in order to pressure it to move away from its ties with China as part of the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia.” She presented resolutions in 2011 and 2012 in her capacity as secretary of state demanding that the UN take action against Sri Lanka for human rights violations during the civil war against Tamil separatist guerrillas.

Hung parliaments are deemed the bane of the Westminster System.  It makes politicians sweat, policy makers work, and the broader system of representative government unusually representative. The latter part is particularly irksome for the majoritarians.

Authoritarian tendencies are never far away from the politically elected. It is always easy to become hubristic when voters go your way, less so when they prefer other options of balance and discernment. Majoritarianism tends to be one of the great dangers of democracy practice, largely because it assumes that the stronger the backing for one force, the more democratic it is.

The fallacy of untrammelled majority rule ignores what parliamentary practice tends to be. Well it may be that governments are elected with a majority, but the rules of representation demand that other parties and voices are accounted for. Strictly speaking, governments may make laws, but parliament passes them in a final vote.

The Australian elections this early July gave politicians a richly deserved outcome. It shocked Turnbull’s conservative government of the day, but did not award victory to Bill Shorten’s opposition Labor party.  While Australia’s Parliament, notably the lower house, could do with many more independents, it was heartening to see five come through in a body with 150 seats.

This is where the hung parliament comes into pay. No government of the day will be entitled to treat debate as a cosmetic exercise.  Policies will have to be thought out instead of rammed through with indifference.  (No government with majorities in either the Senate or the Lower house ever debate anything.)

This point is easily missed by Australian political commentators who find the idea of a shredded majority disturbing. They have nightmares that Australia will become a pseudo-Italian state, marred by the corridor of changing governments. The Australian foreshadowed three years of chaos, with the prospect of another election in 12 months. (Never accept an electorate’s viewpoint till they come around to your viewpoint; but that would be the view of a Rupert Murdoch paper.)

Little thought is given to the obvious fact that Parliament never goes through such a door, remaining with entrenched institutional defiance. Politicians still remain to pass acts.  Debates continue, irrespective of what party decides to subject their leader to decapitation.

The close election result from July 2 makes perfect historical sense.  The entire premise of dissolving both chambers of Parliament by the Prime Minister had been to obtain irrepressible numbers by popular demand. That Malcolm Turnbull assumed he would get such unqualified support suggests a total absence of sentience in Canberra’s governance.

The disgust in what must be one of the more stable political systems in the world with the tribal bloodletting has been well stated in these election results.  Neither side should govern outright.  If governing parties cannot get their act together, they deserve a good electoral scolding at the polling both, and more appropriately, some restraint in practice.  Such figures certainly should not be encouraged with their usual form of behaviour.

Both major parties have found political assassination irresistible.  The Australian Labour Party under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard specialised in sessions of regicide when in government, instigated by party pollsters and propaganda wonks who confused ratings of opinion with effectiveness in government.In 2013, when Tony Abbott, a conservative prime minister, made his way to the office, it took till 2015 for his own party to tire of him. The excuses in removing Abbott in favour of the more conciliatory Turnbull were all too familiar in their historical rhyming: poor consultation, episodes of mania, the firm influence of an inner unelected circle constituted of one.

This Australian parliament, notably at the senate level, has the potential to be as colourful as the last, though establishment chatterboxes fear that some of the figures seem all too reactionary.  In her return to national politics, Pauline Hanson of the One Nation Party will again make her presence felt in Canberra, keeping accompany with a host of other plain speakers who loathe party machines.

Hanson, more than any other member of parliament, has every reason to feel that her pugnacious ideas on halting the arrival of immigrants, refugees and human beings not quite familiar with the “Aussie” way of living were purloined by various governments from the late 1990s onwards.

Hanson is only a scourge in so far as her crude siege philosophy has been totally integrated into Australian political life.  Conveniently called racist, her views pair rather well with the concentration camp essentials of Australian refugee policy.

The attitudinal change inflicted by a hung parliament is a blissful thing indeed.  Rather than being dismissed in a flurry of authoritarian sentiments, it should be embraced as a productive enterprise.  Any decent history of the traumatic years of the Gillard minority government will be aware that working with crossbenchers and independents is exactly what democratic government is all about.  Besides, such trauma is always exaggerated, usually by the calculatingly unimaginative.

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

 

A new wave of militancy, mostly comprising of educated young men, is sweeping through the trouble-torn Kashmir valley. This new breed of Kashmiri militants is more radicalized and more firm in its convictions than its predecessors.

Lately, there has been an unprecedented rise in the number of militants operating in the Kashmir valley with South Kashmir erupting as the new hotbed. Attacks have been carried out against Army, paramilitary forces and police with nonchalance. The number of people attending the funerals of militants is often massive. The militants enjoy huge public support and sympathy; in fact, they had it right from 1989, but now, the new generation of Kashmiri youth is more overt in this. They repeatedly resort to stone pelting near the encounter sites so that the militants have a free escape. Most of the times, this proves successful because of the obvious distraction and also the apprehension of civilian casualties on part of the security establishment.

The security establishment is worried; the people are apprehensive, all the while the volcano of Kashmiris’ distrust for India, which frequently gets manifested in the streets, encounter sites, funeral processions and Friday prayers, is heating up. Without appearing cynical, the immediate aftermath of the recent Pampore attack, in which eight CRPF men lost their lives, was an apt illustration of how common Kashmiris feel about India right now? While the very next day, the whole of India was mourning the death of its soldiers, the Pampore town observed a complete shutdown as a mark of solidarity with the two LeT militants killed in the attack. Young Kashmiri militant, Burhan Wani, has emerged as the new poster boy of militancy in the Kashmir valley. Just take a look on the different social media sites; it is he who has become the new online hero for the Kashmiri teenagers, and not any IAS toppers which would have generally been the case in any normal situation.

The political and security establishments both at the state and central level have acknowledged this disturbing trend. Recently, the GOC Northern Command Let Gen D S Hooda frankly admitted to the ever increasing radicalization and the new found tilt towards militancy among the valley youth. But if Gen Hooda’s acknowledgement is taken as the assessment that his organization has made of this recent radical surge in Kashmir valley, then there needs to be a serious appraisal. He points out the oft repeated reasons—lack of opportunities, religious fundamentalism and role of ISI. Most of the militants are well educated and do not come from the ‘deprived’ sections but from relatively affluent middle class families. Gen Hooda has called for an honest assessment and urgent remedial measures of this problem.

But dismissing and bracketing this militancy, which is totally local in its orientation, as being the handiwork of the neighbouring country’s intelligence agency is surely not an honest and prudent assessment. Gen Hooda and his establishment would be well served if they aim to move away from their self-righteous and simplistic persuasion. One is entitled to pose the question that from where does this alienation emanate? One cannot but agree with Gen Hooda and the perceptions of his organization that there is an urgent need in exploring the ways for de-radicalizing the valley youth. But the million-dollar question that he needs to ask himself and his establishment (both political and military) is that how to achieve an end to the deep-rooted sense of alienation and frustration among the youth? Except the periphery areas, the so-called ‘integrationist’ schemes like the Sadhbhavana have utterly failed to achieve their purposes. It is because the situation is too complex and serious to be resolved by lollypops like Sadhbhavana.

When the state defines itself by sanctioning violent practices, as theorists argue, there is bound to be a counter-definition which at times, like in the case of Kashmir valley, takes things to another extreme. For many people, including those in the establishment, the recent surge in the militancy in the Kashmir valley has been an unexpected development. However, the underlying reality points towards a slightly different direction. While there has been a steady decline in the militancy in valley during the last eight years or so, one thing which has really got unnoticed, is the extreme state oppression which has exacerbated during the same period of time.

The tragedy is not the number of militants joining the militant organizations but the repressive ways of choking the democratic space, recurrent rights violations by the forces, failure and incompetence of police in tackling small law and order problems which results in high-handedness, atrocities and humiliations that an average Kashmiri faces on almost daily basis, and the impunity enjoyed by the erring personnel. All these years, hundreds of Kashmiris have been killed in the street protests. The most recent example is that of six killings in Handwara protesting against an alleged act of molestation. Many more have been imprisoned under the draconian laws. In many ways, the persona of once a bright teenager, Burhan Wani, and the manner in which he was brutalized by the repressive state mechanism to turn into a mutineer, has become emblematic of the whole of Kashmir’s tryst with state oppression. They only ask: how can you have democracy and militarization functioning together?

Not being an alarmist here, the scenario is indeed grim which demands immediate attention. This response certainly cannot be done through neutralizing the militants physically; after all, they carry a certain ideology and how can you kill an ideology with bullets and mortar shells? The need is to engage with them, listen to them, and work for a solution, which is, believe me, what these militants want. Finally, the real cause of this militancy is the unresolved conflict itself and not any other factor. We would do well to move towards the resolution of the conflict through a serious dialogue and an engaging democratic process; only then, the cycle of violence can be broken.

Prof. Basharat Shameem is Lecturer in English Literature, Directorate of Distance Education, University of Kashmir.

Do the American People Want an “Extremely Careless” President? FBI Director James Comey’s Statement On Hillary Clinton’s Emails.

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 06 2016

The beginning of the year 2016 has seen major operational developments in naval power design, born of differing strategic considerations and philosophies of naval power projection. The United States Navy is doubling down on the concept of the nuclear powered aircraft carrier, as well as stealth technology, to form the backbone of its new fleet additions. The resurgent nations, China and Russia, have designed a number of new surface vessels which leverage next generation radar and missile technology. Chief amongst these are next generation guided missile destroyers that will provide both nations with very potent and flexible surface warfare platforms.

The USS Zumwalt DDG 1000, first in class of a projected three vessels, was handed over to the U.S. Navy to begin sea trials on March 20th. Envisioned as the supreme stealth destroyer in the 1990’s, the U.S. Navy originally planned to build 32 such vessels. Now the US Navy will receive only three. With a total program cost of $22.5 billion USD to date, each vessel will cost in excess of $4 billion USD to field. The latest, and most powerful conventional aircraft carrier ever built and put to sea, the USS Gerald R. Ford CVN-78, is also undergoing sea trials and is scheduled for a mid-summer commissioning date. The CVN-78 displaces 90,000 tons, accommodates over 75 aircraft, and employs a number of new technologies, but comes with a price tag of over $13 billion USD.

The Russian and Chinese naval planners and designers have decided on a totally different philosophy for their next generation surface warfare vessels. While they see a limited role for the aircraft carrier in the 21st century, both nations have decidedly refuted its preeminence. Russia has decided to maintain and modernize its sole active carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, and have planned a new class of conventional aircraft carrier; however, they have focused the majority of their efforts and funding in procuring a new class of guided missile destroyer of large displacement. The Lider (Leader) Class DDG has a design displacement of between 17,000 and 18,000 tons, putting it well in the displacement category of a Cruiser. The Lider will be a powerful ASW, AAW platform that will also be equipped to launch a variety of anti-ship guided cruise missiles and land attack guided cruise missiles.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been undergoing an expansion of unprecedented proportions over the past decade. In addition to the Liaoning aircraft carrier, China has added modern corvettes, frigates and destroyers to its two principle fleets. China has commissioned 3 Type 052D DDGs, and has a further six vessels in various stages of construction. The Type 052D is an advanced guided missile destroyer that gives China a parity of capability with their most capable, potential adversaries in the region, Japan and the United States. A total of twelve vessels of this class are planned. China has moved a step further by developing the Type 055 Class DDG, which like the Russian Lider Class, has the displacement tonnage of a Cruiser, at between 10,000 and 14,000 tons. This large vessel will provide the PLAN with a powerful ASW/AAW platform that can act as a key component of a future Carrier Battle Group (CBG), or in conjunction with other surface vessels in providing anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capability in Chinese territorial waters and beyond. The Type 055 will be a powerful tool in further developing China’s blue water capability as a whole, allowing the PLAN to project power, maintain a formidable naval presence, and respond to crisis over much larger distances.

Current Geopolitical Realities and Historic Defense Posture

When considering the viability of both large DDG designs, the current geopolitical realities and challenges facing both Russia and China must be understood. Russia is facing a renewed threat from an increasingly belligerent NATO alliance, led by the United States, which threatens its sovereignty and interests in the Baltic, Mediterranean, Balkans, Caucasus, and the recently reunited Crimea. In order to provide a viable defense of the nation and its allies, Russia must maintain and strengthen its A2/AD capabilities in the maritime realm adjacent to these threatened regions. Similarly, the ever increasing brinkmanship in the South China Sea, between China and the United States, brings into clear focus the challenges to China’s interests in the region. China faces further challenges in its dispute with Japan in the East China Sea over the sovereignty of the Senkaku (Daioyu) Islands.

With a few exceptions, the long histories of both Russia and China reveal a mostly defensive military posture. This stands in strong contrast to centuries of the belligerent pursuit of conquest and colonization by the western powers. The Great Wall is a vast physical manifestation of China’s defensive mindset. Throughout its long history, traditional China was assailed from without by many enemies; by warlike kingdoms from Manchuria in the north, nomadic hordes along its western borders, and later from western powers all along its eastern and southern maritime borders, and still later from the brutal invasion of Imperial Japan. The overwhelming majority of China’s more than 5,000 years of recorded history exhibits a China that has concentrated its military resources on maintaining a strong defensive posture, and focusing its energies inward on developing its own culture and society.

Similarly, Russia’s long history tells a similar tale. Besieged by Viking raiders along its many navigable rivers, assailed by nomadic hordes of Mongols and Huns from the east and southeast, Islamic invasions through the Balkans and Caucasus, the expansionist ambitions of Swedish kings, the attentions of Napoleon Bonaparte and other western powers invading through its western borders and the Crimea, and finally the depraved machinations of Nazi Germany in the 20thcentury, paint a vivid picture of a Russia constantly defending itself. Offensive operations during the Crimean War, during the many wars fought against the Ottoman Turks, and even the prosecution of the Afghan War, were fought with an overarching aim of providing for the defense of Russian territory. Russia has never engaged in far reaching colonial endeavors or military missions of conquest far from its borders, unlike the most powerful members of the NATO alliance.

Once again, both nations are challenged by viable military threats from a singular foreign power. The United States, which has been engaged in constant offensive military operations and invasions thousands of miles away from its borders for the past fifteen years, has become increasingly belligerent toward both Russia and China over the course of the past two years. In the case of China, the U.S. has sided with rival claimants to territories that China claims in both the South and East China Seas, has provided military aid and assistance to these nations, and has taken the unilateral action of sailing warships and military aircraft within the internationally recognized twelve mile limit of sovereignty of these disputed territories. The U.S. is presently engaging two Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) in massive military training operations in the Philippine Sea, adjacent to the main areas of dispute. The Obama administration has seen fit to establish a much more robust defensive treaty with the Philippines, the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, to conduct large scale, joint military drills with the Philippine Armed Forces in April of this year, and to lift the long established ban on the trade of weapons to Vietnam just this May. These are all very clear signs that the United States intends to contain China and to limit its ability to pursue its national interests within its own back yard, to dispute China’s access to vital resources in the South China Sea, and to deny China’s ability to expand and improve its defensive capabilities in the maritime realm adjacent to its borders.

Similarly, the United States has leveraged its dominant position in NATO and its economic control of Europe through international financial organizations such as the World Bank, WTO and the IMF, and to push for the continued expansion of NATO and the further military encirclement of Russia. Not only has Russia witnessed the largest concentration of foreign military forces along its Western European, Baltic and Balkan borders since Operation Barbarossa of 1941, but it has had its centuries old position of security and trade in Ukraine and the Crimea militarily challenged through a U.S. backed and financed coup, and the resultant proxy war in what was arguably the birthplace of Russian culture. Furthermore, the destabilization and destruction of the Syrian state at the hands of U.S. and NATO backed terrorists and largely foreign insurgents, is a second proxy war that threatens to remove Russia’s long term ally in a strategically important region. Syria harbors Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base at Tartus, key to supporting a Russian Naval presence in both the Mediterranean and the Bosporus, as well as the southern land approaches to the Caucasus republics of the Russian Federation. Further destabilization of this southern border to radical Islamic forces will further enflame Islamic terrorism within Russia’s southern republics and create a powerful enemy in the region, allied with Turkey and Islamic extremists throughout the Caucasus.

It becomes clear that both China and Russia must invest in naval warfare platforms that will allow them to field a strong naval deterrent along their maritime borders, to achieve a strong anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capability in key maritime regions adjacent to their maritime borders, and to provide them with enhanced power projection capabilities at increasing ranges. Both the Lider Class and Type 055 Class DDGs will increase Russia’s and China’s chances of meeting these strategic challenges, and will be force multipliers in ensuring success in any future conflicts. Both vessel designs will not only influence any future naval warfare scenarios, but also provide enhanced seaborne regional anti-ballistic missile defense and air defense capability, as well as offensive strike capability via land attack cruise missiles.

Next Generation Naval Developments

Both Russia and China have gone through different, yet similar, evaluations of the most effective and efficient application of modern technological advancements in naval warfare platforms, and how best to utilize these platforms to develop a war-winning strategy and corresponding naval tactical doctrine. The advent of increasingly powerful and accurate missiles, capable of higher speeds, greater effective range, and intelligent, semi-autonomous guidance with the aid of satellite navigation and information processing, has led both nations to develop a similar naval warfare philosophy. Both Russia and China have accepted the limited role of the aircraft carrier in the current high-tech naval warfare environment. Both have embraced the dominant and deciding role of modern missile technology, coupled with advanced radars and battle management systems.

Russia has been at the cutting edge of missile technology and hopes to field the first operational hypersonic missile, the 3K22 Zircon, by 2018. This will coincide with the completion of the modernization of the guided missile battlecruiser Admiral Nakhimov, which will most likely be equipped with the new missiles, as well as long range Kalibr cruise missiles. Both Orlan (NATO designation Kirov) Class battlecruisers, the Admiral Nakhimov and the Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great)  will be modernized fully and reequipped with far more capable radars, battle management systems and the most capable missiles in Russia’s arsenal. The Peter the Great is scheduled to complete modernization in the year 2025, corresponding with the projected date of delivery of the last of twelve new Lider Class DDGs.

China has invested heavily in developing its arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles in recent decades. In an effort to provide greater flexibility and power projection capabilities to its newest surface warfare vessels, the Type 052D Class DDGs are equipped with a VLS that can fire any of the PLAN’s guided missiles, including anti-aircraft, anti-ship, anti-ship cruise, and land attack cruise missiles. It is assumed that the Type 055 Class DDGs will retain the same level of flexibility in VLS design. China is in the process of developing a hypersonic missile, yet is far behind Russia in this effort. They have developed a quite capable anti-ship cruise missile, the YJ-18, which presents a significant threat to the most modern of surface vessels due to its range of 290 nautical miles, inertial guidance system, and high terminal stage attack speed of Mach 3. The Type 055 will most likely be equipped with a more modern variant of the YJ-18, along with newer anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles by the time of completion of the first vessel. Analysts believe that construction has already begun on the first of at least two Type 055 vessels.

The Russian Navy Lider (Leader) Class DDG

Russia has publicly announced its plans to modernize a number of key naval assets on numerous occasions over the past two years. The Russian Ministry of Defense has requested design proposals from Russian shipbuilders for a number of vessels based on very specific design criteria. Alongside both nuclear and non-nuclear powered submarines, a new conventional aircraft carrier, and helicopter carriers to replace the failed Mistral acquisition, a powerful surface combatant to replace older Soviet designs was seen as essential in advancing Russian naval capabilities.

The Project 23560E Shykval Lider (Leader) Class destroyer is perhaps a modern reinterpretation of the Soviet era Kirov Class battlecruiser, with a number of key changes. The Kirov Class battlecruisers were envisioned as massive missile-armed heavy combatants that would be able, with AAW/ASW support from accompanying destroyers and frigates, to deliver a devastating and decisive blow to a U.S. Carrier Strike Group in the event of hostilities. They maintain an increased relevance in their modernized and refitted form; however, the new Lider Class is a notable improvement on the original concept in a number of regards.

The Lider is smaller than the Kirov, at a design displacement of between 17,000 and 18,000 tons compared to the 28,000 ton displacement of the older vessel. The Lider is smaller, yet gains the advantages of greater speed, maneuverability, a smaller radar signature (incorporating a modern stealthy, superstructure and integrated mast design), more efficient nuclear/hybrid electric or gas turbine drive main propulsion, and a large complement of modern offensive and defensive missile systems. The Lider is designed to accommodate a VLS system of approximately 200 missiles of various types, including long range Kalibr anti-ship and land attack cruise missiles, a navalized version of the S-500 long range anti-aircraft missile system, and the Zircon hypersonic anti-ship missile currently in development. The vessel will be equipped with Pantsir-M short range anti-aircraft missiles and Palash close-in defense weapons, as well as at least 16 anti-submarine guided missiles and the Paket-NK anti-torpedo system. The Lider Class is equipped with a flight deck and hangar space to accommodate two helicopters for support and ASW duties. The vessel has a strikingly high and angular radar and sensory mast which makes use of modern stealth concepts to reduce the radar signature of the destroyer.

