Why the British Said No to Europe. “An Act of Raw Democracy”

June 25th, 2016 by John Pilger

The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media.

This was, in great part, a vote by those angered and demoralised by the sheer arrogance of the apologists for the “remain” campaign and the dismemberment of a socially just civil life in Britain.  The last bastion of the historic reforms of 1945, the National Health Service, has been so subverted by Tory and Labour-supported privateers it is fighting for its life.

A forewarning came when the Treasurer, George Osborne, the embodiment of both Britain’s ancient regime and the banking mafia in Europe, threatened to cut £30 billion from public services if people voted the wrong way; it was blackmail on a shocking scale.

Immigration was exploited in the campaign with consummate cynicism, not only by populist politicians from the lunar right, but by Labour politicians drawing on their own venerable tradition of promoting and nurturing racism, a symptom of corruption not at the bottom but at the top. The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East – first Iraq, now Syria – are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United States, France, the European Union and Nato. Before that, there was the wilful destruction of Yugoslavia. Before that, there was the theft of Palestine and the imposition of Israel.

The pith helmets may have long gone, but the blood has never dried. A nineteenth century contempt for countries and peoples, depending on their degree of colonial usefulness, remains a centrepiece of modern “globalisation”, with its perverse socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor: its freedom for capital and denial of freedom to labour; its perfidious politicians and politicised civil servants.

All this has now come home to Europe, enriching the likes of Tony Blair and impoverishing and disempowering millions. On 23 June, the British said no more.

The most effective propagandists of the “European ideal” have not been the far right, but an insufferably patrician class for whom metropolitan London is the United Kingdom. Its leading members see themselves as liberal, enlightened, cultivated tribunes of the 21stcentury zeitgeist, even “cool”. What they really are is a bourgeoisie with insatiable consumerist tastes and ancient instincts of their own superiority. In their house paper, the Guardian, they have gloated, day after day, at those who would even consider the EU profoundly undemocratic, a source of social injustice and a virulent extremism known as “neoliberalism”.

The aim of this extremism is to install a permanent, capitalist theocracy that ensures a two-thirds society, with the majority divided and indebted, managed by a corporate class, and a permanent working poor. In Britain today, 63 per cent of poor children grow up in families where one member is working. For them, the trap has closed. More than 600,000 residents of Britain’s second city, Greater Manchester, are, reports a study, “experiencing the effects of extreme poverty” and 1.6 million are slipping into penury.

Little of this social catastrophe is acknowledged in the bourgeois controlled media, notably the Oxbridge dominated BBC. During the referendum campaign, almost no insightful analysis was allowed to intrude upon the clichéd hysteria about “leaving Europe”, as if Britain was about to be towed in hostile currents somewhere north of Iceland.

On the morning after the vote, a BBC radio reporter welcomed politicians to his studio as old chums. “Well,” he said to “Lord” Peter Mandelson, the disgraced architect of Blairism, “why do these people want it so badly?” The “these people” are the majority of Britons.

The wealthy war criminal Tony Blair remains a hero of the Mandelson “European” class, though few will say so these days. The Guardian once described Blair as “mystical” and has been true to his “project” of rapacious war.  The day after the vote, the columnist Martin Kettle offered a Brechtian solution to the misuse of democracy by the masses. “Now surely we can agree referendums are bad for Britain”, said the headline over his full-page piece. The “we” was unexplained but understood — just as “these people” is understood. “The referendum has conferred less legitimacy on politics, not more,” wrote Kettle. “ …  the verdict on referendums should be a ruthless one. Never again.”

The kind of ruthlessness Kettle longs is found in Greece, a country now airbrushed. There, they had a referendum and the result was ignored.  Like the Labour Party in Britain, the leaders of the Syriza government in Athens are the products of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, groomed in the fakery and  political treachery of post-modernism. The Greek people courageously used the referendum to demand their government sought “better terms” with a venal status in Brussels that was crushing the life out of their country. They were betrayed, as the British would have been betrayed.

On Friday, the Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was asked by the BBC if he would pay tribute to the departed Cameron, his comrade in the “remain” campaign. Corbyn fulsomely praised Cameron’s “dignity” and noted his backing for gay marriage and his apology to the Irish families of the dead of Bloody Sunday. He said nothing about Cameron’s divisiveness, his brutal austerity policies, his lies about “protecting” the Health Service. Neither did he remind people of the war mongering of the Cameron government: the dispatch of British special forces to Libya and British bomb aimers to Saudi Arabia and, above all, the beckoning of world war three.

In the week of the referendum vote, no British politician and, to my knowledge, no journalist referred to Vladimir Putin’s speech in St. Petersburg commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941.  The Soviet victory – at a cost of 27 million Soviet lives and the majority of all German forces – won the Second World War.

Putin likened the current frenzied build up of Nato troops and war material on Russia’s western borders to the Third Reich’s Operation Barbarossa. Nato’s exercises in Poland were the biggest since the Nazi invasion; Operation Anaconda had simulated an attack on Russia, presumably with nuclear weapons. On the eve of the referendum, the quisling secretary-general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, warned Britons they would be endangering “peace and security” if they voted to leave the EU.  The millions who ignored him and Cameron, Osborne, Corbyn, Obama and the man who runs the Bank of England may, just may, have struck a blow for real peace and democracy in Europe.

JohnPilger.com – the films and journalism of John Pilger

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West Rules Macedonia (FYROM) as a US-EU Protectorate, To Put A Check on Russian Influence in the Balkans

June 25th, 2016 by George Tzaferis

A year ago, at a closed-doors meeting between the USA and EU officials and the leaders of the four major parties of FYROM in  Strasbourg, a route map for the resolution of the protracted political crisis was agreed on (or rather imposed). The roots of this political crisis are to be found outside FYROM: it is actually more a confrontation by proxy between “the West”, which supports the opposition, and Russia, which is trying to maintain its influence in the region. In conjunction with the public discontent at government policies and the escalating corruption, the negotiations have contributed to sharpening the crisis, which has become acute.

The route map imposed on the closed-doors meeting between US representatives and the EU and local political leaders was supposed to lead to elections in April 2016. But the elections were postponed to 5th June 2016, in order to be “better prepared”. As it turned out, the elections were not held on 5th June either. They were postponed once again, thanks to  intervention by the same people who had insisted in the  first place on their being held: the representatives of the  USA and EU representatives. Given that the process did not develop in the way intended, the “Westerners” instructed their local gatekeeper parties not to participate.  The result was that that only one group of parties met the deadline for registration: the coalition supporting the current government.

Both sides warnings

Directly after this, the declarations and warnings started :

“The government that will emerge from these elections will not be trustworthy. Such a government will not be a reliable partner for discussions with the international community and there will be a setback to the accession negotiations”.

This was the threat issued by M. Kostantich, the  EU spokesman.  Matthew Nimetz, the UN representative, also said that “it is urgent to form a really   democratically elected government, and after that we can resume negotiations on the country’s name …”

The answer from the other side intervening in the region came immediately:  “The internal political crisis must be solved without interference from the outside” declared Oleg Shcherbak, Russian Ambassador in Skopje , at the inauguration ceremony of the new Russian Consulate in Ohrid. At the same time, the opening of a new Russian military base in the Serbian Republic of Bosnia – Herzegovina was announced, its declared mission being   “confrontation with the spread of jihadism in the Balkans”. Given the on-going demonstrations from the opposition, with the photograph of its leader Zoran Zaev throwing tomatoes at governmental offices being beamed all over the world, the Albanian DUI party  (ally of the government and one of the two main parties representing the strong Albanian minority) submitted a proposal for the elections to be postponed once again. It was supported by 96 MPs.

Even the date of the elections is decided outside FYROM

As a condition for the “Westerners” giving the go-ahead for a new date to be set, the US spokesperson Brian Hoyt demanded submission and immediate ratification of new bill that would enable the country’s president   Gjorge Ivanov to repeal the pardon he had issued for the 55 former governmental officers charged with wiretapping and corruption, to be submitted and voted on the same day. The demand was also supported by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and his German representative in the EU Johannes Hahn, having been imposed, as usual, in a closed-doors meeting of the four parties. The mandate was implemented immediately: President Ivanov has already revoked the pardon to 22 officials, among them former ministers, heads of security and intelligence, general secretaries of government, presidents of Parliament etc.

But the opposition claims that this is not enough. It requests withdrawal of pardon for all 55 of those under indictment. The prime target is Nikola Gruevski, leader of the ruling party and for a decade Prime Minister of FYROM.  Meanwhile, the “color revolution” continues. The protests have spread to other cities as well, with dominant slogans “Resign” and “Nikola to prison”. Gruevski himself announced that he has resigned and is not interested in claiming the premiership again. According to reports he is in the process of transferring his bank accounts abroad and attempting to strike a deal that would enable him to flee to  Russia, together with the former interior minister, former head of the secret service and four businessmen.

The president of FYROM Ivanov has resigned himself to signing overnight whatever is dictated to him by imperial powers (even if it contradicts what he had signed the day before), at the same time salvaging his national pride with barbed comments against Greece: “The Greeks believe that we will conquer their country with the two helicopters we own.” Moreover, in order to show that FYROM has no intention of doing anything without receiving prior permission from the foreign powers, he is even willing to make himself the butt of his own humour: “NATO has obliged us to change our military action plan seventeen times. After so many changes we are virtuosos: we have been trained in every possible strategy! ”

The incredible (and dangerous) servility of local politicians

The conflict is growing and none of the key players in the geopolitical regroupment that is under way in the region seem inclined to lose their access to any vital sphere of influence. The whole of the Balkans, not just hybrid states or provinces like Kossovo, is evolving into a  twofold protectorate. Both governments and oppositions are afflicted by incorrigible servility, clearly eager to link their fate to one of the major foreign players. At every opportunity they affirm their willingness to sell out everything, including the few lingering traces of national sovereignty.

In the NATO Parliamentary Assembly the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama declared the immediate necessity for integration of FYROM and Kosovo into NATO, in order to put a check on Russian geopolitical designs in the Balkans. Since May 19 Montenegro has been a signatory to the NATO accession protocol and will participate in all proceedings with observer status. Following ratification of the protocol by the member states of the alliance it is programmed to become the 29th member.

At the same time that all the above was taking place the SEECP (South East European Co-operation Process) was proceeding in parallel. Started in Belgrade in 1996 as an initiative of Greece and Bulgaria, the SEECP’s main goal was, and remains, full European and Euro-Atlantic integration of the whole region. This is taken for granted and not questioned, even in jest by, for example, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, to judge from his statements.

The scene in FYROM and all across the Balkans is clearly reminiscent of older colonial times, when imperialist intervention in what were later called third-world countries was overt in character. But nowadays these interventions are even more dangerous, given the geopolitical conflict among the great powers in the region and the direct link between what is happening in the Balkans and the war in Syria, the chaos in Libya and the wider instability that exists in the environs of Russia and in the wider Middle East.

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Clinton, Sanders, Trump: Towards “Real Revolution” in America, against Establishment Politics

June 25th, 2016 by Michael Hasty

With the end of the presidential primary season, what was also mercifully halted was the media holding pattern over the last weeks of the campaign. Every week’s post-primary talking-head blather about the Democratic race ended up circling the same drain—into the inevitable electoral “math.” Every week, the same narrative. Watching CNN was like watching “Groundhog Day.”

The media knew from the very beginning of the campaign that the establishment preferred their tested and loyal servant, Hillary Clinton, as the next US president, and so operated in their usual way throughout—that is, with highly refined public relations tactics—to deliver the goods. For example, there are few more effective propaganda tools than the concept of “inevitability.”

What has been truly absurd about the post-primary coverage has been the media’s effort to reassure the public that the system is in no way “rigged.” Rules are rules, and Bernie knew that when he got into it, they say—even on the official left.

A little lesson we can learn from history is that, in the Third Reich, the media was not controlled by the state, but “coordinated,” under propaganda minister Josef Goebbels’ direction (Goebbels, by the way, got most of his ideas from American advertising). Hitler hated reading the same thing in every newspaper. He wanted the press to carry the same Nazi message, of course, but expressed in individual voices, to make the message seem less like propaganda. There was even a Jewish newspaper publishing in Berlin until the very end of the war—relentlessly on message.

The US mainstream media fulfills a similar function today, broadcasting a coordinated narrative on behalf of the transnational elites who control our political, economic and mass media systems.

True to form, Bernie Sanders remained a principled (perhaps too principled)prophet of political revolution and economic and social justice for all Americans throughout the campaign and into its closing moves. Hislivestream speech to his supporters two days after the last primary was a brilliant pivot to the next phase of that revolution, both within the Democratic party and out into the grassroots.

His call for progressives to concentrate efforts and magnify their influence in state and local governments is precisely the message his supporters need to hear. If there is any hope of reclaiming democracy in America, it absolutely depends on scrubbing as much corporate influence as possible from state legislatures before the 2020 census, after which the entire nation will be redistricted. Who controls state legislatures in 2020 is of paramount importance, if the populist revolution now under way in America is to remain nonviolent.

Personally, I’m disappointed that Bernie didn’t choose to join forces with Jill Stein and run on the Green party ticket. He certainly doesn’t owe the Democratic party—which seemed to do just about everything in its power, officially and otherwise, to guarantee a Clinton nomination—his loyalty. And I think, by running against the two most unpopular politicians ever to be major party nominees, he would have an excellent chance of being the next president running in a party that’s already on the ballot in almost every state, and winning easy pluralities in enough states to carry the electoral college.

But I understand that Bernie is a man of his word, and that he doesn’t want to contribute in any way to making Donald Trump president—which may happen anyway, of course. It’s a volatile political environment, open to some uncomfortably real possibilities.

I’m not as concerned as Bernie seems to be, however, about the potential for damage from a Trump presidency; in the 21st century, the power of American presidents, as well as other world leaders, is pretty well circumscribed by transnational corporate interests. And it’s difficult to make the case that he’d be more of a hawk internationally than Hillary, the darling of the neocons. But Trump can do some real damage domestically, and his personal fascist inclinations are arousing some ugly and dangerous undercurrents that have been with us throughout American history. So it’s better that he doesn’t become president.

In fact, for the purposes of political revolution, it’s actually better that Hillary become the next president.

When real revolutionaries seek her impeachment for war crimes and influence peddling, as an example of what should happen to presidents who pledge their loyalty to global capital and the military-industrial complex rather than to justice and the welfare of the American people, we’ll already have well over half the public on our side, including our usual right wing enemies.

With any luck, Elizabeth Warren will be Veep.

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Drilling for Oil in the Israeli-occupied Region of Syria’s Golan Heights, A Violation of International Law

June 25th, 2016 by Claire Bernish

After concluding the flow testing phase, Afek Oil and Gas will now begin analyzing samples drawn from the Ness-2 drilling site, euphemistically dubbed “Deborah’s Well,” in the Israeli-occupied region of Syria known as the Golan Heights. New Jersey-based Genie Energy, Ltd., Afek’s parent company, claims a dubious cadre of investors cum war profiteers, including Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney, Lord Jacob Rothschild, former CIA director James Woolsey — as well as a number of current and former U.S. politicians.

Prior testing at a separate Afek site did not meet expectations, so the company sought other “sweet spots” in the area. Analysis of samples from additional wells will be performed by Afek scientists in conjunction with “external international experts.”

To understand U.S. involvement in the quagmire in Syria, Afek’s oil exploration is of critical import.

Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights region violates international law — thus, Israeli permits granting Afek the ostensible right to perform exploratory tests of a possible “large reservoir” of natural gas and light oil is also illegal. But in a world where Big Oil remains powerful enough to drive foreign policy of the U.S. empire, this direct violation of the Geneva Convention might not even be worthy of a footnote — except to the people of Syria.

In fact, as The Free Thought Project’s Justin Gardner previously reported, the unsavory character heading Genie Oil is none other than Efraim “Effie” Eitam, an Israeli military commander and former Knesset member who once called for the expulsion of the “cancer” of Arabs from Israel.

“Expel most of the Judea and Samaria Arabs from here,” Eitam arrogantly asserted during a soldier’s memorial service in 2006. “We cannot be with all these Arabs and we cannot give up the land, because we have already seen what they do there. Some of them may be able to stay under certain conditions, but most of them will have to go.”

In addition to the eyebrow-raising cabal of Eitam, Murdoch, Cheney, and Rothschild, Genie Oil and Gas appointed new members to its Strategic Advisory Board last September, including:

“Dr. Lawrence Summers, 71st Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton and Director of the National Economic Council under Pres. Obama; former Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, who is credited with helping pass the U.S.-Israel Energy Cooperation Bill while she chaired the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; former governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, who became an energy insider after serving as the Clinton administration’s Energy Secretary; and former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, who co-founded the U.S. Energy Security Council.”

At stake is a 153 square-mile region in the Golan Heights, demarcated by Israeli authorities as exclusive territory for Afek to perform exploratory testing, which began in 2015, through early April 2017.

However, even beyond the not-at-all-minor issue of legality, Afek’s drilling in the region has stirred another, perhaps more imperative, concern. A large aquifer supplying the entire region’s drinking water is positioned uncomfortably close to the stores of fossil fuel — raising contamination concerns sufficiently serious that an Israeli high court issued a temporary restraining order in 2014, though it was quickly dismissed.

But none of this bothers Murdoch, Cheney, Rothschild, and the others, as the Golan Heights to Big Oil represents little more than an exploitative business opportunity. Syria, in fact, has been systematically torn apart primarily because foreign powers and radical groups seek to protect their varied oil interests.

While the Afek ilk set their sights on Golan Heights oil and natural gas, Turkey, the U.S., Russia, Daesh, and a spate of others have been fighting over Syria’s geostrategic location for major oil pipelines under the cover of religious and civil strife.

“[W]e may want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology and focus on the more complex rationales of history and oil, which mostly point the finger of blame for terrorism back at the champions of militarism, imperialism and petroleum here on our own shores,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., intoned in an April editorial for Ecowatch.

As Kennedy astutely noted, U.S. interventionism in the Middle East, and particularly Syria, has little to do with fighting terrorism and far more to do with the region’s rich petroleum reserves  — as in the case of Genie’s magnates. And such insistent international meddling at the behest of corporate oil interests so destabilized the entire region, it led to the formation of Daesh (ISIS) and similar radical groups.

Of course, oil exploration certainly benefits the ongoing push by Israel to expand its occupation and settlements, since U.S.-backed Big Oil operates under the premise the manufactured nation’s encroachment on Syrian territory is perfectly legal. Often, as is the case with Afek and Genie, the Golan Heights is dismissively referred to as “Northern Israel.”

Environmental and humanitarian groups vocally criticize Afek’s exploratory drilling, but despite growing international outcry, have not succeeded in halting ongoing tests.

Considering the notoriously powerful, monied warmongers backing Afek’s petroleum plans, outrage and violation of international law wouldn’t factor one iota in matters concerning the Golan Heights.

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The Orlando Tragedy: Reactions and Reflections

June 25th, 2016 by Hassanal Noor Rashid

The recent heinous murders at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida has had massive reverberations around the world and is a tragedy that has affected many communities. In a single swift moment, a lone gunman, Omar Mateen, had entered a prominent   gay nightclub in Orlando, the Pulse, at 2.02 am on Sunday, 12th June 2016, and opened fire into the crowd with every intent to kill. The tragedy saw 49 people lose their lives and 53 more injured.

This senseless violence soon sparked much outrage and confusion, with demands for clarity on the events that unfolded and the motivations behind the killings.

It has been a few days now since the shootings and more information is still being highlighted in an effort to make sense of this unwarranted act of violence. But as it has happened before, there are many competing narratives that seek to hijack the deaths of these 49 people in pursuit of different agendas, political or otherwise.

The first groups to speak out directly were the LGBT community and the Muslim community, both in the United States and across the world. Taking to social media, the LGBT community has condemned the attack as blatant homophobia , an attack purposefully targeting the LGBT community stemming from  bigotry. There have been some recent developments however which raise doubts about this version of the episode, namely, the claim by the ex-wife of Omar Mateen,  that he was himself a homosexual and had suffered from mental health issues, due to coping with conflicting identities.  Omar’s father, on the other hand, has attempted to refute this statement, emphasizing that Omar had a wife and a child. This does not of course preclude the possibility that he may have been bisexual.

Another group that is just as affected would be the Muslims themselves. It is of no surprise that the first reactions came from the many proponents of Islamophobia who began to vocally proclaim that this was another example of the encroaching tendrils of Islamism or Radical Islam unto Western Civilization, posing a danger to American lives and values.

To support their contention, they allege that Omar Mateen  through various channels  pledged his allegiance to  Islamic terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIL or Daesh and even Hezbollah. Anyone with basic background knowledge of these groups would realize that Al-Qaeda and Daesh are mortal foes of Hezbollah and it is highly unlikely that any terrorist or militant would be inclined to pledge allegiance to all of them even at different times.  Such a contradiction evokes questions about the   gunman’s own personal Islamic background and his own political motivations.

While this ‘Islamic terrorism’ type of narrative serves the agenda of Islamophobes and a segment of the media, there  are other factors which may point to a different explanation for Omar Mateen’s action.

There was a recent interview with one of the witnesses of the attack at the Pulse which was reported in the Washington Post of 14 June 2016.  In it, Patience Carter who was inside the club during the three hour standoff recounts that in the midst of the shooting spree Omar had alluded to something like, “This is about my country” and that he wanted “Americans to stop bombing his country”. While Omar Mateen himself was American born, his parents were from Afghanistan, a target of the US War on Terror.

In many instances of terrorism involving Muslims, invasion and occupation (as in the case of Afghanistan in 2001) appears to be a major cause of anger and outrage among the young members of the community. Religious rhetoric is just the veneer they employ. It is the deaths of tens of thousands of their compatriots, their suffering and their humiliation that spawns a deep sense of grievance. In other words, military occupation and all the dire consequences emanating from it prompts many Muslim youths to turn to violence and terror as they seek justice, albeit in a perverted manner. This is true of not just the US-NATO conquest of Afghanistan but also of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Yet another episode which Muslims all over the world perceive as a grave act of injustice is the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the concomitant usurpation of Arab land and the massacre of thousands of innocent children, women and men since 1947-8.   The series of assaults by Israel upon Gaza since December 2008 underscores this aggression and oppression. And Muslims and many others committed to justice and human dignity know that the United States as the global hegemon that protects Israel cannot be absolved from responsibility for the unending dispossession of the Palestinians.

To substantiate this point further, a report from the USA  published on 16 June 2016,  reveals that Omar Mateen had also appeared in  in a 2012 documentary entitled The Big Fix, which highlighted the controversy surrounding the 2010 BP oil spill. In it, Omar Mateen, who was working as a security guard at the time, can be seen cynically ranting about those involved in the oil spill saying  that “No one gives a s—-, no one gives a s—here” adding that “They want more disasters to happen. That’s where the money making is.”

The apparent cynicism, coupled with the injustices committed against his people, may be a more substantive reason in explaining why Omar Mateen acted the way he did, and may even explain certain contradictory aspects of his behaviour.

Having said that, it must be emphasised that due to the confusing and conflicting nature of the reports currently, many of the possible motivations of Omar Mateen still reside in the realm of conjecture.

The reactions which followed the mass murders are clear however. The tiresome calls for tougher immigration laws, clamping down on Muslim communities as well as suspension of their civil liberties are all too familiar. These calls reveal wilful ignorance and bigotry. They have been fuelled by the mainstream media.

The presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has further exacerbated the situation.  He has used the Orlando tragedy to reinforce his earlier insane argument that there must a ban on migration of Muslims to the United States. He has now added that Muslims living within US borders should also be monitored. This is populist fear mongering aimed at garnering votes for his Presidential campaign.  In contrast to Trump and his ilk, there are many others who have spoken out against the targeting of Muslims. They have condemned manifestations of Islamophobia.  They are against the politicisation of the Orlando Tragedy.

On the other side of the proverbial fence the reaction by various segments of the Muslim world has also been diverse and contentious. Many American Muslims and organizations such as the Muslim Advocates have come out to condemn the massacre. A number of them have expressed solidarity with the LGBT community and have offered to help the survivors to cope with their tragic loss of lives.

Shamefully, there are numerous other groups and individuals who have applauded the deaths of the 49 individuals, claiming that they were “sinners” and therefore deserving of their fate. This attitude is a callous and incomprehensibly heartless reaction towards the tragic loss of innocent lives, something that stands in direct contradiction to the Islamic teachings of compassion and justice.

The varying reactions have widened a cleavage that already exists within the Muslim world. On the one hand, there are many Muslims who are committed to the essence of the faith and would like to see compassion and love set the tone of the community’s pronouncements and actions. On the other hand, there are bigots and dogmatists  wedded to a superficial, narrow interpretation of certain distorted teachings who are incapable of recognising the humanity in all of us. The former shoulder the challenge of defending Islam against Islamophobes while at the same time seeking to reform Muslim attitudes which are antithetical to the faith and to inter-faith interaction.

Another reaction from the incident has much to do with a long –existing controversy, pertaining to the American second amendment and the ease with which one can purchase weapons in the country. One side has raised the banner once more urging for tighter control over gun sales, whilst the other staunchly defends the American citizen’s right to bear arms. Some of the groups advocating gun control have condemned the security company that had employed Omar, G4S, the world’s largest security company which has had dealings with the United States’ government and Israel as well.

The ease with which one is able to purchase guns in America is alarming, as evidenced by numerous other shootings and crimes involving firearms, but perhaps the gun debate is a symptom of a deeper disease.

The deeper disease is a culture of violence which is pervasive in American society. It is rooted in US history itself since the US as we know it today was born from the annihilation of the indigenous American Indians. It was built upon the massacres of the African slave population. From the nineteenth century the US elites created a colonial empire through violence which has now evolved into a hegemonic power that sustains itself through military bases and wars.

The tragedy of Orlando one hopes will persuade at least a fraction of the  US intelligentsia to look deeply into the hegemony and violence that is embedded in the nation’s genes.

Hassanal Noor Rashid  is Programme Coordinator at the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

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Ignorant U.S. Involvement. The 51 U.S. “Diplomats” Memo to Wage an All out War on Syria

June 25th, 2016 by Michael Jansen

The message 51 US diplomats and officials, many said to be Middle East specialists, sent via the “Dissent Channel” to State Department top brass shows that service in this region does not necessarily prove to be informative or promote understanding. 

In this message the signatories criticised President Barack Obama’s refusal to use US military strikes in the drive to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The authors of the memorandum argue that a judicious use of force to compel the Syrian army to abide by the fragile cessation of hostilities, selectively imposed last February, and agree to “negotiate a political solution in good faith”.

Of course, the “solution”, not stated, involves the removal or resignation of Assad, who is blamed preposterously for unrest in the region, which was, in fact, precipitated by the two Bush wars on Iraq and other US meddling.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who disagrees with President Obama’s approach to Syria, called the memorandum “very good” and met with 10 of its authors.

Later his spokesman said Kerry did not endorse the contents of the memorandum but considered it “well written”.

Such weasel words will convince no one. Kerry has long preferred the limited use of US military force against Damascus.

The document mentions “moderate rebel groups” striving to defeat Daesh, when there are no “moderate rebel groups” with muscle with the exception of the Democratic Forces largely composed of Kurdish leftists.

They have close connections to the Turkish Kurdish Workers’ Party, which has been fighting Ankara for autonomy or independence for 38 years and is regarded as a “terrorist” movement by Washington.

The collection of non-Kurdish armed opposition groups are not only takfirists, but also pair with and share fighters and arms with Daesh and Al Qaeda’s Jabhat Al Nusra, branded as “terrorist” groups by the UN and the US.

The 51 call on the Obama administration to “protect and preserve opposition-held communities, by defending them from [Assad’s] air force and artillery”, and claim the government is starving and bombing Sunnis.

The majority of Syria’s Sunnis dwells in Damascus, the coastal cities, Homs, Hama and other government held-cities.

Indeed there has been an influx of Sunnis into government-controlled areas, including the capital where, the population has, perhaps, doubled during the war years.

Two-thirds of those in Aleppo live in the government-held sectors. These demographic facts expose the falsity of the 51’s claim that Sunnis “view the[Assad] regime as the primary enemy in the conflict” and “prospects for rolling back Daesh’s hold on territory are bleak without Sunni Arabs”.

Furthermore, the authors of this misleading and dangerous document do not admit that Sunni Arabs form the majority of Syrian soldiers fighting Daesh, Al Nusra and the other takfirists.

One thing they are right about, however, is that non-Kurdish forces cannot be expected to fight Daesh in non-Kurdish areas.

Nevertheless, Washington has been pressing US-backed Kurds to go for Daesh’s capital at Raqqa, a Sunni city, but the Kurds have expressed opposition to such a plan.

Pressure on the Kurds is likely to increase as government forces turn their attention to Raqqa, Damascus’ next military objective. Commentators speak of a “race” to conquer Raqqa pitting Damascus, backed by Russia and Iran, against Washington’s Kurdish allies.

The 51 dissidents call on the US to ground Syria’s air force and strike Syrian army artillery in order to encourage civilians to stay put in insurgent-held areas.

These diplomats and officials argue this would stem the flow of refugees to Europe, but they fail to mention that Russian warplanes might very well be ordered to protect Syrian aircraft, bases, and artillery positions with the aim of obstructing US efforts to weaken a government Moscow and Tehran have backed over the past five years.

The dissidents call for the US to assert leadership and resolve the Syrian crisis in such a way as to promote US interests without mentioning that in Syria there are multiple external actors with their own interests who could oppose and undermine US leadership.

It is significant that, so far, the names and positions of the 51 signatories remain secret. They are said to be second-rank State Department personnel.

They appear to have adopted the deadly and disastrous approach promoted by former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford who, in 2011, told Syrian critics of the government to protest and nothing would happen to them.

He knew full well that the government would crack down as did the Mubarak government in Egypt when confronted by far more massive protests than the demonstrations that took place in Syria.

If Ford had kept quiet rather than given protesters the impression the US was behind them, they might not have mounted demonstrations that turned violent and launched a civil conflict which rival external players have exploited for their own devious ends.

It must be taken into account that over the past 25 years, direct US intervention in Arab affairs, starting with the 1991 Gulf war, have been disastrous.

The 1991 war, opposed by the late King Hussein, divided Iraq into Kurdish and Arab entities and set Sunnis against Shiites when US president George H. W. Bush urged Shiites to revolt against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Following this war, the US supported Iraqi opposition forces dominated by Iran-backed fundamentalist Shiites who were installed in power in Baghdad by US president George W. Bush after his 2003 invasion and occupation of the country.

During the eight-year reign of Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al Maliki, chosen by the US, Sunnis were persecuted and marginalised, prompting the rise of Al Qaeda and its brutal offshoots, Daesh and Al Nusra, as well as other takfirist groups.

US interventions in Afghanistan and Libya have turned these countries into failed states and created a vacuum filled by the Taliban, Daesh, and other takfirist factions.

Thanks to US interventions, more than a million people may have died in Iraq, while 150,000 and upwards have been slain in Syria. Millions have been driven from their homes, and millions are fleeing the region.

These terrible things are happening because ignorant US involvement is too great rather than too little.

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Selected Articles: Operation Barbarossa, June 22, 1941

June 25th, 2016 by Global Research News

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Operation Barbarossa, June 22, 1941: Nazi Germany Invades the Soviet Union: Putin addresses State Duma

By Stephen Lendman, June 22 2016

On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched perhaps the largest ever invasion by one country against another. Operation Barbarossa involved up to four million combat and support troops – Hitler’s fatal error, miscalculating, overreaching, hubris and arrogance defeating him.  Red Army…

Russland-Nord, Infanterie und Panzer 35t

Nazi Germany Invaded the Soviet Union: 75 years since Operation Barbarossa…

By Jean-Marie Chauvier, June 22 2016

On 22nd June it will have been 75 years since the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, the Hitlerian invasion of the Soviet Union, the war of extermination, pillage and colonization which was to cost the lives of between 24 and 29…

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Brexit: What Is It About? What is at Stake?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, June 22 2016

If you read the presstitute media, Brexit—the referendum tomorrow on the UK’s exit from the EU— is about racism.  According to the story line, angry rightwing racists of violent inclinations want to leave the EU to avoid having to

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Bernie Sanders, Purgatory and the Third Candidate

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 22 2016

Creating parties from establishments is often more complicated that generating Eve from Adam’s birth giving rib.  For one, there will be dissent, viciousness and obstruction.  The establishment can never demand to be shown a mirror of its rotting tendencies; all…

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The Gardasil Vaccine Medical Scandal

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, June 22 2016

“…only 1 in 10,000 HPV-infected women develop cervical cancer”  (Health Impact News) “I predict that Gardasil will become the greatest medical scandal of all times because at some point in time, the evidence will add up to prove that this…

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Is There a Role for the Peace, Antiracist and Social Justice Movements in the 2016 Elections?

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 22 2016

Neither major party offers a program to reverse the present course of militarism and income inequality  These are difficult times in the United States and the world requiring a greater degree of preciseness in our analysis and discipline in the…

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TPP, TTIP: Obama Tries to Woo Allies in Final Push for Trade Deals Only Corporations Like

June 25th, 2016 by Dan Eggen

President Barack Obama’s recent trips to Europe and Asia were more than farewell tours with photo ops. While the media focused on an admittedly cute picture of thepresident shaking hands with Prince George, and dutifully reported his official remarks in Vietnam and Hiroshima, Obama was busy pushing some of the policies he sees as integral to his “legacy.”

These include a military buildup against a newly assertive China and beating the drums for two international trade deals that are increasingly opposed in the United States, Europe and Asia as being too corporate-friendly.

To understand what is driving the opposition to both the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), WhoWhatWhyspoke to experts on the countries Obama visited.

Britain is the second largest economy in the EU. This is not lost on Obama, who sees a unified Europe as more receptive to American economic and political interests. So says Robert Gulotty, a University of Chicago political science professor and author of“America and Trade Liberalization: The Limits of Institutional Reform.”

“Few tariffs actually remain between the UK and US, so it is not a surprise that Obama’s push is actually an effort to sustain the European project,” Gulotty toldWhoWhatWhy. “A US goal in TTIP  is greater access to European markets which have political barriers against, for example, American meats.”

David Cameron, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Matteo Renzi

Left to right, David Cameron, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, François Hollande and Matteo Renzi talk during their April gathering in Hannover, Germany.

Obama’s support for TTIP and for a Europe that remains unified comes at a shaky time for the EU. Recently, several member countries elected leaders that oppose EU-mandated austerity measures enacted after the 2008 financial crisis. Governments inGreece and Spain have faced off with the richer EU countries and other lenders, resulting in near expulsion from the bloc for Greece.

Dissatisfaction with the European Union is also endemic in the UK. Anti-EU (and anti-TTIP) sentiment has forced Prime Minister David Cameron to hold the June 23 referendum on whether Britain should exit the EU, an outcome known by the shorthand “Brexit”. In London, Obama linked this vote to TTIP, warning that if Britain left the EU, it would be moved to the back of the queue for any future transatlantic trade deals.

Yet perhaps it is just this type of rhetoric, both inside and outside Britain, that is fueling the UK opposition to staying in the EU.

Barack Obama, David Cameron

President Obama playing golf with Prime Minister Cameron.
Photo credit: Pete Souza / White House

“Many in Britain saw the photo of Obama driving a golf cart with David Cameron as a passenger. The impression? The US is in the ‘driver’s seat’ and the UK is seen as not able to act in its own independent interest,” Erik Goldstein, professor of international relations at Boston University told WhoWhatWhy.  “That’s what Brexit is all about.”

TTIP might be an even harder sell in Germany, Obama’s third stop on his tour, whereprotests have all but stalled the trade deal. TTIP critics point to environmental and food safety concerns in the deal, as well as the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision, which allows corporations to challenge governments, in a court juried by corporate lawyers, over laws that disrupt profit.  Dr. Michael Efler ofStop TTIP mentioned the Swedish company Vattenfall’s suit against Germany after that country’s “Atomausstieg” (“nuclear exit”) following the Fukushima meltdown as an example of what opponents fear about ISDS.
The Vattenfall case, along with similar actions brought by two German nuclear companies, are awaiting final arbitration.

Meeting in Hamburg with a group of corporations that included Lockheed Martin and Microsoft, Obama warned that if TTIP did not pass soon, “political transitions” would hamper the deal for a “very long time.” This was an unmistakable allusion to the anti-trade-deal rhetoric of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, as well as the wavering support from Obama’s former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Despite Obama’s acknowledgement that the deal will likely not happen before the end of his presidency, the following day Angela Merkel advised the EU Parliament to “hurry up” with their negotiations.

Efler, however, predicts that speeded-up trade negotiations would result in a near certain defeat of TTIP.

A month after visiting Germany, Obama embarked on his second major trip of the year — this time to Asia. Along with promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Obama had another major item on his agenda: Curbing China’s influence in the region.

In Vietnam, the media did actually focus on TPP, because the country will play a crucial role in implementing the deal, with particular regard to workforce protections enjoyed by US and Western workers.

Realistically, though, implementation of these photo-op-friendly initiatives may prove difficult.

“Historically there are two tracks for trade deal liberalization,” Gulotty said. “One track is for countries that are on board with the requirements of the trade deal, and a second track for countries who cannot make the concessions. The point of the TPP is to avoid this second track and make all countries subject to the ‘gold’ standard. However, it will be very difficult to implement, much less regulate, pro-labor initiatives that took over 200 years of fighting in the US.”

Barack Obama, Vietnam

President Barack Obama is greeted at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Vietnam. 
Photo credit: Pete Souza / White House

Though TPP dominated media coverage during the Vietnam trip, The New York Timesnoted that Obama also “ended one of the last vestiges of the Vietnam war” by lifting the US arms embargo against that one-time enemy.

Obama’s move comes during the South China Sea conflict, where countries in the region, including Vietnam and China, are building artificial islands to “improve living conditions, marine conservation, weather monitoring…and also bases for military purposes,” as the Wall Street Journal explains in a short, informative video on the issue.

The conflict is “probably why the arms embargo is being lifted,” Gulotty said. “Vietnam has been antagonized by China because it has actually built more islands than China. So the US is trying to show that it can be an alternative trading partner for Vietnam. The particular way to cement the wedge between the two countries is by selling arms.”

During Obama’s final stop in Japan, cameras were focused on Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima. But behind the scenes the president pressed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a military buildup against China.

“[Since 1945] Japan’s Article 9 has prevented the country from going to war and allowed only self-defense forces,” UC San Diego professor emeritus and author of ‘Beyond Bilateralism: U.S.-Japan Relations in the New Asia Pacific’ Ellis Kraus told WhoWhatWhy.“Under Abe, Article 9 has been reinterpreted to include “collective” self-defense forces. This ability to increase military might in the US-Japan alliance and his staying power in the government has formed a good relationship between Abe and Obama.”

Like Vietnam, Japan is wary of China’s growing influence in the region and recently signed a US-Japan arms deal. This agreement, clearly a result of Obama’s trip, pleased US officials, who, according to Ellis, reasoned that “if Japan is willing to cozy up to the US military, they will be a good deterrent to China.”

Though Abe and Obama agree on many things, the Japanese public may be less enthusiastic about the two leaders’ close relationship, Ellis noted. Even the leaders themselves were at odds when Abe chided Obama about the recent murder of a Japanese woman by a US contractor near the US naval base on the island of Okinawa.

“The Japanese public is split on the Okinawa situation, causing much ambivalence and contradictory feelings,” Ellis said. “The Japanese want the US to defend Japan. However, they also sympathize with Okinawa residents because of the real social and environmental problems that occur due to the base.”

The Japanese public also seems divided on the TPP, despite “generally supporting trade deals,” according to Ellis. “Some interest groups and farmers have raised concerns over food safety.”

Asked how the Japanese feel about Obama and Abe’s increasingly militant posture toward China, Ellis replied, “While the Japanese public approves of defense of Japan, Abe’s extension of Article 9 is not terribly popular.”

Obama’s visit to Europe and Asia may have been laden with cozy photo-ops and the commemoration of historic events. Yet the media mostly ignored perhaps the major reason for the trip: the promotion of widely contentious trade and military deals that have been advanced as cornerstones of President Obama’s foreign policy.

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¡Basta Ya, Brussels! British Voters Reject EU Corporate Slavestate

June 25th, 2016 by Mike Whitney

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it. — Thomas Paine

British voters delivered a savage deathblow to the EU corporate superstate on Thursday sending global markets tumbling and forcing Prime Minister David Cameron to announce his resignation. The narrow victory, which caught the prognosticators by surprise, is the strongest sign yet that working people across the continent are awakening to economic and political disaster that has been created in the name of European integration. Not only has the EU failed to live up to its promise of lifting all boats and widening prosperity, it has also transformed the region into a low-growth, high unemployment charnel house where bankers and their corporate allies siphon off the wealth of the weaker states to enrich high-flying speculators and voracious bondholders. And while the referendum’s outcome will surely be challenged in the months to come,  it represents a critical turning point in the public’s attitude towards a thoroughly reactionary and odious institution that is solely responsible for the abysmal state of the economy, the progressive erosion of living standards, and steady rise of right wing extremism. Here’s a short clip from Raul Ilargi Meijer explaining what Brexit really means:

Nobody seems to understand it’s not about Cameron or Nigel Farage, or Michael Gove vs Boris Johnson, it’s about voting for or against the EU, for or against Juncker and Tusk and five other unelected presidents having a say in one’s life.

And that’s not all either. It’s about voting to leave, or remain in, a Union that is already dead and preserved only in a zombie state. Brexit is just one vote and many more will inevitably follow. Brexit is not the first, Grexit had that ‘honor’ last year. Later this month, elections in Italy and Spain have the potential to turn into preliminary Italix and Spexit votes. And then there will be more.

The reason why these things are taking place, and will be, going forward, is that the economies of all these countries are fast deteriorating. The sole reason why people have accepted the rule of Brussels coming from far away over their daily lives, is the promise that it would make those lives better and more comfortable. That promise has been shattered. The EU has made things worse for most Europeans, not improved them. And when seen in that light, why should people agree to continue to be told what to do by those who’ve made them poorer? There’s no democratic model in which that remotely makes sense. There are only undemocratic models left….

An economy in decline means the end of centralization and the end of existing political power structures. This is inevitable.(“Murder, Lifeboats, an Iceberg and an Orchestra“, Automatic Earth)

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The Brexit referendum represents a fundamental rejection of austerity for working people and subsidies (QE) for the markets. It is an indictment of the destructive policies that have thrust a broad swathe of southern Europe into a permanent depression while bankers in Paris and Berlin make out like bandits.  Even now the loathsome European Central Bank continues to run up massive debts (ECB-QE is $80 billion per month) just to line the pockets of corporate CEOs who offload their toxic bonds with the clear intention of using the money to buyback their own shares further enriching themselves and their swinish shareholders at the expense of ordinary investors. This Ponzi-rip off is what passes as economic policy in the EU. Brexit threatens put an end to this huckster’s swindle.  Here’s a little more background from the World Socialist Web Site:

The EU is an instrument of the ruling classes of Europe for the imposition of brutal austerity measures—most directly on the workers of Greece, of Spain, Portugal and Ireland, but also on workers in the UK, France and Germany….Prime minister, Cameron, has even proclaimed an “Age of Austerity” as his government imposes cuts of £210 billion, (€263 billion), equivalent to over 10 percent of Britain’s GDP, at the cost of the destruction of 20 percent of all public sector jobs, millions more in the private sector and the decimation of vital services.

The EU is second of all an instrument of military aggression. It is a vital ally of NATO in its escalating conflict with Russia and China as the US and European powers seek to control all of the world’s markets and resources—including vital oil and gas riches commanded by the Putin regime in Moscow and the giant production platform manned by billions of super-exploited workers led by President Xi Jinping in Beijing. (“The Brexit referendum and the struggle for socialism“, World Socialist Web Site)

Brexit is also a rejection of incoherent immigration policies whose objective is to accommodate the millions of victims of US war-making in the Middle East. EU leaders should make every effort, including economic sanctions, to stop Washington from arming and training extremist proxies that are currently fighting in Syria and who have forced roughly 4 million refugees to flee to Europe for safety. Europe shouldn’t be blamed for the blowback from America’s bloodthirsty foreign policy. Even so, Brussel’s unwillingness to stand up to Washington on this matter has allowed radical elements to emerge whose xenophobia is fueling widespread anti-immigrant hysteria. In the US, GOP hopeful, Donald Trump has capitalized off anti-immigrant sentiment making a wall along the Mexico border a central tenet of his platform.

Trump issued a statement shortly after the results of the EU referendum were announced. He said:

The people of the United Kingdom have exercised the sacred right of all free peoples. They have declared their independence from the European Union and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders and economy. A Trump administration pledges to strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain, deepening our bonds in commerce, culture and mutual defense. The whole world is more peaceful and stable when our two countries – and our two peoples – are united together, as they will be under a Trump administration.


 Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence. Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first. They will have the chance to reject today’s rule by the global elite, and to embrace real change that delivers a government of, by and for the people. I hope America is watching, it will soon be time to believe in America again.

Trump owes his popularity entirely to the mismanagement of the US economy which–like the EU–provides trillions for Wall Street while leaving Main Street to fend for itself.  The widening of inequality is paralleled by the rise in political extremism which is hastening the dissolution of the EU superstate and the move towards war. And Britain is just the tip of the iceberg. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, only 38 percent of people in France had a favorable view of the EU, down from 69 percent in 2004. (which is lower than the level of support in the UK). Similarly, only 47 percent of the Spanish population holds a favorable view of the EU, down from 80 percent in 2007.

The EU has shown that it is as incapable of reform as it is of accepting responsibility for perpetuating a financial crisis that began 7 years ago and persists to this very day. It has also demonstrated repeatedly that it will not hesitate to inflict as much economic pain as possible on its victims unless they comply with its counterproductive edicts. Worst of all, the strict rules of the EU make it impossible for state representatives to follow the will of their people or to act in a way that serves their own national interests. Any deviation from Brussel’s neoliberal consensus is likely to end up before the European Court of Justice where the mega corporations have the upper hand. By leaving the EU, Britain will restore its sovereignty and strengthen its democracy. Ambrose Evans Pritchard summed it up like this:

Stripped of distractions, it comes down to an elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by a European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense, and that the British people can never remove, even when it persists in error.

Hat’s off to the British voters who had the guts to reject the EU corporate slavestate and cast their ballot for freedom. You’re an inspiration to us all.

Mike Whitney, lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

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TTP, TTIP, TISA and CETA: U.N. Legal Expert Calls Proposed Trade Deals “Illegal”

June 25th, 2016 by Eric Zuesse

Alfred de Zayas, the U.N.’s Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, is assigned the task to apply the standards of international law to proposed treaties, to determine whether they’re in accord with international law. On Friday, June 24th, he issued his finding on three large proposed treaties regarding international trade among Atlantic countries: TTIP, TISA, and CETA. Earlier, on February 2nd, he had issued a similar finding on the proposed TPP treaty between Pacific countries, and his conclusion there was the same: that the proposed treaty violates international laws, and is inconsistent with democracy. 

His finding regarding the proposed Atlantic treaties condemned them by saying: “Trade deals prepared and negotiated in secret, excluding key stakeholders such as labour unions, consumer associations, health professionals and environmental experts and now parliaments, have zero democratic legitimacy.” This describes all of U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed treaties on trade: TPP, TTIP, and TISA, and it also includes CETA, which is the proposed treaty between the EU and Canada.

He further damningly noted that, “Disfranchising the public from participating in this important debate is undemocratic and manifests a profound disregard to peoples’ voice.”