Twelve Lider Class vessels have been ordered to be delivered between 2020 and 2025. The requirement for nuclear/hybrid electric drive may only be for a portion of the total number of vessels, with the remainder being of more conventional gas-turbine propulsion arrangement.  Nuclear propulsion would greatly increase the underway endurance of the vessel, limited only by crew and weapons replenishment needs. Considering training and maintenance requirements, perhaps a third of the planned vessels will be completed as nuclear powered, long-endurance vessels to bolster the Northern and Pacific Fleets. The inclusion of at least one newly designed aircraft carrier in the procurement plans of the Russian Navy greatly changes the envisioned deployment and use of the Lider DDGs. The large DDGs may become the chief AAW/ASW platform for future CSGs, but long term Soviet-Russian naval doctrine exhibits a notable refuting of aircraft carrier importance in naval strategy, and thus any new carriers would most likely be used in a campaign or theater specific role, and not a carrier-centric restructuring of Russian naval doctrine.

Design Specifications:

LOA: 200 meters/656.2 feet

Beam: 20 meters/65.6 feet

Displacement: Between 17,000 and 18,000 tons.

Propulsion: Hybrid nuclear and gas turbine.

Cruising Speed: 30-35 knots.

Range: Practically unlimited with nuclear propulsion. At least 90 day planned endurance.

Weapons Systems: A number of existing missiles, and missiles currently in development.

60 x anti-ship cruise missiles/land attack cruise missiles. Kalibr-NK or Zircon supersonic missiles are a possibility.

16 x anti-submarine missiles.

128 x anti-aircraft missiles. Most likely a navalized version of the S-500 now in development.

Pantsir-M and Palash systems for short range and close-in defense.

Radar/Sensors:

Shrouded in mystery, but the very large integrated mast suggests advanced X and S Band phased array radars for target acquisition and tracking, fire-control and engagement. Other sensory and communications arrays.

Aircraft: Flight deck and hangar space to accommodate 2 x Ka-27 of Ka-32 helicopters.

The Chinese PLAN Type 055 Class DDG

China has been modernizing and expanding its Navy at a rate that far outpaces the rest of the world. China has invested a great deal of its wealth, as the second largest economy in the world, and the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter, into modernizing and expanding its military capabilities. China estimates an increase in defense spending for fiscal year 2016 of between 7% and 8 %, putting the total amount at approximately $980 billion yuan ($150 billion USD). The PLAN has received a large portion of the annual defense budget of China, traditionally amounting to an estimated 25-30% of total expenditures in recent years.

The most modern and capable surface combatant in the Chinese Navy is the Type 052D guided missile destroyer, which the PLAN is building at a rapid rate. The vessel supplements Type 052 destroyers of earlier, less capable variants. It must be noted that the PLAN is also commissioning modern vessels of just about every other designation at the same time, including an aircraft carrier, frigates, corvettes, LPDs, LSTs, tankers and logistics support vessels. Either as an acknowledgement of the need for a larger vessel to serve as a fleet command ship, a powerful AAW/ASW platform to round-out future CBGs, a very capable A2/AD vessel, or all of the above, Chinese naval planners have decided to build a vessel similar to their Russian counterparts. Similar in design, capabilities, and dimensions to the Lider Class, the PLAN Type 055 DDG is an impressive vessel on paper. If Chinese naval architects and engineers can continue their impressive list of achievements in recent years, the Type 055 should live up to its intended role.

It is widely thought in military intelligence and analysis circles, that the first Type 055 is currently under construction. A superstructure mock-up was constructed last year in order to test the effectiveness of the superstructure and integrated mast design. An updated Type 346 phased array radar, with at least four arrays mounted on the forward superstructure, in addition to X-band radar and other ECM equipment, and communications and sensory gear yet to be determined, are most likely housed in the integrated mast. As the program is shrouded in secrecy, we must assume that the vessel will incorporate similar, yet more advanced systems than the Type 052D.

As far as weapons systems, the Type 055 will incorporate a similar VLS system as the Type 052D, which utilizes rectangular cells that are quad-packed (4 missiles per cell) and can accommodate any missiles currently in use in the PLAN, and predictably, new missiles of greater capability. Such a VLS design allows for the missile arsenal on the vessel to be tailored to the intended mission, and not limited to specific missiles, as is the case with the U.S. Mk.41 VLS. The Type 055will be armed with one VLS forward of the bridge, and one aft, which will accommodate either 48 or 64 cells each. Although at first glance this number compares to a U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke Class and JMSDF Atago Class DDG, both mounted with 96 cell VLS systems, the Type 055 will have the flexibility of mounting far more offensive missiles. In theory, a Type 055 could be equipped with 384 to 504 anti-ship cruise missiles to attack an opposing fleet, or the same number of land attack cruise missiles to bombard a land target while covering and supporting an amphibious assault. Although a more balanced load of offensive and defensive missiles of all types is most prudent and most likely, the Type 055 will possess the inherent flexibility to be armed to best exploit any strategic situation, and to best achieve specific missions.

Design Specifications:

LOA: 186 meters/610.2 feet

Beam: 23 meters/ 75.5 feet

Displacement: Between 10,000 and 14,000 tons.

Propulsion: Twin gas-turbine main engines, twin marine diesel auxiliaries.

Cruising Speed: 30+ knots.

Range: Unknown, but probably between 5,000 and 6,000 nautical miles.

Weapons Systems: A number of existing missiles, and missiles currently in development

96 -128 cell VLS armed with any combination of ASW, ASCM, LACM, and SAMs.

CY-5 ASW missiles

HHQ-9 long range SAMs

DK-10A medium range SAMs

YJ-18 or YJ-83 ASCMs

CJ-10 LACMs

1 x 130mm DP deck gun

2 x triple launchers for 324mm torpedoes

2 x FL3000N CWIS close-in defense

2 x 30mm CWIS close-in defense

2 x 25mm automatic cannons

Radar/Sensors:

Undisclosed, yet probably a notable improvement on the Type 346 series of phased array radar. Advanced X and S Band phased array radars for target acquisition and tracking, fire- control and engagement. Other sensory and communications arrays.

Aircraft: Flight deck and hangar space to accommodate 2 x

A Revolution in Naval Warfare and the Fate of the Aircraft Carrier

In all respects, the United States Navy is the preeminent naval power in the world. It has far more combatant vessels than any other nation. It employs the largest number of modern, advanced and combat-capable surface warfare vessels of any other navy. The U.S. Navy also operates more aircraft carriers than all other navies of the world combined, and these aircraft carriers are many magnitudes more powerful than those of any other nation. The U.S. navy will be commissioning a new generation of nuclear aircraft carrier (CVN) this summer, the USS Gerald R. Ford Class. With a complement of over 75 aircraft, advanced radar, communication and sensory capabilities, electromagnetic catapults and defensive weapons systems, the CVN is an awesome vessel. However, as the range and capability of modern anti-ship missiles has grown over the past two decades, there is a glaring question being asked. Have conventional aircraft carriers been eclipsed as the most powerful weapon of naval warfare? As increasingly hard to intercept and accurate missiles have been fielded in large numbers, capable of sinking a large vessel with a single hit, have far exceeded the effective range of carrier strike aircraft, is the large CVN a viable fulcrum by which to plan a naval strategy around?

Both China and Russia have fielded extremely capable anti-ship missiles in recent years, both shore based and aboard warships. The latest of these missile-equipping surface warfare vessels, such as the Russian Kalibr #M-54T and Chinese YJ-18, can strike at ranges between 330 and 400 nautical miles, at a speed of approximately Mach 3.0 at their terminal phase, and have warheads of between 300Kg. and 500Kg. depending on the variant. Both nations field land-based cruise missiles that can target and destroy vessels off-shore at ranges in excess of 1,350 nautical miles. The Chinese DF-21D and DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) can target a carrier out to range of between 1,700 to 2,500 nautical miles. The ubiquitous F-18 Super Hornet, the U.S. Navy’s only strike fighter, has an effective strike range without aerial refueling, of 600 to 700 nautical miles, depending on payload. Its future replacement, the F-35 JSF, fails to improve this range limitation. The obvious inability of carrier based aircraft to both protect CSGs from long range ASBMs, and be able to strike enemy targets before the CSG becomes vulnerable to attack itself are obvious. Either the U.S. Navy needs to rethink their reliance on carriers, come up with creative ways to employ strike aircraft with aerial tankers, or design and employ a long-range, carrier-borne strike aircraft. Advanced electronic counter measures that would be effective against a supersonic or hypersonic ASBM are not an option due to the supersonic, and even hypersonic speeds involved.

Have long range ASMs, employed by both surface vessels and submarines, coupled with long range ASBMs rendered the conventional aircraft carrier forces of the U.S. Navy obsolete? The obvious answer is yes, if the Carrier Strike Group is used against an adversary such as Russia or China, that can bring such high-tech missile weapons to bear. The United States has not employed its expensive CSGs against a capable adversary, over the past two decades of major advancement in missile technology. They can’t, and they won’t. The $13 billion USD Gerald R. Ford CVN is a major technological marvel and an extremely capable warship; however, its aircraft complement lacks the range to be of any use in projecting power against a real adversary with a robust A2/AD capability. The proposed replacement for the F-18 Super Hornet, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, achieves no range advantage over its predecessor.

The Matter of Economics

An extremely important factor often overlooked in strategic military planning, is the matter of economics and national monetary policy. By late 2011, the United States federal government’s debt exceeded the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the nation. Standing at 102% as of 2015, the national debt continues to climb, regardless of record tax revenues. Only the coupling of the USD to petroleum and its status as the global reserve currency has allowed for such a massive debt to GDP ratio to grow and exist for so long without correction. The United States has been leveraging these factors, and impoverishing future generations to maintain a military that is larger and more costly than its top ten nearest counterparts combined. The United States is spending increasing amounts of money, and getting less in return. Misguided, or more accurately, a self-destructively and derelict monetary policy only fuels the problem, as an inflated USD money supply and unlimited spending by the federal government drives up the cost of national defense.

Is the U.S. Navy misguided in its adherence to the belief in the dominance of the aircraft carrier in modern naval warfare in the twenty-first century? A simple economic exercise may provide the answer. In an extremely insightful, concise and accurate analysis titled “What Cost a Carrier?”, written in March of 2013 for the Center for a New American Security, CAPT. Henry J. Hendrix, USN (Ph.D.) lays out a cost-benefit analysis of the conventional CSG. He takes a look at how a CSG compares to other possible combinations of naval surface warfare vessels, submarines and modern ASBM forces and asks the all-important question, “Has the time of the aircraft carrier as the preeminent tool of U.S. power projection and naval presence finally come to an end?”

Captain Hendrix estimates that the total cost per day to operate a CSG (in 2013) was $6.5 million USD. This includes the total life cycle cost of operating the carrier air wing, the accompanying surface vessels and SSN in the CSG, and the associated total crew. He also determines the life-cycle cost of each F-18 strike aircraft at a conservative $120 million. Considering that each aircraft, over the course of its life-cycle it will only drop 16 weapons total ,assuming 1,000 total strike capable aircraft in inventory, the cost per bomb/missile employed works out to be $7.5 million USD per unit. Considering that a Tomahawk LACM costs only $2 million USD, is this a truly cost effective employment of naval power?

In contrasting the CSG with the Chinese strategy of utilizing land based ASBMs in saturation attacks against CSGs, Capt. Hendrix quite easily comes to the conclusion that The Chinese are getting far more bang for their buck. At an estimated unit cost of $11 million USD per DF-21D SBM, China can afford to build 1,227 of these missiles for the cost of just one Gerald R. Ford Class CVN, at a cost of $13.5 billion USD each. If the Chinese saturated a targeted CSG with a large number of these “carrier-killers”, attacking from multiple approach vectors and at varying speeds (reaching supersonic speeds of Mach 5 to Mach 8), a mission-kill is highly probable. The missile strike need not sink the carrier out-right, merely cause enough damage to render it inoperable for performing its intended mission for an extended period of time.

Conclusion

Faced by an increasingly hostile and belligerent United States, both China and Russia have invested heavily in developing strategies and technologies to defeat U.S. naval power. The United States operates ten Carrier Strike Groups, with an additional carrier in reserve status. The U.S. has trusted in, and expertly utilized the Carrier Strike Group to dominate the maritime domain and to project power across the globe since the aircraft carrier proved its preeminence during the Second World War.

Almost seventy-five years have passed since the Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that showcased the power projection capabilities of fleets based around aircraft carriers. The United States perfected the use of carriers in the intervening decades, and used them effectively as both a political and military tool. However, just like the seas that these massive weapons of war sail upon, warfare is constantly in a state of change. New technologies have yielded alternative ways of fighting naval engagements, and both Russia and China have made use of these technologies to build an alternative naval warfare strategy meant to counter and defeat the carrier-centric U.S. Navy.

Both nations have invested heavily in developing long range, guided anti-ship missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles. Their national defense strategies dictate the use of both land based and ship based missile systems to attack U.S. carrier strike groups, first to achieve a mission-kill against the carrier and then to attack the supporting vessels in the strike group with superior firepower. Where U.S. warships are designed to protect an aircraft carrier as their primary mission, and are outfitted with a heavier complement of AAW/ASW weapons, Russian and Chinese surface vessels are designed with greater offensive firepower, to target and destroy enemy warships. Once an aircraft carrier and its air wing are rendered useless, the flexibility and firepower of Russian and Chinese fleets will prove decisive.

The Russian Lider Class and the Chinese Type 055 Class represent the next generation of embracing this alternative strategy, one that rebukes the superiority of the aircraft carrier in 21st century naval warfare. Both ships are larger than traditional guided missile destroyers, despite their DDG designation. They pack far more offensive weaponry than a traditional destroyer, and their VLS design allows them a greater degree of flexibility. They can be mission tailored, and can take advantage of the full arsenal of modern missiles produced by their respective nations. Both are far more cost-effective than an aircraft carrier. In a purely defensive role, when used in conjunction with land-based anti-ship guided missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles, as well as land-based air superiority fighters and strike aircraft fitted with anti-ship missiles, they will prove even more potent. Such a combination of national defense capability is a viable deterrent to foreign aggression.

The United States has obviously chosen to wager its naval supremacy on larger and more advanced aircraft carriers. It must now decide on how best to counter the Russian and Chinese superiority achieved in stand-off, over the horizon missile strike capability. The obvious answer is to develop a carrier air wing that can protect the CSG at increased range, and strike first. The U.S. has dumped over $1.3 trillion USD into an aircraft that will replace the F-18 super hornet. This aircraft, the F-35 JSF, has failed to exceed the capabilities of the legacy aircraft, and does not possess the needed range to change the range-gap that the CSG now faces. The U.S. Navy needs a new aircraft. In the meantime, the U.S. Navy may have to come up with ingenious stop-gaps that will extend the range of its fleet air arm. One such expedient measure is the adaptation of aircraft not originally designed for the function, to be modified and pressed into service as carrier-based aerial refueling tankers. The U.S. Navy is experimenting with a number of aircraft to see if this is both feasible and practicable.

The United States just unveiled a new ABM system based in Romania, ostensibly part of a NATO anti-missile shield aimed at protecting the alliance from unidentified ‘Rogue States’. The United States is following up with a second such ABM base in Poland. In addition, the U.S. has notified China that it is planning to base Terminal High Altitude Aerial Defense (THAAD) ABM systems in South Korea. The reason given by the White House is the threat that a nuclear armed North Korea poses to the allied nations of South Korea and Japan. Reading between the lines, both Russia and China must see that ABM systems placed right on their borders may be used to shoot down any long range anti-ship cruise missiles or ballistic missiles targeting an aircraft carrier strike group.

Technological innovation and human ingenuity are constantly changing the nature of warfare. Opposing forces will continue to try and gain an advantage over one another. This timeless fencing match will continue as it has for centuries. The next generation guided missile cruisers designed by both Russia and China have provided them with a distinct advantage. It is now up to the United States to answer this challenge. It appears that the U.S. has doubled down on the aircraft carrier, and while reaping huge economic gains for the defense establishment, has left the nation, its sailors and airmen, at a distinct disadvantage.

Brian Kalman is a management professional in the marine transportation industry. He was an officer in the US Navy for eleven years. He currently resides and works in the Caribbean.

The European continent has been rocked by one of the largest political earthquakes in recent years, after the British people made the historic decision to leave the European Union (EU). The arrogant, corrupt establishment was so convinced that their concerted propaganda campaign to keep Britain in the EU would prevail over EU detractors, that they clearly were shocked by the Brexit vote.

A personal highlight over the past few weeks has been watching the plethora of EU zealots and puppets of the globalist cabal whining, sulking and generally throwing their dummies out of their prams in response to the democratic wishes of the people. Remember, the Western establishment is only a cheerleader of democracy when it serves their interests, not when it challenges them. 

But what is the significance of the Brexit vote for the future of the EU? Long plagued by problems and perpetual crises, the fabric that holds the undemocratic and technocratic EU together is close to being set ablaze. Will the Brexit vote be the final spark that triggers the entire collapse of the EU, or is another event needed to finally ignite the European project that the globalists hold so dearly?  I would tend to favour the latter over the former, as the response by the EU elites has been to push for further integration and the creation of an EU superstate.

Let the People Vote!

One of the most tectonic implications of the historic vote is how it has worked to energize calls from numerous other EU countries to hold in-out referendums. From the Netherlands to Italy, political organizations opposed to the EU have been emboldened by this vote. But the country that has the greatest potential to put the final nail in the coffin of the EU is France.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Front National, has been agitating for an in-out referendum on EU membership for years now, and has said that if she wins the presidential election in April next year, she will call an in-out referendum. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, Le Pen ramped up her calls for a vote, however the French President Francois Hollande recently rejected such calls. According to research conducted by the University of Edinburgh in March of this year, 53 percent of people in France would be infavour of holding a referendum on EU membership.

Although the Brexit vote was an important one, it should be kept within historical context and not overstated. Britain has had a complex relationship with Europe for hundreds of years, and prior to the First World War and the threat to the balance of power in Europe that arose in the early 20th century; British strategists were for large periods more focused on expanding the influence of the British Empire internationally, than on European affairs. As an island, geographically split from mainland Europe by the English Channel, Britain has also often seen itself as having one foot in and one foot outside of Europe.

These realities contributed to the rather late admission of the UK to the union, not becoming an EU member until 1973. A more pivotal vote would be if one of the founding members of the EU voted to leave, with Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, comprising the six founding countries of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952.

The Brexit spirit seems strongest in the Netherlands and France; with France’s size, strength and instrumental position in creating the EU meaning its voice would have the greatest impact. If the French people vote to leave the EU in a potential future referendum, there is no way the Western elite can prop up their treasured European project anymore.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

http://journal-neo.org/2016/07/05/a-frexit-would-be-the-final-nail-in-the-eu-s-coffin/

http://journal-neo.org/2016/07/05/a-frexit-would-be-the-final-nail-in-the-eu-s-coffin/

It must have been clear from the very beginning on 12 September 2015, when cheers lifted the roof and people across the land stood up, punched the air and shouted “Yes!” as the results of the Labour Party leadership elections were read out, that Jeremy Corbyn’s victory would be quickly followed by determined efforts to unseat him.  And so it was.

At regular intervals mainstream media kept issuing reports of unhappiness with Corbyn’s leadership among the Labour MPs, said reports always coming from ‘unnamed MPs’.  Everyone else called them the Blairite MPs who were seeing Tony Blair’s precious New Labour disappear.

One has to recognise that three separate events were going to coincide, more than likely by careful arrangement.  After years of waiting, the report on the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq invasion was due to be published.  In order to deflect or delay any damage to Tony Blair (and himself), Prime Minister David Cameron ruled that it would not appear until after the EU referendum.  After all, the Tories had also backed Blair and voted to invade Iraq.

But Cameron also decided to hold the referendum just 2 weeks before the publication of the report, presumably hoping the debate over the result, whichever way it went, would deflect our attention.  At the same time the anti-Corbyn Labour MPs, headed by arch-Blairite Hilary Benn had already planned to stage their coup against Corbyn immediately after the referendum.

Again, whichever way the vote went, they would base their argument on Corbyn not campaigning actively enough, being lukewarm about the EU, and repeat their argument that in a general election he would make the party unelectable.

Thus, even while Britain was reeling from its decision to vote to leave the EU, the mainstream media became obsessed by the vicious and unrelenting attempts to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader. The connections between the Chilcot Inquiry and the attempted coup against Corbyn have not passed unnoticed; among others, both former ambassador Craig Murray and former First Minister Alex Salmond have written on the subject.

Let’s start at the beginning.

On the very same day of Corbyn’s landslide victory the idea of his inability to be an electable Prime Minister was being peddled.  Journalists were discussing the issue in November.  In January 2016 there was a further push to discredit him, the Daily Mail claiming that the Iraq war had led Labour to the ‘unelectable and unassailable’ Jeremy Corbyn, while the Spectator said he was untouchable while still being an ‘electoral disaster’.

Membership numbers became a battleground.  In December 2015 Blair’s ally Peter Mandelson had claimed that “30,000 long-term members had left the party (a grossly inflated figure), but in January the Guardian contacted officers and members of Labour constituency parties across the country.  The result:

“Almost every constituency party we contacted reported doubling, trebling, quadrupling or even quintupling membership, and a revival of branches that had been moribund for years and close to folding.”