The U.N.’s press release, on June 24th, from its Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), especially notes:

An earlier consultation conducted by the European Commission in 2014 resulted in 97% of respondents from across Europe expressing opposition to the inclusion of asymmetrical investment protection in Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the USA. “The same would apply to CETA, but no consultation was ever held,” he noted.

“Asymmetrical investment protection” refers to the power that these proposed treaties grant to international corporations to sue (for alleged loss of their profits) nations that increase regulations to protect the safety of the public from toxic products, and from environmental harms, and that protect workers’ rights and other human rights that can also, in some circumstances, reduce corporate profits. “Asymmetrical” refers to the absence in the proposed treaty of any symmetrical power granted to a government to sue an international corporation that violates its laws to protect the public.

De Zayas goes further than merely charging that these treaties are “asymmetrical”: he adds that, “In case of conflict between trade agreements and human rights treaties, it is the latter that prevail. States must not enter into agreements that delay, circumvent, hinder or make impossible the fulfillment of human rights treaty obligations.”

In a statement to the Council of Europe, on April 19th, de Zayas had said: “Two ontologies seem to have been lost in the ideologically-driven corporate narrative. Firstly, the ontology of the State, its raison d’être to legislate in the public interest, including preventative measures to avert potential harm to the population. Secondly, the ontology of business, which is to take calculated risks for profit.” He meant there that these proposed treaties, which would enable the latter to override the former — enable international investors to override national sovereignty of democratic nations, and which would impose their own system of ‘arbitration’ that isn’t required to adhere to any nation’s laws and constitution — violate international law.

The U.N. OHCHR’s June 24th press release concludes by saying:

“Trade agreements should be ratified only after human rights, health and environmental impact assessments have been conducted, which has not been the case with regard to CETA and TTIP,” Mr. de Zayas said.

“Ratification of CETA and TTIP would start a ‘race to the bottom’ in human rights terms, and would seriously compromise the regulatory space of states. This is contrary to the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter, and would constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a democratic and equitable international order,” the UN Independent Expert concluded.

The statements by the U.N.’s Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order are damning against these proposed treaties. As the U.N.’s appointed independent legal counsel regarding these treaties, he is saying that, regardless of whether they will become law in any particular country, they are in clear violation of international law.

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.

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Europe, A De Facto US Colony: Trump, Clinton and Sanders on Brexit

June 25th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

During his April London visit, Obama opposed Brexit, touting nonexistent “single market” benefits.

Trump backed Brexit, saying in response to Thursday’s vote “they took back their country. It’s a great thing…fantastic.”

“People are angry all over the world,” suggesting other EU countries may follow Britain’s lead.

He failed to explain what’s most important. Thursday’s Brexit vote was non-binding. Parliament alone has final say on whether Britain remains in the EU or leaves – a lengthy process to unfold slowly over the coming months, likely well into a new US administration.

The jury is out but looks virtually certain to reject Brexit. Money-controlled special interests want EU unity remaining intact.

Clinton opposes Brexit, her senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan weeks earlier, saying she “believes that transatlantic cooperation is essential, and the cooperation is strongest when Europe is united.”

She has always valued a strong United Kingdom in a strong EU. And she values a strong British voice in the EU.

She and others like her want Europe remaining a de facto US colony, sovereign independent countries prevented.

Sanders tried having things both ways, in late April saying “let the British people make their own decisions,” then adding:

“I think the European Union obviously is a very, very important institution. I would hope that they stay in” – lending imperial support like always.

In a previous article, I said union, not Brexit, threatens world peace and stability. Sovereign independence is sacred. Sacrificing it to an external authority is incompatible with democratic freedoms, societies left vulnerable to tyranny.

US-dominated NATO is the main source of global conflicts, related violence, instability, chaos and human misery.

I suggested if all 50 US states never united to create America, we’d likely have world peace, not permanent wars.

Paul Craig Roberts calls the EU and NATO “evil institutions.” Breaking them up may be the only way to prevent WW III, a major threat if Clinton succeeds Obama.

Putin was quoted, saying “(f)irst there was Bush senior in power, then Bush junior. (Bill) Clinton was (US president) two times in a row.”

Now his wife has ambitions. (T)he family might stay in power. As they say in Russia, a husband and wife are the same Satan.

In response to David Cameron, saying he “might be happy” with Brexit, he responded sharply, saying “I believe that this is nothing but a bad attempt to influence the public opinion in one’s own country.”

But, as we have seen, it failed to achieve the expected effect. Still more so, after the voting nobody has the right to say anything about Russia’s position. This is nothing but evidence of a low level of political culture.

“The way I see it, we have been very decent all the way. We closely followed what was happening, but in no way influenced that process or even tried to do that” – calling Cameron’s claim entirely baseless.

People are dissatisfied with policies harming their welfare. They “want to be more independent.”

Putin expects nothing catastrophic followingThursday’s vote, fear-mongering misplaced despite current market turbulence.

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.

 

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Gardasil: Not Proven to Prevent Cancer of the Cervix!

June 25th, 2016 by Dr. Gary G. Kohls

A recent DNT commentary article, written and or endorsed by area board-certified pediatricians, oncologists and obstetricians/ gynecologists  appeared in the Duluth News-Tribune Op-Ed section promoting the universal use of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for pre-teen and teen-age girls. It appears to be a part of the world-wide billion dollar promotion campaign to get the world’s young women, even in poor third world nations, more fully vaccinated than they already are.  The huge amount of money behind the massive effort comes from one of the most profitable, price-gouging pharmaceutical companies in the world, Merck. 

In 2006, after only 3 – 5 years of clinical trials, the FDA approved for marketing the most expensive vaccine in the history of the world, Gardasil, which has been proclaimed as a preventative for cancer of the cervix, a claim that was never proved and has, to date not prevented a single case of cervical cancer.

The whole premise that the vaccine could prevent cancer was presented by Merck investigators to the FDA (and then to American physicians and now to their patients) was based on the finding (again made by investigators who were deeply conflicted by their financial involvement with Merck money in that they were employees, had shares in the company or had received honoraria or grants to get the product to market and promote the vaccine any way they could.

The name of Merck’s so-called anti-cancer vaccine is Gardasil. Their competitor (and collaborator when it comes to promoting the notion that a vaccine directed at the HPV can prevent cancer) is the British multinational pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, whose HPV vaccine is called Cervarix.

Scandalously, the truth of the matter is that neither company’s vaccine has ever prevented a single cancer of the cervix, mainly because cancer of the cervix takes 20 – 50 years to develop and the vaccine corporations only clinically tested the product prior to FDA approval for less than 5 years.

What the industry-sponsored studies did show in their relatively brief trials is that the vaccines produced transient anti-HPV immune complexes in most of the young female vaccinees and that there were modest reductions in the development of abnormal Pap smears that, in the vast majority of cases, disappear by themselves anyway. 99% of patients infected with HPV resolve spontaneously.

For much more information on the Gardasil debate (which isn’t allowed to be discussed seriously on most for-profit radio, television or print media), click here:

The antigens in these alarmingly expensive and hugely profitable (for Big Pharma and many medical clinics) are genetically-engineered proteins that, thanks to the neurotoxic aluminum adjuvant in each dose, can cause serious autoimmune disorders and unknown levels of potentially serious mitochondrial damage. (It also needs to be mentioned that each of the three shots in the series costs around $140 plus office call charges.)

The DNT commentary article contained all of the talking points that Merck, Glaxo, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the oncology trade journals  and the OB/GYN trade associations use to promote these vaccines around the world; but it mentioned none of the many serious downsides, which, for physicians interested in the welfare of their patients, represents a gross disservice to prospective patients and their parents. Physicians are supposed to offer complete information on what they prescribe so that the patient can make a fully informed consent or refusal to accept the treatment (or surgery).

So how bogus is the vaccine industry’s claims that Gardasil can prevent cancer? The irrefutable fact is that there have been zero cases of cancer prevention proven. Patients will have to wait another generation or two to find out about cancer prevention, the major reason that parents are pushing their daughters to get the shots. 20 – 50 years is the amount of time for cancer of the cervix to develop.

One useful statistical measure that some medical investigators use is the Number Needed to Treat (NNT), which is one way to quickly state the effectiveness of a treatment. It indicates how many patients have to be treated before one patient can be said to have benefitted from the treatment. For instance the NNT for a course of penicillin for penicillin-sensitive streptococcal pharyngitis is 1 (meaning that one cure occurs for every one course of treatment. If a treatment results in only half of patients benefitted, the NNT is 2 (the inverse of the fraction1/2). The smaller the NNT, the more beneficial the treatment is.

An article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (co-authored by four investigators, three of whom were either employees of one of Merck’s Canadian subsidiaries or had received money, honoraria or grants from vaccine companies) that stated that for Gardasil, the Number Needed to Vaccinate (same principle as the NNT) to prevent 4 or 5 cases of cervical cancer for a typical 12 year old girl would be 9,080, meaning that 9075 girls would be risking the serious adverse health consequences of Gardasil (many of which are only recently coming to light, including autoimmune disorders) not to mention the financial burdens but still not receiving alleged benefit : the prevention of cervical cancer!

Physicians are never informed of NNT or NNV statistics but patients deserve to know about it before embarking on any recommended treatment program. What Merck has done to promote Gardasil in the deceptive “Not One More” campaign (that makes parents truly believe that Gardasil will prevent cancer, when in actuality the risks and costs come nowhere near outweighing the miniscule, alleged benefit.

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Despite the Brexit Vote, the Odds Are Against Britain Leaving the EU

June 25th, 2016 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The Brexit vote shows that a majority of the British voters understand that the UK government represents interests other than the interests of the British people. As difficult as the British know it is to hold their own government to account, they understand they have no prospect whatsoever of holding the EU government to account. During their time under the EU, the British have been reminded of historical times when law was the word of the sovereign.

The propagandists who comprise the Western political and media establishments succeeded in keeping the real issues out of public discussion and presenting the leave vote as racism. However, enough of the British people resisted the brainwashing and controlled debate to grasp the real issues: sovereignty, accountable government, financial independence, freedom from involvement in Washington’s wars and conflict with Russia.

The British people should not be so naive as to think that their vote settles the matter. The fight has only begun. Expect:

— The British government to come back to the people and say, look, the EU has given us a better deal. We can now afford to stay in.

— The Fed, ECB, BOJ, and NY hedge funds to pound the pound and to short British stocks in order to convince the British voters that their vote is sinking the economy.

— More emphasis on the vote’s weakening of Europe, leaving all to the mercy of “Russian aggression.”

— Hard to resist bribes (and threats) to prominent members of the leave majority and pressure on such leave leaders as Boris Johnson to be reasonable, concillatory and to maintain good relations with Washington and Europe, and to reach a compromise on remaining in the EU.

— Expect the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to attribute the loss of British jobs and investment opportunities to the leave vote.

Once you learn to think about how things really are and not as the presstitutes present them, you will be able to add to the list all by yourself.

Remember, the Irish voted against the EU and pressure was kept on them until they reversed their vote. This is the likely fate of the British.

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

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Russia and the Kuril Islands Dispute with Japan

June 25th, 2016 by J. Hawk

Kuril Islands represent one of Russia’s many outer defensive outposts either outside its contiguous borders (as in the case of Kaliningrad), national borders (Armenia, Tajikistan, for example), and even the Eurasian continental landmass (Novaya Zemlya and, of course the Kurils). Each of them plays a specific role in the larger defensive and deterrent posture, and each has its own peculiarities.

The Kurils are not an exception. For starters, they are still something of a contested territory, since Japan has continuously laid a claim to them ever since the end of World War 2 that did not conclude with a Russia-Japan peace treaty that might have addressed their final status. Nevertheless, there is zero possibility these islands will ever return to Japan.

First of all, the example of NATO expansion in Europe has made it plain that any Russian “real estate for pieces of paper” deal is a really bad idea since the US and US-allied states have shown a pattern of ignoring their commitments as soon as an opportunity presents itself. There is no indication that anyone in the Kremlin would want to relearn that lesson, and there doesn’t appear to be anything tangible that Tokyo could offer Moscow to offset the loss of the Kurils which are more important to Russia’s security than to Japan’s.

Kuril Islands collectively represent a barrier separating Pacific Ocean from the Sea of Okhotsk, therefore Japan’s control over the archipelago would in effect bottle up the Russian Pacific Fleet and undermine the Pacific-based submarine strategic deterrent.

Even though Japan claims only the southernmost islands of the chain, such as Iturup and Kunashir, in practice there is no guarantee against future Japanese claims against other islands in the chain for similar historic reasons, which would now be bolstered by the precedent of Iturup’s and Kunashir’s return to Japanese sovereignty.

The fact that Japan has joined the US-led economic restrictive measures against Russia naturally meant a Russian response, not only in the economic realm but also military one. Kuril Islands, which are protected by the 18th Machine Gun–Artillery Division with some 3500 troops, have had their status elevated as part of both the response to Japanese economic pressure on Russia and to the US “pivot” toward Asia which, though chiefly aimed at China, nevertheless potentially threatens Russian interests too.

For these reasons the Kuril Islands are undergoing a transformation in economic realm, in order to raise their usefulness to the Russian economy as a whole, but military one as well so that, if need be, they can resist a concerted Japanese and/or US effort to seize it through a surprise “coup de main” attack, and serve as a platform for force projection into the Pacific Ocean where Russian aeronaval forces will be able to render assistance to China in its own territorial disputes with Japan, US, and Philippines over the status of South China Sea islands.

These upgrades include the reorganization of the 18th Division, re-equipping it with upgraded weapons systems, assigning a tank battalion on a permanent basis, and placing Pantsyr, Tor, and Buk air defense systems, while providing infrastructure for the S-400 to be deployed there in times of crisis. The air component of the islands’ garrison will include Ka-52K naval attack helicopters originally ordered for the Mistral ships, which will be based on the Kamchatka Peninsula and deploy to the islands on a rotational basis.

There are no indications at the moment the islands would have permanently based fixed-wing aircraft, as they islands are within range of land-based long-range fighters, and any aircraft based on the Kurils would be vulnerable to a surprise attack due to the inability to disperse them to secondary airfields. The garrison will, however, include batteries of land-based anti-ship missiles, including Bal and Bastion systems, the latter armed with supersonic Oniks missiles.

Apart from their military significance, these preparations are intended to send Tokyo a message that, should it be interested in a peace treaty with Moscow, that treaty ought to be signed sooner rather than later, when the islands’ military capabilities become truly formidable, and that in any event no Russia-Japan accord will include any redrawing of international borders.

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Hybrid Wars: The History of Asia. The Legacy of Japan. The Post Cold War Era. The Role of China. The TPP Trap

June 25th, 2016 by Andrew Korybko

(Please read Part I, Part II, Part III,  Part IV  , and Part V before this article)

The global economic position of ASEAN is of pivotal importance in contemporary international relations, but similarly just as significant is the region’s strategic one vis-à-vis China and the unipolar world. There’s a multitude of complex variables impacting on the current state of affairs, and in order to properly understand the present situation, one needs to become briefly familiarized with the region’s past.

Revisiting The Pages Of Time

The history of Southeast Asia is characterized by a rich intermingling of indigenous and foreign elements that combined to produce a unique regional identity. Some of these interactions are millennia-old while others are much more recent, but only the most lasting and relevant will be enumerated below. The following is by no means comprehensive and has been limited for the sake of space and focus, but the reader is recommended to independently pursue any of these leads if he or she is inclined to learn more. The highlighted selections are specifically curated in order to draw attention to the origins of how each of the five most currently powerful and geopolitically pertinent actors (China, India, Japan, the US, and Russia) affected Southeast Asia in their own specific way:

Civilizational Overlap

It’s not for naught that Europeans used to broadly describe Southeast Asia as “Indochina” since this is actually the precise region where Indian and Chinese civilizational influences intermingle to a large degree. The standard non-Asian individual nowadays likely has no idea why that neologism was initially chosen, but the history behind it is actually quite important and is increasingly returning as a factor in the present day.

India:

What most foreigners are completely unaware of is that India exerted tremendous civilizational influence over Southeast Asia for almost the past two millennia, with the effect being so strong that some scholars have controversially referred to the Indianized kingdoms of the time as being part of ‘Greater India’. While this is a highly sensitive term to use, it does carry with it much truth in a tangible sense. India’s civilizational footprint is still visible in the architecture of many of the temples dotting the Myanmar, Thai, Cambodian, and Indonesian landscapes, and it’s a well-established fact that Hinduism and Buddhism (both of which originated from India) have become inseparable parts of the region’s historical identity.

map1h

India under British rule

In fact, taking it a step further, the Islamization of modern-day Indonesia, the largest and most populous country in Southeast Asia and incidentally also the largest Muslim one in the world, is thought to have been largely facilitated by Muslim traders from Gujarat in contemporary India. Conclusively, while it may not be common knowledge to many outside observers, there is absolutely no denying that Indian civilization played a guiding role in influencing the progressive development of Southeast Asia’s identity, and that the historical reserves of soft power that India commanded could potentially be reactivated in part in order to advance its current geopolitical agenda, dependent of course on their skillful application and the appeal that various factors have to their respective targeted audiences.

China:

Imperial China played a much more direct and ‘hard’ role over Southeast Asia than India’s kingdoms ever did. The Emperor formally incorporated Vietnam into the realm for over a millennium and forced the lion’s share of the region to pay tribute to him at one time or another throughout their history. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the entirety of Southeast Asia was continually in a state of proxy servitude to China, but this sort of relationship with the Empire was noticeably and qualitatively different than that which was previously enjoyed with India and which had no formal power hierarchy between them. Nonetheless, this type of interaction wasn’t the only one that Southeast Asia had with China. Commercial ties between both of them were very deep and mutually beneficial owing to the region’s location along the maritime Silk Road to India and the Mideast, and this resulted in a moderate level of Chinese migration spurred on by the many merchant traders that dealt with the region.

The modern-day consequences of these ties are evident. China’s historical incorporation of Vietnam into the Empire is seen as a dark era of outright colonialism by many in the latter country, and it bred a level of resentment and distrust that became such an integral part of the Vietnamese national identity that it continues to impact on the present despite the nearly 1,000 years that have passed since that time. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the effect of China’s historical relations is much more positive in many respects and has given rise to a large ethnic diaspora community. According to The Wall Street Journal, there are approximately 7 million ethnic Chinese each in Thailand and Indonesia, with about 6 million residing in Malaysia (where they constitute a relatively larger proportion of the population). Reports indicate that ethnic Chinese are much more integrated and assimilated in Thailand than they are in Malaysia, and politically speaking, this creates both advantages (as in Thailand) and obstacles (like in Malaysia) for the application of Chinese foreign policy.

1844 Spruneri Map of Asia in the 15th and 16th Centuries

1844 Spruneri Map of Asia in the 15th and 16th Centuries

The attitude of the majority of the titular nationality towards the Chinese minority inevitably affects how they view China proper, so in the case of negative communal interactions such as in Malaysia, it’s difficult for the Chinese government to reassure the locals of their regional policies and gain their lasting trust. The same issue, however, is less of a factor in Thailand because of the much more harmonious relations between the ethnic groups. Of importance to mention is also that three-quarters of Singapore’s population are ethnic Chinese but that this doesn’t seem to be an influencing element one way or another due to the specific island identity that Lee Kuan Yew fostered over the decades. While China is the developed city-state’s top trading partner, political and security ties between the two are much more muted. It was only in 1990 that both sidesformally entered into bilateral relations with one another, and it was announced in early December 2015 that Singapore would be hosting US spy planes that will provocatively operate over the South China Sea. Overall, while China’s ethnic diaspora is a positive soft power asset in Thailand, it is also a complicating variable in Malaysia and surprisingly even a non-factor in Singapore, illustrating that Beijing’s potential utilization of this instrument is wholly dependent on the national conditions of the host country and cannot be patterned in any way.

The Lasting Legacy Of Imperial Japan

Fast-forwarding the historical record closer to the present, Japan’s World War II occupation of Southeast Asia can arguably be seen as being much more influential than the European colonialism that preceded it for decades. In more ways than one, Japan’s brief legacy of direct and bloody involvement in the region was cataclysmic in setting off the chain reaction of independence that would follow after the war, and it is also responsible for the rise of indelible national heroes in Vietnam, Myanmar, and Indonesia.

The War Years:

The Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia was promoted by Tokyo as a liberation campaign against the Western Imperialists, but in actuality it was the reimposition of the same oppressive system under a slightly tweaked format and racially different overseers. While at first being welcomed by many in the region as a welcome respite from European dominance, the regretful reality soon seeped in that nothing had in fact changed on a structural-political level. The resource exploitation and economic mismanagement that the Japanese engaged in helped contribute to the devastating famines in Vietnam and the most populous Indonesian island of Java, culminating in the deaths of one to two million and 2.4 million people, respectively. The Japanese were also very brutal with their subjects and would wantonly kill them for the slightest disobedience, to say nothing of the rampant torture they carried out against prisoners of war and suspected rebels. The only country that had it slightly better than the rest was Thailand, but that was simply because its formal World War II alliance with Imperial Japan required minimal occupation efforts to keep it in line.

japanese_offensive_1941

Japanese Offensive in SEA, 1941

If there is any ‘positive’ that can be gleaned from this destructive period, then it’s that the Japanese proved that the European colonizers were not undefeatable and that Asians are in fact just as capable as any other race in rising up against their oppressors. In a similar vein, the temporary removal of the American and European colonial administrations and their gradual replacement with progressively more autonomous Japanese-occupied ones (especially in the closing days of the war) brought about an irreversible precedent that would inevitably lead to independence. The pace in which this achieved varied widely throughout the region, with Myanmar receiving it in 1948 for example, while Brunei didn’t experience it until 1984 (with the latter being explained by the Sultanate’s own self-interested unwillingness to part as a British protectorate earlier). In general, however, the Japanese occupation can be seen as a watershed event that completely upended the old European colonial system and greatly sped up their struggle for independence.

Independence Heroes:

One of the ways in which the Japanese occupation most directly shaped the contemporary national identity of some Southeast Asian states is through the independence heroes that emerged from its aftermath. These men left a very impressionable mark on their home countries that continues to resonate to this day, but they would not have ever had their chance to shape their countrymen’s national identity had it not been for their role in leading their states to independence in the first place. Each of the three heroes that will be mentioned rose to prominence due to the roles that they played in World War II, with their most noteworthy difference being the level of collaboration that they had with the Japanese occupiers.

The most independent of the bunch was Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, who wholeheartedly refused to accept Japan’s occupation of his homeland. He bravely fought against them and eventually assumed leadership of North Vietnam after expelling the French who had returned in their wake. Aung San from Myanmar (then called Burma) was cut from a completely different cloth, as he came to power during the war precisely because of his collaboration with the Japanese. He was trained in Japan and sent back to Myanmar just prior to the Axis invasion as a means of legitimizing it on national liberation grounds. He was later made War Minister of occupied Myanmar but became disillusioned with the Japanese and eventually rebelled against them near the end of the war. He subsequently helped lead his country to independence from the UK after the war but was tragically assassinated before he could ever see that day arrive. The third and last independence hero to come to power immediately after the war was Sukarno in Indonesia. The Japanese freed him from prison after invading the island nation and planned to use the renowned independence activist as their proxy for controlling the country.  Sukarno took great strides in advancing Indonesian independence in the final months of the war, but he never rebelled against his masters and only declared independence after the Japanese had already surrendered.

Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh

These three independence heroes have rich personal backgrounds and performed their roles under extraordinarily complex conditions, which thus explains why Sukarno partnered with the Japanese while Ho Chi Minh vehemently fought against them, so it’s highly suggested that the reader explore their personal biographies more in-depth if there’s an interest in finding out the specific contexts in which they came to power. These individuals’ incorporation into the research was made in order to demonstrate the effect to which Imperial Japan inadvertently shaped the emerging national identities of some of the key states in the region, since these three men are indisputably recognized as the fathers of their respective modern nations. For better and for worse, Southeast Asia’s current independence is firmly linked to the events that transpired during the period of Japanese occupation, and it’s worthwhile to be aware of this relationship in order to make sense of why some actors are enthusiastically welcoming Japan’s return to the region (as strange as that may seem after having just recently been victimized by it).