In March through to the local elections in May, the ‘persistent myth’ of Corbyn’s unelectability kept being raised by the Blairites, despite Labour’s good record in retaining and gaining seats in by-elections, despite a poll showing Labour was now ahead of the Tories; and above all, despite party members emphasising their support for their elected leader.

Then, as soon as the result of the EU referendum was announced, the attempted coup –or Chicken Coup, as some named it – was in full swing.  The accusation that Corbyn had not done enough to persuade Labour voters to back the Labour In campaign was pushed to its limits.  Yet 60 percent had voted to stay with Europe – rather better than the Tory membership, nearly two thirds of which voted for Brexit.

The mass and obviously pre-planned resignation of Shadow Cabinet members made people wonder how long this coup had been in the planning.  So, let’s go back to the beginning – again.

Much of the coup appears to have been orchestrated by the PR firm Portland Communications, that has many links to right-wing Labour MPs.  An unnamed senior Labour party official has claimed that within a month of Corbyn’s election there was a plan in place to get rid of him.  This is backed up by a report in the Times in November.  And it seems that Portland Communications knew of the ‘mass resignation pact’ 6 months ago.

Having decided to act after the referendum, the MPs’ demand for him to go would be based on Corbyn’s ‘lacklustre’ campaigning for the EU.  How could one tell, the media being only interested in pushing negative news on Corbyn, not news on rallies and speeches?

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, Corbyn’s ally for many years, has an interesting addition to the whole messy argument.  Giving a speech  for a Stand up for Labour event in a West London pub on 29 June, he said:

“Jeremy and I met with Angela Eagle and Hilary Benn and they said they wanted to run the European campaign and we said “fine”.  But … we said that we need to agree the politics of this.  We said that we can’t just go out there as simple Europhiles because, to be frank, there was a need for reform in Europe.  And at that point in time they were trying to argue that we should unanimously support Cameron’s deal in Europe.  We refused.

“So we said “get on with the campaign and call us in when you need us, we will do all that we can to support”.  Jeremy toured round this country – the stamina of the man is unbelievable.  Thousands of miles, meeting after meeting.  Both of us spoke in virtually every major city in the country.  But we campaigned on the basis of ‘remain but reform’.  And that is where most of the British population are.  They agree that there needs to be reform.  It was no use going out there just arguing that the European Union was perfect.  It was remain and reform.”

Hilary Benn has been the main instigator behind this coup.  Internet searches show that his campaigning for remaining in the EU was not so much lacklustre as almost invisible.  The media only reported on one speech; but then, they didn’t report on Corbyn’s and McDonnell’s tireless campaigning at all.  You would think someone would notice the large audiences Corbyn and McDonnell draw, but no.

Angela Eagle, probably, or possibly, standing against Corbyn in a leadership election made even less impression.  In the end, the campaign was headed by senior Labour MP Alan Johnson – who is now telling people ‘not to rubbish the last Labour government.’  True, Blair’s government did some very good things for this country, but it will not be forgiven for Iraq.

So desperate are the coup MPs to rid themselves of the membership’s choice they have resorted to outright dishonesty.  For example; following the publication of a letter from 250 Labour councillors backing Corbyn, Labourlist produced one claiming to have been signed by 600 councillors, all backing his removal.

This was immediately called into question.  Birmingham councillor Sharon Thompson said she had not signed the letter.  Instead, she had signed one backing Corbyn.  Other councillors came forward, making the same complaint.  The letter on Labourlist’s website has now been amended, while it denies any responsibility for producing it.

The Deputy Leader Tom Watson has rightly been criticised for his on/off support for Corbyn.  On 27 June he was reported to have told the BBC that he had told Corbyn to resign as leader, but this story has been amended too many times to have any real substance.

Then up pops a story that Corbyn was refusing to talk to Watson – which he has done.  Corbyn’s aides were accused of preventing people from talking to him.  Another ally, Diane Abbott, was said to be physically blocking the doorway (that story disappeared very quickly).  John McDonnell quietly responded that “Jeremy has an open-door policy”.

Watson has now told MPs that he is seeking a meeting with the trade unions in the hope they can persuade Corbyn to resign, he himself having failed.  Speaking for the unions, Len McCluskey had already said they were willing to broker a peace deal between the MPs and Corbyn.  But – the unions regard Corbyn as the party’s democratically elected leader, something the MPs want to ignore.

It is true that Corbyn has lost the support of the majority of Labour MPs but it seems those MPs think they are there to represent themselves, not the people who voted for them.  It is also true that in less than a week the party membership grew by 60,000, taking the total party membership to over 440,000.

Anti-Corbyn MPs are claiming that many of these new members want to vote against Corbyn.  They claimed the same last September when people registered as members and supporters before the leadership election.  Not wholly true then, one doubts the truth of it now.  What is patently obvious is the vast number of people rallying for Corbyn.

This sorry history is full of the word ‘claim’, but that is where we are.  Almost all the anti-Corbyn stories are just that – claims.  Not truth, not facts with evidence attached, but claims snatched out of the air.  As each one is shot down, another one appears, as fact-poor as the last.  Do they never learn?

Labour MP Angela Eagle now claims that “there are many people, MPs, party members up and down the country, asking me to resolve this impasse”.  She does not mention the fact that her Walsall constituency party, both officers and its members, are very angry indeed. With their backing, the Chair had written to her, asking her not to back the No Confidence vote that Benn and his allies had engineered, a request, no, a mandate she ignored.

So, if Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t resign, she threatens to challenge him for the leadership.  Scary.  Or, as the Canary puts it, she is threatening him with his own victory.  Not scary – dumb.  Considering the support he has among the membership this seems to be a remarkably silly challenge.  But it explains why they are all so desperate to get him to go – now.  Before one of them has to stand toe-to-toe with Corbyn, and be humiliated by the party members.

Russia has announced that it will send more advanced aircraft, including K-52 helicopter gunships, to Syria in order to strengthen the Russian military grouping that takes part in anti-terrorist operations.

According to the Defense Ministry, Russia’s sole aircraft carrier of Admiral Kuznetsov will in October carry Ka-52 helicopters to Syrian waters to participate in combat missions across the crisis-hit country. In case the new helicopters’ successful missions in Syria, Russia may to replace some Su-25 fighter bombers deployed in Latakia with Ka-52 helicopter gunships.

In total, the Russian aircraft carrier will have about 15 Su-33 and MiG-29K/KUB fighter jets and more than 10 Ka-52K, Ka-27 and Ka-31 miltiary helicopters that will strikes at militants in Syria from an eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea.

Since last week, Russian warplanes have conducted actively air strikes with special attention to northern Latakia, northeastern Idlib, near the cities of Aleppo and Deir Ezzor. Various sources say that from 40 to 70 terrorist targets were destroyed.

Heavy clashes between the Syrian Arab Army and a joint force of Al Nusra, Nouriddeen Al-Zinki and the Free Syrian Army are ongoing in the strategic Mallah Farms near Aleppo City. Pro-government forces have repelled all militants counter attacks and now in control of about 80% of the farms.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Democratic Forces have repelled ISIS counter attacks south and west of the strategic city of Manbij. Pro-Kurdish sources argue that ISIS has faced significant casualties.

More about the Russian aircraft carrier program:

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Image: Anthony Freda

“Under CIA manipulation, direction and, usually, their payroll, were past and present presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay and Costa Rica, “our minister of labor”, “our vice-president”, “my police”, journalists, labor leaders, student leaders, diplomats, and many others. If the Agency wished to disseminate anti-communist propaganda, cause dissension in leftist ranks, or have Communist embassy personnel expelled, it need only prepare some phony documents, present them to the appropriate government ministers and journalists, and – presto! – instant scandal.” (William Blum, CIA Manipulation: The Painful Truths Told by Phil Agee, Anti-Empire Report 27 June 2013)

Independent media outlets are increasingly challenging the powers that be and, thanks to social media, the truth about what is really happening in our world can be shared at the click of a button.

Sadly, the imperial war machine continues to rear its violent head in exponential proportion under the guise of democracy and “War on Terrorism”.

This war machine is promoted by the mainstream media who cannot be trusted for many reasons. It is a well documented fact that the CIA has used journalism as a cover for its agents and has planted stories in the media.

According to CIA documents, “more than 400 American journalists … in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency“, wrote Carl Bernstein in 1977.

In this episode of Alternative views, former CIA agent John Stockwell explains “how CIA ‘disinformation’ tactics manipulate public opinion by planting stories in the press and by financing and supporting right-wing newspapers“.

Planting stories in the media is a standard CIA technique:

A common Agency tactic was writing editorials and phony news stories to be knowingly published by Latin American media with no indication of the CIA authorship or CIA payment to the media. The propaganda value of such a “news” item might be multiplied by being picked up by other CIA stations in Latin America who would disseminate it through a CIA-owned news agency or a CIA-owned radio station. Some of these stories made their way back to the United States to be read or heard by unknowing North Americans. (Blum, op. cit.)

Moreover several journalists are members of the very influential foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations, which has among its corporate members:

1. Major financial institutions such as:

Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Citi

Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

JPMorgan Chase & Co

The Nasdaq OMX Group

2. All the companies part of what is known as Big Oil:

BP p.l.c.

Chevron Corporation

ConocoPhillips Company

Exxon Mobil Corporation

Shell Oil Company

TOTAL S.A.

3. Major defense and security contractors which largely rely on military sales (figures from SIPRI) and government subsidies, among others:

DynCorp International (70% of revenues from military sales in 2011)

Lockheed Martin Corporation (78% of revenues from military sales in 2011)

Northrop Grumman (81% of revenues from military sales in 2011)

Raytheon Company (90% of revenues from military sales in 2011)

Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. (99% of revenues from federal government)

In addition, mainstream media experts on foreign policy issues are often linked to the military-industrial complex and are very often presented as “independent”.

During the public debate around the question of whether to attack Syria, Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, made a series of high-profile media appearances. Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.”

In each case, Hadley’s audience was not informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley’s share’s worth $891,189). Despite this financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert. (Public Accountability, War or No War on Syria: Conflict of Interest of “Experts” who Commented in Favor of Military Intervention, October 15, 2013)

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Far-reaching revisions to Japan’s national security laws became effective at the end of March 2016. Part of the government’s efforts to “reinterpret” Japan’s war-renouncing Constitution, the revised laws authorize military action that would previously have been unconstitutional. The move has been severely criticized within Japan as being a circumvention and violation of the Constitution, but there has been far less scrutiny of the international law implications of the changes.

The war-renouncing provision of the Constitution ensured compliance with the jus ad bellum regime, and indeed Japan has not engaged in a use of force since World War II (jus ad bellum is the regime of international law that governs the use of force – it essentially prohibits all use of force against other states, with two exceptions, namely the exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense, and collective security operations authorized by the U.N. Security Council). But with the purported “reinterpretation” and revised laws – which the Prime Minister has said would permit Japan to engage in minesweeping in the Straits of Hormuz or use force to defend disputed islands from foreign “infringements” – Japan has an unstable and ambiguous new domestic law regime that could potentially authorize action that would violate international law.

By way of background, Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution provides, in part, that the Japanese people “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force in the settlement of international disputes.” It was initially drafted by a small group of Americans during the occupation, and they incorporated language and concepts from the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, and Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter that had been concluded just months earlier. Thus, Article 9 incorporated concepts and language from the jus ad bellum regime for the purpose of imposing constitutional constraints that were greater than those imposed by international law, and waiving certain rights enjoyed by states under international law. While drafted by Americans, it was embraced by the government and then the public, such that it became a powerful constitutive norm, helping to shape Japan’s post-war national identity. (For the full history, see Robinson and Moore’s book Partners for Democracy; for a shorter account and analysis, see my law review article “Binding the Dogs of War: Japan and the Constitutionalizing of Jus ad Bellum“).

Soon after the return of full sovereignty to Japan in 1952, the government interpreted this first clause of Article 9 as meaning that Japan was entitled to use the minimum force necessary for individual self-defense in response to an armed attack on Japan itself. It also interpreted it as meaning that Japan was denied the right to use force in the exercise of any right of collective self-defense, or to engage in collective security operations authorized by the U.N. Security Council. These were understood to be the “sovereign rights of the nation” under international law that were waived by Japan as a matter of constitutional law.

All branches of government have consistently adhered to this interpretation ever since. Factions within the LDP have for decades wanted to amend Article 9, but for complex reasons relating to the constellation of political forces both within the LDP and between it and the various opposition parties, it has never been able to do so. Prime Minister Abe similarly sought to amend Article 9, and initially tried to first amend the amending formula itself, but the public and political opposition stymied these efforts. In 2014, frustrated in its efforts to formally amend Article 9,the Abe government circumvented the formal amendment procedure and purported to “reinterpret” the provision. It did so by issuing a Cabinet Decision that articulated significant shifts in the national defense policy, and asserted that such changes would be deemed constitutional pursuant to a new understanding of Article 9.

In the summer of 2015 the government submitted two bills to the Diet that implemented these changes to policy. They effected revisions to ten existing national security laws and established one new law (a document containing the revisions and new law, can be found here, while a very brief summary of the key changes can be found in a document here (both in Japanese)).

This process, which circumvented the formal constitutional amendment procedure, as well as the substance of the “reinterpretation” and subsequent legislation, has been condemned within Japan as being unconstitutional – by constitutional scholars, former Directors of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, a former Supreme Court Judge, and tens of thousands of protesters in the street (for more on this, see this essay in JURIST). But leaving those issues aside, several of the changes also raise international law issues, which have been subject to far less scrutiny within Japan, and have gone virtually unnoticed outside of Japan.

One such change is to authorize the use of force in response to “an infringement that does not amount to an armed attack.” This is a potentially radical change to the domestic law threshold for use of force in self-defense. The traditional interpretation of Article 9 as permitting Japan to use force in the exercise of individual self-defense has consistently and explicitly defined a direct armed attack upon Japan (actual or imminent) as the condition precedent for exercising the right. The “reinterpretation” authorizes the use of force in response to “infringements” that do not amount to an armed attack, such as “unlawful” foreign incursions into territory surrounding “remote islands”.

This change has been implemented through revisions made to a series of inter-related provisions in a number of different national security laws, most significantly the Self-Defense Force Law, the re-namedResponse toSituations ofImportant Influence Law, and the Response to Situations of Armed Attack and Existential Threats Law (the new formulation for collective self-defense, discussed below, for example, is implemented in Art. 2(4) of the Response to Situations of Armed Attack and Existential Threats Law, and in Art. 76 of the Self-Defense Force Law, among others). It is also reflected in some less remarked Cabinet Orders (such as the Government Response to Unlawful Landing of Armed Groups on Remote Islands,Cabinet Order of May 14, 2015).

Without getting too deeply into the details of these provisions, however, the key point is that the overall effect of the changes would appear to lower the threshold for the use of force, as that term is understood in Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, below the level of “armed attack” that is the required pre-condition for the justified use of force in self-defense, pursuant to both Article 51 of the U.N. Charter and customary international law. In short, the change raises the concern that in some situations the government of Japan could now use force in accordance with its “reinterpretation” of the Constitution and its revised legislation, in a manner that would constitute a violation of the prohibition against the use of force in international law.

A second change is the elimination of the long-standing interpretation of Article 9 as prohibiting the use of force for purposes of collective self-defense. This change has been widely viewed within Japan as being impossible to square with the long-standing understanding of Article 9. But while unconstitutional, given that a use of force for purposes of collective self-defense is explicitly permitted under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, this change should not be expected to raise any international law issues.

The problem is that the government did not simply incorporate the international law concept of collective self-defense. In order to mollify its coalition partner, the government introduced language that would ostensibly further limit the conditions under which Japan could engage in collective self-defense. But while purporting to narrow the scope of the right, this clause of the Cabinet Decision itself created considerable ambiguity and uncertainty. Depending on how it is interpreted this clause of the “reinterpretation” may again lower the threshold for the use of force below that required by the jus ad bellum regime.

The formulation adopted, in both the Cabinet Decision and the implementing provisions of the revisedSelf-Defense Force Law and the Response to Armed Attack and Existential Threat Law (among others), suggests that Japan may use “the minimum force necessary” when “an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan occurs and as a result threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger to fundamentally overturn [the] people’s right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” On one possible interpretation this somewhat collapses the distinction between individual and collective self-defense, in that Japan would only be permitted to exercise the right of self-defense if the armed attack on another country also constituted an immediate existential threat to Japan. That should create no obvious international law issues. But the problem is that this is not how the government itself appears to understand the clause.

In discussing the operation and scope of the new right of collective self-defense, Prime Minister Abe and Defense Minister Nakatani have both made comments about the possibility of Japan conducting mine-sweeping operations in the Straits of Hormuz if it were mined by Iran. Taking the statements at face value, that the authority relied upon for such action would be the right of collective self-defense as defined (rather than on other international law principles that might authorize the clearing mines from international straits), the comments are revealing about the government’s interpretation of its unique definition of collective self-defense.

First, Abe’s comments suggest that the armed attack on a country in close relations with Japan may be uncoupled from the threat to Japan’s survival and the people’s rights to the pursuit of happiness, such that each is a separate trigger for exercising the right of collective self-defense. In his several public comments Abe has made no reference to how Iran’s mining the straits of Hormuz might constitute an armed attack on another country (far less one in a close relationship with Japan), but has instead asserted that the justification for the exercise of collective self-defense would simply be the threat to the livelihood of the Japanese people posed by such a blockade – a threat to the “people’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the language of the clause.

This not only uncouples the exercise of collective self-defense from an armed attack on another country, but even from a threat to the survival of Japan, and rather conditions it solely upon a threat to the livelihood of the people of Japan – however, that might be measured or defined. And since the contemplated minesweeping is justified as an exercise of self-defense, it is presumably understood as itself constituting a use of force, conducted in the territorial waters of Iran. If this is how the Japanese government understands its own definition of collective self-defense, it suggests that it may consider itself entitled to use force for “infringements that do not amount to an armed attack”, consistent with its new position on the exercise of individual self-defense.

There are other changes reflected in the “reinterpretation” and in the revised legislation that similarly raise potential questions about compliance with international law, which there is no room to discuss here. The risk that such changes could permit unlawful action will depend on how the new legislation is interpreted and implemented in practice, as is true of the two examples discussed above. But the key point is that while the Japanese Constitution previously helped ensure compliance with the jus ad bellum regime, and indeed was one of the few constitutional systems that imposed limits on the international use of force, the “reinterpretation” and revised laws have created an unstable and ambiguous regime that could actually provide domestic legal authority for action that would violate international law. What is more, with the floodgates now opened on constitutional “reinterpretation” by unilateral executive fiat, there is no telling how long it will be before these changes are themselves again revised, further relaxing the domestic legal constraints on internationally unlawful action.

Craig Martin is an Associate Professor at the Washburn University School of Law. He specializes in international law and the use of armed force, and comparative constitutional law.

This is a slightly revised and expanded version of an article first published in the international law blog Opinio Juris, Apr. 21, 2016.

The following text is based on a lecture made by Bill Rosenburg to the Global Peace and Justice Network in Auckland on 17 June 2003 and to scholars and students of journalism at the Auckland University of Technology on 18 June 2003. This was before the takeover by Fairfax of INL’s newspapers had been finalised. Rosenburg began by emphasising that his expertise, as far as it exists, lies in ownership of the news media, not as a media commentator.

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There is an effective duopoly in each of the main media – Print, Television and Radio. The Internet is a new and growing source of news. Three, and shortly four, companies dominate. Because of its nature – a mixture of distribution channel and content, news, other information and content – it is more difficult to describe.

This talk will cover

• Recent developments in each medium – Print, Radio, Television, Internet
• The main owners – who are they?
• Does it matter? What can be done?

Print Media

The two companies which dominate our print news media are Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL) and Wilson and Horton.

In 2003, INL newspapers had nearly half (47.4%) of the audited daily newspaper circulation in New Zealand. Its main newspaper competition is from Wilson and Horton, which had 43.8% of the daily newspaper circulation in 2003 (29.3% of which came from the New Zealand Herald, the largest circulation newspaper in New Zealand). The two between them in 2003 owned 87.4% of audited daily press circulation of the provincial newspapers (those with under 25,000 circulation), and 92.2% of the metropolitan readership (those newspapers with more than 25,000 circulation). In addition they have extensive and increasing ownership of community newspapers, and magazines.

Only about 70,000 readers still have an independent daily newspaper. The largest such daily, the Dunedin Otago Daily Times, with a circulation in March 2003 of 44,546, is owned by Allied Press, belonging to the Smith family, which also owns the Greymouth Evening Star, West Coast Timesand a number of community newspapers in Dunedin, Otago, Southland and Westland. There are only six other audited locally owned daily newspapers.

INL’s most profitable daily is the Christchurch Press, which has a near monopoly in Christchurch. It also owns the Dominion Post and in fact all the daily newspapers with circulation greater than 25,000 other than the New Zealand Herald, Hawke’s Bay Today and the Otago Daily Times.

In 2003 INL had 93.7% of the audited circulation of the country’s six national weekly newspapers.

INL’s print and Internet media are detailed in the accompanying table. Its magazines include the country’s largest selling publication, TV Guide, and it has a virtual newspaper monopoly in many cities and in the national Sunday newspapers. Numerous titles have come and gone amongst its magazines, mainly purchased from other companies (at least 12 since 1992), but with a few of its own startups. In 1998 it announced a new glossy, Grace, aimed at the “independent woman”. The May launch had a touch of farce when rival Australian magazine Claudia came out with the same cover photo of Hollywood star Helen Hunt. INL Magazines reportedly resolved the matter by buying every copy of Claudia bound for the New Zealand market. It was not a good start: the magazine closed in January 2001.

Other subsidiaries include the major magazine distributor, Gordon and Gotch, which distributes “55% of all [magazine] titles circulated in the country.”

Wilson and Horton’s Print and Web media
Metropolitan daily	Magazines	Community newspapers	Publishing
NZ Herald	NZ Woman’s Weekly	Over 30 titles	Contract Publishing
Provincial Dailies	New Zealand Listener	Plastic Cards	UBD
Northern Advocate(Whangarei)	Websites	Security Plastics	W&H Publications
Bay of Plenty Times	www.nzherald.co.nz		Wises Maps
Daily Post (Rotorua)	www.ubd.co.nz	Printing
Hawke’s Bay Today(Hastings)	www.look.co.nz (outdoor advertising)	BankPrint	PrintCorp
Wanganui Chronicle	www.wises.co.nz (maps)	CHB Print	Rotorua Printers
Evening News(Dannevirke)	… and others	Christchurch Star Print	Security Print
The Chronicle (Levin)	Tourist giveaways	Colorgraphic Print	The Print Place
Oamaru Mail	Auckland Tourist Times	ComPrint	W&H Graphics
Wairarapa Times-Age	Thermal Air (Rotorua)	Ellerslie Printers	W&H Print
Outdoor advertising	Look Outdoor	Hutcheson Bowman & Stewart	Webprint Colour

Wilson and Horton, in addition to its flagship, the New Zealand Herald, owns eight provincial newspapers. It owns the large-circulation magazines New Zealand Listener, perhaps the only title in the mainstream print media which is genuinely on the Left of the political spectrum, and theNew Zealand Woman’s Weekly and publishes several magazines on contract. Its subsidiary Community Newspapers Ltd has 32 giveaway community newspapers.

Other Print Media

The two remaining national newspapers are the Politically Correct (from the Right) National Business Review (circulation 13,401 at 31 March 2003), and The Independent (circulation 9,680), two business papers which are in constant bitter, often vitriolic, rivalry. Both regularly demonstrate some of the most lively investigative journalism in New Zealand.

NBR is owned by New Zealander Barry Colman’s Liberty Press, formed in 1997, which also publishes New Zealand Personal Investor, New Zealand Business Who’s Who, and The Capital Letter amongst others. It sold 15 titles to Kerry Packer’s Australian Consolidated Press in November 2001(of which more shortly).

The Independent, which tolerates a considerably broader range of views in its columns (despite having Roger Kerr on its board!), is owned by a former National Business Review editor and award-winning investigative journalist, Warren Berryman.

The Auckland yuppy Metro is owned by Kerry Packer’s Australian Consolidated Press (ACP), one of the two largest magazine publishers in Australia (which also owns Hoyts Cinemas). It also publishes Australian Women’s Weekly (New Zealand edition), Buy Sell and Exchange, Cleo (New Zealand edition), North and South, and several more. It is continuing to accumulate titles.

PMP, controlled by the Seven Network of Australia, publishes New Idea and seven other magazines in New Zealand. Even some of New Zealand’s most important rural publications are overseas owned. Federated Farmers’ flagship Straight Furrow was sold to the Australian-owned New Zealand Rural Press Group in January 1999, which is controlled by the Fairfax family.

Television

TV1 and TV2 are still state owned, but TV3, after a turbulent history, was purchased by the biggest privately owned TV broadcaster in Canada, Canwest Global Communications Corporation. It launched TV4 shortly before the October 1996 election, in a politically charged presentation.

The commitment of TV3 and TV4 to local content has been widely criticised. In 1999 it reached a nadir, the two CanWest channels screening no new local drama or comedy shows during the year. Only New Zealand On Air funding persuaded it to recognise its New Zealand location in 2000.

Prime Television New Zealand Ltd, owned by Prime Television Ltd of Australia started regional broadcasting in 1998. Prime Television runs regional television services throughout Australia, being its largest regional broadcaster. It developed a new Auckland facility at Albany and broadcast into Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland, including local news and commercials. Despite its optimism, it failed to make any profits in New Zealand, losing over $10 million in 2001, possibly because it featured high quality documentaries and drama which TV1 no longer appeared to be interested in. In December 2001, Prime announced a deal with Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd (PBL). In return, PBL gained an option to buy 50% of Prime New Zealand by 2008. The new mass-market Prime programming competes directly with TV2 and TV3, and is gaining market share^,.

A number of small regional TV stations also exist, with very small market share. In Christchurch they have been associated with a succession of extreme Right businessmen and fundamentalist Christians. It is a fascinating story we do not have time to go into here.

The monopoly cable and satellite pay TV operator, Sky TV (Sky Network Television Ltd), was founded by business pillars of the New Right in New Zealand, Craig Heatley (an ACT Party founder and financer), Terry Jarvis, and Tappenden Construction (headed by fellow New Right evangelists, Alan Gibbs and Trevor Farmer).

Sky has made a determined attempt to corner the market: it owns about 86% of available frequencies in the South Island, but used only about 40%. It bought them as a commercial block to prevent other parties getting them according to former CTV director of resource, Grant Roberts. In 1997 it also added satellite broadcasting to enable it to reach the 30% of the country not receiving it via UHF.

In 1997, INL took a controlling shareholding in Sky TV. With later share purchases, including some from TVNZ, its current shareholding is 66.25%^,.

In 1999, INL bought out most of TVNZ’s share in a deal reeking of special favours. It was at a price well below market value, apparently on the feeble – and anti-competitive – grounds that “TVNZ places considerable importance and value on a positive and co-operative ongoing relationship with Sky and its existing major shareholders”. Even the Stock Exchange’s Market Surveillance Panel asked for an explanation. It did not pay dividends: within weeks, Sky was ditching TVNZ for TV3 to rebroadcast its sports – rugby, rugby league and cricket – and provide Sky’s news feeds.

In February 2001, Telecom bought out Tappenden’s 12.2% of Sky for $192.6 million and took a seat on its board. Sky lobbied the Government to have TVNZ broadcast TV1 and TV2 through Sky’s digital network. It achieved its aim in a ten-year deal announced in November 2001, after an open access deal between TVNZ and TelstraSaturn fell through. The publicly owned channels will still be free to air, but the deal forces viewers to buy a limited, proprietary Sky set-top-box to decode signals – thus giving Sky monopoly control of digital services, the future technical direction of television^,. “Forget any advanced interactive services TVNZ might want to develop, and forget any idea of access to the Internet through digital television,” said Paul Norris, former senior TVNZ executive and head of the Broadcasting School at Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. “Most of all, forget any idea that TVNZ is any longer in control of what services it can develop or offer. It will be in thrall to Sky. If Sky does not want to carry these services, it will simply say no.” TVNZ’s channels will also introduce local content largely lacking from Sky’s content, apart from sport. The government says it does not rule out regulation of Sky’s digital platform to ensure access for all broadcasters.

Radio

In April 2002, the Internet site radio.net.nz listed 212 radio stations operating in New Zealand. While a large number of small local community radio stations have sprung up in the last few years including 11 community access stations operating from Auckland to Invercargill, and 25 iwi radio stations funded by Te Mangai Paho, the concentration of ownership of stations is rapidly increasing. In 1996 there were 157, of which over half (87) were owned by just three companies: New Zealand Radio Network, Radio Pacific and Energy Enterprises. Since then Radio Pacific and Energy Enterprises have merged, taken over a number of other stations, and in turn been taken over by CanWest. Meanwhile, New Zealand Radio Network has also continued to accumulate stations. The only solid competition to these two networks is the State-owned non-commercial National Radio and Concert networks.

New Zealand Radio Network

In 1996 the commercial stations of Radio New Zealand were sold for $89 million to three companies closely associated with Tony O’Reilly. The purchaser was New Zealand Radio Network Ltd, which was then owned one-third each by Wilson and Horton Ltd, Australian Provincial Newspapers Holdings Ltd (APN), and Clear Channel Communications Inc of the US. APN (which later changed its name to APN News & Media, or ANM) is 44% owned by Independent Newspapers Plc of Ireland which is 25% owned by the O’Reilly family. Clear Channel Communications and APN each owns 50% of the Australian Radio Network (ARN) which owns 12 metropolitan radio stations in Australia. It now owns New Zealand Radio Network.

O’Reilly’s acquisition consisted of 41 stations plus the Radio Bureau – an advertising production studio – and Radio New Zealand Sport. Initially New Zealand Radio Network continued to use Radio New Zealand’s news service, dumped it in April 1997. It made numerous additional acquisitions, including Prospect, Independent Radio News and sports service, and seven further companies including the Primedia group. This purchase brought criticism from the Labour Party for its cramping of competition and the absence of rules on cross-media ownership, and additionally by the Alliance for the growing foreign ownership of broadcasting. It currently claims to be the country’s largest commercial operator with 53 stations and more than 50% of advertising revenue.

Canwest

For many years, Radio Pacific was the only independent network, but growing through acquisitions. Radio Pacific’s chairman, Derek Lowe, said, “I do feel there should be some media companies that are owned and therefore controlled by New Zealanders.” He made sure of this by continuing his acquisitions. In 1999, Radio Pacific merged with Radio Otago, one of the oldest independents in New Zealand, to form RadioWorks.

CanWest started its radio empire with the More FM radio network, Channel Z and The Breeze. Then in 2000 when it launched a bid for RadioWorks. Despite Lowe’s criticism of the price offered, CanWest’s tactics of standing in the market for shares without consulting the RadioWorks board, the board’s “don’t sell” recommendation, and Lowe’s previous brave words extolling New Zealand ownership of New Zealand news media, he led the lolly scramble to sell his shares.

In December 2000 CanWest made an offer for remaining shares and was assured of success when Energy Investments Taranaki, a 10.6% shareholder earlier taken over by Radio Pacific, accepted the offer. Its chairman, Norton Moller, said that “CanWest’s bid had thwarted the aspirations of many RadioWorks shareholders who had wanted to be part of a strong and influential New Zealand-owned radio company”. RadioWorks was by then the second largest radio company with Radio Pacific, The Edge, The Rock, and Solid Gold networks plus 22 other local stations. The takeover gave it an advertising revenue share of 47-48%.

RadioWorks’ public behaviour has been less than exemplary. In July 2000, it was criticised by the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s chief executive for “causing difficulties by not supplying the authority with audio tapes of contentious shows”, despite the fact that they were required to keep news, current affairs, and talkback tapes for at least 35 days. Broadcasting Minister Marian Hobbs threatened to increase the Authority’s powers because when complaints were laid against “certain private radio stations”, they would “accidentally delete” the only copy of the broadcast. Similar behaviour and fines have followed, including making a kind of history in August 2002 when a judge, Mark Lance, QC, won an out-of-court settlement against Radio Pacific for defamation, believed to be tens of thousands of dollars, after talkback host Mark Middleton made a sustained attack on him over several weeks in terms the judge’s barristers described as “scandalous, humiliating and untrue, injuring his professional reputation”. It was believed to be the first time a judge had won a payout over media criticism.

Internet

A rapidly growing alternative source of information and entertainment is the Internet. Originally run not-for-profit by educational and research institutions, the realisation of its commercial potential has led to commercialisation as rapid as its growth. This threatens its open nature.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in New Zealand were initially either Universities, their commercial off-shoots, or small businesses set up for the purpose. PlaNet, founded by environmental activists, has independent services in a number of centres. A host of others are struggling to exist against larger competitors including WorldCom New Zealand (formerly Voyager, owned by WorldCom of the US, subject of one of the world’s largest accounting scandals), ClearNet and Paradise (both owned by TelstraClear) and Telecom’s Xtra. Xtra is particularly controversial because of its predatory pricing. Soon after its startup in 1996 it dropped its prices to below what it charged other ISPs, and, they claimed, below cost. Second to Xtra is the locally owned Internet Group (Ihug).

The line between the Internet and other publishing and communications is increasingly blurred. Telecom’s stake in INL and ownership of Xtra have already been noted, along with its interest in pay television. TelstraClear has similar ambitions. Both INL, with its Stuff Website, and Wilson and Horton, with its own Website including the New Zealand Herald, are now publishing over the Internet as well as conventionally, but there are many more examples.

The international Independent Media movement – Indymedia – bravely attempts to provide alternative sources of news, including in New Zealand, largely using volunteers. In addition, there are commercial labours of love such as Scoop, which also provides alternatives sources of news, and outlets for organisations which would rarely find mainstream media coverage.

The Main Owners – Who Are They?

News Corporation

INL is currently just over 45% owned and therefore controlled by News Ltd, the Australian branch of Rupert Murdoch’s US-based News Corporation, one of the world’s Big Seven big global media empires. In July 2003, Fairfax Holdings of Australia bought its New Zealand print media. It will be left with just Sky TV, and there is speculation that News Corporation will make a full takeover. In total, INL is 76% overseas owned and other shareholders include Telecom with a 9% shareholding and a seat on the company’s Board. The other main shareholder of INL is the Todd family.

Overseas, Murdoch is highly controversial for his raids on newspapers from Australia to the UK to the US. He gave away his Australian citizenship so he would be allowed to buy TV channels in the US – and then complained when he couldn’t buy channels back in Australia. In the UK he used vicious union-busting tactics, including police and Australian transport firms, to move his papers out of Fleet Street and de-unionise them.

Neither is Murdoch above tax avoidance. In 1997 the UK, the US, Canada and Australia set up an international tax investigation into News Corporation – it paid almost no tax that year: 7.8% of profits in the previous year, as compared to 28% for the Walt Disney corporation (one of the other Big Seven media transnationals). Concerns about his corporation’s tax habits have also been raised in the UK, Israel and the US.^, In 1989 an Australian Parliamentary investigation found News Corporation was using tax havens such as the Dutch Antilles, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda to launder its profits. In the UK, News Corporation subsidiary, British News International paid only 1.2% of its profits in tax, compared to a company tax rate of 33%. As we will see, tax avoidance is a pattern among media owners in New Zealand.

A few months after the 1996 election to power of the Howard-led government in Australia, Murdoch criticised it for not carrying out radical reforms, saying New Zealand was the model to follow. A major factor in the 1997 “New” Labour election victory in the UK was Murdoch’s support for its leader, Tony Blair, via the Sun newspaper – which had supported the Conservatives in the previous election. His support did not go unrewarded. In February 1998, the House of Lords voted to tighten competition law to curb Murdoch’s tactics of setting “predatory” low prices on his newspapers (such as the Times) to drive rivals out of business. This was opposed by Blair, his spokesperson saying, “This amendment will not become law. It doesn’t add to the effectiveness of the Bill and singles out one company in a way that is unnecessary”. The following month, Blair tried to help Murdoch take over an Italian TV station, Mediaset, by speaking directly to the Italian Prime Minister, Ramano Prodi.

Murdoch is frequently criticised for the influence he has on editorial policy – towards entertainment and the reactionary. He strongly defends his right to interfere in editorial matters: “it’s my responsibility sometimes to interfere” he told a forum in January 1999. He took the BBC off his Asian Star satellite service because of its critical documentaries about China and in 1998 he intervened to prevent his publishing subsidiary, HarperCollins, from publishing a book critical of China by the former Hong Kong governor, Chris Patten.

In a notorious case, reporters at a television station owned by Fox, a News Corporation subsidiary in the USA, produced a report critical of Monsanto. They were sacked when they refused to modify their story. The station manager pressured them to back down by saying: “We paid $3 billion for these stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!”.

Murdoch explicitly backed the US invasion of Iraq, saying, “We can’t back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam…I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it”. Once again he backed Tony Blair: “I think Tony is being extraordinarily courageous and strong… It’s not easy to do that living in a party which is largely composed of people who have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort of pacifist”. He was clear in his rationale: “The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy…would be $US20 a barrel for oil. That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country”. In another interview he gave further explanation: “Once it [Iraq] is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else”. The UK Guardian surveyed 175 of “the highest-selling and most influential papers across the world owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation”. It found none had opposed US and UK actions, and many actively derided opposition to the invasion. “How lucky can Murdoch get! He hires 175 editors and, by remarkable coincidence, they all seem to love the nation which their boss has chosen as his own,” commented the Guardian’s writer, Roy Greenslade.

Locally, INL does a fair imitation of Murdoch’s views. At INL’s annual meeting in 1992, after some years of staff cuts and new technology, the then chairman, Alan Burnet, asked for more tax relief, described unemployment as a “wretched plague on society and an enormous drain on welfare funds”, and acclaimed the (former) Employment Contracts Act as “one of the most important developments of recent years.” The reason for its enthusiasm was related to Parliament by the Engineers Union in June 2000 when it named INL and Telecom at the top of a list of nine companies which acted in bad faith under the Act. The attitudes continued into 2001 when the Employment Relations Authority ordered INL to meet its employees’ union representatives, finding that it had failed to act in good faith.

Direct political involvement was revealed in the 1999 election when INL admitted to making donations to National and Labour as “an indication of support for the political process”. Senior Lecturer in Journalism at University of Canterbury, Jim Tully, however commented that “media companies should not be donating money to political parties”, and that they were even more difficult to justify if they did not treat every party the same.

Fairfax

John Fairfax Holdings Ltd, which has 21.4% of the Australian capital city and national newspaper market, has a good reputation for its journalism in Australia, where it publishes the generally well-regarded Melbourne Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, and The Australian Financial Review which allow a variety of opinion. Nonetheless its management is politically conservative. For example, there was concern in Australia last year when former Liberal Party Treasurer, Ron Walker, who still had strong political ties, was named as a director. There is an ongoing debate within the company as to the degree of centralisation of its activities, which may well show up in its operations in New Zealand.

Though it carries the Fairfax name, the company no longer has Fairfax family ownership. This is a reflection of a weakness which may come back to haunt us. The company almost went bankrupt in the early 1990s and was forced to sell its magazine division and other assets. Kerry Packer and far-Right Canadian media magnate, Conrad Black became controlling shareholders in 1991. Eventually Black withdrew, and Packer was constantly on the edge of breaching Australia’s media ownership rules. In 2001 he sold his 14.9% shareholding, leaving largely institutional shareholders including Bankers Trust Australia Ltd (8%) and Tyndall Australia Ltd (10%). It is commonly regarded as the weakest of the major media companies in Australia financially, but with highly desirable assets. Both Packer and O’Reilly have shown recent interest in purchasing it. O’Reilly might – but would not necessarily – have difficulties with the Commerce Commission as it would give him almost total control of New Zealand’s print media. Fairfax’s weakness, particularly after this major acquisition, may also lead to problems with maintaining and expanding its operations, and in competing with the O’Reilly empire.

But Fairfax is by no means squeaky clean. Part of its formula for buying INL’s newspapers was for us, as taxpayers, to help it. Using a scheme that O’Reilly is using with Wilson and Horton, the plan was to sell the mastheads of the newspapers to a US bank and lease them back. Tax advantages in both New Zealand and the US would have doubled the return on Fairfax’s acquisition – using a handy $23 million of our money in tax benefits. Unfortunately for Fairfax, the Minister of Finance announced he would close the loophole. Just how much Wilson and Horton’s owners have been making a year from our taxes has not been revealed. O’Reilly revalued the company’s mastheads from $82 million to $794 million after he purchased Wilson and Horton in 1996, and then sold them to JP Morgan of the US for $1.1 billion when Wilson and Horton was resold to O’Reilly’s Australian company, ANM.

Just to complete the tax-avoidance picture: Kerry Packer, the richest man in Australia, is notorious for his gambling (in September 2000 he lost $46 million in a single gambling spree) and his tax avoidance (in 1991 he famously told the Australian House of Representatives Select Committee on Print Media: “if anybody in this country doesn’t minimise their tax, they want their heads read”).

O’Reilly

Until May 1995 Wilson and Horton was a rarity amongst large New Zealand companies: it was New Zealand owned. Courtesy of a raid by Brierleys on its shares, however, Irish newspaper group, Independent Newspapers Plc (INP, now Independent News and Media, INM), gained a controlling 28% interest. INP steadily built up its shareholding and gained full control in 1998.

In 2001, INP sold its shareholding for $999 million to APN News and Media (ANM), the Australian company in which it has a 44% shareholding, and which already was a partner with it in The New Zealand Radio Network. The move was partly to release funds for other purchases (O’Reilly was interested in John Fairfax Holdings) but also as a way of avoiding Australian media ownership laws that restrict foreigners to 25% of a newspaper company and prevent control of television, radio and newspapers in the same market^,.