Reparations And Re-engagement:

Part of the reason why some regional elite are actively or passively supportive of Japan’s re-engagement with Southeast Asia is because they feel that it has absolved itself of its World War II guilt by paying financial reparations and “grant aid”. These were made after the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco and Japan’s 1954 US-supported membership in the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific, a multilateral trade and development grouping. Washington backed Tokyo’s reintegration into the region in order to use it as a proxy vehicle for complementarily spreading its influence there. The US also knew that the then-recovering Japanese economy would need nearby export outlets and outbound investment opportunities in order to continue its growth, and since American grand strategy stipulated that a strong (occupied) Japan is beneficial to its Asian interests, it did whatever it institutionally could to make this happen.

Perceptively, one can discern the nascent beginnings of a Lead From Behind prototype that would later be rolled out in full force to contain China decades later and which will be discussed at a further point in the research. Simply put, Japan would never have been allowed to re-enter Southeast Asia had it not been for the full complicity and support of the US, which supported this move in order to advance its geostrategic considerations. Financially ‘atoning’ for World War II was just the normative gateway that the US led Japan to in order to ‘legitimize’ its return to its preplanned area of future proxy influence.

The Cold War

The first period of global superpower confrontation was important for Southeast Asia because it heralded the introduction of the US and the USSR (now Russia) as important players in the region. For the most part, American influence was a lot more deeply entrenched and broadly applied than its Soviet counterpart was, but that doesn’t mean that it was necessarily more effective. One needs only to recall the Vietnam War to vividly remember the limits (some of which were self-imposed) of American power in Southeast Asia during the time and the hefty toll that meagerly funded guerrilla fighters could inflict on the capitalist superpower. Additionally, the fear of a communist uprising in British-occupied Malaya was enough to compel the crown to commit tens of thousands of soldiers over the 12-year period prior to independence to quelling the disturbance, which stretched the slowly disintegrating empire past its limits and was an unnecessary financial burden that reaped no direct geopolitical dividends (besides being ultimately successful in rooting out the communists).

The US:

In over five months from late 1965 to early 1966, anti-communist regime killed about half a million of Indonesians.

In over five months from late 1965 to early 1966, anti-communist regime killed about half a million of Indonesians.

Returning the focus back to the two superpowers, the US’ sphere of influence was over the breadth of ASEAN, but at the time, the organization obviously didn’t include all of its current members. Initiated in 1967, it began with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, but later expanded to include Brunei in 1984. Its other enlargements didn’t occur until after the Cold War was finished, so for the entirety of the proxy conflict, it can truthfully be said that the whole organization was fully under American control. The only time this was ever endangered was during the twilight period of Sukarno’s presidency, when the Indonesian leader was suspected of becoming too close to local communist influences and was consequently overthrown by a CIA-engineered coup(the politically driven aftermath of which killed between 200,000–1,000,000 people).

Prior to the reunification of Vietnam, the US obviously had influence over South Vietnam, but this ended in 1975 with the communist liberation of Saigon. The contained ‘domino effect’ that swept over the other two Indochinese countries of Laos and Cambodia put an end to the US’ covert anti-communist wars in each and gave rise to the conditions under which stout US-ally Thailand asked the Pentagon to surprisingly withdraw almost all of its forces a year later. This didn’t extend to covert ones, however, as the US and Thailand worked closely together in supporting Khmer Rouge guerrillas after they were overthrown as a result of Vietnam’s 1979 intervention in Cambodia.

In Thailand’s other neighboring direction, the US’ ties with Myanmar (then Burma) had been pragmatic since independence but were complicated by the military-run government that came to power in 1962. The new authorities espoused a ‘non-aligned’ form of socialism that didn’t quite put the country under the Soviets’ sway, but was serious enough in its implementation that it scared the US away. In the last years of the Cold War, the US tried pulling off an unsuccessful Color Revolution in Myanmar that was eventually smashed by the military. In response to that and the associated jailing of proxy provocateur Aung San Suu Kyi, Washington imposed a harsh sanctions regime that inadvertently pushed the country closer into arms of China. The final event of significance of Southeast Asian significance that involved the US during the Cold War was the 1986 People’s Power Revolution that ousted corrupt US puppet Ferdinand Marcos from power and eventually engendered enough anti-American sentiment that the new government kicked the US out of the Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay naval base in 1991.

USSR (Russia):

The Soviet Union never happened to gain as wide of a presence in Southeast Asia as the US, but the inroads that it did make proved to be quite stable and long-lasting. The core of Moscow’s influence in the region came down to Hanoi, and after the reunification of Vietnam, the Soviet Union gleefully took over the US’ former naval base in Cam Ranh Bay. This allowed the Soviet Navy to exert a very strong role in Southeast Asia and continually keep the US on edge in the region that had hitherto treated as an extension of its own backyard (an ‘Asian Caribbean’, if one will). The Soviet Union had historically patronized the Pathet Laos, and when the communists finally overthrew the pro-US monarchy, Vientiane also came under Moscow’s strategic purvey.

A Soviet placard in supprt of the Vietnam war for independence.

A Soviet placard in supprt of the Vietnam war for independence.

However, Vietnam always played a much larger role in Laotian affairs than the Soviets ever did, and although the USSR had independent bilateral relations with Laos, both sides were ultimately dependent on Hanoi’s supportive goodwill in geographically facilitating their relations. Relations with Cambodia were less physically constrained but under stronger and more direct Vietnamese influence because the state was essentially under the total control of the People’s Army of Vietnam until its complete withdrawal in 1989. To put it another way, Vietnam was the lynchpin of the Soviet Union’s Southeast Asian policy, and this strategic partnership has continued into the present with the Russian Federation, albeit to a dramatically scaled back degree.

China:

Beijing’s role in Southeast Asia during the Cold War was not commensurate with its size and historical footprint, and for the most part, it was kept at bay by most of the regional states. While it’s true that China supported North Vietnam during the Vietnamese War, this didn’t translate into the type of patron-proxy relations that some in Beijing may have anticipated afterwards. The reason for this is clear and it has to do with China’s millennium-long control over Vietnam. Although occurring almost one thousand years ago, the historical memory of this period continues to play a decisive role over the Vietnamese identity even to this day and has resulted in an ingrained suspicion of China being implanted in the national psyche. Due to the sensitivities that many in Vietnam had of unwittingly falling under China’s de-facto control, the authorities made moves to align their country more closely with the Soviet Union as a strategic counterbalance to this perceived threat, and accordingly, they also did the same for their Laotian allies after the 1975 as well.

China’s only significant geopolitical advance at this time was in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, but Vietnam’s late-1978 regime change intervention there dealt a hard blow to Beijing’s regional ambitions. It was partly for this reason why China attacked Vietnam a few months later in early 1979 during a limited engagement conflict, but the end result was an embarrassing loss that few in China could have expected at that time. Faced with a cluster of three anti-Chinese states south of its border (Vietnam and its Laotian and Cambodian allies) and the complete reversal of any soft power gains it had made in supporting each of their communist liberation movements there, China realized that it had to revolutionize its policy in Myanmar (known as Burma at the time) in order to compensate. Thus, Beijing decreased the support that it had previously given to the Communist Party of Burma in order to repair relations with Yangon (then the capital). This led to a gradual rapprochement between the two neighbors that culminated in a strategic partnership after the failed Color Revolution of 1988 and the US’ determined and mostly successful efforts to make Myanmar a ‘pariah state’.

Post-Cold War

Russian Retreat:

The years after the Cold War were marked by important processes that rapidly transformed Southeast Asia. The first thing that obviously marked this new era was the absence of Russia from the region. Following the Soviet collapse, Moscow was plainly much too weak to maintain such a far-flung (albeit highly strategic) presence in Southeast Asia, and pressing domestic budgetary concerns guided the government’s decision in halting all forms of foreign aid. Minimal relations were still maintained with Vietnam, but Russia’s leadership spent most of the decade trying to build relations with the West, not the East. Although this misprioritization was partially corrected by the pragmatism of Yevgeny Primakov, it didn’t have much of an immediate effect on Southeast Asia, and Russia eventually withdrew from Cam Ranh Bay in 2002 and pretty much abandoned the region until it became strong enough to return during the beginning of the New Cold War.

Chinese Renaissance:

South China Sea dispute

South China Sea dispute

Around the same time as Russia’s sudden disengagement from Southeast Asia was China’s renewed engagement with it, brought about because both sides decided to put aside their prior ideological differences and enter into an economic renaissance that has been mutually beneficial for both parties. A large amount of credit goes to the Chinese leadership for pragmatically moderating their previously strict ideological adherence to internal and external communist precepts, thus allowing a domestic economic renewal to take place that made long-term trade engagement with it more attractive to the capitalist countries of Southeast Asia. The tempering of Cold War-era tension between China and Vietnam was important in getting both sides to realize the benefits of mutual economic cooperation, and Vietnam’s military withdrawal from Cambodia reopened the country to Chinese influence. All in all, up until the US decided to purposely heat up the long-dormant South China Sea dispute following its announced “Pivot to Asia” in 2011 (the Asian beginning of the New Cold War), it can objectively be ascertained that relations between China and Southeast Asia were at unprecedentedly historic levels, which of course is one of the main reasons why the US decided to mischievously disrupt them.

Intra-Bloc And Inter-Bloc Integration:

The post-Cold War years for ASEAN were importantly marked by its enlargement to include the entirety of Southeast Asia. Vietnam joined in 1995 and Myanmar and Laos followed in 1997. Cambodia, the last member to enter the bloc, became an official party to the organization in 1999, thus completing ASEAN’s formal pan-regional incorporative efforts and setting the foundation for the AEC that would follow in November 2015. In the 16 year gap that followed, ASEAN took measured steps in partnering itself with other major economic poles across the world, ergo the plethora of FTAs that it signed in the late-2000s. The combined effect of the intra- and inter-bloc integrations that ASEAN engaged in was to make it a recognizable economic force in the world that has consistently boasted one of the highest growth rates. Also, by incorporating the rest of the region and reaching out to other areas across the globe, ASEAN has been able to position itself as the go-to organization for all actors interested in trade with Southeast Asia, thus raising its global profile even more. In hindsight, it looks almost inevitable that it would eventually become one of the most economically attractive regions in the world and transition itself to the AEC, but the bloc did face a near-existential crisis in 1997 that threatened to unravel all of its gains up until that point.

The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis:

The Event

PBS assembled a very detailed and accurate timeline of everything that transpired during this prolonged and eventually geographically broad economic crisis, and the reader is enthusiastically urged to reference it for further specifics, but in the meantime, a concise summary will suffice for the scope of the present research. In the summer of 1997 and right before ASEAN’s phased incorporation of Myanmar and Laos, a speculative financial attack nearly took down the Thai currency. Within a few months, it quickly spread throughout the region to Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, with Singapore also being slightly affected as well. Conceptually, it can be understood that the post-modern attack that was launched against Thailand was intended to spread as it did throughout the core of ‘traditional ASEAN” (the member countries before the 1990s mainland expansions). George Soros is largely suspected of having plotted the attack, being directly blamed for the regional financial fiasco by then-Malaysian Prime Minister Mathir Mohamed, and his involvement in the scheme helped solidify his present notoriety for disruptive interventionism.

Lessons

A protestor in South Korea during the 1997 crisis

A protestor in South Korea during the 1997 crisis

By the time the crisis had largely dissipated in 1999 (at least in that part of the world, as it later spread to South Korea, Russia, and Brazil), Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia had all accepted IMF ‘assistance’, with the latter of the three actually experiencing a regime change against long-term American ally Suharto. It was inevitable that the unpopular and aging leader would eventually office at some point, and it’s very possible that the US sought to guide the leadership transition that was bound to take place, just as it would later do with Mubarak in the ‘Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions. Also, this was the era in which the US was still working to perfect its Color Revolution techniques and synchronize the complex interplay between multitudes of non-state actors, both those wittingly involved (like Soros) and those unintentionally manipulated (such as the protesting students). The ultimate lesson that can be gleaned from this experience is that non-state actors such as Soros and the IMF, most likely working at the behest of the US, collaboratively attempted to sabotage ASEAN’s increasingly independent economic trajectory and forcibly bring it more in line with the ‘Washington Consensus’.

Good Intentions

It can be somewhat inferred that as a response to what had transpired, ASEAN felt more motivated to expand its trading relations with other major actors so to make its stability invaluable to the global economic system and proactively preempt a future repeat of the US/Soros/IMF disruption that had occurred. This motivation somewhat explains the determined commitment that the bloc made to entering into as many FTAs as possible in the coming decade, ultimately cumulating in Southeast Asia becoming the global economic crossroads that was discussed at length in Part I. It can be interpreted that most of the leadership in ASEAN’s member states at the time understood just how troublesome the ‘Washington Consensus’ is for their economies, given its unequal structural hierarchy and inherently imbalanced nature, and sought to find a way to extricate themselves from this system.

The TPP Trap

This makes it all the more pitiful that some of them later retreated on their multipolar principles and enthusiastically embraced the US’ TPP. There are undoubtedly some internal economic and political elements (the so-called “elite”) that stand to profit handsomely from this arrangement at the expense of their country’s sovereignty, but it may also be that some of those in charge just don’t realize that the US will obviously use the ‘trade pact’ (if such an unequal arrangement can even be called that) to institutionalize its control over economies and usher in the ‘Washington Consensus 2.0’. Many of them, such as those in Vietnam, are too blinded by the US’ pressure to ‘spite China’ that they don’t realize that they’re being led directly into a unipolar trap. The US played its cards well, though, it must be said – it anticipated quite accurately that the timed and US-initiated thawing of the South China Sea dispute would lead to a flurry of nationalism and manufactured fear in Southeast Asia that could be easily manipulated to divide the region to America’s grand strategic advantage.

tpp-map

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the post-graduate of the MGIMO University and author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Hybrid Wars 5. Breaking the Balkans

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The Brexit Aftermath: Confusion Reigns!

June 25th, 2016 by William Bowles

Confusion reigns!

And as I turned on BBC News this am, not surprisingly, in the face of the Referendum result, the BBC is now saying the reason we voted to leave is because of the fear created around the issue of immigration! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

BBC news coverage has never stopped making immigration one of its main talking points, endlessly, ad nauseum, citing it’s usual, self referential argument that, ‘it’s what people are worried about that counts, not the reality and that’s why we have to report it’. Is it any wonder therefore that we see reactions like the example above?

So how to deal with the fact that as a socialist, I voted the same way as Nigel Farage (even if for diametrically opposed reasons)? And therein lies the rub as they say. Many a strange bedfellow as I think Vladimir Illyich Lenin commented about something or other.

Because the central issues that should have been at the heart of any debate on the EU, were and still are, totally absent, so what else is there to talk about except what the ruling elite decides is important for us to focus on? Immigration. It’s always worked in the past.

Essentially, on both sides of what has passed for a debate, it’s been about whether we will be better off (financially) in or out of the EU and the role that immigrants/refugees allegedly play in the process of making us richer or poorer, in or out? And then a lot of guff about ‘sovereignty’ (something we gave away long ago when we became the US’s poodle and an aircraft carrier in the Cold War) and ‘being British’, whatever that is.

Is it any wonder therefore, that confusion reigns. And the breast-beating will begin, has begun, and the mea culpas, and the blame game. In other words business as usual.

Either way, we know that it will be ordinary people who pay the price. Well somebody will have to pay for daring to defy the Empire!

But what is also apparent is the total disarray amongst our ruling elites. I am convinced that they never seriously considered that the British people would actually vote to exit. I think the idea had not entered their tiny, myopic minds, so confident were they that their propaganda campaign, led by its faithful mouthpiece, the BBC, could fail. Well it’s never failed in the past has it?

Yet it’s directly the result of the propaganda campaign that’s been waged by the self-same elite that over half the electorate voted to leave. No wonder the BBC is calling the result an “earthquake”. And no wonder. How exactly, do we extricate ourselves from a dictatorship of banks based in Brussels?

But look on the bright side: It’s a whole new slew of consultants jobs waiting to be created whose function will be to try and untangle ourselves from the Gordian Knot called the European Union.

As for the left: well I think this is an incredible opportunity for us to consider our options and what the break opens up for us, if indeed the break does goes through. But will we rise to the occasion I wonder?

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Rubbishing Brexit: Post-Referendum Malevolence in Action

June 25th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Twenty-four hour news networks are both terrible and worthy sites to gauge herd-like assumptions. A gaze at CNN over the coverage of the Brexit over the course of Fridaysuggested the dismay, growing into outrage that the infallible market had somehow failed to detect the Leave voters on its all divine radar.

“The markets got it so wrong,” came one CNN pundit reporting on the various erosions of the European stock market. Assumptions of the all wise market deity continued to come out, as if the market has body, soul and form. If the Brexit vote should have taught such figures anything, it is that the market is neither divine nor particular democratic in the way it fiddles with its invisible hand.

The marketeers were thereby marshalled against the Brexiteers. The smug “told you so” gatherings started to assume face with varying degrees of anger and resentment. Democracy had triumphed as an experiment, but…

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan could only speak about the hope that financiers and companies would still see London as the premier venue, showing his own, rather atrophied version of the British citizen in action. Such a view usually takes the position that the corporation has greater citizenship credentials than the registered voter.

Forget Paris and Berlin, please, pleaded Khan, as the great financial hub of the world could still go about its business irrespective of what voters thought. “We are open for business,” he explained to the CNN viewers. The swill of platitudes did not stop (“We will continue being the best city in the world”), much of it a desperate fight against reality itself.

A cumulative loss of investment, a contraction, a different set of trading relationships with Europe and the rest of the world; that was former Blair minister and Labour Peer Lord Mandelson’s dark prediction in a nutshell. So many buts, so many qualifications to the democratic initiative.

At least Mandelson resisted taking his fist to the leave votes, noting instead an anger in the population against the governing classes. To ITV news, he explained that neither Conservative nor Labour politicians were considered trustworthy, and lacked “the connection they thought they had.”[1]

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, despite the clear vote for Brexit, decided to ignore the “gut” and “instinct” of the pro-leave voter, feeling, instead, that more brain might have been utilised. He does his own bit of rubbishing of the Brexit voter, suggesting that those on the continent and beyond who praised the vote should be a very good reason to rubbish it.

Instead of stretching out a hand of understanding to those who wished Britain to leave, he sought support from those who voted to remain. “If you are angry and heart-broken over Brexit then join the Lib Dems.”[2]

Within every political class beats the heart of a vengeful authoritarian, and Farron is no different, pitching his own reverse populist line that the Brexit vision, despite having “won this vote”, is not a “vision I and thousands of Mirrorreaders share.”

For Farron, the Mirror reader’s demographic is fundamentally materialist, a coda for middle class Britain. “Mirror readers are worried about their job, their mortgage and their family.” The UKIP leader, Nigel Farage is, in contrast, ethereally daft, “a tin pot Braveheart” wrapped in the flag.

Sadly, Farron’s own cerebral contribution to the debate has been rather bereft of substance. Judge people, he snorted, by the friends they keep, thereby negating criticism. If Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and the presumptive Republican nominee for US president Donald Trump appreciate the Brexit vote, be wary.

The platoons of condescending commentators and pro-remain agitators continued to emote through the course of the next twenty-four hours following the vote. An article inThe Washington Post suggested that Britons had gotten busy searching the EU on Google “hours after voting to leave it.”[3]

Fung’s hardly remarkable piece uses the ever unreliable vox pops technique in the hope of identifying the fickle and the feckless. “Even though I voted to leave,” he cites an interview of a Brexit voter with ITV news, “this morning I woke up and I just – the reality did actually hit me. If I’d had the opportunity to vote again, it would be to stay.”

The obvious point to make about the spike in search terms is that the entire British populace, from both the Remain and Leave camps, were wondering about the implications, hence feeding the figures in post-electoral agitation.

But the sting in the tail of the Post piece was the condescension. Britons may well have been “mystified” by what would happen in an exit scenario, but “many seemed not even to know what the European Union is.”

Within, and without Britain, Europe is fracturing. Over thirty three million people expressed their views. Within Britain, the votes went along lines of disunion. A silent Britain, one hidden from the political discussion, roared its disapproval. Scotland went to remain; Wales did not. Northern Ireland, in wishing to remain, will be seeking options for closer collaboration with the Republic of Ireland.

All of these consequences may now be seen as disastrous, when they should be viewed as the logical manifestation of a people’s will. Dislike it, but never rubbish it. That is a tyrant’s prerogative, an instinctive response in refusing to reform. Gatekeepers of the European project will do at their peril.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-06-24/mandelson-brexit-result-shows-disconnect-between-people-and-politicians/

[2] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/if-you-angry-heart-broken-8276478

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/24/the-british-are-frantically-googling-what-the-eu-is-hours-after-voting-to-leave-it/

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Why the UK Said Bye Bye to the EU. It’s Immigration! A Vote against Corruption

June 25th, 2016 by Pepe Escobar

So what started as a gamble by David Cameron on an outlet for domestic British discontent, to be used as a lever to bargain with Brussels for a few more favors, has metastasized into an astonishing political earthquake about the dis-integration of the European Union.

The irrepressibly mediocre Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, posing as a “historian”, had warned that Brexit, “could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but Western political civilization in its entirety”. 

That’s foolish. Brexit proved that it’s immigration, stupid. And once again, it’s the economy, stupid (although the British neoliberal establishment never paid attention). But serious bets can be made the EU system in Brussels won’t learn anything from the shock therapy – and won’t reform itself. There will be rationalizations that after all the UK was always classically whiny, obtrusive and demanding special privileges when dealing with the EU. As for “Western political civilization”, what will end – and this is a big thing — is the special transatlantic relationship between the US and the EU with Britain as an American Trojan Horse.So of course this all goes monumentally beyond a mere match between a hopelessly miscalculating Cameron, now fallen on his sword, and the recklessly ambitious court jester Boris Johnson – a Donald Trump with better vocabulary and speech patterns.

Scotland, predictably, voted Remain, and may probably hold a new referendum — and leave the UK — rather than be dragged out by white working class English votes. Sinn Fein already wants a vote on united Ireland. Denmark, the Netherlands and even Poland and Hungary will want special status inside the EU, or else. Across Europe, the extreme right stampede is on. Marine Le Pen wants a French referendum. Geert Wilders wants a Dutch referendum. As for the vast majority of British under-25s who voted Remain, they may be contemplating one-way tickets not to the continent, but beyond.

Show me the people

Anglo-French historian Robert Tombs has remarked that when Europeans talk about history they refer to the Roman Empire, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Great Britain is somewhat overlooked.

In reciprocity, quite a few Britons still consider Europe an entity that should be kept at a safe distance.To compound the problem, this is not a “Europe of peoples”. Brussels absolutely detests European public opinion, and the system exhibits an iron resistance to reform. This current EU project that ultimately aims at a federation, modeled on the US, does not cut it in most of Britain. Arguably this is one of the key reasons behind Brexit – which for its part has already disunited the kingdom and may eventually downgrade it into a tiny trading post on the edge of Europe.Lacking a “European people”, the Brussels system could not but be articulated as a Kafkaesque, unelected bureaucracy. Moreover, the representatives of this people-deprived Europe in Brussels actually defend what they consider to be their national interest, and not the “European” interest.

Brexit though does not mean Britain will be free from the dictates of the European Commission (EC). The EC does propose policy, but nothing can be followed through without decisions from the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which group representatives of all elected governments of member states.Arguably Remain, in the best possible case, would have led to some soul-searching in Brussels, and a wake-up call, translating into a more flexible monetary policy; a push to contain immigration inside African borders; and more opening towards Russia. The UK would remain in Europe giving more weight to countries outside the eurozone while Germany would concentrate on the 19-member eurozone nations.So Remain would have led to the UK increasing its politico-economic weight in Brussels while Germany would be more open to moderate growth (instead of austerity). Although Britain arguably would wince at the notion of a future eurozone Treasure Minister, a European FBI and a European Minister of the Interior, in fact the whole notion of a complete economic and monetary union.That’s all water under the bridge now. Additionally, don’t forget the mighty single market drama.

The UK not only will lose duty-free access to the EU’s single market of 500 million people; it will have to renegotiate every single trade deal with the rest of the world since all of them have been EU-negotiated. French economy minister and presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron has already warned that, “if the UK wants a commercial access treaty to the European market, the British must contribute to the European budget like the Norwegians and the Swiss do. If London doesn’t want that, then it must be a total exit.” Britain will be locked out of the single market – to which over 50% of its exports go — unless it pays almost all that it currently pays. Moreover, London must still accept freedom of movement, as in European immigration.

The City gets a black eye

Brexit defeated an overwhelming array of what Zygmunt Bauman defined as the global elites of liquid modernity; the City of London, Wall Street, the IMF, the Fed, the European Central Bank (ECB), major hedge/investment funds, the whole interconnected global banking system.The City of London, predictably, voted Remain by over 75%.  An overwhelming $2.7 trillion is traded every day in the “square mile”, which employs almost 400,000 people. And it’s not only the square mile, as the City now also includes Canary Wharf (HQ of quite a few big banks) and Mayfair (privileged hang out of hedge funds).The City of London – the undisputed financial capital of Europe — also manages a whopping $1.65 trillion of client assets, wealth literally from all over the planet. InTreasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson argues, “financial services companies have flocked to London because it lets them do what they cannot do at home”.

Unbridled deregulation coupled with unrivalled influence on the global economic system amount to a toxic mix. So Brexit may also be interpreted as a vote against corruption permeating England’s most lucrative industry.Things will change. Drastically. There will be no more “passporting”, by which banks can sell products for all 28 EU members, accessing a $19 trillion integrated economy. All it takes is a HQ in London and a few satellite mini-offices. Passporting will be up for fierce negotiation, as well as what happens to London’s euro-denominated trading floors.I followed Brexit out of Hong Kong – which 19 years ago had its own Brexit, actually saying bye bye to the British Empire to join China.

Beijing is worried that Brexit will translate into capital outflows, “depreciation pressure” on the yuan, and disturbance of the Bank of China’s management of monetary policy.Brexit could even seriously affect China-EU relations, as Beijing in thesis might lose influence in Brussels without British support. It’s crucial to remember that Britain backed an investment pact between China and the EU and a joint feasibility study on a China-EU free trade agreement.He Weiwen, co-director of the China-US-EU Study Centre under the China Association of International Trade, part of the Ministry of Commerce, is blunt; “The European Union is likely to adopt a more protectionist approach when dealing with China. For Chinese companies which have set up headquarters or branches in the UK, they may not be able to enjoy tariff-free access to the wider European market after Britain leave the EU.”That applies, for instance, to leading Chinese high-tech companies like Huawei and Tencent. Between 2000 and 2015, Britain was the top European destination for Chinese direct investment, and was the second-largest trading partner with China inside the EU.

Still, it may all revert into a win-win for China. Germany, France and Luxembourg – all of them competing with London for the juicy offshore yuan business – will increase their role. Chen Long, economist with Bank of Dongguan, is confident “the European continent, especially Central and Eastern European countries, will be more actively involved in China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ programs.”So will Britain become the new Norway? It’s possible. Norway did very well after rejecting EU membership in a 1995 referendum. It will be a long and winding road before Article 50 is invoked and a two-year UK-EU negotiation in uncharted territory starts. Former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling summed it all up; “Nobody has a clue what ‘Out’ looks like.”

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End of Regime in Europe! The Question is not Britain, the Question Concerns all Europe

June 25th, 2016 by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

Fukuyama, an ex-official of the State Department, with very poor intellectual capacities, became world famous in 1990 with his idea that History has ended. Now History is back, in full steam.

One may agree or disagree with Brexit. But he has to admit that here we have to do with a clear anti-estabishment revolt of the British, a revolt with clearly national but also clear class characteristics. Look for instance the pattern of the vote. City voted overwhelmingly to remain in the Union, the popular, de-industrialized and agricultural regions of the country, the “lost of globalization”, very much for Brexit. (As has happened in many cases, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, nationalism was not the only direct reason of the quest for independence of the Republics, antagonisms for power and property were very much the reason, still it was the national idea which offered a ready basis of legitimacy for the break down).

The result represents also an enormous historic defeat for Dr. Scheuble and the whole German leadership, it understands or not (as so many times has happened in German history).

The question is not Britain, the question concerns all Europe

It is not only that Britain is exiting the EU. The Union itself has entered a process of a probable collapse as a structure. This process will leave nothing unaffected. Internal equilibriums in various national states, the European economic order and geopolitics. It is not only the neoliberal (under German co-domination) EU which will probably leave the scene of history. It is all the European “ancien regime” which is prepared to leave. At least the one consecrated with the adoption of the Maastrich Treaty and the triumph of neoliberalism. (Indirectly also with the political choice to go on with NATO enlargement, of which the EU enlargement was the political-economic part).

Let us hope that the collapse of post-national neoliberalism will not lead also to the collapse of the fundamental achievements of European peoples after 1945. From now on we enter a “chaotic” period, in the mathematical sense of the word, with very different positive or negative possibilities.

An unacceptable Union

They will do and say everything to reinterpret, to diminish and to distorde the meaning of the British vote, still the verdict is unequivocal and its significance explosive.

The European Union, at least as it stands now and with the policies and the arrogance it is producing, is simply unacceptable not just by British, but by a clear majority of all European citizens. The Maastricht system, institutional incarnation of neoliberalism (and atlanticism), imposed in Western Europe in the wake, and under the enormous impact of the collapse of “Soviet socialism”, and also of the Mitterrand (and the British Left) defeat and capitulation and of the German reunification, as it was executed, proved to be a socially regressive, economically inefficient, politically oligarchic, antidemocratic structure.

It is collapsing in front of our eyes, as the result of the first wave (2008) of the financial crisis and the way European leaders reacted to it. Its destruction could catalyze a second wave of financial-economic crisis.

The final political blow to the legitimacy of the European Union was inflicted last year, when all the world saw the way Berlin and Brussels crashed Greece, a member of the European Union.

Even if they did not say anything at the time, everybody drew the conclusions about the nature and the character of this Union and of German policy in Europe. It was only a question of time before the political fall-out of this “victory” turns back, hitting those who masterminded it. This is what is happening now.

Greeks were too weak to succeed in their rebellion. British were too strong to accept such a Union. It was History, not the Left or the Right, which put European revolt on the order of the day. European Left proved in 2015 too hesitating, too weak, too unwilling to become the leader of the Revolt till the end. A part of the European Right was there to fill the vacuum, at least at that stage. And it did it.

By voting to leave the European Union, British citizens confirmed, as contradictory as it may seem, that they are deeply Europeans, in their own way of course and following the particular path history and the international position of their country has determined.

By voting the way they voted, British did the same that did, before them, the citizens of Cyprus, of France, of Netherlands, of Ireland, of Greece, every time they had the opportunity. They rejected massively the policies produced and imposed by the elites, both national and European ones (the two more and more indistinguishable), in spite of the enormous terror and propaganda campaigns to do the opposite.

European elites answered to this repeated cry of peoples by saying to them that they don’t understand what they are voting for, by ignoring the direct expression of the popular will and by doing the exact opposite of the policy they were mandated by their electorate to apply, in complete disrespect of the most elementary democratic principles.

The Marie Antoinette syndrome

Maybe European elites thought that, if there is divorce between people and its rulers, they should change people, as once Berdold Brecht put it to the adress of the rather deaf East German rulers of his time.

By doing it time and again, they simply laid the ground for a strong European nation to go one step further than previous revolts, voting clearly for a divorce with Brussels. Though some forces in the British Left have supported this, so it would be inexact to attribute everything to the Right (the opposite happened in Greece where a part of the Right supported the revolt), it did that under the initiative and the domination of Rightist forces, because they were the only available to play this role. This may have and it will have of course a huge impact on the follow-up, but is not changing the fundamentals roots and the character of the revolt. It makes more, not less necessary for the European Left to review and change in a radical way its policy towards both the national and the European questions. If it will not do it, it will simply disappear just as the regime is disappearing.

In Britain, but also everywhere in the continent, the European Union is more and more understood by a majority of the citizens as a system not defending people from, but organizing social regression. (Some of its leaders even say it openly, probably unaware of the political consequences. Barroso for intance said some years ago that everybody knows that future generations will live in worse conditions than in the past! Some advisors of Sarkozy have stated openly their goal to overrun completely the social project incarnated in the historic compromise French communist resistance passed with De Gaulle, in exchange for resigning from the goal of a revolution in France, but also because De Gaulle supported in fact a “social-democratic” and national project for his country).

In the western and in the southern parts of Europe “European integration” as it is realized, it is also more and more understood as a mechanism to take back from people the political freedoms and rights they used to enjoy after the victory over Nazism and Fascism, in 1945 and, as far as it concerns Portugal, Spain and Greece, after the collapse of the dictatorships in 1974. It is not a coincidence the fact that JP Morgan for instance, published, some years ago, a report stating that the huge obstacle to reform which needs to be overcome are the “antifascist constitutions” South European nations acquired after 1974!

It is important to remark at this point that there is from time to time a lot of talk of “federation” in Europe, but no real project of federation. By “federation” they mean, in really Orwellian terms, not any federation of European nations and states. They mean their subordination to the power of the High International Finance (and the US as far as it concerns geopolitical questions). There is no more telling symbol of this subordination, and of the enormous lie hidden behind all federation talk, than the appointment of a Goldman Sachs banker, Mr. Mario Dragui, in the position of the President of the (independent, but only from people and nations) European Central Bank, in fact to the position of an unelected European super Prime Minister.

The revolt of Europeans is developing along national lines for a number of reasons. Most people, especially the most threatened, and in particular the more traditional working class, feel the need, by instinct, before they hear anybody telling them, of state and of nation to protect them. Some people in the Left believe this is reactionary, but they have to explain why is progressive the replacement of national states from the international rule of big Banks (many of them and the most important, they are not even European!)

It is not a coincidence, that those revolts are happening mainly in nations which have, more or less, a strong national tradition. Cypriots have done one of the first anti-colonial revolutions after the 2nd World War, in spite of being a handful of people opposing an Empire. In the administration councils of French multinationals they speak now English, still France remains the country of the Marseillaise and it has a tendency to remember it, every time it feels the need. By the way, the first communist revolution in modern European history, the Paris commune, begun because French bourgeoisie wanted to handle the capital to the Germans. Netherlands is one of the birthplaces of European freedom, the country of Spinoza. Ireland as a country has been defined by the revolt against foreign rule. Greeks have mounted a ferocious resistance against Hitler, when most European nations had compromised with him. They inflicted in 1940-41 the first military defeat in Europe to the Axis and their subsequent resistance has provided to the Soviets and the “General Winter” precious time, while it disturbed seriously Rommel’ s logistics in Africa. (By the way they paid a very heavy price, as they were betrayed or crashed by their Allies after the War. They risk now to suffer the same fate, paying a terrible price for both their revolt and for the unpreparedness and betrayal of their leaders).

Neoliberals have been able to control nearly all the media and political landscape, intellectuals and the public opinion. They were even capable of erasing mush of History from the program of western universities. You can be a graduated economist nowadays, but ignore completely Keynes or Galbraith, a political scientist, without having read one page of Plato or Aristotle, a psychologist ignoring the work of Freud. Even most physicists do not know how Kopernic or Galileo were thinking.

By controlling everything, they fell victim of their success, believing finally blindly their own propaganda. By saying so much time and on so many occasions that “There is no Alternative”, they became finally completely incapable of politically supporting and struggling for their own alternative. Not to speak about understanding what is going on and how people are thinking.

In the environment of prosperity of the ’90s, all that seemed extremely strong and successful. But as both the middle classes and more oppressed social strata felt the pressure of the economic crisis and then of the financial crisis of 2008, the material conditions for neoliberal hegemony begun to collapse and with them the political and ideological foundations of the European Union. Unsatisfied by the pro-globalisation turn of many leftist politicians and parties, the traditional working class has in some cases deserted them moving to the far right, the other anti-establishment pole. The identities neoliberalism tried to suppress for ever, did not disappear, they went “underground”, remaining deeply inside the collective (and nationally organized) subconscious, ready to be waken up when people feel the need to legalize their resistance to a threatening new order.

Political corectness finished by blinding its architects and rehabilitating many of the very same ideas it was persecuting!

Right and Left, destroying and building

European Right seems more fit to the role of finishing the collapsing European Union and destroying the existing European order.

But the real question is not this any more. The real question is what will replace the existing European order and how to avoid the rather unavoidable, in the middle term, collapse of the existing European order will not lead also to the collapse of Europe.

For various reasons, the simple return of Europe to its nation-states, cannot be the solution. And even if British, French and Germans can as a minimum think and try it, nobody else can seriously believe to such a perspective. This is why, the defense of the nation-states and of what remains of democracy in their context is absolutely necessary, but in the same time is impossible without the emergence of a new project, socio-economic and international, able to replace the collapsing neoliberal Order.

If Europeans needed finally the Right to destroy, they will probably need some sort of Left to build. But this should be a much more radical, much more serious, much more dedicated Left, deprived of its illusions about the EU and globalization and its opportunism.

The result of the British referendum illustrates well the hard choices Sanders and Corbyn will be pushed to make, between the radicalism which propelled them to their positions and the conservatism of their parties. To succeed they should find a way to unite the dissent, the reformism of those who still have much to lose and those who have nothing to lose. The conclusions the Podemos leadership in Spain and the leaders of the French and the German Left will draw from the British case may be be also of crucial importance not only for the immediate future of the continent, but for its History.

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The UK Is Trumped: Departs from the EU, Deeply Divided

June 25th, 2016 by Brent Gregston

The people have had their say: The UK will quit the 28-nation European Union.

Push finally came to shove and voters decided the risk of leaving the EU was a risk worth taking.

Brexit’s Trump-like central message — “Put Our Own People First” — will resonate across Europe as mostly far-right politicians follow its lead.

Campaigning was suspended for three days in its final week after the brutal murder of Jo Cox — a young Member of Parliament on a crusade to keep the UK in the EU. Her death failed to influence the outcome.

Memorial, Jo Cox, London

Memorial for Jo Cox, MP, at Trafalgar Square, London. Photo credit: Garry Knight / Flickr (CC0 1.0)

A former aid worker, she was known for her support of Syrian refugees. In court, Cox’s killer gave his name as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain.”

Only a month earlier, Britain’s far-right politician Nigel Farage told a BBC reporter that violence over migration would be “the next step…if people feel that voting doesn’t change anything.”

The Brexit vote is a momentous event for global stock markets and a reality check for the political elites in London, Brussels and other EU capitals.

Here are four takeaways from Britain’s In-or-Out EU referendum:

Brexit was a Protest Vote in a Staggeringly Unequal Economy

Brexit, Boris Johnson

Photo credit: Gwydion M Williams / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The UK’s “Out” vote reflects a critical mass of loathing for mainstream political parties, business and media elites.

Millions of alienated British citizens — ignoring dire warnings of economic depression and the sheer peril of the unknown — voted to abandon membership in the European Union. An idea considered crazy when first launched over two decades ago carried the day.

“It was fired by a feeling of revulsion in the pit of people’s stomachs,” Nicholas Shaxson, who writes for the Tax Justice Network, told WhoWhatWhy. “It’s a generalized hatred of the elites in Britain. It’s a phenomenon that you’ve also seen in the United States. And there’s similar things happening elsewhere in Europe.”

Working-class voters were drawn to the “Leave” camp because it presented a rare opportunity to strike back at a system that has created the worst income inequality since the 1930s.

Sociologist Lisa Mckenzie, whose research focuses on the lives of the working poor she grew up with, wrote in The Guardian that Brexit “is about the precarity of being working class….The referendum has opened up a chasm of inequality in the UK and the monsters of a deeply divided and unfair society are crawling out.”

The release of the Panama Papers in April marked a turning point in the run-up to the EU Referendum. The more Prime Minister David Cameron, chief supporter of the “Remain” camp, dodged questions about his own global offshore holdings — earning him the nickname “Dodgy Dave” — the more it fueled support for Brexit.

Many Brits ceased to believe a word coming out of Cameron’s mouth no matter how many times he said a Brexit would increase taxes, threaten pensions and reduce funding for the National Health Service (NHS).

Likewise, the Bank of England told UK citizens they would be poorer if they pushed their country out of the EU. They were joined by the International Monetary Fund and a chorus of talking-head experts.

The too-close-to call polls led Cameron to make a last-ditch stand in front of 10 Downing Street (the equivalent of the White House), where he issued a desperate, Churchillian appeal to the British “not to quit.”

On Friday morning, Cameron announced that he would step down by October.

Brexit Won by Bashing Immigrants

Nigel Farage, UKIP, leave poster

Nigel Farage with UKIP ‘leave’ poster  Photo credit: Ruptly TV / YouTube

The far-right’s anti-immigrant campaign ultimately overshadowed the anger of working-class voters and the angst about British sovereignty. Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP), previously on the fringe, has become a major force in British politics.

“It’s immigration, stupid. This is the issue. The real issue,” pro-Brexit MP Peter Bone told Politico.

Poll results suggested that immigration was the No. 1 issue for voters.

Much like Trump ranting about Mexican rapists, Farage regularly evoked the “security of women.” The threat of sexual assaults by migrants was, according to him, the “nuclear bomb” of the EU referendum.

Only a few days before her death, Jo Cox addressed the issue in a column in her local newspaper, arguing that “Brexit is no answer to real concerns on immigration.”

On the morning of the day Cox was murdered, Farage unveiled a campaign poster in British Parliament showing lines of refugees and the headline: “Breaking Point.” The caption read: “We must break free of the EU and take back control of our borders.”

Meanwhile, Leave.eu, a pro-Brexit splinter group, was comparing both refugees and LGBT people to vicious snakes in one of its videos, which included a reading by Trump.

Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London and most prominent pro-Brexit politician, made half-hearted attempts to distance himself from the UKIP campaign’s racist undertones, while emitting his own dog- whistle slurs. In one, he suggested that Obama opposes Brexit because of the “part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British empire.”

In or Out: Big Finance Is a Winner

For the UK’s financial sector, Europe’s largest, Brexit will be a short-term shock but with the UK outside the EU, it will enlarge upon its already leading role as a business and tax haven for the world’s superrich.

City of London

City of London skyscrapers, north of the Thames, viewed from City Hall.  Photo credit: Doc Searls / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Headquartered in a small area of central London, the UK’s financial hub actually has its own jurisdiction, The City of London Corporation, more often referred to as the City of London or just the City.

David Cameron used the EU referendum to squeeze concessions from the EU for the City and promote its deregulatory agenda. It was British lobbying that sank the European Union financial transactions tax and watered down bank regulations designed to avoid a financial crisis of the kind that brought the world economy to it knees in 2008.

The Brussels-based Corporate Europe Observatory published a report last week analyzing how “from the day a ballot on UK membership was first announced by Cameron three years ago, the financial sector has sought and won significant lobbying victories.”

Now that Brexit has won it will, according to Nicholas Shaxson, further increased the power of  “unaccountable, offshore interests.”

The charity Christian Aid recently pointed out that “a quarter of the world’s major tax havens on a ‘blacklist’ published today by the European Commission are either British Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies.”

Brexit Is Just the Beginning

At this point, Brexit looks more like the beginning than the end of populist revolt in the European Union. The Leave victory in the UK’s referendum could trigger the process of EU disintegration.

In other EU countries, political outsiders, mostly from the far right, are drawing inspiration from Brexit.

Both The Netherlands and France face elections in a few months that will include popular far-right parties. Both countries rejected the EU constitution in 2005 (later adopted as the 2007 Lisbon Treaty).

A majority of French say they too should get to have their own referendum on whether they stay in the EU. France’s Marine Le Pen, the most prominent far-right politician in Europe, says she wants the EU to “explode.”

The results of a Europe-wide survey show that “voters of Eurosceptic parties feel fundamentally abandoned and betrayed by their own society and institutions.”

Brexit has shown the way. The European Union is not too big to fail.

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Video: Donbass People’s Militias: History and Capabilities

June 24th, 2016 by South Front

The armed forces of the break-away republics of Donetsk and Lugansk have grown significantly in professionalism, effectiveness and size since the civil war escalated with the start of the Kiev government’s Anti-Terrorist Operation in April, 2014. What started out as a ragtag group of militias that refused to recognize an illegitimate government, which was openly hostile to them, has grown into an effective, conventional fighting force. Although hard to verify, the army numbers between 40,000 and 45,000 active personnel, as well as a pool of volunteer reserves that may be as high as 40,000.

When the Euromaidan turned violent, with the active support of neo-Nazi groups, and western backing became glaringly evident, especially on the part of the U.S. State Department, the ethnically Russian majorities of eastern and southeastern Ukraine saw the writing on the wall, and began to take measures to protect themselves. After the coup that overthrew the Yanukovich government, and the solidification of power by western-aligned oligarchs and ultra-nationalist fascists in Kiev, the militias moved to acquire closer parity of force with the new government by taking over police and army arsenals in their territories. Kalashnikovs, RPGs, and grenades supplemented the various improvised weapons of the militias, as the Kiev junta’s ATO started on April 15th, 2014. It was obvious from the early, dramatic downing of Mi-24 attack helicopters with MANPADS by the militias, that they most likely had received some aid from Russia.

The militias soundly defeated the UAF’s two successive offensives, which the militias skillfully turned into encirclements and routs. The encirclement battles of Iliovansk in 2014, and Debaltsevo in 2015, provided the militias with a large number of captured vehicles, heavy weapons and munitions. It is estimated that the DPR captured and recovered approximately 471 pieces of heavy equipment from the Debaltsevo cauldron alone, including 58 tanks, 141 IFVs and APCs, and 180 trucks. In addition, 18 self-propelled artillery pieces, 28 towed guns, and 10 large caliber mortars were recovered. NAF equipment workshops have proven capable of rendering approximately two thirds of the equipment they acquire, serviceable once again. Copious amounts of ammunition for all calibers of small arms and heavy weapons were also abandoned by the UAF in their rush to escape encirclement.

After two years of fighting against a much larger and well equipped adversary, the various militias have been converted into a more disciplined and structured fighting force, based on Russian standards and organization. While the overwhelming majority of their vehicles and heavy equipment are of Ukrainian origin, having been requisitioned or captured, they obviously have received material support from Russia in the form of munitions, uniforms, communication and signals equipment, and reconnaissance UAVs. Russia has also provided military trainers, advisors, and intelligence support. This is evident from the high degree of tactical proficiency exhibited by the militia in attacking and defending against a numerically superior adversary, their ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances on the battlefield, and the proper use of infantry, IFVs and MBTs together in a mutually supportive combat role. Whether this Russian support is official, or carried out by private Russian citizens, especially military veterans, is hard to determine. The Russian government denies any official military involvement in the conflict.

The Donetsk Peoples Militia is composed of a number of motorized and mechanized brigades, as well as specialist units such as special operations, reconnaissance units, artillery batteries and at least one armored brigade. The “Sparta” battalion and the 1st Independent Battalion Tactical Group “Somalia” are arguably the two most recognized and effective units within the DPR militia. These two units have been quite effective in reinforcing hotspots in the defensive line and infiltrating the front lines and exploiting breakthroughs offensively. The DPR Militia is supported by a number of independent units of international volunteers, predominantly Russian. The importance of Russian volunteers cannot be denied, especially experienced veterans of Russia’s conflicts in the Caucasus Republics. The added positive effect on morale that these volunteers provide, in letting the militias know that Russians have not abandoned them, is of great importance.