INP is controlled by the O’Reilly family, headed by the Irish former rugby international and billionaire, Dr Tony (now Sir Anthony) O’Reilly, who hit New Zealand screens as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of HJ Heinz and Company when it took over another icon, Watties Ltd (he has since resigned from his Heinz posts as both CEO and then chairman of Heinz).

Although O’Reilly does not have the same reputation for interference in politics and editorial policy as his rival, Murdoch, and his New Zealand Herald allows a noticeably broader representation of opinion than INL’s newspapers, he is no Leftwinger. Wilson and Horton co-sponsored the elitist “Williamsburg” conference on Asia in Queenstown in March 1998. At it, O’Reilly offered “an investor’s view” of New Zealand, praising “a 20% return on capital”, describing New Zealand as “the top destination for multinational corporations which wish to locate in a fair, free and friendly enterprise for all of South-east Asia”, and ending

“Looking at and participating in the miracle of New Zealand in commerce, I have no doubt whatsoever that the next century will confirm what we already know – that New Zealand has found the economic way of fairness and transparency and a real return on capital; and that because of this, many others are in the process of finding the way to invest in this extraordinary country”.

In July 2001, O’Reilly invited former Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, to visit New Zealand to sell the idea of joining the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mulroney had signed Canada into NAFTA after an election campaign promising that he wouldn’t. He became possibly Canada’s most unpopular and distrusted politician, his Progressive Conservatives Party having its Parliamentary numbers cut from 155 to two. Mordecai Richler (described by present Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, as “simply one of the most brilliant artists in Canadian history”) wrote that “Mulroney, to give him credit, was a consummate pro, a mellifluous fibber with the built-in advantage of never once being inhibited by shame. In office, Mulroney lied regularly, even when it wasn’t necessary, just to keep his hand in.”

O’Reilly rewarded Mulroney by putting him on the international advisory board of the Herald’sparent company, Independent News & Media. On his visit to New Zealand, the Herald gave Mulroney (and NAFTA) a week of cringing star treatment, relegating the hugely popular anti-globalist author, Naomi Klein (who had attracted between 800 and 1,000 people to her public meeting in Auckland during the same week) to one interview in the lifestyle pages.

Herald Assistant Editor and business journalist, Fran O’Sullivan, takes a leading role in business groups advocating a US-New Zealand free trade and investment agreement, and her writing in theHerald supports that stance.

Clear Channel Communications

Partner with ANM in its ownership of the Australian Radio Network (ARN) is Clear Channel Communications, of San Antonio, Texas. It is reviled enough in the USA to merit a dedicated Clear Channel Sucks Website, www.clearchannelsucks.org. It states on its home page:

“Clear Channel owns over 1,200 radio stations and 37 television stations, with investments in 240 radio stations globally, and Clear Channel Entertainment owns and operates over 200 venues nationwide. They are in 248 of the top 250 radio markets, controlling 60% of all rock programming. They outright own the tours of musicians like Janet Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Madonna and N’Sync. They own the network which airs Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Casey Kasem, and the Fox Sports Radio Network. With 103,000,000 listeners in the US and 1,000,000,000 globally (1/6 of the world population), this powerful company has grown unchecked, using their monopoly to control the entire music industry”.

Even the mainstream Internet news and commentary site, Salon.com has been running a series of articles entitled “Radio’s big bully: A complete guide to Salon’s reporting on Clear Channel, the most powerful – and some would say pernicious – force in the music industry”.

But the most striking complaint against Clear Channel in the context of news, is its behaviour during the invasion of Iraq. Noted Indian writer Arundhati Roy describes it most clearly:

“Clear Channel Worldwide Incorporated is the largest radio station owner in the country. It runs more than 1,200 channels, which together account for 9% of the market. Its CEO contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bush’s election campaign. When hundreds of thousands of American citizens took to the streets to protest against the war on Iraq, Clear Channel organized pro-war patriotic “Rallies for America” across the country. It used its radio stations to advertise the events and then sent correspondents to cover them as though they were breaking news. The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretence, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists”.

Meanwhile, Clear Channel is lobbying intensively and successfully to have restrictions removed that try to preserve some degree of competition in the news media.

“The Federal Communications Commission is considering further deregulation that would allow Clear Channel to expand even further, particularly into television”, writes Paul Krugman, prominent US economist and New York Times columnist. Krugman continues as follows:

“The company’s top management has a history with George W Bush. The vice chairman of Clear Channel is Tom Hicks, whose name may be familiar to readers of this column. When Mr Bush was Governor of Texas, Mr. Hicks was chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, called Utimco, and Clear Channel’s chairman, Lowry Mays, was on its board. Under Mr. Hicks, Utimco placed much of the university’s endowment under the management of companies with strong Republican Party or Bush family ties. In 1998 Mr. Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers* in a deal that made Mr. Bush a multimillionaire”. * An American football team, not the actual Texas Rangers police force. Ed.

CanWest

CanWest is headquartered in Canada, but it is also has interests in Australia, Chile and the UK. Not all of its Australian interest has voting rights, due to Australian restrictions on overseas ownership of news media. CanWest is lobbying to allow it up to 50% voting shares. Lobbying and politics are not unusual for Izzy Asper, owner of over 90% of the voting power and 65% of the equity in CanWest. He has been a leader of his province’s (conservative) Liberal Party, and was a vocal supporter of the economic policies of the last two decades in New Zealand, particularly the “zero restrictions on foreign investment in the media”. “I was recently representing Canada in Brussels at a Group of Seven (G7) meeting. I said to all the G7 heavyweights, Japan, the US and all, ‘The only example in the world of a country that has its head screwed on and isn’t distracted by silly stuff is the government of New Zealand.’ Since the reformation in New Zealand in the 80s, you’ve become the experimental laboratory for the entire world. Sir Roger (Douglas) has travelled to Canada and is revered … the fact is, New Zealand is one of the most professionally managed countries in the world”.

Adding to the political flavour of the company, in August 2000 CanWest bought 13 big city newspapers, many other smaller dailies, Internet properties and various other interests in Canada from Hollinger Inc, in one of the biggest media transactions in Canadian history – valued at $NZ7.7 billion. Hollinger was chaired by the notorious extreme Rightwing media baron, Conrad Black, whom we have already met through his former interest in Fairfax. In the transaction Black gained a 15% equity interest and 6% voting interest in CanWest – the second-largest stake behind the Asper family – and two seats on the CanWest board, one of which he intended to take personally.

However as it turned out, it was not Black that became the villain of the piece. Rather than imposing his Rightwing views, he pursued personal glorification, renouncing his Canadian citizenship to enable him to become Lord Black of Crossharbour in the UK, and selling his stake in CanWest. Instead, the controlling Asper family imposed a rule that “all 14 of its big city newspapers would run the same national editorial each week, issued from headquarters in Winnipeg … Any unsigned editorials written locally at the 14 papers, the company said, should not contradict the national editorials, which covered such subjects as military spending, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and property rights”. “The decision provoked immediate complaints from journalists across Canada, who say its effect goes far beyond the editorials, imposing control on columnists and reporters as well … Many journalists say the company is breaking age-old traditions that keep reporters and columnists independent of the publications’ owners”. The Aspers showed no sympathy: “CanWest publications committee chairman David Asper borrowed lyrics from the rock group REM: ‘I can say to our critics and especially to the bleeding hearts of the journalist community that, “It’s the end of the world as they know it . . . and I feel fine”’ … John Miller, Director of the Newspaper Journalism Program at Ryerson University, Toronto, said that CanWest newsrooms have become demoralized… ‘If it goes against what is perceived as the Asper line, then some stories aren’t going to get written, or some stories will be written and then they will be killed.’…” Columnists were censored or discarded. A regular columnist was forced to resign after writing a column critical of the Aspers.

The trend was confirmed in June 2002, when the Aspers dismissed Russell Mills, the publisher of the Ottawa Citizen in their Southam Newspaper chain. Mills said he “had paid the price for not letting CanWest review an editorial calling on the Liberals to overthrow [Canadian Prime Minister] Chretien if he did not resign and a longer, critical review of the Prime Minister’s record”. The Aspers are close friends of Chretien. Southam ordered all its major papers to run two special editorials attacking journalists in general, and the Ottawa Citizen in particular, for their reporting of the sleaze scandal surrounding Chretien. The Director of Carleton University’s School of Journalism, Christopher Dornan, commented that the Aspers had “compromised the integrity of their entire newspaper chain” by their action in sacking Mills. “This, unfortunately for the country, extends into the corridors of governance as well because this seems to be an action taken – perhaps independently – at the behest of the Prime Minister”. He said the Aspers “did not fully understand what it took to run a news organisation”. The action showed “they would act with impunity and not tolerate any employee deviating from the party line”.

TV3 was in the centre of controversy after the 1999 election when it revealed that it donated $25,000 to the National and Labour Parties (as had INL as I have mentioned) and not to minor parties.

Does It Matter?

“However, in the case of broadcasting, I am recommending against any significant liberalisation for three reasons. Firstly it is important that our media reflect our values and our culture. It is clear that New Zealanders put more value on a media that informs rather than just entertains. These and other cultural values will only be protected by New Zealand ownership. Secondly, we make world class broadcasting in this country. Thirdly, foreign broadcasting will have a pervasive role in our media. Already radio and television are dominated by overseas programmes, and direct satellite television broadcasts from overseas will be a reality in the near future”. (Guess who said this  ).

I have outlined the ownership of the media in New Zealand, and have shown that it is very concentrated, and concentrated in the hands of large overseas media organisations. The significance of that state depends on the importance of various factors in determining media content and emphasis.

The factors that are frequently identified are concentration of ownership vs competition; the effect of commercialism; the nature of the owners; and whether the owners are overseas or local.

There are many elegant and persuasive statements from people for whom one would have the greatest respect to the effect that a healthy society requires a healthy diversity of competing media expressing different views. In that view, competition is seen as a solution to the dominance of a few narrow viewpoints. Yet this is not the whole answer. Competition in ideas is indeed a healthy state. But competition of commercial news media organisations is likely to be largely at the commercial level.

Commercialism arises from the profit motive, which then outweighs the needs of society for accurate and relevant information. It mainly functions through advertising. According to sharebroker, Forsyth Barr, “the business of newspaper publishing is selling advertising”. Doubtless they would say the same for all news media. Advertisers are the real customers of a commercial media organisation, not its readers, viewers or listeners. This brings pressure to shield advertisers from views they do not like, to avoid complicated or expensive stories, and to avoid content that does not attract the maximum possible audience at any given time.

Commercial competition does not provide a variety of voices. Rather, it provides sameness of voices for fear of driving off mass audiences – and for ownership reasons I shall return to. We only have to look at our television over the last decade to see this starkly illustrated: one where commercials are often more creative than its programmes (and certainly have more local content).

Thus if we focus on competition, it must be on the competition of ideas, and that will only be genuinely released when the commercial aspects of news media production are minimised or removed altogether. Hence we have the vital need for public-interest broadcasting, whether government or community owned. Perhaps we also need public-interest print media. There is a gap waiting to be filled – that is for a quality national daily newspaper.

Mainstream Media’s Critical Function

One further comment is important here. The mainstream media fulfil a critical function that all the Indymedia, Internet email lists, alternative media of all forms, and even most commercial magazines do not fill. That is that they set the agenda for discussion, for people’s common view of the state of the world and for what is important in it. Once that agenda is set, it is very difficult to rearrange, even with quite literally the best information in the world. Yet it is that agenda that frequently guides people’s actions and priorities. So the mainstream news media – which are frequently the commercial news media – remain vitally important despite the growth of wonderful new forms of information distribution.

What is the significance then of ownership? It must determine the direction taken by the increasing similarity of views and sources presented in the media.

Evidence that direction by owners does occur has been presented in this article, but journalists frequently object that they have not seen it happening to them. Some of the influence is subtle: conscious or unconscious self-censorship by journalists who get to know what is editorially acceptable and see no point in challenging that; selection of staff (especially at senior levels) who will reflect the owner’s philosophies, and so on. A May 2000 survey of journalists by The Pew Research Centre in the US, in association with the Columbia Journalism Review, confirmed this. In a survey of nearly 300 US journalists and news executives, it found that:

“About one-quarter of the local and national journalists say they have purposely avoided newsworthy stories, while nearly as many acknowledge they have softened the tone of stories to benefit the interests of their news organizations. Fully four-in-ten (41%) admit they have engaged in either or both of these practices”.

But disturbingly often, news suppression is to protect the news organisation itself: the owners. Of those surveyed, “More than one-third (35%) say news that would hurt the financial interests of a news organization often or sometimes goes unreported”. Investigative journalists are most likely to cite the impact of business pressures on editorial decisions.

When we reflect back on the strongly held political views, the commercial practices (including high levels of tax avoidance) and willingness to bend, or lobby for removal of, restrictions on their freedom of action, of the owners of our media, we should not wonder why issues like media ownership, the unpopular economic policies of the 1980s and 90s, international trade agreements, and business behaviour are not more intensively scrutinised by our news media.

Closer to home, the Australian Broadcasting Authority has commissioned research which provides further evidence on the effect of ownership interference and influence.

Could it happen here? Given that the owners of most of New Zealand’s news media have world-wide interests, and the examples presented here, it would be amazing if it did not.

Yes, Ownership Does Matter

In addition, there is the issue of foreign versus local ownership. While it is quite clear from the examples I have given that local ownership is no guarantee of a variety of views, at the same time it is more likely to reflect local needs, and to use local talent. Perhaps even more importantly, foreign ownership immediately means heightened commercialism, since success in commerce is what has lead to the ability of the media transnationals to dominate their international markets. Their owners are likely to support conservative economic policies because it is in that environment that they have thrived. Paul Norris, who describes the extent of foreign ownership of New Zealand’s media as “without parallel in the developed world”, puts it this way:

“Does the extent of foreign ownership matter? Clearly it does. Foreign private owners have no particular concern for our national identity and culture. In television terms, why should they spend money on New Zealand programmes when they can import proven ratings winners for a fraction of the cost? To make a New Zealand documentary costs roughly ten times as much as an existing programme from the BBC, Australia, or some other foreign distributor. For a locally produced drama or mini-series, the differential is even greater”.

Australia takes these matters seriously enough to maintain the Australian Broadcasting Authority to monitor and research these issues. Australia’s media ownership laws, though constantly being defended against the media owners themselves, have for many years restricted both overseas ownership of the news media and cross-ownership of the different media – television, radio and newspapers. The current Australian government is in the process of removing restrictions on foreign ownership of the print media, but initial indications are that it may retain some regulation of cross-ownership. However even this is likely to be under threat in the negotiation of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement.

Restrictions on cross-ownership of the media exist in many other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

Such regulations attempt to use competition and ownership restrictions to encourage diversity of views and local content and control. Given that they do not address the problems caused by commercialism, and the continuing dominance of a few owners in even strongly regulated countries like Australia, the effect is useful but limited in effectiveness. Creating and strengthening publicly owned news sources and broadcasting are further options that many take. Even then, commercialisation through reliance on advertising can simply replicate the problems presented by privately owned media (as our own public TV channels have graphically shown).

Because of our commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), we would be restricted in the restrictions we could put on cross-ownership and foreign ownership of our broadcast media; yet we should be trying to do just this.

The evidence I have presented shows that in New Zealand, changes in the ownership, regulation and commercialisation of our media are long overdue.

Endnotes: The quote is from Richard Prebble, Minister of State-Owned Enterprises, on changes to New Zealand’s broadcasting rules, 1988. Detailed endnotes for this article are available from CAFCA on request.

That seems to be the opinion of the majority of reader-comments at reddit.

In response to an article that presented six U.S. criminal laws which clearly describe the most basic aspect of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email operation, and some of which U.S. laws specify up to 20 years imprisonment for it, the overwhelming opinion of commenters at reddit has been that if the FBI doesn’t recommend that the case regarding Clinton be pursued in court, then she should be (for all intents and purposes) considered and treated by voters to be innocent in the matter.

The reddit-commenters were commenting upon an article which opened by noting that these six laws were only the laws that describe the most basic aspects of what she unquestionably did — not necessarily all of the laws that she might be charged with breaking by her email operation. It was an article I wrote. Its opening said:

“This is not an exclusive list, nor does it relate to charges that might possibly be made against Ms. Clinton on grounds other than the unquestionable and basic ground that she moved all of her State Department email operation to a private and non-secured computer outside the State Department, and then attempted to destroy the record of those emails. Here are the six criminal laws of that type, which, I here allege, she clearly broke.” (For example: the speculation in the press, that she might be charged with RICO violations for abuse of her position as Secretary of State to enrich herself and her husband via their Clinton Foundation, was not relevant to the matter addressed in the article, which was far more basic than anything speculative.)

The viewpoint of the majority of reddit commenters seems to be that if the FBI doesn’t recommend legal action, then there should be no legal action, regardless of whether the reason why the FBI recommended no legal action might possibly have been that the U.S. President, and his appointee who heads the ‘Justice’ Department, have, in effect, ordered the FBI not to recommend legal action against the former Secretary of State — something that the public will probably have no way of knowing until the history books are written (if ever). (And, by that time, President Clinton’s Presidency might already be past history.)

The view of reddit readers on this matter seems therefore overwhelmingly to favor a ‘democracy’ in which the Executive branch may, if it so chooses, simply ignore the written laws of the country (specifically, in this case, the six laws that were listed).

Consequently, reader-comments are requested here below, responding to that opinion of the majority of commenting readers at reddit, by addressing the following question: Do you consider yourself to be living in a ‘democracy’ if the elected President of your country has taken an oath of office saying: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and if every one of his or her appointees (including the Secretaries of State, such as Hillary Clinton) has taken a similar oath of office, and if these officials have (or might have) demanded their subordinates not to pursue a certain legal case (one which, to pursue, could be the major factor determining whom the next U.S. President will be)?

Another question would be: Would this government be a ‘democracy’ if the lower-level official in the matter (whomever at the FBI possessed the authority in this matter) decided entirely on his or her own volition to ignore those six laws?

If such a decision were instead to have been made by the U.S. President and/or another person at a level above the FBI official, would that constitute obstruction of justice — a serious crime in any country?

Associated questions to these, regarding whether or not the majority of readers commenting at reddit upon this matter, are supporting their government even if their government violates the country’s clearly written laws, include this: How would a government of this description be, in principle, different from a “dictatorship”?

Another would be: Is this government legitimate? Is it even Constitutional?

And, some of the readers here might be interested to readthis article about what the term “democracy” means. None of the reader-comments at reddit even mentioned that, though the article that reddit-commenters were responding to hadlinked to it at its end.

In the context of all this, therefore, if one happens to decide that our government is neither Constitutional nor democratic, then another issue to be discussed here could be: Does this mean that a revolution is necessary; and, if it is, then how should it be done?

If a revolution is not necessary, then must the public accept that they are slaves to the existing government; or, if we are not slaves to it, then how are we not?

All of these are issues that are implicit in the original article, and thus in the comments that were posted to it at reddit. Since the latter seem to reflect the majority-view of the matter, responding to that, and keeping all of the issues that have been noted here in mind in doing so, would be especially appropriate. It would be public comment at a deeper level.

So: please post here your view of the reader-comments at reddit. Maybe there is a deeper level of public thinking about these matters, than what has been expressed by the readers at reddit. Maybe it’ll even be posted right here.

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

Brexit vote, European Union turmoil prompts reevaluation of world situation

Since the June 23 vote on whether the United Kingdom (UK) would “Leave” or “Remain” within the 28 member-state European Union (EU), uncertainty has accelerated not just in London but throughout the international community. The vote to Leave the EU by 52-48 percent of the electorate in England signaled the worsening of the already existing political crisis in relations between the UK and states on the European continent.

Global financial markets reacted to the new political situation through the crashing of stock trading, the decline in the value of the British pound, and a series of statements by the Bank of England in attempts to reassure the world capitalist class. Both the European Parliament in Brussels and their UK counterparts at Westminster have held acrimonious debates over the future of relations between Britain and the EU.

EU heads-of-state and parliamentarians are saying that London should evoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and exit from the regional bloc as soon as possible. The British are attempting to delay the exit by engaging in protracted negotiations over the terms of the severing of relations.

Under such circumstances the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney on July 5 held another press conference to report to the British public and the capitalist markets internationally that the financial system would have adequate liquidity to shield the economy from further shocks. In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote Carney suggested that this crisis would not rise to the level of the problems of 2007-2008 which triggered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Nonetheless, the British Daily Mail reported on July 5 that Carney “unveiled a move to boost lending by up to £150 billion under plans to contain the fallout of the Brexit vote as the pound plunged to fresh 31-year lows. Mr. Carney sought to assure that the Bank’s efforts to soften the impact of the EU referendum results were working, but he raised concerns over the vulnerability of debt-laden households to an economic slowdown. While he stopped short of repeating recession warnings, he said the UK faced the prospect of a ‘material’ slowdown in the economy and that risks the Bank had feared ahead of the referendum had begun to emerge.”