The Lugansk Peoples Militia is comprised of approximately two battalions of mixed composition; however they most closely resemble mechanized battalions. They also possess separate reconnaissance, special operations, and artillery units. They are supported by a number of independent units, including Cossacks, international and Russian volunteers, and the famous “Prizak” (“Ghost”) Mechanized Battalion. The Ghost Battalion was formerly lead by Aleksey Mozgovoy, before he was killed in an ambush on May 23rd, 2015, by unknown assassins. This unit has remained semi-autonomous from the LPR chain of command, due to the questions surrounding Mozgovoy’s murder.

The DPR and LPR militias are predominantly comprised of infantry units; however, they do possess enough heavy equipment to approximate the establishment of at least two Russian Independent Motorized Rifle Brigades. The tank elements are comprised predominantly of Ukrainian T-64BMs and T-64BVs and a small number of T-72s. Inconclusive photographic evidence of vehicle identification numbers points to the possible Russian origin of some T-64s in NAF service.

The militias lack any conventional air assets, yet have made extensive use of UAVs of numerous types, including those commercially sold, for the purposes of surveillance and reconnaissance. They have proven quite adept at using UAVs in the combat role of artillery spotting. The NAF also possess enough anti-aircraft missile systems to provide effective air-defense against both ground attack fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and to prohibit UAF employment of tactical airlift operations close to the territories of the DPR and LPR. The UAF have lost at least 21 aircraft to enemy action since the conflict began.

In a direct comparison to the militias, the Ukrainian Armed Forces consists of over 200,000 personnel, with approximately 70,000 stationed at the eastern conflict zone. The 2016 defense budget of Ukraine is approximately $4.4 billion USD, or 5% of national GDP. The UAF has far greater depth as of the summer of 2016, and thus can rotate units in and out of combat and establish a sizeable mobile reserve. Where the militias lack both of these advantages, they do; however, gain the advantage of shorter lines of supply, transport and communication, and a much higher degree of combat effectiveness, motivation and morale. Both forces utilize the same basic weaponry; however, the militias have proven far more proficient in the use of both armor and artillery.

The Militias are in a precarious situation, and their continued survival rests as much on their own resolve and ability as it does on the geo-political struggle of foreign powers. Perhaps the greatest variable exerting restraint on the UAF, and a renewed military offensive on Donbass is the threat of direct Russian intervention; however this may change dependent upon developments in other theaters of conflict. As the Syrian government forces continue their advances on both Aleppo and Raqqa, with the aid of renewed Russian airstrikes, the US may pressure the Poroshenko government to open a second front against Russia in Donbass. The Militias will once again be forced to comprise their role as a pawn on a chessboard that they do not control, all the while struggling to maintain their survival and independence in a deadly geopolitical game not of their choosing.

 Written and produced by SF Team: Brian Kalman, Daniel Deiss, Edwin Watson
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State Department Syria Memo: Setting the Stage for War with Russia

June 24th, 2016 by Bill Van Auken

Secretary of State John Kerry met Tuesday morning with several of the State Department “diplomats” who drafted an internal dissent memo calling for the US to launch air strikes against the Syrian government, supposedly as a means of bringing an end to the five-year-old war that has claimed well over a quarter of a million lives and driven over half the Syrian population from their homes.

The New York Times reported that Kerry and 10 of 51 mid-level operatives who signed the memo “engaged in a surprisingly cordial conversation” over the memo, which was leaked to the media virtually before the ink on it was dry.

There was nothing surprising about the tone of the meeting. Traveling in Europe when the memo surfaced in the press last week, Kerry described it as “an important statement.”

The reality is that the policy proposed in the memo is one that Kerry has himself advocated within the Obama administration for years as a means of turning the tide in a war for regime-change that has employed Al Qaeda-linked and CIA-backed Sunni militias as proxy forces.

In 2013, the then-newly installed secretary of state was one of the most bellicose proponents of a direct US military intervention to topple the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad after the Obama administration declared its “red line” over the use of chemical weapons. It was Kerry who laid out the brief for war in August of that year, based on the fraudulent claim that Assad government forces were responsible for a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs.

The Obama administration stepped back from the threatened direct military intervention in the face of overwhelming popular opposition to another Middle East war and amid deep divisions between the US military brass, on the one hand, and the State Department and CIA, on the other, about the advisability of such an intervention.

Instead, the administration embraced a chemical weapons disarmament plan brokered by Moscow. Subsequently, in 2014, it launched air strikes and sent hundreds of Special Forces into Syria—in direct violation of international law—on the pretext of fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a viciously sectarian Islamist militia that Washington had tacitly supported until it overran much of Iraq, routing US-armed and trained security forces.

That this was a phony war was exposed by Russia’s own military intervention in Syria a year later, which succeeded—together with Syrian government troops—in dealing serious blows to both ISIS and the Al Nusra Front, the Al Qaeda Syrian outfit that Washington still protects.

This is the situation that has prompted the State Department dissent memo. The so-called “rebels” backed by Washington are not only in a state of shambles, but are turning the guns supplied by the CIA and the Pentagon against each other.

The cease-fire, which the State Department dissidents claim to want to enforce through military escalation, has been used by Washington to funnel more weapons to the Islamist militias, reposition their forces and blunt the Russian-backed Syrian army offensive. It has not, however, succeeded in shifting the tide of battle in support of the Western-backed forces.

Thus the need for what the State Department operatives call “a more militarily assertive US role in Syria, based on the judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hardnose US-led diplomatic process.”

In other words, another exercise in “shock and awe,” with US Tomahawk missiles and smart bombs raining down on Damascus, just as they did previously on Kabul, Baghdad and Tripoli, will set things right.

This argument, completely in sync with the militarist ideology of the criminals in the Bush administration who orchestrated the war based upon lies that destroyed Iraq, is combined with a “humanitarian” appeal.

The statement asserts that “the moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable.” No one would suspect from this cynical rationale that the “five years of brutal war” are the direct product of the massive regime-change operation orchestrated by Washington itself. The argument, however, dovetails with the hypocritical anti-imperialist campaign waged by the pseudo-left, including such organizations as the International Socialist Organization in the US, the New Anti-capitalist Party in France and the Left Party in Germany, which have gone so far as to extol this CIA-backed regime-change operation as a “revolution.”

The frustration expressed by the State Department dissidents is not just with the failure of Obama’s Syria policy, but with that of US imperialism’s entire Middle East strategy over the course of a quarter-century.

In the wake of the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy’s liquidation of the Soviet Union, Washington embarked on a course of unending war based upon the conviction that militarism and neocolonial conquest could offset the historic crisis and economic decline of American capitalism. The crude ideology justifying this strategy of criminal aggression was summed up by the Wall Street Journal at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991 with the slogan, “force works.”

As it turned out, however, it didn’t. A quarter-century of US wars in the region have yielded only a debacle, killing and maiming millions, turning tens of millions into homeless refugees, and leaving the social fabric of the entire region in tatters.

The answer provided by the authors of the State Department memo to this debacle is yet a further military escalation, this time with the distinct threat of triggering a nuclear world war.

“We are not advocating for a slippery slope that ends in a military confrontation with Russia,” the memo states, quickly adding that its authors “recognize that the risk of further deterioration in US-Russian relations is significant and that military steps… may yield a number of second-order effects.”

Among these “second order effects” are the killing of Russian and Iranian military personnel deployed with Syrian government forces, the likelihood of the bringing down of both US and Russian warplanes, and an escalation of mutual hostilities.

This is where the “slippery slope” that the State Department dissenters “are not advocating” leads. Such a progression is hardly an accident. From the outset, the US proxy war for regime-change was launched with the aim of depriving Moscow and Teheran of their principal ally in the Arab world in preparation for direct confrontation with both countries.

The call for a direct US military intervention against Damascus has been made under conditions in which tensions between Washington and Moscow are today greater than at any time since the height of the Cold War. Continuous NATO military exercises on Russia’s western borders and the deployment of anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe designed to prepare a “winnable” nuclear war against Moscow point to the mounting danger of a confrontation between the world’s two major nuclear powers.

The Obama White House has dismissed the proposals in the State Department memo. There is no inclination to roll out a major new military intervention before the November elections. The American ruling establishment has always been loath to provide the American people even the remotest opportunity to express their attitude to war.

Whichever party wins, however, the incoming administration will embark on a dangerous escalation of militarism. Both the Democratic and Republican presumptive candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have expressed their support for intensified bombing, the imposition of a no-fly zone and other acts of aggression. More fundamentally, the drive to war is rooted in the steadily deepening crisis of American capitalism and the uncontainable tensions building up in US society.

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The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), An Instrument of “Regime Change” Financed by Wall Street

June 24th, 2016 by Tony Cartalucci

Using a front to hide illegal or immoral activities has been a feature of human criminality since the beginning of human civilization itself. Facades, both ideological and economical, have helped criminal enterprises conceal the true nature of their activities for centuries.

In ages past, organized religion would often take systems of legitimate philosophy and spirituality, and transform them into a means of organizing the masses for the benefit of an elite few, often those heading empires, kingdoms, or nation-states. More recently, patriotism and now the notion of “democracy” have been used successfully by similar cadres of special interests to conceal their self-serving agendas behind notions likely to recruit support from large segments of a population that would otherwise be disinterested.

There is no example of this more transparent than that of the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to its own website, it claims:

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, NED makes more than 1,200 grants to support the projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.

“The growth and strengthening  of democratic institutions around the world” sounds noble enough. One would expect, then, that the NED would be led by a collection of some of the most notable activists involved in the empowerment of “the people.” Instead, upon NED’s board of directors, we find people representing corporate-financier interests notorious for instead, exploiting and subjugating “the people.”

Unfortunately, for those receiving the millions upon millions of dollars the NED hands out annually to “nongovernmental organizations” (NGOs) around the world, few bother to actually check who it is underwriting their daily activities, and fewer still have the integrity to both turn down the money let alone inform the people they claim to represent just who is attempting to reach into their respective nations and subvert their political systems, and to what end.

Quite literally, each and every member of the NED’s board of directors represents Fortune 500 corporations, insidious corporate-financier funded policy think-tanks, and a wide variety of other obvious conflicts of interest unbecoming of an organization truly interested in, “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.” 

NED: Who’s Who

The worst part of NED’s activities worldwide and the fact that allegedly liberal progressive NGOs are taking money from them and aiding and abetting their agenda, is the fact that the background of NED’s board of directors is posted directly on NED’s own website. This means recipients of NED cash either recklessly didn’t bother to look into the organization sponsoring them, or simply do not care about the compromised nature of their sponsors.

For example, Marilyn Carlson Nelson (NED secretary) is co-CEO of one of the largest privately held companies in the world, Carlson Holdings operating hotels around the world. She also serves on the board of Exxon Mobil and chairs the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. She alone represents such a tangled web of compromising and conflicting interests, it calls into question the integrity and true agenda of NED.

Carlson Nelson’s company, Carlson Holdings, deals in hotels, yet she concurrently sits on a government board under the International Trade Administration which makes decisions and policies on behalf of the US that directly benefits private industry specifically like that of Carlson Holdings. Her position upon Exxon Mobil’s board of directors is also troublesome. Exxon, a gargantuan multinational corporation, conducts business around the world and by necessity, requires political (and military) interventions to enter into and overwhelm those few remaining markets it has yet to dominate.

Carlson Nelson’s role in the NED, then, could be (and is) easily abused to subvert foreign governments that pose barriers to Carlson Holdings or Exxon, and put into power opposition parties that would deal in favor of such multinations – all under the guise of “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.” 

Other NED board members representing compromising corporate-financier special interests include Marne Levine (Facebook, Coo, Instagram), Mark Ordan (WP Glimcher – real estate), and with Carl Gershman, Princeton Lyman, Stephen Sestanovich, and Melanne Verveer serving as members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – a corporate-financier funded think-tank representing the collective economic and geopolitical ambitions of Wall Street, London, and Brussels’ most powerful special interests.

The CFR’s corporate sponsors include Bank of America, Chevron, Citi, Exxon, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, PepsiCo, Shell Oil, Coca-Cola, BP, Google, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, Boeing, Facebook, DynCorp, Northrop Grumman, Pfizer, Raytheon, Microsoft, and Merck – a virtual who’s who of abusive special interests plaguing the world with socioeconomic disparity, compromising “free trade” deals, and driving conflicts ranging from “color revolutions” and proxy wars to full-scale invasions and decade-long occupations.

NED – which poses as a liberal-progressive organization – includes a surprising number of right-wing Neoconservatives (Neocons). This includes Vin Weber, a Bush-era Neocon who strongly advocated the invasion and occupation of Iraq – a war now revealed to have been predicated on an intentional lie regarding Iraq’s supposed chemical and biological weapons program.

Weber is a partner at the public strategy firm, Mercury. There, he consults and lobbies for multinational corporations, governments, and corporate-funded foundations including Microsoft, Visa, Pfizer, AT&T, Ebay, the Ford Foundation, pharmaceutical firm Gilead, NBC, the government of Qatar, and many others.

For what reason would NED include a pro-war corporate lobbyist on its board of directors if not for the fact that NED itself is but a facade for carrying out pro-corporate-financier agendas under the guise of promoting “democracy” around the world?

Other Neocons populating NED’s board of directors includes Elliot Abrams, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad,  and Will Marshall. One pro-war Neocon could have been an anomaly – five begins to fit a pattern. It should be noted that NED’s subsidiary, Freedom House, also hosts corporate lobbyists and pro-war Neocons as well, including Kenneth Adelman.

NED Funds Your Local “Pro-Democracy Activists,” But Who Funds NED? 

One of NED’s subsidiaries, Freedom House, is admittedly funded by multinational corporations including AT&T, defense contractors BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman, industrial equipment exporter Caterpillar, tech-giants Google and Facebook, and financiers including Goldman Sachs.

NED itself – according to a 2013 disclosure (.pdf) – is funded by among others, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

What do these corporations have to do with “the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world?” 

The US Chamber of Commerce in particular is also heavily involved in post-regime change operations carried out by the US government either through direct military conflict or proxy wars and “color revolutions,” being the first to appear in front of new proxy governments to establish Western corporate-financier hegemony over newly “opened” market space.

NED’s individual donors also are telling. They include Frank Carlucci of the notorious Bush-family linked equity firm, the Carlyle Group. There is also former NED board member Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of defense contractor Boeing, big oil’s ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.

Also listed as an individual donor to NED is Neocon Paula Dobriansky – a trustee at NED’s subsidiary Freedom House, as well as former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who served during the Bush administration.

Supposedly liberal-progress NGOs around the world taking money from corporate-financiers, warmongers, and right-wing ideologues embodies perfectly the notion of a fraudulent front used to conceal criminal intentions under the guise of a noble cause.

How it Works: A Case Study 

ThaksinCFRThe Southeast Asian state of Thailand is currently gripped by a long-running political crisis centered around Thailand’s indigenous institutions and political order, and that of US-backed proxy Thaksin Shinawatra. Shinawatra himself was – like NED individual donor Frank Carlucci, a member of the Carlyle Group. Before becoming prime minister in 2001, Shinawatra would pledge to his friends in the US business community that he would use his office to serve as a “matchmaker” between Wall Street and Thailand’s people and resources.

Upon taking office, he would carry out a series of abusive and unpopular moves including the commitment of  Thai troops to America’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the hosting of the CIA’s abhorrent rendition program on Thai soil, and an attempt to ram through a US-Thai free trade agreement in 2004 without parliamentary approval.

In 2006, Shinawatra would ultimately be ousted from power by the Thai military. Since then, he has been represented by some of the largest lobbying firms in Washington, including by the above mentioned Freedom House trustee Kenneth Adelman. However, that is not the limit to which the NED has helped prop up Shinawatra’s political front in Thailand.

The NED also funds a myriad of “NGOs” in Thailand aimed specifically at undermining Thailand’s institutions – most notably the military, monarchy, courts, and even the economy itself. These are included on a long list on NED’s own website and include:

  • Thai Poor Act;
  • Thai Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism;
  • Thai Volunteer Service;
  • Makhampom Foundation;
  • Cafe Democracy;
  • Media Inside Out Group;
  • ENLAWTHAI Foundation;
  • Human Rights Lawyers Association and;
  • Foundation for Community Educational Media

It should be noted that in recent years, NED has become as ambiguous as possible about listing which NGOs it specifically funds – while NGOs in Thailand receiving NED funding regularly attempt to conceal NED funding and have been caught on several occasions outright lying about it.

For instance, while NED lists “Foundation for Community Educational Media,” it actually includes organizations like Thai Netizen and Prachatai – two entwined media fronts who have habitually covered up their foreign funding all while asking for donations locally.

Such behavior indicates that NGOs like Thai Netizen and Prachatai are fully aware of the impropriety they are a party to.

Each and every NED-funded NGO in Thailand is currently engaged in daily attacks against the current government, and serves a direct supporting role in bolstering opposition fronts directly tied to the ousted regime of Thaksin Shinawatra. “Human rights lawyers” underwritten by NED regularly represent US-backed agitators rounded and charged for various crimes while media fronts like Prachatai churn out a daily tidal wave of disinformation in support of US interests both in Thailand and across Asia.

Legitimate grassroots campaigns such as opposition to foreign multinational agribusiness and attempts to impose genetically modified organisms (GMOs) upon Thai agriculture receive little to no support from this milieu of US-funded fronts. Likewise, pragmatic and constructive opposition to current government policies done within a framework of cooperating with government agencies to arrive at compromises are also ignored entirely by NED’s networks.

NED’s various fronts are solely focused on pressuring the government into arranging elections and giving America’s proxies, Thaksin Shinawatra and his political allies, another opportunity at seizing power.

Shinawata, once back in power, and after sufficiently diminishing the power of Thailand’s existing political order, would return to destructive pro-US policies ranging from “free trade” with Wall Street special interests to supporting America’s unending wars worldwide. His regime would also likely mobilize Thailand’s population and resources on behalf of Washington’s proxy war with China – costing Thailand a valuable trade and military partner along with peace and stability across Asia.

When political instability surfaces around the world – opposition forces mobilizing in the streets and over the airwaves must be carefully scrutinized. Determining from where they receive their funding and political support is essential in determining whether these opposition forces are legitimate or the manufactured pawns of Western corporate-financier special interests being funded through fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy – a front that is private – not national, and that is for corporate-financier special interests – only under the guise as being “for democracy.”

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

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Women as Pawns in the Political War Game

June 24th, 2016 by Barbara Nimri Aziz

In 1990, it was a Kuwaiti ‘witness’ testifying how marauding Iraqi troops charged into a Kuwaiti hospital and tore babies from their incubators . In 2001, it was videos of an Afghan woman tied to a pole, stoned to death before a cheering crowd. (These practices continue despite that nation’s ‘liberation’ by the US and allies).Today, we have a Yazidi sex slave testifying to the American Congress how she was brutalized by her ISIS captors. She pleads: “The US must act”.

The 1990 Kuwait “incubator story”, later exposed as a fabrication, was presented by the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador, part of a major PR campaign by Kuwait and USA. It helped sell the Gulf War/Operation Desert Storm that introduced American troops into Arab Gulf States (they’re still there) to occupy Kuwait and repel the Iraqis, driving them out with brutal, inhuman means that elsewhere would be designated as war crimes. In 2001, images of the Taliban as heartless beasts were spread with the help of western women in their newfound compassion for downtrodden Afghan sisters. (Never mind how Afghan women fared during the Russian occupation, and earlier.) If any liberal anti-war citizens of western democracies had doubts about a military invasion of Afghanistan, they were won over by that widely distributed image of the blue-shrouded female corpse in the execution stadium.

In 2003, unable to locate downtrodden Iraqi women, or desperate Libyan women in 2011, our human rights-driven military planners found other means (Weapons of Mass Destruction and Responsibility to Protect) to destroy those nations.

Things have been somewhat delayed about how western democracies should take Syria and reinvade Iraq. After the Syrian leadership, ISIS is the stated target. For the time being voices of caution prevail– those aware of the economic costs and the tens of thousands of dead and maimed US military personnel. But the war heroes (“hawks”) in the US legislature and the military establishment are endeavoring to devise a ruse to justify invasion. Enter the Yazidi people—both minority and non-Muslim–with ready women victims. The testimony last week by a Yazidi woman sex slave is the latest in this inexorable campaign. Forget about any Shi’ia widow or orphan, any lost boys and uneducated Sunni girls; forget about poverty and separated families or the rise in heart attacks and PTSD lived every day by millions of Syrians, Afghanis and Iraqis; ignore highly educated women and men working as servants in exile or those millions of parents forced to send their children abroad. Those stories have become humdrum “horrific tales of refugees”. We need a dramatic woman victim.

Yazidi women are not only impoverished and homeless; they are sex slaves too! Somehow these women were able to escape their captors to bring us firsthand accounts. Our media launched its Yazidi campaign last September offering a sequence of unarguable testimonials. The culprit is not war, not occupation, not militarization, not a crushed, dysfunctional state’s inability to provide. It is ISIS!

Somehow these select victims find human rights organizations to introduce them to CNN’sAmanpour; one “brave victim” provides details of the rapes and how, for example, her ISIS brutalizer prayed before and after his assaults on her. Most recently human rights agents brought a woman we know as “Bazi” before a US congressional committee. “The US must act”, this former sex slave tells Congress. She calls “on the USA and other countries to establish a safe zone for Iraqi and Syrian religious minorities…or they’ll be wiped out.”

No one asks about the chaotic outcome of the “responsibility to protect–R2P” rationale for the invasion of Libya, or about how women and men survive there today. In Afghanistan, we hear from the occasional women community leader. But what about the general population of Afghan women, still closeted, still shrouded, probably poorer than ever, subject to drone strikes that kill their children, their uncles and fathers on the only happy occasions, weddings, in their more severely circumscribed lives?

John Pilger is a tireless critic of biased journalism and the supporting role of media in war policies. Pilger would also agree that human rights organizations work with media to carry out the west’s war agenda, and the exploitation of women are a handy pawn in these assaults.

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“Seismic Shock”: UK Vote to Leave the EU Triggers Economic and Political Crisis

June 24th, 2016 by Chris Marsden

Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU) in yesterday’s referendum by a narrow margin—51.9 percent to 48.1 percent on a turnout of 72 percent. In response, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he was standing down, but not until the Conservative Party conference in October.

The referendum result has sent a seismic shock, not only through Britain but Europe and the world. It confounded the expectations of the financial markets, hedge funds, bookmakers and the political establishment.

Even as polls closed at 10 p.m. yesterday, predictions were for a Remain vote—reflected in the value of the pound soaring and a recovery on global markets. By the early hours of Friday morning, however, the pound had fallen to its lowest level in more than 30 years, plunging 10 percent against the dollar and falling against the euro and the yen.

The UK is the fifth largest economy in the world and the second largest in Europe. The implications of its departure from the EU are widely seen as potentially precipitating its break-up, with France, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece and even Italy registering majorities for exiting the euro in polls.

The UK itself is divided, with England and Wales voting to leave and Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to remain. Fifty-three percent in England and 52 percent in Wales voted for Brexit, but 62 percent in Scotland and 56 percent in Northern Ireland voted to stay.

There is talk of a second referendum on Scottish independence, with former Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond insisting that such a referendum must take place within the two years specified by Article 50 of the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon, which would begin the process of a UK withdrawal from the EU.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams stated that the referendum result raised the issue of a united Ireland, under conditions in which there are suggestions of the reintroduction of border controls and tariffs along the Republic’s 330-mile border with the North.

In England, London was the only region to vote for Remain, by 60 to 40 percent. Every other region went to Leave, by 58 percent in Yorkshire and Humberside, 54 percent in the North West, 59 percent in the West Midlands, and more than 50 percent in both the South East and South West.

The most significant exception to this voting pattern was among those under the age of 24, where the Remain vote was 75 percent in favour.

In Westminster, the primary concern was to try to stabilise the financial markets, with banks insisting that Cameron should delay invoking Article 50. The FTSE 100 fell by £120 billion—500 points—on opening, with particularly heavy losses for banks and house builders. Mark Carney, Chairman of the Bank of England, pledged to pump £250 billion into the markets, and there is speculation that interest rates will be cut to zero by August, with UK growth expected to “slow to a crawl.”

Cameron’s resignation announcement is designed to meet this demand for a delay. He insisted that it was still his prerogative to decide when Article 50 was invoked and he would not do so until a new Conservative Party leader was elected in the autumn. His pledge is at the same time an appeal to the Brexit wing of his party around former London mayor Boris Johnson, who led the official Leave campaign, to work together in the short-term to ensure economic stability.

Johnson is touted as the leader necessary to head off an electoral challenge by the UK Independence Party (UKIP). UKIP leader Nigel Farage is the only party leader to have gained from the referendum—striking a populist pose against the “merchant banks” and the “elite.” He has positioned himself as a critic of any compromise over invoking Article 50.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s position is by no means assured. Criticisms made by his Blairite opponents that he did not do enough to win the argument for Remain have been mirrored by the 10 to 15 Leave Labour MPs. They now claim to speak for 45 percent of Labour voters and have condemned him for abandoning his previous opposition to the EU and being “out of touch” on immigration.

With the likelihood of a leadership challenge, Corbyn’s response, as always, is an attempt to triangulate between his critics. He has called for Article 50 to be triggered immediately as representing the will of the people and indicated his support for immigration controls, based on economic criteria, once EU legislation on the free movement of labour is no longer in force. But he did so while insisting that the government must be supported in its efforts to stabilise the economy.

Crisis meetings are underway in Brussels between European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Parliament President Martin Schulz and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

Talks between the EU’s remaining 27 member states are to be held next week without the UK, with Tusk warning it was “not a moment for hysterical reactions.”

However, Manfred Weber, a senior German conservative Member of the European Parliament, warned the UK will receive “no special treatment,” declaring: “Exit negotiations should be concluded within two years at max… Leave means leave.”

Schulz said he would be speaking to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on how the EU “can avoid a chain reaction” of other member states following the UK’s lead.

The referendum has produced a significant shift to the right in Britain and throughout Europe. There is a large element of social protest involved in the result, which led to a significant increase in turnout in working class areas. Disaffection with the Tory government and the Labour Party was combined with hostility to the EU to ensure an overwhelming Leave vote—especially among those earning less than £15,000 per annum.

However, anger has been successfully channelled behind right-wing political tendencies deeply hostile to the working class, in a campaign characterised by nationalism and anti-immigrant xenophobia.

Across Europe, many far-right parties exploit anti-EU sentiment and the social devastation caused by austerity for reactionary ends. France’s Front National leader Marine Le Pen said: “Like a lot of French people, I’m very happy that the British people held on and made the right choice.” In the Netherlands, Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders called for a referendum on the country’s membership of the EU.

Their populist demagogy conceals the aim of a more aggressive offensive against the working class. On the morning of his “victory,” Farage said the Leave camp had made a “mistake” in promising that the £350 million in current UK contributions to the EU would be spent on the National Health Service in the event of a Brexit vote.

A politically criminal role has been played by George Galloway, the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party, Counterfire and the Communist Party. As the Socialist Equality Party explained, in urging a “Left Leave” vote they helped subordinate workers to a right-wing initiative aimed at shifting political life even further along a nationalist trajectory, “thereby strengthening and emboldening the far-right in the UK and across Europe, while weakening the political defences of the working class.”

In calling for an active boycott of the referendum, the SEP insisted that the EU was in an advanced stage of break-up due to the global economic crisis and the rise of national and social antagonisms. But the working class must formulate its own independent response—one based not on a defence of capitalism and a retreat into the nation-state but on the unification of the European working class in the struggle for socialism.

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The Brexit Vote. What Does it Mean? Hopefully, a Breakup of the EU and NATO, the Avoidance of World War III

June 24th, 2016 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The EU and NATO are evil institutions.  These two institutions are mechanisms created by Washington in order to destroy the sovereignty of European peoples.  These two institutions give Washington control over the Western world and serve both as cover and enabler of Washington’s aggression.  Without the EU and NATO, Washington could not force Europe and the UK into conflict with Russia, and Washington could not have destroyed seven Muslim countries in 15 years without being isolated as a hated war criminal government, no member of whom could have travelled abroad without being arrested and put on trial.

Clearly, the presstitute media lied about the polls in order to discourage the leave vote.  But it did not work.

The British people have always been the font of liberty.  It was the the historic achievements of the British that transformed law into a shield of the people from a weapon in the hands of the state and gave accountable government to the world.

The British, or a majority of them, understood that the EU is a dictatorial governing mechanism in which power is in the hands of unaccountable people and in which law can easily be used as a weapon in the hands of unaccountable government.

Washington, in an effort to save its power over Europe, launched a campaign, willingly joined by presstitutes and the brainwashed left-wing, who flocked to the One Percent’s banner, that presented the effort to preserve British liberty and sovereignty as racism.  This dishonest campaign shows beyond all doubt that Washington and its media whores have no regard whatsoever for liberty and the sovereignty of peoples.

Washington regards every assertion of democratic rule as a barrier to its hegemony and demonizes every democratic impulse.  Reformist leaders in Latin America are constantly overthrown by Washington, and Washington asserts that only Washington and its terrorist allies have the right to choose the government of Syria, just as Washington chose the government of Ukraine.

The British people, or a majority of them, gave Washington the bird. But the fight is not over.  Perhaps it hasn’t really yet begun.  Here is what the British can likely expect:  The  Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and George Soros will conspire to attack the British pound, driving it down and terrorizing the British economy.  We will see who is the strongest: the will of the British people or the will of the CIA, the One Percent, and the EU and neocon nazis.

The coming attack on the British economy is the reason that leave supporters such as Boris Johnson are mistaken in their belief that there is “no need for haste” in exiting the EU.  The longer it takes for the British to escape from the authoritarian EU, the longer Washington and the EU can inflict punishment on the British people for voting to leave and the more time the presstitutes will have to convince the British people that their vote was a mistake.  As the vote is nonbinding, a cowardly and cowed Parliament could reject the vote.

Cameron should step down immediately, not months from now in October.  The new British government should tell the EU that the British people’s decision is implemented now, not in two years and that all political and legal relationships terminated as of the vote.  Otherwise, in two years the British will be so beat down by punishments and propaganda that their vote will be overturned.

The British government should immediately announce the termination of its participation in Washington’s sanctions on Russia and hook its economy to the rising nations of Russia, China, India, and Iran.  With this support, the British can survive the Washington led attack on their economy.

www.paulcraigroberts.org

 

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Glyphosate: The Pesticide Industry Keeps the Data Secrecy Scandal Going in the Name of ‘Investment Protection’

June 24th, 2016 by Corporate Europe Observatory

The ongoing political drama around renewing the EU authorisation for glyphosate began as a rather unusual conflict between two international public health organisations, the WHO’s International Agency for Research against Cancer (IARC) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Although they reached opposing conclusions on the cancer-causing properties of glyphosate, the issue that quickly escalated their discussion into hostility was the impossibility of cross-examining the underlying evidence. EFSA was able to include the entirely public IARC assessment into its own work, but was obliged to withheld the superior evidence it said it had, only publishing summaries lacking essential information.

The reason ?

The studies in question were part of the dossier companies must habitually provide when requesting market re-authorisation – they had not been published anywhere and belong to the companies, meaning EFSA would most likely get sued by said companies if it were to publish them.

In December 2015, CEO filed an access to documents request to EFSA, asking for three studies, owned by Monsanto, Cheminova and Arytsa respectively, that were particularly central to EFSA’s assessment of glyphosate’s carcinogenic characteristics and thus far unavailable to the IARC. But seven months down the line, we’re still waiting : the companies continue to refuse disclosure, negotiating redactions with EFSA as well as the Commission, as broader disclosure requests have been made. Instead, they keep proposing useless “reading rooms”, which do not allow for public scrutiny of the studies, nor sufficient analysis of the data.

What arguments are used to prop this up ?

We filed another access to documents request asking for the industry’s reasons for opposing disclosure, and only just received a first response which we have published in full. See section below for some quotes and comments.

The main argument found in all companies’ letters is that these studies which they perform out of their administrative obligations to obtain market authorisation are in fact “investments”. This is of course misleading (for companies, these studies are regulatory costs, not productive investments) but enables them to claim the data qualifies for investment protection regime. The three companies’ letters all refer to the protection of commercial secrecy and have much common wording – even sharing entire sentences, which could be expected given that they are lobbying in common for glyphosate within the so-called Glyphosate Taskforce.

The companies also argue their case from different angles. Monsanto mainly uses commercial secrecy, Cheminova relies more heavily on intellectual property, and Arysta emphasises the legal protection of ongoing decision-making processes in the EU (even though EFSA finished its work in November 2015). They also include more ad-hoc legal elements, such as an article in the EU’s Pesticides Regulation protecting the confidentiality of the identity of persons involved in animal testing. All refer to the importance to preserve their data from competitors, which is rich if you remember that most “competitors” on the glyphosate production market have put their data in common for this market re-authorisation procedure (the patent on glyphsate expired 15 years ago).

But the core of their message is always the same: the study data is our property, no trespassing.

As long as these studies are kept secret, it will be impossible for the scientific community to assess EFSA’s conclusions and therefore for the public to understand the validity of the EU’s decision, whichever way. Conveniently for industry, this secrecy also makes it impossible to judge whether it is actually justified. It has become clear that the rules of the game are rigged in favour of companies and at the expense of the public interest. This must be changed.

The bottom line of the case

This bottom line has been well summarised by Dr. Christopher Connolly, Reader in Neurobiology at the University of Dundee, Scotland, who said:

The failure of the PAFF Committee to reach a qualified majority on the issue of glyphosate use sends a strong message that more scientific knowledge is required on the hazard/risk of glyphosate to both human health and the environment. Until this evidence is convincing, one way or the other, glyphosate may no longer be authorised for use in the EU. Clearly, the authorisation process requires a more robust framework, on which sound decisions can be made.

The research should be performed much earlier in the process of authorisation, with the evidence being produced by independent laboratories, the data made available to the scientific community, and the cost met by the producer.

———————————————————————–

The Monsanto study (on cancer in mice, 1983) (pp. 3-4)

– Monsanto hereby formally objects to the disclosure of the entirety of the Study

– The Study is privately owned by Monsanto and is used for the renewal of the approval of the active substance Glyphosate”, and its disclosure “may harm legitimate interests of Monsanto as it is prejudicial to the “commercial interests” of Monsanto (in the meaning of Article 4(2) of Regulation 1049/2001

Why is a toxicity study a commercial interest? Monsanto explains that the administrative requirement to provide a study is, in fact, an… investment.

– The Study represents a material investment in time and money for Monsanto and its findings form part of the core data package and knowledge of relevant product. If the study is made available to the public upon request, this will make investment efforts of businesses like Monsanto useless, because effectively anyone, including competitors, would then have access to key commercial information without any expense for possible use in and outside the EU.

Which is wrong (for the company, these studies are regulatory costs, not investments) but enables our writers to claim that these studies of mice having had miserable lives 30 years ago actually contain “key commercial information”. Was it really that bad?…

The next step is logically to calling for ‘balancing’ the disclosure for public health reasons and commercial secrecy:

It is the duty of the EU Institutions to balance the contribution which the information makes to the protection of public interest, notably disclosure for public health reasons, and the degree of damage to commercial secrecy resulting from the disclosure

Then, since after all everything in the study cost money and because Monsanto employees are geniuses, broaden the spectrum of commercially sensitive information to everything in the study:

Inter alia, above information includes know-how (e.g., Monsanto’s scientific approaches and justifications, suggested and applied testing methodology, etc.) relating to the scientific expertise and strategy, created by Monsanto when preparing the dossier for disclosure in confidence to EFSA. Accordingly, such Monsanto’s know-how would be adversely affected if disclosed to the public.

In view of the above, Monsanto hereby requests to refuse in access to documents of the Study.

But they know they cannot refuse partial disclosure: bluff only works so far, and summaries have already been published by EFSA. So they also try to prevent dissemination of the material with the “reading room” idea: you read, and that’s all you’re allowed to do. Easier for industry, easier for the administration (redacting all these pages is a particularly tedious job), but a waste of time for everyone else.

Without prejudice to the above arguments, should EFSA still consider granting access to the document to the third party, Monsanto would insist on making The Study available to the thirs party in a closed data room, without any possibility to make copies, reproduction or communication of the information and under logistical conditions to be agreed with Monsanto.

The Cheminova study (on cancer in rats, 1993) (p.9)

“Cheminova formally objects to the disclosure of the entirety of The Study.”

Yes, it starts the same. But then Cheminova uses another concept than Monsanto’s commercial secrecy: intellectual property.

The Study is owned by Cheminova and is protected by intellectual property rights. On that basis, all summaries, assessments and other documents included in The Study may not be disclosed, as this would jeopardize the proper execution of the intellectual copyright.

Then the exact same arguments than Monsanto: investment, vague but nasty competitors…

the data represents a substantial investment in time and money for Cheminova and the findings form part of the core data package and knowledge of the product.

If The Study was made easily available upon request, businesses would be reluctant to conduct research to register their substances since third parties including competitors would then have access to key commercial information for possible use in the EU and/or outside the EU

And Cheminova’s letter ends with the same suggestion: a reading room.

The Arysta study (on cancer in mice, 1997) (p.17)

Arysta’s first argument is different, and unusual: it tries to use the third exception of the 1049/2001 Regulation on the “integrity of the decision-making process of the institutions of the European Union” which is meant to protect ongoing work by the EU institutions, even though EFSA finished its work in November 2015. But it then uses the two others: protection of commercial interests and intellectual property.

Attached files:
Consult document here :
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Brexit Surprise: Britain Leaves the EU. New “Brexit” Conservative Prime Minister? Legal Process for Brexit Commences?

June 24th, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

Polls predicted a close vote. London bookmakers put odds strongly against Brexit. State controlled BBC and other major UK media one-sidedly promoted remaining in the EU, suggesting disaster otherwise.

The final vote, announced early Friday morning, was leave 51.9%, stay 48.1%. Turnout was 71.8%, 30 million Brits voting, the highest electoral participation rate since 1992.

UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage hailed what he called Britain’s “independence day.” The Tory-led remain camp called it a “catastrophe.”

Farage called for Cameron’s immediate replacement, saying “(w)e have to have a Brexit prime minister.” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty should be invoked straightaway, the legally binding mechanism for permitting the lengthy Brexit process to begin.

In the cold light of day, nothing so far changed or likely will – despite a hugely negative market reaction, including sterling plunging to a 30-year low.

The Bank of England said it’s working with other central banks to preserve financial stability as markets plunged following the Brexit vote.

ECB president Mario Draghi earlier said he was “ready for all contingencies.” UK Prime Minister David Cameron said he’ll resign in October.

“I will do everything I can…to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months, but I do not think it would be right for me to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination,” he announced.

“In my view we should aim to have a new prime minister in place by the start of the Conservative Party conference in October.”

“A negotiation with the European Union will need to begin under a new prime minister, and I think it’s right that this new prime minister takes the decision about when to trigger Article 50 and start the formal and legal process of leaving the EU.”

Former Tory London mayor Boris Johnson reportedly wants his job. Claims about a historic divorce, Britain in “unchartered territory” are wildly exaggerated.

Thursday’s vote was non-binding. Parliament alone has final say on Brexit or remaining in the EU – the latter extremely likely as things settle down in the weeks and months ahead.

Invoking Article 50 begins the legal process for Brexit, a lengthy procedure lasting up to two years maximum unless extended by unanimous agreement.

Money-controlled special interests will decide what happens ahead, not a popular majority calling for Brexit. Ordinary people have no say over affairs of state. Believing otherwise is foolhardy.

Odds strongly favor Britain remaining in the EU. Rupturing the union is unlikely in the cards.

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.

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How the UK Sold Fake GT 200 Bomb Detectors to Thailand and Got People Killed

June 24th, 2016 by Tony Cartalucci

The UK proves that power and profits come before the lives of even its own allies’ soldiers and police.

 The GT200 is an otherwise useless plastic box that does nothing with equally useless “sensor cards” that serve no discernible function.

Despite this fact, UK-based Global Technical and an array of salesmen ranging from experts in the British military serving as equipment export support teams, to British ambassadors, to even the British government’s Department of Trade and Industry (now renamed the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) peddled the useless item as a “bomb detector,” putting lives at risk in the nations they were peddled in, and even costing the lives of hundreds including dead police and soldiers in both Iraq and Thailand.

In Thailand, amid the wake of the scandal, US and British backed media services have attempted to capitalize on the political fallout, laying the blame squarely on the Thai government, never mentioning the central role of the British government in promoting the useless and ultimately deadly device.


Faced with mounting violence in Thailand’s deep south, the government in Bangkok placed its trust in its British allies. It is clear that this trust was not only misplaced, but shamefully used and abused by London in a multi-million dollar scam involving the British military, government, and diplomatic corps.

Critics of the Royal Thai Army and the current government have seized upon the scandal to opportunistically and dishonestly undermine both, with some even going as far as blaming the soldiers who risked their lives in the restive southern provinces of Thailand while employing the fraudulent British-made GT200.

The BBC and Guardian Expose the UK Government’s Role 

While the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Thailand politically wields the GT200 scandal against the Thai government and its military exclusively, the BBC itself has exposed the breadth and depth of the UK government’s involvement.

A lot of effort was put into creating the illusion of credibility where no technical merit existed. This not only included slick as well as unscrupulous marketing tactics, but also included the recruitment of British ambassadors and even equipment export support teams drawn from the British military, despite the fact that the British military itself refused to use the fraudulent device.  

The BBC’s 2011 article, “UK government promoted useless ‘bomb detectors’,” would report (emphasis added):

The government has admitted that the Army and UK civil servants helped market so-called “bomb detectors”, which did not work, around the world.

Export of the “magic wand” detectors to Iraq and Afghanistan was banned on 27 January 2010 because of the threat they posed to British and allied troops.

The move followed a BBC Newsnight investigation showing they could not detect explosives – or anything else.

Now Newsnight has learned that they are still being sold around the globe.

The BBC’s report would continue by explaining (emphasis added):

…a Royal Engineers sales team went around the world demonstrating the GT200, another of the “magic wand” detectors which has been banned for export to Iraq and Afghanistan, at arms fairs around the world even though the British Army did not consider them suitable for its own use.

The government’s Department of Trade and Industry, which has since been superseded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, helped two of the manufacturers sell their products in Mexico and the Philippines.

The BBC’s article concludes by stating:

…there will be questions about why the ban on exports to Iraq and Afghanistan has not been extended to protect the citizens of other countries.

However, it is clear that this question has an easy answer. The lives of foreigners to the British government, military, and industry are subordinate if not entirely meaningless to profits and power.

Giles Paxman, Britain’s former ambassador to Mexico. Before the GT200 scandal, and even after it, accusing ambassadors from the US, UK, or Europe of immense criminal impropriety would be met with accusations of being “conspiracy theorists.” In reality, it appears that immense criminality is endemic across Western diplomatic circles with their ties to industry and organized crime so close the two are virtually indistinguishable from one another. 

It is an ethos that defines the last several centuries of British – and in general – Western history.The BBC would publish another report on the GT200 titled, “The story of the fake bomb detectors,” in which they detailed the coercive methods used to peddle the useless devices upon unsuspecting nations (emphasis added):Sales demonstrations would be rigged to succeed, she says. Anyone sceptical of the devices would be publicly humiliated. And users were instructed not to open the equipment – to avoid damaging the “sensitive technology” inside. 

Some of the devices came with “detector cards” which were programmed, the fraudsters claimed, to detect everything from explosives, to human beings and dollar bills through concrete, water and from great distances.

Considering how humiliation is used by the Western media to portray anyone questioning the West’s various narratives as “paranoid” or as “conspiracy theorists,” one can only imagine the abuse one would be subjected to had they accused British ambassadors and British military sales support teams of selling what is essentially and empty plastic case with a disconnected radio antenna on it as a “bomb detector.”Yet that is exactly what the British government did. GT200 Couldn’t Have Been Sold Without London’s Complicity The UK Independent would also cover the story in an article titled, “How UK soldiers and ambassador were enlisted to help sell fake bomb detectors,” reporting that (emphasis added): Giles Paxman, then Britain’s ambassador to Mexico, wrote to senior officials in the embattled state government to introduce the wares of Kent entrepreneur Gary Bolton, who was selling the GT200, a handheld detector supposedly capable of identifying drugs or explosives at up to 700 metres. Unbeknown to the ambassador, it used nothing more than a car aerial attached to a hollow plastic grip and did not work.

Ambassador Paxman would, according to the Guardian, emphasize “the excellence of the UK’s security industry.” He would arrange meetings with officials across the country with the maker of the GT200, and is precisely why an otherwise unknown criminal was able to peddle his fake devices globally to the UK’s various allies.

Thousands of brave police and soldiers like those pictured above, had their lives knowingly placed in danger by the British government who mobilized its various departments, the military, and even its diplomats to promote and sell the GT200 “bomb detector” that quite literally did nothing. 

The Independent would reveal that the device cost a mere 2 GBP to make, but was sold for as much as 15,000 GBP each.The Independent would also reveal (emphasis added):Bolton’s ability to enlist a British ambassador to back his fraud reveals how British diplomats and officials around the world are routinely available for hire, and how the government does not normally check whether products they are promoting actually work. 

Eight years before Paxman got involved, a Home Office scientist had concluded an early version of Bolton’s device was “a useless lump of plastic“ and warned: “Not only does it not work in theory, it doesn’t work in practice either.” About 1,000 copies of the warning were sent to the Foreign Office, police forces, the Ministry of Defence, the Royal Engineers and the prison service, the Guardian understands.

In other words, the British government was well aware that the device did not work, did not use it domestically or with its military forces abroad because they knew it did not work, but proceeded to sell it to allied nations anyway.The British government used its influence and reputation to pressure allied nations into buying them, knowingly putting the lives of soldiers and police in jeopardy, as well as implicating suspects falsely of criminal involvement in cases the devices were used to investigate.The Independent would also note that the GT200’s creator “had been quick to recognise the value of British government involvement in the sales pitch for his adapted novelty golf ball finder as he pitched to authorities in Thailand, Bahrain and across Africa.”Thailand Swindled by its Ally, Then Betrayed Again  The Thai government is likely embarrassed by being swindled by the UK. They likely believed – as well as were likely told by the British government itself – that the involvement of British ambassadors and equipment export support teams drawn from the British military were a sound substitute for the rigorous testing the GT200 should have undergone before purchases were made.

Because of the high-level nature of the meetings arranged by British diplomats to facilitate the fraud, the British government knows that investigations into Britain’s role would also require implicating those Thai officials who were present at these meetings. Because of this, the British are confident they can get away with their crime with only minor repercussions.What the Thai government has hopefully gained from this scandal is the realization that those claiming to be its closest allies should be those least trusted.

The privileges Thailand has erroneously granted nations like the UK and US should be gradually rolled back until entirely revoked. The necessity to uproot the influence and interests of both the British and their counterparts on Wall Street and in Washington from the Kingdom of Thailand is increasingly evident.The UK’s actions maliciously cost Thai police and soldiers their lives and in the fallout of the scandal, the British and Americans through their grip on international media, are dishonoring their memories by portraying the victims as being “incompetent” and “corrupt.”

The GT200 scandal reaffirms just how little the West thinks of people beyond their borders and how far they will go and how many they will trample to further accumulate power and wealth. And the GT200 scandal is just one of many angles from which the West attacks, undermines, and pilfers the wealth, dignity, stability, and futures of nations like Thailand. If this is the sort of help the British government will afford a single criminal and his fake bomb detectors – imagine the support they would render for Fortune 500 corporations.For Thailand and the Thai people, perhaps this latest demonstration of the contempt the West has for the East will provide an impetus for the East to finally stop paying into the ideas, wealth, and influence of the West.

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How the UK Sold Fake GT 200 Bomb Detectors to Thailand and Got People Killed

June 24th, 2016 by Tony Cartalucci

The UK proves that power and profits come before the lives of even its own allies’ soldiers and police.