This same Daily Mail article went on to note specific examples of actions taken by firms in the real estate and equity industry which indicate potential large-scale problems in the short term which could easily hamper Britain’s standing in the broader global economy. All three major bond rating agencies, Standard & Poor, Fitch and Moody’s, have downgraded Britain’s credit status making it more difficult for corporations and financial institutions to borrow funds in line with other states.

According to the newspaper, “two investment firms suspended trading in their property funds as investors scrambled to pull their money out of UK commercial property holdings.

Aviva moved to halt trading in its £1.8 billion property fund, while asset manager M&G Investments temporarily suspended trading in its property portfolio and feeder fund.

Their decision comes a day after Standard Life Investments stopped dealing in its £2.7 billion UK Real Estate fund. The suspensions hit the pound, which dropped below 1.31 US dollars for the first time since 1985 and sunk to its weakest level against the euro since 2013 at 1.17 euros.

Sterling’s latest slide followed worse-than-expected figures for Britain’s dominant services sector last month.”

If these trends of conflict and subsequent fracturing of the UK-EU alliance continues it could disrupt the post-World War II economic and political construct which was a reflection of the dominant role of the United States in the international capitalist order. The Bretton Woods financial system, the Marshall Plan, the Potsdam Conference along with the emergence of the European Economic Community and the EU, has already suffered imbalances a quarter of a century ago with the overthrow of the socialist countries in Eastern Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

There has been an expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bringing into this imperialist military alliance many of the former socialist states in Europe leading to the encirclement of the Russian Federation, the ascendancy of a fascist-oriented regime in Ukraine and threats of further ultra-nationalist governments on the continent. Tensions are mounting between Washington, the UK, EU member-states on one side against Moscow, Beijing and its allies on the other.

Along with the weakening of the EU and the UK, an upsurge in right-wing intolerance and xenophobia in the UK and throughout Europe could cause deepening divisions within the NATO states and the economic implications of these developments would hamper the ability of central banks and global financial institutions to adequately stabilize the world capitalist system threatening another great depression and the potential for renewed world war.

Economic Uncertainty Compounded by Political Divisions

Inside UK politics there is a realignment of forces taking place on a rapid basis. The ruling Conservative Party along with their Labor counterparts campaigned for a Remain vote.

Prime Minister David Cameron the following day after the vote announced his resignation by October which has been pushed forward until September. Member of Parliament Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London, and a proponent of the Leave vote, was seen as being the heir apparent to Cameron.

However, Johnson, in a struggle over succession, was rejected by key players among the Tories including MP Michael Gove, who has announced his candidacy for the leadership post and consequently prime minister. Soon enough yet another figure, Home Secretary and MP Theresa May, who supported a Remain position, is also seeking the top post within the party. Altogether there are five different officials within the Tory party which are vying for the leadership post.

On the Labor Party side, the designated left-leaning leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who wanted the Remain vote to succeed as well, has been challenged by his parliamentary colleagues where a vote of no-confidence was held against him gaining 80 percent of his fellow MPs. Corbyn has since refused to step down prompting a threat to hold a general membership election. Whether Corbyn is successful in maintaining his position of leadership through a membership poll or not, the party would inevitably be ripped to shreds if an agreement between the various Labor factions is not negotiated.

This fracturing of the political landscape extends to Scotland where the Nationalist Party has threatened to hold another referendum on succession. In Northern Ireland, the nationalist movement is looking at a similar election saying they want to remain inside the EU.

These fissures in British politics are not unique within the western capitalist world during this period. Australia, which is a British settler extension of London, is facing the possibility of a hung parliament where Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is scrambling to form a viable government amid threats from his predecessor Tony Abbott who is being watched not only personally but also as it relates to the political future of the country.

The U.S. government, which is a close partner of both the UK and the EU member-states, is being placed in an awkward political situation having supported the Remain position however at the same time needing to navigate its foreign policy relations while such much animosity exists inside the UK and between London and Brussels.

As it relates to the instability within electoral politics in the U.S., the candidacy of Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump has caused much consternation inside and outside the party. Trump has interjected open racism into the campaign while the Democratic Party is plagued by the same problems considering the role of the Bill Clinton administration during the 1990s in further fostering the mass incarceration of African Americans and Latinos.

Credibility problems abound when the leading criminal investigative agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has to hold a national press briefing to announce that despite the violations of rules governing state department functionaries and officials, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, will not be recommended for indictment.

Africa and the World Capitalist Crisis

Although many African portfolios dealing with economic issues along with financial institutions have attempted to put a positive face on the open split within the EU and the rancorous character of the presidential elections in the U.S., a movement towards recession has already been well documented.

Over the last several months in Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa, the three largest economies on the continent, all of these heavily-populated states have experienced financial problems involving the decline in currency values, the rise in unemployment and the reemerging debt crisis which caused tremendous social problems during the period of the 1960s through the 1990s.

Bloomberg wrote on July 5 noting “The MSCI Emerging Markets Currency Index retreated 0.7 percent. It was little changed on Monday (July 5) after jumping 2 percent in the four days through Friday. The Mexican peso, Colombian peso and South African rand posted the steepest declines among 24 currencies.”

Dan Steinbock in an article published by seekingalpha.com emphasizes that “Whatever its final impact, in the short term, the UK’s EU referendum will increase global economic uncertainty, market volatility and economic risk. In Africa, most scenarios will prove costly, particularly among those economies highly exposed to UK trade, investment, banking and remittances.” (July 5)

This same writer goes on to say that this scenario was to be anticipated in light of the political trajectory taking place in Europe. He stresses after taking a tour of the EU member-states prior to the vote on June 23 that “Despite media headlines about ‘shock,’ the Brexit outcome was not a surprise. It reflects years of UK’s economic malaise following the global crisis, the European debt crisis, and the Britons’ ambivalence about the EU, the euro and integration.”

These developments illustrate the need for new regional alliances outside the framework of the world capitalist system. Many have placed hope within the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Summit which is seeking to establish alternative development funding and trade networks.

Nevertheless, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and China have been under attack by U.S. imperialism in an effort to halt its movements toward strengthening independent economic and political blocs. These setbacks for the so-called “emerging economies” will also have an impact on the West as well by closing markets for their products, reducing demand and generating social unrest.

The potential for other states within the EU to withdraw from the bloc is a major worry for the imperialist states. This discontent within both the Eastern and Western European states are largely emanating from the Right of the political spectrum but will ultimately generate negative outcomes for the capitalist class internationally. The priority for the developing countries and emerging markets remain centered on removing their vulnerabilities from the international capitalist system in order to achieve sustainable growth and development based on the interests of the majority of the world’s population.

 

Since 1999 the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) system has been under siege by successive Republican and Democratic state administrations. Politicians and business interests have viewed the district as a political and economic resource to the detriment of the city residents, students and parents.

Under the guise of improving the system, correcting inefficiency and stamping out corruption, the worst case-scenario has emerged leaving the largest per capita African American populated major city without an independent and self-governing school district. When the Michigan state legislature took control of the DPS in 1999, the district had a $93 million surplus with a voter-approved $1.5 billion bond issue aimed at school improvement.

Today after 17 years of undemocratic control and interference, the system is broken, largely insolvent and incapable of making rudimentary repairs to its buildings leaving students, teachers and administrators to work in deplorable conditions.  Earlier during 2016, teachers engaged in a series of “sick-outs” in response to the working conditions where leaking roofs, mole, mushrooms, heating problems and leaking water have become the norm in what is supposed to be a modern municipality.

The fragility of the system under a series of emergency managers from 1999 through 2005, and then again under the former Democratic Governor Jenifer Granholm in 2009, another dictator was appointed, in essence finishing off the system which has lost approximately 140,000 students. Over 200 school buildings have been closed along with thousands of teachers, counselors, social workers, administrators, clerics and other education employees forced out of their jobs.

In a recent phase of this state-controlled destruction of a school system, the Republican-dominated legislature has crafted yet another scheme that will only make matters worse in Detroit. No consideration was given to the needs and desires of the people of the city in order to perpetuate further disempowerment and underdevelopment. The entire aim was designed to carry out its objectives based upon an ideological aversion to public education and labor unions.

The local NBC affiliate in Detroit reported on June 21 saying “The Republican-controlled Senate passed a main bill 19-18 earlier this month, and the GOP-led House followed with a similar razor-thin 55-54 vote. Some Republicans joined all Democrats in opposition during an emotional debate that brought some lawmakers to tears. Snyder, who had warned legislators that insolvency would be disastrous for students and the state if the district ran short of money this summer — as it would have without further intervention — said in a statement that the measure is ‘fresh start’ and an ‘unprecedented investment for the education of Detroit’s children.’”

Such an assertion could not be further from the truth. The system of public education in Detroit has been stripped of any viability and quality. This is by no means an investment in students, educators and their communities but an act of colonial rule imposed for the purpose of exploitation and national oppression.

Aspects of Apartheid Education in Michigan

The emergency management system which has been imposed on school districts across the state as well as municipalities largely impacts majority African American districts. Systems in cities such as Highland Park, an independent municipal enclave surrounded by Detroit, and Inkster, a suburb of Detroit, have been entirely liquidated.

Charter school education which was designed and implemented during the 1990s has taken away the majority of students within Detroit and other municipalities. In Highland Park the charter system provides education for all residents of the city. This also holds true for Inkster where those not swallowed up by the charter system are sent to neighbouring districts.

The charter education system remains unaccountable to the State Board of Education structures and is allowed to function without adequate monitoring and controls. By and large charter schools resist unionization and therefore collective bargaining between the teachers and the administrations.

Consequently, under the charter school model there are extremely high turnovers of both educators and students. The education system is turned into an unwieldy “market place” where schools are like revolving doors failing to provide the stability, consistency and uniformity of standards that mark any successful teaching and learning system.

A June 28 lengthy article published in the New York Times on the travesties of charter school education in Detroit begins by focusing on “Ana Rivera [who] could have had almost any choice when it came to educating her two sons. For all the abandoned buildings and burned-down houses in her neighborhood in the southwest part of this city, national charter school companies had seen a market and were setting up shop within blocks of each other, making it easier to find a charter school than to buy a carton of milk. But hers became the story of public education in a city grasping for its comeback: lots of choice, with no good choice.” (Article written by Kate Zernike)

This same report continues noting that Rivera “enrolled her older son, Damian, at the charter school across from her house, where she could watch him walk into the building. He got all A’s and said he wanted to be an engineer. But the summer before seventh grade, he found himself in the back of a classroom at a science program at the University of Michigan, struggling to keep up with students from Detroit Public Schools, known as the worst urban district in the nation. They knew the human body is made up of many cells; he had never learned that. When his school stopped assigning homework, Ms. Rivera tried enrolling Damian at other charters, but the deadlines were past, the applications onerous. Finally, she found him a scholarship at a Catholic school, where he struggled to rise above D’s all year. ‘He doesn’t want to hear the word engineering, she said.”

The plight of Rivera is quite common in Detroit. Such stories abound amid a local school district disempowered by right-wing benign neglect coinciding with the forced subjugation of Detroit residence under financial stability agreements, emergency management, forced illegal bankruptcy and continuing “oversight” by an unelected review board appointed by politicians who work for the banks and multi-national corporations and not the people.

This New York Times article revealed that “Detroit now has a bigger share of students in charters than any American city except New Orleans, which turned almost all its schools into charters after Hurricane Katrina. But half the charters perform only as well, or worse than, Detroit’s traditional public schools. ‘The point was to raise all schools,’ said Scott Romney, a lawyer and board member of New Detroit, a civic group formed after the 1967 race riots here. ‘Instead, we’ve had a total and complete collapse of education in this city.’”

U.S. Fails to Implement Supreme Court Decision on Segregation 62 Years Later

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court in its Brown v. Topeka ruling declared that “separate but equal” education is inherently unequal and a violation of the constitution. Nonetheless, after six decades the conditions overall have not improved for African Americans and Latinos.

In a recent decision by the federal courts related to the public school system in Cleveland, Mississippi, it was found that the district still maintains segregated education for African American and white students. However, this district still receives federal and state funds to operate despite its continuation of the practices of racism.

Consequently, from Michigan to Mississippi, racism in education remains part and parcel of the nationally oppressive system of racial capitalism and apartheid. Moreover, these issues are not being discussed by politicians even during a national election year.

Neither the Democratic or Republican parties address the crisis in education inside the U.S. This clearly illustrates that the system of American capitalism cannot provide quality schooling for the growing majority of students of color which attend the public school systems throughout the country.

Therefore it is quite clear that the problems of racism and class bias within education cannot be divorced from the broader questions of national liberation and social justice. In order to build a viable education system for all students irrespective of race and class there must be fundamental transformation of the capitalist system guaranteeing people the right to learn on an equal basis. This can only be achieved under socialism where all forms of class exploitation and national oppression are eradicated.

No aspirant for high public office in US history is more despicably unworthy and dangerous – scandal-ridden, irreparably tainted, criminally culpable, a global menace if she succeeds Obama.

Ahead of America’s Independence Day weekend, FBI officials interviewed her over use of her private email server for official State Department business – storing easily hacked classified material.

According to her spokesman Nick Merrill, she “gave a voluntary interview…about her email arrangement while she was Secretary. She is pleased to have had the opportunity to assist the Department of Justice in bringing this review to a conclusion.

“Out of respect for the investigative process, (she) will not comment further…” She and husband Bill are notoriously tight-lipped about matters warranting close public scrutiny – high public office and personal crimes neither so far charged with or likely to be.

Over the holiday weekend, various media reported Hillary wouldn’t face criminal charges – now confirmed.

On Tuesday morning, FBI director James Comey said none are “appropriate” with regard to use of her private email server for official State Department business.

Calling her handling of classified information “extremely careless,” Comey claimed “no reasonable prosecutor” would file criminal charges.

Using her home-based personal server instead of the State Department’s could only have been to illegally, unethically and inappropriately, and unthinkably conceal information from other government officials she didn’t want knowing about on how she ran the department and conducted dirty business overall.

Deleting over 30,000 emails raises obstruction of justice issues. Conducting official State Department business from her personal unsecured residence server seems unthinkable. Circumventing higher authority and coverup appear likely explanations.

Her culpability on other issues and overall trustworthiness are other matters entirely.

Days earlier, one of my doctors involved in keeping me in working order asked how I thought Hillary’s scandal would go and if she’d be elected president.

I said yes to the latter because things are likely rigged to assure it. As for the former, I explained if he or I committed her offenses, we’d be in prison serving long sentences.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

Tactics of minimisation have been central to Hillary Clinton’s political career. When stumbling takes place, go for the established book of deflective rules.  When violations of the law take place, explain that it was normal at the time.  Suggest that others had engaged in a form of conduct only subsequently frowned upon.

Such tactics should be kept in the dustbin of history. For the Clintons, they have consistently worked, giving that particular not so holy family a particularly nasty sense of political entitlement. They remain the ghouls of the US political establishment, paying (or rather withholding) tribute to the dead ideas of liberalism.

Evidently, the inappropriate use of a private server to conduct what were classified communications and potentially accessible to third-parties, did not seem grave enough a breach to warrant criminal charges.

That was the preliminary finding by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is concluding its investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State.  The Bureau had received the referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General seeking answers on whether classified information had been transmitted on that personal system during her time in office.

The statement by its director, James B. Comey, is worth noting, as it shows the extent the former First Lady and Secretary of State has managed to escape yet another pickle of systematic indiscretion. It also shows the degree of singularity Comey was offering his own statement.

He claimed, for instance, to have “not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government.  They do not know what I am about to say.”

A rum sort of thing, especially given the prior remark that “the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest”. The only assumption one can draw from Comey here is that the FBI preferred to go it alone in this venture, bringing out the gory details less to inculpate the former Secretary than exonerate her.

There was a potentially two-pronged trap for Clinton: a felonious violation of a federal law on the subject of mishandling classified information either intentionally or a grossly negligent way; or the misdemeanour of knowingly removing classified information from “appropriate systems or storage facilities.” Investigations into possible intrusions were also made.

Comey’s statement describes a mess.  As Secretary of State, she used several email servers and relevant administrators, along with a host of mobile devices to view and convey emails via personal domains.

During the course of her stewardship at the Department, processes of replacement, storage and decommissioning took place. This compounded the problem, rendering the trail of messages fuzzy.  The decommissioning in 2013 of one of the original servers, for instance, saw the removal of email software that was “like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping and pieces on the floor.”  Hardly a picture of well drawn propriety on the part of the Secretary.

As for the emails Clinton proudly claimed she supplied to the Bureau for perusal – roughly 30,000 or so – 110 in 52 chains were “determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.”  Additional emails were also uncovered from the ether of deletions and archived email accounts of former employees, though these were generally deemed less significant.

The Bureau suggested that there was no clear evidence that Clinton or her aides “intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence they were extremely careless in their handling of very extensive, highly classified information.”

Comey speaks of his concern that many of the emails “should have been on any kind of unclassified system” a point made even graver by the fact that they “were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the US Government – or even with a commercial service like Gmail.”

Taking a snipe at another government organisation, the FBI also found that the State Department was distinctly lacking in a “security culture” of which use of unclassified email systems was symptomatic.  As to the issue of intrusion into the personal domains by “hostile actors,” a frank admission followed. While no evidence was detected, “we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence.”

The final assertion is interesting, if only because it shows how the FBI has an inherently soft view about Clinton’s conduct.  This may not be surprising: the Clintons have been regular subjects of investigations by Comey’s outfit.  The failed Arkansas real estate deal which became Whitewater and the Presidential pardons in January 2001 remain key events.

Evidence of potential violations of the relevant statutes may well exist, but in the view of the Bureau, “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”  There was, in the view of the investigators, no instance of wilful mishandling or clear intent in dealing with classified information, or exposure on a scale suggesting “inference of intentional misconduct”.

Officials have lost their jobs for less.  Administrative and legal sanctions, as admitted by Comey, have been levelled in similar circumstances.  State bureaucracies, as Max Weber reminds us with solemn gravity, guard secrets and their use with fanatical intensity.

Not, it would seem, on this occasion.  Clinton was spared, even if the FBI recommendation remains just that.  It was a textbook outcome pointing to the failures of consistent approaches all too familiar to that of her husband. Yet again, this eel of history escapes the realms of legality with institutional dispensation.

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

FBI Director James Comey announced Tuesday that his agency will not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server to handle government communications during her four years as secretary of state in the Obama administration.

Comey read out a lengthy prepared statement that criticized Clinton and her staff in harsh terms, saying they had been “extremely careless” in the handling of classified information. However, he said, this conduct did not rise to the level of criminal violations, concluding that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring criminal charges in this case.

The FBI director began by admitting that it was highly unusual for him to present his findings in a public statement, but that it was appropriate because of the widespread interest in the case. He then declared: “I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.”

This disavowal of any pressure from inside the Obama administration was made necessary by the week-long furor provoked by the half-hour private meeting last Monday between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton.

The Attorney General oversees FBI operations and would normally have the final say on any decision to prosecute. By Friday, Lynch was compelled to declare that she would not overrule the FBI recommendation on the Hillary Clinton email case, whatever it was, although she would still “review” it.

By Comey’s account, of the 30,000 emails stored on Clinton’s private server and returned to the State Department by her attorneys, 110 “have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.” The term “owning agency” refers to the agency which originated a chain of emails, frequently one of the intelligence agencies with more restrictive classification standards than the State Department.

Comey said the FBI review found that the “security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified email systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.”

This comment sheds light on a protracted conflict within the federal government apparatus, beyond the partisan disputes between the Obama administration and its Republican congressional opponents. CIA and NSA officials in particular, joined here by the FBI, have responded to the public exposure of secret NSA spying operations, CIA torture at detention camps, and CIA and Pentagon drone-missile assassination programs, by demanding a tighter lid on information about such activities.

Most of the information deemed “secret” in the Clinton emails was retroactively classified by one of the intelligence agencies. Emails were reclassified as secret even in cases where they merely forwarded to Clinton’s attention media reports about alleged secret US government activities.

This classification process has little to do with keeping US operations secret from foreign governments or terrorist groups—the invariable pretext for such security procedures. The real purpose is to keep these operations secret from the American people, who are the real targets of most government spying, and the potential victims of torture and assassination by the government that claims, falsely, to represent them.

As Comey outlined it, there were three possible charges that could have been brought against Clinton or her aides: intentional mishandling of classified information or grossly negligent mishandling, both felonies; and knowingly removing classified information from appropriate systems, a misdemeanor.

In explaining the decision not to bring any such charges, Comey reviewed the criteria required for bringing similar charges in past cases. “All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice,” he said. “We do not see those things here.”

The distinction drawn here is between Clinton, whose mishandling of classified material was carried out in her own self-interest, and others, like Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, who made classified material available to the public, exposing the crimes of US imperialism.

Left out entirely from the investigation was the content of Clinton’s emails, which in many cases dealt with real crimes for which she bears responsibility. The subject matters ranged from her role in orchestrating a right-wing coup in Honduras to the fomenting of wars for regime change in Libya and Syria that have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands, to her signing off on drone assassinations in Pakistan.

The FBI decision would seem to remove the last major obstacle to Clinton’s becoming the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. The announcement came only three days after Clinton was interrogated by an FBI task force for several hours about her role in the establishment and use of the private email server.

It follows by one week the report of the House committee established to investigate the death of four US diplomats and security agents in Benghazi, Libya in 2012. It found no evidence to support the right-wing campaign blaming Clinton personally for the killings carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, while ignoring the operation underlying this fiasco, the CIA’s funneling of arms and “foreign fighters” from Libya into Syria.

Given the length of the report Comey has delivered to the Attorney General, the bulk of it must have been written well before Clinton’s interview Saturday, suggesting that the decision not to bring charges was made some time ago.

The timing of Comey’s announcement was clearly political: three weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where Clinton will be nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate. A decision to prosecute would have thrown the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party as a whole into deep crisis.

For this reason, it is reasonable to conclude that the US military-intelligence apparatus has decided to throw its considerable weight behind Clinton, or at the very least, to avoid placing a major obstacle in her path to the White House.

Amid continuing protests against the Socialist Party government’s (PS) reactionary labor law, Prime Minister Manuel Valls again used Article 49-3 of the French constitution yesterday to impose a new draft of the law in the National Assembly without a vote. Just outside the Assembly, riot police kettled a protest by several hundred people on Concorde Bridge.

The PS also imposed unprecedented security restrictions at yesterday’s protests in cities across France, which were timed to coincide with the presentation of the bill in the National Assembly. The starting point of the protest in Paris, Italy Square, was barricaded and surrounded by riot police. Protesters arriving at the march had to undergo three searches, including with a full-body pat-down, before reaching the square.

After using Article 49-3 to ram a first draft of the labor law through the Assembly in May, and issuing an extraordinary threat to ban a June 24 protest under the state of emergency, the PS’ gesture is a signal that it will stop at nothing to ram through its anti-social agenda. It has trampled over overwhelming popular opposition to the law ever since it was first presented in March. Amid the unprecedented crisis caused by the British vote to exit the European Union (EU), and facing a likely economic crash, the PS intends to rapidly impose the law’s anti-working class provisions.

The new draft of the bill presented to the Assembly yesterday arrived from the Senate, where the right-wing majority had eliminated all the token changes to the law the PS had made as concessions in the face of mass protests. They cut out programs for unemployed youth and reinstated limits on penalties judges can impose on employers who carry out sackings in violation of existing labor law.

None of these changes modified the essential content of the law: lengthening working hours, undermining younger workers’ job security and, above all, allowing unions and management at individual workplaces to negotiate contracts violating the Labor Code.

Before presenting the bill to the Assembly yesterday, the PS again added another minor change to the bill, a provision allowing unions and employers in each industry to negotiate agreements specifying how firm-level contracts can violate currently existing, industry-wide contracts. Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri insisted, however, that this was a purely symbolic change: “What we are proposing does not in any way modify the importance we want to give to firm-level contracts, but it will reaffirm the role of industry-level agreements.”

This measure will impose no meaningful control on the anti-worker measures that the unions and bosses will negotiate, and in any case, the Senate will once again be free to remove it.

The purpose of this maneuver is to allow the PS and the union bureaucracies to try to defuse social anger and to claim they are negotiating in the interests of the workers, whereas the law is just as harmful to the workers as the day it was first presented. “The clarifications on industrial-level agreements are useful to reassure workers,” stated the French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC) union, which supports the labor law.

“Without weakening the law, we want to avoid looking like we are frozen in place,” an adviser to President François Hollande explained, stressing that the PS still had to be careful due to explosive popular opposition: “We have repeatedly thought in the last four months that we had seen a way clear of this crisis.”

The central element that is emerging is the gulf separating the working class from the political parties and trade unions on the periphery of the PS. Many of these forces criticized the labor law and organized the protests against it. However, all of them had called for a vote for the PS in 2012, and all of them supported a perspective of negotiating with the PS in order to obtain whatever modifications Hollande was willing to make to the law.

No party was oriented to the task objectively posed by the eruption of a movement of the working class against the PS: mobilizing workers’ opposition to austerity independently of maneuvers between the PS and the unions, and linking it on a revolutionary and socialist platform to growing movements of the working class across Europe—in Belgium, Greece, and beyond. The sentiments driving masses of workers and youth found no genuine reflection among any of the existing political forces.

Three-fourths of the population opposes the law, and workers and youth are ever more drawing the conclusion that it is impossible to negotiate any agreement with the PS. Facing financial pressure due to repeated strike actions, and beginning to shed illusions that the current protests will stop the implementation of the bill, broader layers of workers and youth are increasingly turning away from the regularly-scheduled union protests.

The PS, the union federations and pseudo-left parties like the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) hope to use this as an opportunity to wrap up the protests—allowing the PS to ram the law through and start the process of negotiating concessions contracts in workplaces across France.

“PS members or trade unionists, everyone is tired,” a government minister told Libération. “We have to get to the end of this, even if this means disappearing down a mouse hole.”

In the run-up to yesterday’s protest, Workers Force (FO)—which, together with the Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and the NPA-linked Solidarity Union Democracy (SUD) union, organized protests against the law—indicated that it opposed the action.

Last week, FO leader Jean-Claude Mailly told La Croix that he “did not want” yesterday’s protest in Paris to take place, adding, “it is becoming complicated.” He peremptorily announced an end to the protests until September: “There are no demonstrations this summer, people are going on vacation.”

The continuing desire to fight among workers and youth protesting the labor law yesterday, reflecting the broader anger against austerity building among workers in France and across Europe, is diametrically opposed to the positions of Mailly.

The WSWS spoke to Quentin, a university student, at the protest yesterday in Paris. “Today, I cannot see based on the PS’ actions how it can claim to be a left-wing party,” he said. “I voted for Hollande in 2012 because I did not want either the ultra-free market policies of [right wing President] Nicolas Sarkozy or the authoritarian policies of Marine Le Pen. And then we ended up getting both.”

Quentin added that the Brexit crisis raised both the crisis of EU institutions and the rise of far-right nationalism. “Now the situation in Europe is getting very political, and the struggle against the labor law is a clear example of this,” he said, adding: “We know very well that this is a law that the EU Commission wants to see passed.”

Later today, the Chilcot Inquiry in to the 2003 invasion of Iraq publishes its report. If it says what it is widely expected to say, it could pave the way to a former Prime Minister being impeached by Members of the House Of Commons for possible war crimes. It would be an action so momentous, it could be described as unprecedented. The Article of Impeachment has not been used since the Napoleonic Wars, while a former Prime Minister being arrested for supposed misconduct in high office has never happened.

Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister under discussion, would not be the first in history who probably should have gone to prison, but he is potentially the first who will. His own successor as Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is almost certain to argue for it.

While most people arguing that any Western involvement in the Middle East is “all-about-oil” usually mean it in an over-simplistic way, the war of 2003 was certainly strongly connected to oil. It is in the context of the region’s history with oil that the possibility of Blair’s impeachment must be studied.

Oil was first discovered in Mesopotamia in 1902. Before that time, Britain’s interests in the Middle East were somewhat sporadic. The UK’s main concern there was controlling the Suez Canal; so long as the Suez was in British hands, it kept open communication and transport links to India, and gave a channel from which to counter potential threats to India from the Russian Empire. (This was the reason why Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister in 1878, took control of Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire at the Congress of Strasbourg. The deal gave Britain a base from which to guard the Suez, and in exchange Disraeli agreed to extend military support to Turkey in the event of a war against Russia.)

But after 1902, British fascination with the Middle East, particularly Mesopotamia, increased instantly and dramatically, and has been an almost-constant feature of international affairs ever since. It played dominant roles in the aftermath of each World War. Indeed, it was the British who partitioned Mesopotamia and renamed the bulk of it ‘Iraq’.

In the 114 years since oil was discovered there, the British have been at war with, or occupying, Iraq, for, by my calculations, 56 of them – almost exactly half of the region’s ‘Oil Age’. I would suggest that that is long enough to count as an outright colonisation.

Now Tony Blair always maintains that his wish for war in 2003 was based on a moral desire to see a brutal dictator – Saddam Hussein – removed from power. That claim on his part is probably true, and his calamitous behaviour is more a matter of naivety – seeing complex international concerns as Star Wars-style battles between good and evil – than greed.

But the fact that it was possible for Blair to take the country to war cannot be put down just to the fact that he was Prime Minister. Many, many other elements, within the state, within commerce, within financial elites, would have had to be in favour too, and their motives will probably not have been the same as Blair’s. Their approval would more likely have fitted into the past pattern of domination, resource-greed, and cynical economic interests. Certainly a key concern among war-mongers in the USA would have been preserving the oil-dependent value of the otherwise almost-useless American dollar; it is only because, since the early-1970’s, oil transactions have had to be carried out in US dollars, and every country needs constant supplies of oil, that American currency is still worth anything at all. Iraq, between 2000 and 2002 had attempted to switch from trading oil for dollars to trading oil for euros.

Other interests would have seen the opportunities for Western construction firms to make a killing rebuilding a post-war Iraq. And of course many more simply would have seen a grand opportunity to control Iraq’s oil exports, and keep them from ending up in the hands of Communist China. It all fits in with the British (and latterly American) pattern of the last 114 years in Mesopotamia and Iraq perfectly.

When looking at that pattern, Blair’s perspective looks utterly skewed. He saw the Ba’athist regime, and Saddam Hussein, as cancerous monstrosities turning Iraq into a ‘problem state’. What he failed to notice was that Iraq was no problem to the British. I Iraq has never invaded Britain, it does not steal resources from Britain, it does not interfere in Britain’s processes of government. On the contrary, it is Britain that has long been the problem for Iraq. Even the Ba’athist regime was propped up by the military supplies of the British arms industry.

But the patronising mentality of former Imperial powers made it impossible for Blair to see the relationship in that way. The British were the rich, mighty country, long firmly-established among the world’s elite powers, the country that was more advanced, the country that was ahead, the country that had ‘made good’. Therefore Iraq simply had to be the country that was doing everything wrong, therefore Iraq hadto be the problem and the paternalistic British Government had to be ‘the solution’. Britain therefore had to help Iraq to ‘grow up’, had to teach it how to behave.

In Blair’s mind, anyone against this was obviously equally as ‘immature’ as Saddam’s regime. So Blair thought it was acceptable to lie, to exaggerate, to present flimsy evidence as unassailable truth, to throw away any number of innocent lives in both countries and others, and above all to try and scare his own population with fantasy stories about a military threat posed by Iraq, all in order to teach Iraq its lesson. In truth, that threat had been neutered by the First Gulf War in 1991, and kept suppressed by brutally harsh sanctions imposed at Anglo-American insistence. Most people realised it; any chemical weapons still in Saddam’s possession would be long past their expiry dates, and would no longer be effective. But the lie was justified to Blair, the sacrifice of lives was justified to Blair, the scaring of the public was justified to Blair, because he just knew better than everybody else. It is a familiar mindset among devoutly religious people, and Blair has never made any secret of his Christian faith.

That brand of violent arrogance, even if it has a moral aim at its root, simply cannot be tolerated in a Prime Minister. It is the tipping point where a Prime Minister in a secular democracy assumes his religious beliefs mean he is unaccountable to his people. That is the antithesis of secular democracy. When that behaviour becomes evident, it must be clamped down on, hard enough to deter any subsequent Prime Minister from assuming he or she can behave similarly. If it leads a Prime Minister to declare a poorly-planned and deeply-destabilising war, against the public’s wishes, then he has undoubtedly become a war criminal.

That is why, should Chilcot’s findings prove strong enough, I want Tony Blair to be impeached.

And yes, eventually, I want him to go to prison.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in deconfliction mode with the West after a wild ride of two and a half years of military and diplomatic tensions.

In a wide ranging policy speech at a biannual meeting of Russian ambassadors on July 1, Putin did not just go through the regular litany of complaints over the West ignoring Russia’s interests, NATO expansion, U.S. unilateralism, missile defense and overthrowing regimes in “color revolutions.” He eschewed saber-rattling over NATO’s decisions to deploy additional forces in the Baltics, called Western countries partners in creating a “broad anti-terrorist front,” and emphasized Russia’s interest in “close cooperation with the United States on international affairs.”

Only two weeks before, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin said Russia accepted the United States as the “only superpower” and wanted to work with it, provided the United States kept its democracy lectures to itself. On a visit to Finland a few days ago, Putin agreed to hold a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council after NATO’s Warsaw summit this week, accepted NATO’s proposal for preventing military air and sea incidents and instructed Russia’s defense minister to fly Russian military planes over the Baltic Sea with their transponders on.

Since early 2016, Putin and other senior Russian officials have been signaling Moscow’s interest in de-escalating tensions with the West. They want to normalize relations Moscow views as going back to pre-Crimea, bracketing it out as Russia and the West managed to do after Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia, without any rollback of Russian policies to exert control over Ukraine.

Moscow has been taking stock of its forceful policies to reassert Russia’s status as a global power and to rollback the expansion of Western institutions into the former Soviet space that Russia views as its rightful sphere of influence. These policies of managed confrontation with the West over Ukraine and later Syria have been widely popular with the domestic audience in Russia — over 60 percent think Russia’s foreign policy is successful — and boosted Putin’s domestic support to stratospheric levels.

Yet, actual policy results have been somewhat underwhelming. Moscow has proven its ability to wreck Ukraine to prevent it from joining Western alliances. But the costs have been enormous both in terms of Western economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and a ruined relationship with a close neighbor. Yet, the West has refused to recognize Russia’s sphere of influence and has ignored calls to flesh out a new Yalta agreement on the post-Cold War settlement. Moscow’s military position with regard to the West has actually deteriorated as NATO began applying the worst-case assumptions to Moscow’s irresponsible saber-rattling and unpredictable behavior and began planning for additional troop deployments, a race Moscow could not win. The policy of aggressively deterring the United States and NATO was fast approaching a point of diminishing returns.

Russia has weathered the sanctions’ impact and its economy did not collapse. But the sanctions have been limited and it became clear that a more forceful Western response, like bans on exports to the EU and the suspension of SWIFT transactions could have resulted in a devastating blow to Russia’s economy, while a pivot to Asia proved harder to achieve.

Moscow’s daring military intervention in Syria in 2015 succeeded in piercing Russia’s isolation over Ukraine and was somewhat breathtakingly hailed as the country’s ascension to the elite club on a par with the United States, capable of deploying military force abroad to affect political outcomes. Russia may have rescued Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime from a military defeat, but its investment of blood and treasure has bought it only more Assad and some limited cooperation with the United States. Now, almost a year after its intervention, Moscow is still stuck in Syria and is on the verge of owning its mess of a civil war — Iran is sharing in this investment. It desperately needs a political exit to declare victory and go home, but that could only be engineered through cooperation with the United States, Turkey (hence the latest rapprochement) and Saudi Arabia.

We bring to the attention of our readers the full text of FBI director James Comey’s statement concerning Hillary Clinton’s emails.

No criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. That was to be expected. Political pressure was exerted on both the FBI and the Justice Department.

It should nonetheless be noted that the FBI confirmed that there was on the part of Hillary Clinton “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information”

Moreover, the FBI statement describes Hillary Clinton as “extremely careless in … the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”.  

What kind of decision-making can we expect if  Hillary Clinton were to be elected president of the United States. Do the American people want an “extremely careless” president who has been under prior investigation by the the FBI. The question of carelessness  is of particular relevance in relation to US Foreign Policy. Hillary Clinton is on record: she supports the use of nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis,  

“the nuclear option should not at all be taken off the table. That has been my position consistently.” (ABC News, December 15, 2015)

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” (ABC “Good Morning America.”, quoted by Reuters, April 22, 2008)

“Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today [Al Qaeda, Daesh-ISIS] we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.  (Transcript of CNN interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd0fLAbV1cA )

Bear in mind this FBI report below does not address the alleged fraudulent activities of the Clinton Foundation.  (M. Ch. GR Editor)

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF FBI JAMES COMEY’S STATEMENT

emphasis added by Global Research

Good morning. I’m here to give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.

After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.

This will be an unusual statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. Second, I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.

I want to start by thanking the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am so grateful and proud of their efforts.

Video on CSPAN of FBI Director James Comey’s Statement

So, first, what we have done:

The investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.

Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.

Consistent with our counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with the personal e-mail server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.

I have so far used the singular term, “e-mail server,” in describing the referral that began our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together — to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work — has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.

For example, when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused — or “slack” — space. We searched through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back together.

FBI investigators have also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided by Secretary Clinton to the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.

The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.

This helped us recover work-related e-mails that were not among the 30,000 produced to State. Still others we recovered from the laborious review of the millions of e-mail fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in 2013.

With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”

I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account — or even a commercial account like Gmail — there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.

It could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as “personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014.

The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.

It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.

We have conducted interviews and done technical examination to attempt to understand how that sorting was done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.

And, of course, in addition to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from those involved in setting up and maintaining the various iterations of Secretary Clinton’s personal server, to staff members with whom she corresponded on e-mail, to those involved in the e-mail production to State, and finally, Secretary Clinton herself.

Last, we have done extensive work to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.

That’s what we have done. Now let me tell you what we found:

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government — or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.

While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.

With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.

So that’s what we found. Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of Justice:

In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.

I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.

I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation—including people in government — but none of that mattered to us. Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this organization.

 

This has been an amazing week which saw the first clear sign of the collapse of the EU and Turkish President Erdogan presenting his excuses to Russia for the downing of a Russian SU-24 over Syria 7 month ago. While the latter event was largely eclipsed by the former, it might be the sign of something even more dramatic taking place: the collapse of Turkey.

Does that seem like hyperbole?

Let’s look again.

The Presidency of Erdogan has been nothing short of cataclysmic for Turkey which resulted in a perfect storm of crises, each of the very serious:

1) Crisis in Syria: the Turkish policy of support for Daesh to overthrow Assad has failed. Abjectly so. Not only is Assad still in power, but the latest bombing in Turkey seem to indicated that Daesh is turning against Turkey now (assuming the official explanations is true, which it might not be as we will discuss below). The entire Syria policy of Erdogan is now in shambles.

2) Crisis with the EU: the last thing the Brits did before Brexiting was to tell Turkey that it could join the EU in 3000 years. Other EU member states were not as direct, but everybody knows that this is true. Furthermore, the grand Erdogan-Merkel friendship and alliance has completely fizzled out.

3) Crisis with the Armenians: when the German Parliament recognized the genocide of the Armenians and, soon thereafter, so did the Pope, it was pretty darn clear that the western powers that be were sending Turkey a simple message: a raised middle finger. Love story over, screw you!

4) Crisis with the USA: US special forces have now been spotted in Iraq wearing Kurdish badges. While minor, this incident is telling and has greatly angered the Turks. Bottom line: the Empire needs the Kurds in Iraq and Syria and Turkey takes second place right now.

5) Crisis with Iran: by supporting Daesh, by trying to sabotage the “Islamic pipeline” and by trying to overthrow Assad, Turkey has completely alienated Tehran.

6) Crisis with the Kurds: by engaging in an even more brutal level of anti-Kurdish violence the Turks have basically re-ignited a full scale civil war and the Kurds are showing no signs of getting weaker. In fact, they are currently more powerful than ever, courtesy of the US invasion of Iraq.

7) Crisis with NATO: following the downing of the Russian SU-24 NATO clearly indicated to Erdogan that he was on his own and that NATO would not get involved in a Turkey-triggered war.

8) Crisis with Russia: the downing of the SU-24 did not result in the expected Russian military response, but resulted in 7 months of crippling economic sanctions by Russia and an enormous loss of prestige by Turkey. More about this later.

So, this can be all summed up by saying that Turkey under Erdogan has shown a truly Ukrainian-level of incompetence, arrogance and delusion.

It is in this, truly dramatic, context that Erdogan had to write his letter of apology.

The first thing which should be said about this is that Erdogan took a major political risk: after spending months chest-thumping and declaring uri et orbi that Turkey will never, ever, apologize if only because Turkey was in the right, this sudden “zag!” puts Erdogan is a very difficult position. Hence the initial rumors that the letter said that he was “sorry” but not “apologizing” or, second variant, that the apology was only to the family of the murdered Russian pilot, but not to Russia. This did not last too long and pretty soon the bewildered Turks gave up trying to give this apology a face-lift. It was exactly what everybody understood it to be: a real full and humiliating apology.

Next there was a statement of the Turkish foreign minister categorically denying that any compensation would be paid. That too lasted a couple of hours until it was admitted that not only would Turkey pay, but Turkey would pay whatever was demanded.

Finally, there is a very real possibility that the bombing of the airport in Ankara Istambul might be a very direct message sent to Erdogan: “if you try to appease the Russians we will unleash hell on you”. And while Daesh is a prime candidate for sending that kind of message, there are other possible candidates: the US, of course, and the Turkish deep-state. To make matters even more complicated, we should not discard any scenario as impossible, including the possibility that Erdogan himself, and his supporters, engaged in a false-flag event to justify 1) cooperation with Russia against terrorism and 2) turning against Daesh.

Right now, the official version (Daesh did it) makes sense to me, but I would not discount any other possibility.

What is certain is that the stakes in Turkey are now sky-high and that Erdogan is fighting for his future and, possibly, the future of Turkey as a state. His opening towards Russia and, at the same time, Israel is a clear sign of despair. If only because Russia is unlikely to offer much in terms of rewards for the following reasons:

First, the Russians are now deeply suspicious of Erdogan and consider him a loose cannon, possibly a lunatic, who cannot be trusted and who can make a zag after every zig.

Second, the letter was a first, necessary, step to reopen negotiations, but the negotiations themselves will be a long process. Foreign Ministers Lavrov and Cavusoglu will begin these negotiations this week, but the number of issues to be discussed in very long. Most importantly, the Russians will demand tangible and important steps from Turkey, especially in Syria and in regards to Turkey sponsored terrorism in Russia and the Ukraine. It is by no means clear to me that Erdogan will be willing to make such major concessions. Officially, I expect a lot of smiles and hopeful declarations, but behind closed door the Russians will be making many tough demands. It is not clear to me that Ergodan could yield to the Russian demands even if he wanted to.

Erdogan really appears to have deluded himself that he is some kind of major player and he is now discovering that he is not. What is even worse, he now probably realizes that he has many dangerous enemies and no friends at all.

Potentially, Russia could offer Turkey a lot, way more than just a return to better relations, tourists and a market for Turkish vegetables. But my feeling is that Erdogan is turning to Russia in despair and to improve his bargaining position towards all the others enemies he has made. The problem is that he Russians probably see that too and that they will be very cautious, even if they hide this caution behind all manners of nice diplomatic language.

I might be wrong here, but I think that the Russians want Erdogan out. In their minds they have already “Saakashvilized” him if only because Turkey is an extremely important country, strategically located and Russia cannot afford to have a delusional lunatic ruling it. Furthermore, the Turkish people have a major problem on their hands: a severe case of multiple personality disorder. They have to decide if they want to be secular Europeans, “Young Turk” neo-Fascist nationalists, Islamic radicals, Kemalist secularists? Do they want an impossible mono-ethnic Turkey or can they accept that others not only live there too, but also that these “others” lived in these lands long before the Turkic nomads invaded them? Right now, Turkey is anti-European, anti-Russian, anti-Armenian, anti-Kurdish, anti-Armenian, anti-Christian, anti-Arabic, anti-Persian, anti-Greek, etc. That makes Turkey a big powder keg which any spark could detonate. And the problem for Russia is that this powder keg is uncomfortably close and deeply involved in the Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

What this all means is that it is in Russia’s strategic interest to have a responsible and trustworthy partner to deal with. Sadly, I don’t see that as very likely because, just as in the case of the Ukraine and Israel, the problem with Turkey is that this an artificial, illegitimate and fundamentally unsustainable country.

Israel, the Ukraine and Turkey are all built on a rabidly nationalist/racist worldview which offers no hope to anybody that does not agree with this worldview. This is why, for the Turks, the Kurds are either “mountain Turks” or “terrorists” who deserve to be shot. It would be naïve to the extreme to think that the mindset which made the genocide of Armenians, along with many other minorities (Christian Assyrians, Syrians, Chaldeans and Greeks), has somehow disappeared especially if we keep in mind that a) the Turks still deny the reality of this genocide and b) that this genocide has never stopped, but only slowed down:

Genocide, besides the actual physical destruction of the members of the target group, aims also to erase all traces of the target group’s identity, through forced assimilation. In the Armenian case, it was mainly women and children who were forced to convert to Islam, adopting Turkish or Kurdish names and thus lost their Armenian identity over time. Another measure of the genocidal process is deleting all traces of the population who have been massacred or driven away by such deportations. This includes destruction of all buildings and monuments while renaming all the names of villages, towns, rivers, and other things that can attest to the presence of Armenians in the area. In 1914, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople presented a list of Armenian sacred places that were under his supervision. The list contained 2,549 religious sites of which 200 were monasteries while 1,600 were churches. A survey in 1974 showed that only 916 Armenian churches could be identified within Turkey’s borders, half of which were almost completely destroyed and among the rest only ruins of 252 items remained. The authorities have also renamed almost all villages, towns, mountains, and rivers in Armenia and changed their historical Armenian name to Turkish ones. This policy continues even in our days when, for example, the Turkish Interior Ministry announced in 2005 that it would rename certain animal Latin names since they had “separatist tendencies”. Armeniana Ovis (sheep) would be renamed Ovis orientalis Anatolicus, while Capreolus Capreolus Armenus (deer) would be called Capreolus Capreolus capreolus. Even Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica (red fox) was to be renamed Vulpes Vulpes. The proposal was rejected by UNESCO, the UN agency in charge of these data, referring to the unfounded the Turkish reasons for the changes (source)

And then there is Cyprus, which the Turks still illegally occupy. Again, such levels of violence in and around artificial and illegitimate countries is something normal and not a temporary fluke (see: the Ukraine and Israel).

What this all means for Russia is that while the Kremlin will warmly welcome Erdogan’s latest “zag” and while efforts will be made to return to a more or less situation, the only possible long term goal for Russia is to support either the break-up or the federalization of Turkey into some kind of more or less civilized country. The good news for Russia is that she really need not make any special efforts towards that goal as the Turks, just like the Israelis and the Ukrainians, are doing a splendid job making sure that their political project never becomes viable. The best thing Russia can do at this point in time is to brace for the likely flare-up of violence in Turkey and try to protect herself, and her allies, from the inevitable fallout.

As for Turkey – the future looks very grim. The latest move to court Russia and Israel will not meaningfully improve the strategic situation for Turkey. At best, it will give the appearance of a pseudo-regional détente. But nothing else will change unless the Turkish state itself changes and that is something that the Turkish people do not seem to be willing to accept, at least not in the foreseeable future.

It took two years and a mind-boggling $7 million for House Republicans to finally complete an exhausting 800-page report on Benghazi that largely reiterates a lot of the information Judicial Watch has already released since the 2012 terrorist attacks on the Special Mission Compound in Libya. That amounts to a staggering $8,750 a page for material piled into an insufferable document that doesn’t even contain a smoking gun.

Nevertheless, members of the Benghazi Select Committee released the findings of their tiresome investigation this week with great fanfare, as if they had uncovered earth-shattering information during their lengthy probe. The reality is that most of the material had already been divulged to the public, much of it by Judicial Watch which has litigated in federal court to uncover the truth about Benghazi and published two special reports (read them here and here) on the attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The millions it cost to conduct this particular congressional probe could have been better spent. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media is having a field day pointing out that the two-year investigation produced no bombshells. One national newspaper editorial says that it’s hard to imagine a bigger waste of government resources.

Here’s the spark notes version of the report highlights for those who don’t have the stomach—or time—to go through hundreds of pages; the military was never deployed to help save the victims, the Special Mission Compound didn’t have adequate security and the Obama administration knowingly lied to the American people by claiming the attack was a spontaneous protest ignited by an obscure anti-Muslim internet video. All of this is old news that was unearthed and disseminated long ago. Before the first anniversary of the Benghazi attacks Judicial Watch had obtained records and reported that a group of approximately 150 heavily armed Islamist militia members attacked the U.S. diplomatic mission. Subsequent to that Judicial Watch got ahold of droves of government files showing that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Obama administration officials knew in real time that the Benghazi attackers were “armed extremists.”

Back in 2014 Judicial Watch reported that the U.S. military had a multitude of forces in the region surrounding Libya when terrorists attacked the Special Mission in Benghazi, but the order from the administration was to stand back as the violent ambush unfolded. A retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Randall R. Schmidt, provided Judicial Watch with a detailed Navy map pointing the specific locations of all the forces—including dozens of destroyers and amphibious assault ships—that could have responded to the attack. Schmidt got the information after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Navy while he investigated how the military responded to the Benghazi massacre. Last year Judicial Watch uncovered Department of Defense (DOD) documents that show the U.S. military was poised and ready to respond immediately and forcefully against terrorists in Benghazi. In an email to State Department leadership, then DOD Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash immediately offers “forces that could move to Benghazi” during the attack and reveals that “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” Years earlier then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta explained the administration’s lack of military response to the nearly six-hour-long attack like this: “Time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

In 2013 Judicial Watch obtained documents showing that the State Department hired an inexperienced and virtually unknown foreign company to protect American interests in the dangerous North African country long known to be infested with terrorists. The State Department paid the obscure and untested British firm, Blue Mountain Group, $794,264 for nearly 50,000 guard hours to secure the U.S. compound. British government sources said that even they were unfamiliar with Blue Mountain and in fact the Brits used a different—certainly more competent—security company to protect their mission in Libya. It’s not like the State Department wasn’t aware of the eminent dangers in Benghazi. In fact, the agency knew for years that weak security at American embassies and consulates worldwide could result in a tragedy like Benghazi yet senior officials failed to act. Benghazi was simply one of a long string of security failures that date back more than a decade, according to a probe conducted by an independent panel of security and intelligence experts.

It is hard to imagine how one person could do so much wrong and never once be charged with a crime. Even worse she was elected to the U.S. Senate, was nominated to be Secretary of State and confirmed to be Secretary of State by the U.S. Senate. Now she is about to be “anointed” the President of the United States of America by the Democratic National Committee and Obama in spite of the fact that she is the subject of two FBI criminal investigations.

One of the investigations is about her illegal use of an unsecured private server to conduct Official Government business and the other is an investigation into the activities of the Clinton Foundation. However Obama’s recent enthusiastic public endorsement of her to be President proves that he has ordered the Department of Justice to refuse to file any charges against her no matter how strong a case the FBI presents to the Department of Justice.

Many people refer to Hillary as the “devil”, with good reason. I actually began to refer to her that way years ago and then began to hear other people do the same thing. Recently I saw a news clip of one of her carefully choreographed speeches, to a carefully screened audience where she actually pointed out that she, “does not have horns”! It was meant as a laugh line for her sycophant supporters but it told me that her handlers are very much aware of her image problem. My delight at hearing this quickly subsided when I remembered hearing so many people say, “yes I know she is bad, but I am still going to vote for her” and learning that I could literally be verbally assaulted at places like the gym if I dared to say anything negative about her around some people!

I have no idea how many books have been written about her specifically, much less about her and Bill together. When you add the internet writings about her and him to the books there is probably more public information available about them than any couple in history. While some of the published information was written to make them look good or to attempt to overcome negative information, the majority of the writings provide detailed negative information about them. With Hillary running for President the focus has been much more on her than Bill in recent years.

Hillary began her irrational, head first dive into politics during her college years when she became a disciple of Saul Alinsky. For those of you who are not familiar with Alinsky he was the father of the radical community organizer movement in America. Hillary’s senior thesis in college was about him. Obama was also an Alinsky disciple.

Over the years a lot of what has been written about Hillary, from a wide variety of unrelated sources, confirms that she is totally irrational and has an explosive temper. Some of her long, loud, profanity laced, and at times physical, attacks on Bill behind closed doors at the White House were so bad that the Secret Service agents on duty were concerned about how to protect the President from the First Lady.

Anyone who has watched her interviews or speeches, even on a limited basis has to admit that she “changes her story” from one moment to the next (lies).

Hillary’s first job after law school was working for the Watergate Special Prosecutor. She got the job as a favor to a friend. She was fired from that job for lying and evidence tampering. She should have been disbarred and criminally charged. This appears to be the beginning of her lifetime of believing she could say or do anything without any negative consequences.

When some of her activities at the Rose Law firm in Arkansas were questioned critical files mysteriously disappeared. The obviously altered files reappeared on a bed side table in one of the White House bedrooms when the investigation ended.

There was also her extraordinarily successful, one time cattle futures trade.

Six months into Clinton’s first term as President, White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster committed suicide under what many say were questionable circumstances. He was more attached to Hillary than Bill. His primary responsibilities were to set up the Clinton’s Blind Trust, which was not going well, and to be the “keeper” of the Clinton’s pre White House files, including the “White Water” files.  Regardless of what anyone may believe about his death, it is undeniable that Hillary’s Chief of Staff, Margaret Williams literally walked around the Secret Service agent assigned to guard his office until appropriate investigators could get there and removed boxes of files.

“Travelgate” was an irrational and illegal Hillary disaster. She fabricated claims of inappropriate activities and actual charges were brought against the career, White House travel office staff in a failed attempt to award their positions to personal friends. In the process the career, working staff people’s lives were virtually destroyed.

Everything in the White House except for personal things the First Family brings with them is public property. Much of it is very valuable (like the antique vase Hillary broke into many pieces when she threw it at Bill). There is actually a person assigned to maintain a detailed inventory of everything in the White House that is public property. The number and value of the items Hillary took with her when they moved out of the White House may be debated, but it is undeniable that she did remove items that were public property and had to return them.

After they left the White House the Clinton’s immediately set out to clean up Bill’s reputation, establish his legacy, set Hillary up to be President, and amass a personal fortune. Nothing was off limits in their efforts to accomplish all these goals. This is when Hillary first began to make her obsessive drive for personal money and power (she will never have enough of either).  She immediately began her carefully orchestrated plan to become a U.S. Senator from New York, which was supposed to be her stepping stone to becoming President. Just prior to becoming a Senator (while it was still legal?) she closed a deal for an $8,000,000 book advance.

As soon as Hillary was sworn in as a U.S. Senator she began to do what almost all senators do. She worked at becoming friends with all the other senators, avoided doing anything that may appear to be controversial, fund raised and planned for her presidential run. However, unlike the other Senators dreaming about being President, she was supposed to be preordained. And then another Alinsky disciple came along and took the Presidency from her! But Hillary was not to be denied the Presidency. She simply moved on to a new plan to replace Obama as president and joined Bill in his efforts to turn the Clinton Foundation into an international money machine.

Hillary’s new plan to be president actually worked out better than her initial one. It gave the Clinton’s an opportunity to cut an unbeatable deal with Obama. Hillary became Secretary of State, which added to her resume and allowed the Clinton’s to turn the Clinton Foundation into an international money machine on steroids! In exchange the Clinton’s agreed to help make sure Obama got re-elected and Hillary would be assured the Presidency in 2016.

Hillary was now in a position to do anything she wanted to with absolutely no concern about any consequences as long as she did her part to make sure Obama was reelected. This was an absolute “win win” situation for the Clintons and Obama. Obama was assured that he would be unchallenged by Hillary in his reelection bid and he would have her full support for his ideologically driven transformation of America.  She was free to commit massive fraud and treason as Secretary of State and was guaranteed to be the next president.

Here is a small sample of the illegal and treasonous things Hillary did as Secretary of State:

• Did not appoint an Inspector General for the State Department while she was in office.
• Illegally used her power to facilitate hundreds of millions of questionable/illegal dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation.
• Also illegally used her power to facilitate hundreds of millions of questionable/illegal dollars going into Bill Clinton’s pockets for speaking fees and international business deals.
• Appointed an unqualified big donor to a sensitive committee.
• Refused to use State Department approved communication systems under any circumstances including using an unsecured private server in her home for all official communications.
• Everything she did was deliberate and coldly calculated to facilitate and cover up her illegal and treasonous activities regardless of the damage she did to America or how much she put America at risk.
• Obama has done what may be un-repairable damage to America economically and put us at an extreme level of risk for more and bigger terrorist attacks here and abroad.

Hillary will be worse than Obama in all respects unless we do something about it!

Retired senior executive, college graduate, deep interest in national and international currents events. His articles can be found on his blog site, onlymakessense.com

By Stephen Lendman, July 05 2016

“Perception Management” was pioneered in the 1980’s under the Reagan administration in order to avoid the public opposition to future wars that was seen during the Vietnam War.

The United States Department of Defense defines perception management as:

Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations, security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.

At the onset of the Iraq war in 2003, journalists were embedded with US troops as combat cameramen.  The reason for this was not to show what was happening in the war, but to present the American view of it.  Perception management was used to promote the belief that weapons of mass destruction were being manufactured in Iraq to promote its military intervention, even though the real purpose behind the war was regime change.

Alvin and Heidi Toffler cite the following as tools for perception management in their book, War and Anti-War: 

• accusations of atrocities;
• hyperbolic inflations;
• demonization and dehumanization;
• polarization;
• claim of divine sanction; and
• meta-propaganda.

In 2001, the Rendon Group, headed by John Rendon, was secretly granted a $16 million contract to target Iraq with propaganda. Rendon, who had been hired by the CIA to help create conditions to removal Saddam Hussein from power, is a leader in “perception management”.  Two months later, in December 2001, a clandestine operation performed by the CIA and the Pentagon produced false polygraph testimony of an alleged Iraqi civil engineer, who testified that he had helped Saddam Hussein and his men hide tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.  Of course, we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq.

A study by Professor Phil Taylor reveals the differences between the US and global media over the coverage of the war to be:

• Pro-war coverage in the US made US media “cheerleaders” in the eyes of a watchful, more scrutinous global media;
• Issues about the war were debated more in countries not directly affected by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks;
• The non-US media could not see the link between the “war on terror” and the “axis of evil”; and,
• The US media became part of the information operations campaign, which weakened their credibility in the eyes of global media.

President Bush himself admitted in a televised interview with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News that, “One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.”  Vice President Dick Cheney stated on Meet the Press, “If we’re successful in Iraq…we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”

Prior to 2002, the CIA was the Bush Administration’s main provider of intelligence on Iraq. In order to establish the connection between Iraq and terrorists, in 2002, the Pentagon established the “Office of Special Plans” which was, in reality, in charge of war planning against Iraq, and designated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to be the provider of intelligence on Iraq to the Bush Administration.  Its head, the Undersecretary of Defense, Douglas J. Feith, appointed a small team to review the existing intelligence on terrorist networks, in order to reveal their sponsorship states, among other things.  In 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz wrote a memo to Feith entitled, “Iraq Connections to Al-Qaida”, which stated that they were “not making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al-Qaida.”

Peter W. Rodman, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, established a “Policy counter Terror Evaluation Group” (PCTEG) which produced an analysis of the links between Al-Qaida and Iraq, with suggestions on “how to exploit the connections.”

“In February 2003, when former Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the U.N., he described “a sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda network,” stating that “Iraq today harbors a deadly network headed by Zarqawi’s forces, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden,” and that Zarqawi had set up his operations, including bioweapons training, with he approval of the Saddam Hussein regime.  This has since been discredited as false.

However, in October 2004, due to the fact that the Iraqi insurgency was catching on as a cause in jihadist circles, Zarqawi pledged his allegiance to Al-Qaeda.  This was after his group had exploded a massive bomb outside a Shiite mosque in August 2003, killing one of Iraq’s top Shiite clerics and sparking warfare between the Shiite and Sunni communities.  The tipping point toward a full-blown civil war was the February 2006 attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which is credited to Haythem Sabah al-Badri, a former member of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, who joined Al-Qaeda after the U.S. invasion.  This gave birth to the AQI, Al-Qaeda in Iraq

General Wesley Clark, the former NATO Allied Commander and Joint Chiefs of Staff Director of Strategy and Policy, stated in his book, Winning Modern Wars:

As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.

In 2004, John Negroponte, who had served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, was appointed as ambassador to Iraq with the specific mandate of implementing the “Salvador Option”, a terrorist model of mass killings by US sponsored death squads.

In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld sent Colonel James Steele to serve as a civilian advisor to Iraqi Paramilitary special police commandos known as the “Wolf Brigade”.  Steele was a  counter-insurgency specialist who was a member of a group of US Special Forces advisors to the Salvadorian Army and trained counter-insurgency commandos in South America, who carried out extreme abuses of human rights.  The Wolf Brigade was created and established by the United States and enabled the re-deployment of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.  The Brigade was later accused by a UN official of torture, murder and the implementation of death squads.  The techniques used by these counter-insurgency squads were described as “fighting terror with terror”, which was previously done in other theaters, such as Vietnam and El Salvador.

The use of death squads began in 2004 and continued until the winding down of combat operations in 2008.  In addition to the death squads, regular military units were often ordered to “kill all military age males” during certain operations; “dead-checking” or killing wounded resistance fighters; to call in air strikes on civilian areas; and 360 degree rotational fire on busy streets.  These extreme measures were justified to troops in Iraq by propaganda linking the people to terrorism.

Colonel Steele, with the help of Col. James Hoffman, set up torture centers, dispatching Shia militias to torture Sunni soldiers to learn the details of the insurgency.  This has been attributed as a major cause of the civil war which led to the formation of ISIS.

The operation of death squads as counter-insurgency measures was also common knowledge at the time.

Private contractors, such as Steele, were often subject to different rules than the military forces they served and, in some cases, served with.  As of 2008, an estimated 155,286 private contractors were employed by the US on the ground in Iraq, compared to 152,275 troops. The estimated annual cost for such contractors ballooned to $5 billion per year by 2010.

In August 2006, four American soldiers from a combat unit in Iraq testified in an Article 32 hearing that they had been given orders by their commanding officer, Colonel Michael C. Steele, to “kill all military age males”.

According to the journalist Glen Greenwald, all military age males in strike zones of the latest drone aircraft strike programs are considered militants unless it can be proved otherwise. Some say that this has resulted in more civilian casualties than has been reported by the government.

Kenneth Eade is the bestselling author of the Brent Marks Legal Thriller Series. Read other articles by Kenneth, or visit Kenneth’s website.