 The GT200 is an otherwise useless plastic box that does nothing with equally useless “sensor cards” that serve no discernible function.

Despite this fact, UK-based Global Technical and an array of salesmen ranging from experts in the British military serving as equipment export support teams, to British ambassadors, to even the British government’s Department of Trade and Industry (now renamed the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) peddled the useless item as a “bomb detector,” putting lives at risk in the nations they were peddled in, and even costing the lives of hundreds including dead police and soldiers in both Iraq and Thailand.

In Thailand, amid the wake of the scandal, US and British backed media services have attempted to capitalize on the political fallout, laying the blame squarely on the Thai government, never mentioning the central role of the British government in promoting the useless and ultimately deadly device.


Image: Faced with mounting violence in Thailand’s deep south, the government in Bangkok placed its trust in its British allies. It is clear that this trust was not only misplaced, but shamefully used and abused by London in a multi-million dollar scam involving the British military, government, and diplomatic corps.

Critics of the Royal Thai Army and the current government have seized upon the scandal to opportunistically and dishonestly undermine both, with some even going as far as blaming the soldiers who risked their lives in the restive southern provinces of Thailand while employing the fraudulent British-made GT200.

The BBC and Guardian Expose the UK Government’s Role 

While the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Thailand politically wields the GT200 scandal against the Thai government and its military exclusively, the BBC itself has exposed the breadth and depth of the UK government’s involvement.

Image: A lot of effort was put into creating the illusion of credibility where no technical merit existed. This not only included slick as well as unscrupulous marketing tactics, but also included the recruitment of British ambassadors and even equipment export support teams drawn from the British military, despite the fact that the British military itself refused to use the fraudulent device.  

The BBC’s 2011 article, “UK government promoted useless ‘bomb detectors’,” would report (emphasis added):

The government has admitted that the Army and UK civil servants helped market so-called “bomb detectors”, which did not work, around the world.

Export of the “magic wand” detectors to Iraq and Afghanistan was banned on 27 January 2010 because of the threat they posed to British and allied troops.

The move followed a BBC Newsnight investigation showing they could not detect explosives – or anything else.

Now Newsnight has learned that they are still being sold around the globe.

The BBC’s report would continue by explaining (emphasis added):

…a Royal Engineers sales team went around the world demonstrating the GT200, another of the “magic wand” detectors which has been banned for export to Iraq and Afghanistan, at arms fairs around the world even though the British Army did not consider them suitable for its own use.

The government’s Department of Trade and Industry, which has since been superseded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, helped two of the manufacturers sell their products in Mexico and the Philippines.

The BBC’s article concludes by stating:

…there will be questions about why the ban on exports to Iraq and Afghanistan has not been extended to protect the citizens of other countries.

However, it is clear that this question has an easy answer. The lives of foreigners to the British government, military, and industry are subordinate if not entirely meaningless to profits and power.

Images; Giles Paxman, Britain’s former ambassador to Mexico. Before the GT200 scandal, and even after it, accusing ambassadors from the US, UK, or Europe of immense criminal impropriety would be met with accusations of being “conspiracy theorists.” In reality, it appears that immense criminality is endemic across Western diplomatic circles with their ties to industry and organized crime so close the two are virtually indistinguishable from one another. 

It is an ethos that defines the last several centuries of British – and in general – Western history.The BBC would publish another report on the GT200 titled, “The story of the fake bomb detectors,” in which they detailed the coercive methods used to peddle the useless devices upon unsuspecting nations (emphasis added):Sales demonstrations would be rigged to succeed, she says. Anyone sceptical of the devices would be publicly humiliated. And users were instructed not to open the equipment – to avoid damaging the “sensitive technology” inside. 

Some of the devices came with “detector cards” which were programmed, the fraudsters claimed, to detect everything from explosives, to human beings and dollar bills through concrete, water and from great distances.

Considering how humiliation is used by the Western media to portray anyone questioning the West’s various narratives as “paranoid” or as “conspiracy theorists,” one can only imagine the abuse one would be subjected to had they accused British ambassadors and British military sales support teams of selling what is essentially and empty plastic case with a disconnected radio antenna on it as a “bomb detector.”Yet that is exactly what the British government did.GT200 Couldn’t Have Been Sold Without London’s Complicity The UK Independent would also cover the story in an article titled, “How UK soldiers and ambassador were enlisted to help sell fake bomb detectors,” reporting that (emphasis added):Giles Paxman, then Britain’s ambassador to Mexico, wrote to senior officials in the embattled state government to introduce the wares of Kent entrepreneur Gary Bolton, who was selling the GT200, a handheld detector supposedly capable of identifying drugs or explosives at up to 700 metres. Unbeknown to the ambassador, it used nothing more than a car aerial attached to a hollow plastic grip and did not work.

Ambassador Paxman would, according to the Guardian, emphasize “the excellence of the UK’s security industry.” He would arrange meetings with officials across the country with the maker of the GT200, and is precisely why an otherwise unknown criminal was able to peddle his fake devices globally to the UK’s various allies.

Image: Thousands of brave police and soldiers like those pictured above, had their lives knowingly placed in danger by the British government who mobilized its various departments, the military, and even its diplomats to promote and sell the GT200 “bomb detector” that quite literally did nothing. 

The Independent would reveal that the device cost a mere 2 GBP to make, but was sold for as much as 15,000 GBP each.The Independent would also reveal (emphasis added):Bolton’s ability to enlist a British ambassador to back his fraud reveals how British diplomats and officials around the world are routinely available for hire, and how the government does not normally check whether products they are promoting actually work. 

Eight years before Paxman got involved, a Home Office scientist had concluded an early version of Bolton’s device was “a useless lump of plastic“ and warned: “Not only does it not work in theory, it doesn’t work in practice either.” About 1,000 copies of the warning were sent to the Foreign Office, police forces, the Ministry of Defence, the Royal Engineers and the prison service, the Guardian understands.

In other words, the British government was well aware that the device did not work, did not use it domestically or with its military forces abroad because they knew it did not work, but proceeded to sell it to allied nations anyway.The British government used its influence and reputation to pressure allied nations into buying them, knowingly putting the lives of soldiers and police in jeopardy, as well as implicating suspects falsely of criminal involvement in cases the devices were used to investigate.The Independent would also note that the GT200’s creator “had been quick to recognise the value of British government involvement in the sales pitch for his adapted novelty golf ball finder as he pitched to authorities in Thailand, Bahrain and across Africa.”Thailand Swindled by its Ally, Then Betrayed Again  The Thai government is likely embarrassed by being swindled by the UK. They likely believed – as well as were likely told by the British government itself – that the involvement of British ambassadors and equipment export support teams drawn from the British military were a sound substitute for the rigorous testing the GT200 should have undergone before purchases were made.

Because of the high-level nature of the meetings arranged by British diplomats to facilitate the fraud, the British government knows that investigations into Britain’s role would also require implicating those Thai officials who were present at these meetings. Because of this, the British are confident they can get away with their crime with only minor repercussions.What the Thai government has hopefully gained from this scandal is the realization that those claiming to be its closest allies should be those least trusted.

The privileges Thailand has erroneously granted nations like the UK and US should be gradually rolled back until entirely revoked. The necessity to uproot the influence and interests of both the British and their counterparts on Wall Street and in Washington from the Kingdom of Thailand is increasingly evident.The UK’s actions maliciously cost Thai police and soldiers their lives and in the fallout of the scandal, the British and Americans through their grip on international media, are dishonoring their memories by portraying the victims as being “incompetent” and “corrupt.”

The GT200 scandal reaffirms just how little the West thinks of people beyond their borders and how far they will go and how many they will trample to further accumulate power and wealth. And the GT200 scandal is just one of many angles from which the West attacks, undermines, and pilfers the wealth, dignity, stability, and futures of nations like Thailand. If this is the sort of help the British government will afford a single criminal and his fake bomb detectors – imagine the support they would render for Fortune 500 corporations.For Thailand and the Thai people, perhaps this latest demonstration of the contempt the West has for the East will provide an impetus for the East to finally stop paying into the ideas, wealth, and influence of the West.

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Derailing Chilcot: The Red Herring of Post-War Planning in Iraq

June 24th, 2016 by Ian Sinclair

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions,” the American novelist Thomas Pynchon once wrote, “they don’t have to worry about answers.”

When it comes to the US and UK’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent occupation, the British establishment have conveniently and repeatedly asked the wrong questions.

Quoting a senior, unnamed source, last month the Times newspaper reported that Tony Blair, former foreign secretary Jack Straw and the former head of MI6 Richard Dearlove “will face serious ‘damage to their reputations’ from the Chilcot report into the Iraq War, which has delivered an ‘absolutely brutal’ verdict on the mismanagement of the occupation”. According to the Times “the section [of the inquiry’s report] on the occupation will be longer than that on the build-up to” the invasion, and the Times reporter blogged that the section on the occupation “is where some of the most damning verdicts are drawn”.

As they have done with every previous public utterance he has made in recent years, the Guardian happily provided Blair with a platform in June to pre-empt the inquiry’s findings – and shift the focus to the occupation and away from the most damaging and dangerous areas for the former prime minister. According to the Guardian, Blair will “argue the ultimate cause of the long-term bloodshed in Iraq was the scale of external intervention in the country by Iran and al-Qaeda”. (Come on, stop laughing, this is serious). He will also “accept that the planning for the aftermath of the war was inadequate” and admit “the West did not foresee the degree to which complex tribal, religious and sectarian tensions would be uncorked” by overthrowing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Let’s be clear: the US-UK military occupation of Iraq – full of massive amounts of deadly violence dished out by the US and UK armed forces, torture and destructive divide-and-rule tactics – was a catastrophe for the people of Iraq. And it was hugely unpopular, with a secret Ministry of Defence 2005 poll of Iraqis finding that 82 percent “strongly opposed” the presence of coalition troops, with 45 percent saying attacks against US and UK forces were justified.

However, it is a complete red herring to suggest better planning is the crux of the issue. “The problem wasn’t the way that this was implemented, the problem was that we were there at all,” argued Rory Stewart, who served as the coalition’s provisional authority deputy governorate co-ordinator in Maysan province In Iraq, in 2013:

“All these people who think ‘If only we had done this, if only if we hadn’t de-Ba’athified, if only we hadn’t abolished the army’ misunderstand the fundamental tragedy of that encounter between the international community and Iraqis… it wasn’t the detailed, tactical decisions that were made, it was the overall fact of our presence. The problem was so deep that if we hadn’t made those mistakes we would have made other mistakes. It was a wrecked intervention from the beginning, from the very moment we arrived on the ground.”

Moreover, the assumption behind the establishment’s fretting over post-war planning is that if the occupation had gone smoothly, then everything would have been OK. In reality, it would not have changed the fact that the US and UK aggressively invaded an oil-rich nation in contravention of international law, based on a pack of deceptions. It was a “crime of aggression” – as explained by the chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office at the time – whether the occupation was successful or not. Bluntly, if I plan and execute a robbery, whether it goes “smoothly” with minimal violence and resistance or is a complete mess is immaterial – it’s still a crime.

The limited, self-serving debate surrounding post-war planning in Iraq echoes the liberal media’s belief that, to quote Cambridge Professor David Runciman, the US and UK invaded Iraq “to spread the merits of democracy”. Yes, it all went wrong, but our intentions were good. This kind of thinking can lead to spectacularly convoluted and offensive conclusions, as the BBC’s John Humphrys proved in October 2012 when he asked about the British occupation of Iraq: “If a country has sent its young men to another country to die, to restore – create democracy, you’d expect, well you’d expect a bit of gratitude, wouldn’t you?”

British historian Mark Curtis has coined a term for this blinkered power-friendly framing: “Britain’s basic benevolence.” Criticism of foreign policies is possible, notes Curtis, “but within narrow limits which show ‘exceptions’ to, or ‘mistakes’ in, promoting the rule of basic benevolence”.

The West’s support for democracy in the Middle East is also evidence-free. “It is presented as though the invasion of Iraq was motivated largely or entirely by an altruistic desire to share democracy,” notes Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House.

“This is asserted despite the long history of Anglo-American great-power involvement in the Middle East, which has, for the most part, not involved an effort to democratise the region,” she explains. “Rather, the general trend has been to either support authoritarian rulers who were already in place, or to participate in the active consolidation of authoritarian rule, including strong military and intelligence cooperation, as long as these rulers have been seen as supporting Western interests more than popularly elected governments would.”

Back to Chilcot. Blair’s government and its supporters successfully deceived – or at least bamboozled – large sections of the press and key sections of the establishment in 2002-3, in what Curtis calls “a government propaganda campaign of perhaps unprecedented heights in the post-war world”.

By steering the debate onto questions surrounding the occupation of Iraq, Blair and co, assisted by a pliant press and Chilcot, are once again shifting the narrative to their advantage. We cannot allow them to triumph over us again. Therefore, it is imperative that everyone interested in uncovering the truth and seeking justice for Iraqis keep the focus on the key issue – the deceptions, lies and legal questions surrounding the run-up to the initial invasion.

As the judgement of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg – a key influence on the development of international law – declared, “To initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Ian Sinclair is a freelance writer based in London and the author of The March that Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003. He tweets @IanJSinclair

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Israeli Intelligence Chief: We Do Not Want An ISIS Defeat in Syria

June 24th, 2016 by Al-Masdar News

This statement tacitly endorses the US proposal (50 State Department Officials) to wage war on Syria government forces. The unspoken agenda is to “Protect” the US-NATO-Israel foot-soldiers, aka ISIS, Al Nusra, et al   (M.Ch. GR Editor)

 

Israeli intelligence Chief, Major General Herzi Halevy, said that the last three months have been the most difficult for ISIS since its inception.

In a speech delivered at “Herzliya” conference yesterday , Halevy explicitly said “Israel” does not want the situation in Syria to end with the defeat of ISIS “,  the Israeli NRG site reported.

“Withdrawal of the super powers from the region and letting Israel alone in front of Hezbollah and Iran that possess good abilities Will make “Israel” in a hard position” . Therefore, we’ve to do all we can so as not finding ourselves in such situation”, the Israeli chief intelligence added.

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Brexit: What Happens Next? Cameron Resigns, Will Other Countries Leave the EU?

June 24th, 2016 by Kavaljit Singh

Britain has voted to leave the European Union. In a referendum held on Thursday (June 23), close to 52 per cent of Britons favored leaving the EU. The referendum results reveal that the arguments put forward by Brexiters found greater resonance with the sentiments of ordinary people than the ones put forward by pro-European camps, the establishment and world leaders. 

Before the polls closed, the UK’s political establishment was expecting that overwhelming voters would vote to stay in the EU. In the same vein, most media analysts and market observers were predicting a win for Remain camp. Even Nigel Farage, leader of far right-wing UK Independent Party (UKIP) and a staunch supporter of the Leave campaign, had hinted on Thursday that his campaign has apparently lost the vote. But the outcome of referendum has proved them all wrong.

At the domestic political front, this vote has boosted the morale of the UKIP which has been calling for greater immigration control and restoring power to Parliament. However, the vote for Leave campaign should not be viewed as an outright victory for UKIP and other far right-wing groups because a large number of voters sympathetic to Conservative and Labour parties also voted in favor of exiting the EU.

The results have already shaken up the political establishment. David Cameron has decided to step down by October and major changes in the leadership of Labour and other parties are expected in the coming weeks.

This vote is expected to trigger a wide range of far-reaching social, economic and geo-political ramifications at the domestic, European and international levels. Many of these effects would be long-term and are yet to be fully comprehended. Even though the Leave vote was largely influenced by the immigration issue but other important concerns have not been given adequate attention.

Of course, a lot would depend on the next moves by the UK government to negotiate and facilitate the withdrawal from the EU by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. In terms of UK’s future relationship with the EU, various options are on the table. For instance, the UK can opt for a model of semi-attached relationship with the EU, similar to the one enjoyed by Norway. The Nordic country enjoys access to the EU’s common market (through its membership of the European Economic Area) but it has no say over EU rules. The UK could also emulate the Switzerland model of a slightly loose relationship with the EU. The UK could also put forward a new kind of relationship with the EU provided its proposal gets the support of member-states of EU.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that it would take considerable time for the UK to establish new relationships and rules for travel of people as well as trade of goods and services across borders. At the minimum, one year of political and economic uncertainty is expected. If handled badly, the uncertainty caused by a political crisis could soon turn into a major financial and economic crisis. Even though most British banks are currently in a stronger position than in 2007 when the global financial crisis erupted but the UK banking industry is still not out of the woods. Many banking reforms are still undergoing and investment banks could face fallout due to higher market and economic volatility as this process unfolds.

On Friday morning, the British Pound hits 30-years low and FTSE fell over 8 percent within minutes of financial markets opening. It is apparent that the statement issued by Mark Carney, Governor of Bank of England, promising swift policy action to tackle any disruptions had no impact on the market volatility.

This vote will have significant ramifications on the UK’s agenda for trade and investment integration with the rest of the world. Through the membership of the EU, the UK has been promoting greater cross-border trade and investment flows in the past. Particularly in the areas of financial services, the UK has been seeking greater market access for its banking industry. From now on, the UK will have to pursue this agenda on its own. This may have both positive and negative outcomes. Besides, the fate of a mega free trade initiative, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), hangs in balance with Brexit.

Similarly, the EU (minus the UK) would have much less bargaining power to negotiate bilateral trade and investment protection agreements. The EU is currently engaged with a wide range of bilateral trade and investment agreements with a number of countries including India. With the change in power relations, the EU may not be able to push for higher levels of commitments in trade in industrial goods and agricultural products, services and investment liberalisation, geographical indications and government procurement under the proposed India-EU free trade agreement (FTA). This may also work in favor of other developing countries which are seeking similar trade and investment agreements with the EU.

It is obvious that the UK referendum will encourage right-wing political parties and groups in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary and other European countries to call for similar referenda. Already the larger EU project towards greater economic integration has been facing a crisis with its flawed monetary union and single currency experiment.

In addition, there are serious geo-political ramifications related to the future role of the UK (and the EU) in the management of international economy and politics, which are yet to properly analyzed and understood.

Kavaljit Singh works with Madhyam, New Delhi.

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The Tory Chickens Come Home to Roost. Brexit, What Next?

June 24th, 2016 by William Bowles

Ask yourself this: Why has immigration been made the pole around which, this entire referendum ‘debate’, has revolved?

Why has the closet Nazi Nigel Farage of UKIP been given so much airtime?

Could it be the masses, hammering at the doors of Fortress Europe after we, that is the US-EU-NATO axis of pure barbarism, destroyed their countries, have something to do with it?

Thus, as so many times before, the Empire utilises its well tried and tested tactic of evoking the ‘other’ to inject fear into our hearts.

Yet it was only a decade ago that a Labour government made sure that tens of thousands of Polish workers would be admitted to the UK without a murmur from UKIP and the rest of the assorted rabble on the Right. And it’s pretty obvious that they were admitted in order to drive down wages and conditions of work. This is what EU economic policy is all about, otherwise known as austerity; a drive to ‘flatten’ wages and conditions downward right across across the EU. We see it currently at work in France, with yet another ‘socialist’ invoking austerity and in reality, it’s actually first and foremost EU policy that Hollande is invoking.

It seems that we, as a people, never learn the lessons of the past, for how many times has race, colour, ethnicity or religion, been used as a weapon to divide and rule us?

Fifty years ago it was Enoch Powell (also a Tory) and his ‘rivers of blood’ emanating from his Midlands constituency, Wolverhampton as the ‘dark hordes swarmed’ over white, working class England.

And why does Farage gets so much exposure? Because he his one of the ruling elite’s weapon of disinformation and deceit. He speaks with a Tory voice but he’s not actually of the Tory Party, hence he can say in public all the things the Tories (and no doubt a goodly sprinkling of Labour) could never say in public themselves. Farage is the ruling elite’s stalking horse of the day. We’ve been in this situation so many times before that it’s getting really tedious. Economic crisis? Find a scapegoat. Political crisis? Find a scapegoat. Find an enemy, wage war…

Thus what started as essentially an internal Tory Party feud between the old guard and an even older guard, morphed into the Tory Party’s worst nightmare, actually having to live up to one of their promises. And horror of horrors the Brexiters actually won, (even if it is pretty much a fifty-fifty result, 51% to 48% but a much higher turnout of 72% than the last general election at 61%. And what’s the betting that it was that working class vote that doesn’t normally vote in the General election, that made the difference?)

Thus in spite of pulling out all the stops, including the brazen and quite outrageous use of ‘our’ public broadcaster, the BBC, to put the frighteners on the public should we dare tell the elite to, well as I put it in an earlier piece, FUCK OFF, we did tell them! I even read a comment somewhere that if we dared leave the EU the Russians would invade us. But all to no avail, the North/South economic/social divide made sure of that.

So what’s next? Well, it’s a long, long way and mucho bucks (some estimates I read years ago, put it at trillions of pounds to actually, that is to say, the actual cost of extricating ourselves from all the laws that originate with the EU and creating new ones, or putting old ones back?) before the UK actually does really exit, if indeed it ever does.

On the left, such as it is, I think it’s pretty clear that Corbyn has  revealed the folly of his divided self, heading up a Labour Party that aside from a few exceptions, was solidly pro-EU and solidly anti-Corbyn. They will use his ‘lacklustre’ support for remaining as a reason as to why the Remainers lost and of course, why he should resign.

But what of others on the left who supported exit, aside from the two I have already quoted from (here and here), both of whom dealt with why but not what they saw after, should we exit? Takis Fotopoulos, is a Greek expat lefty, best known for his ‘Inclusive Democracy’ project who tells us firstly, why we should exit:

On the other side, there are the victims of globalization in Britain and throughout the world: i.e. the millions of workers all over Europe who have lost their jobs since globalization began taking effect about 30 years ago, from the miners – after being defeated in the 80s following a long and heroic struggle – to the steelworkers who are about to suffer the miners’ fate, as soon as the referendum is out of the way.That is, on the other side are all those who are the victims of the opening and liberalization of markets for capital, labour and commodities. As even the Financial Times admitted a few days ago, “we are close to the point where globalization and membership of the Eurozone in particular have damaged not only certain groups in society but entire nations”.[2] In other words, we are talking about all those in Britain (and beyond!) who are forced to work for survival wages and zero contract hours, not to mention the victims of a continuously deteriorating social welfare system (health, education and so on). This system is under the constant threat of further funding cuts while, at the same time, having to cover the needs of more and more people because of the so-called “four freedoms” of the EU, introduced by the Maastricht Treaty and those that followed it (i.e. freedom in the movement of capital, commodities and of course labour). – ‘Brexit, Neoliberalism and the Eurozone: What Is at Stake in the British Referendum‘ By Takis Fotopoulos, 29 April 2016.

Okay, but how exactly, does exiting the EU change this equation? We all live in a neoliberal world, and exiting the EU is not going to change that. In the UK, the people Fotopoulos is referring to, who are at the sharp end of neoliberal policies, are a minority (even if a sizeable one) and it’s a minority that doesn’t vote (except, it appears, in the Referendum) and hence has no representation. Electing Corbyn as head of the Labour Party didn’t change that, even if he does have a mandate from them, a mandate that he has trampled on by supporting (however reluctantly) the Remain camp. I would go so far as to say that those who voted for Corbyn have been cruelly misled, but then that’s the history of Reformism.

Surely, the point here is that all the things Fotopoulos refers to above, zero hours contracts, cuts in the social wage and so forth (let alone our butchering of the planet and its peoples which doesn’t mention) have been in the works for thirty years now and we have been unable to resist any of it! At best we fight rearguard actions to hold on to the little that’s left of the postwar gains we made.

What’s missing from Fotopoulos’s argument is any reference to Imperialism. The UK, like it’s major European allies, is an imperialist state. The great majority of its people support (or acquiesce to) the policies of an Imperialist Great Britain, even if we are a poodle imperialism to the ravenous wolf, the US.

Fotopoulos ends his piece by telling us what we need:

What we therefore need in Britain, in Europe and in the world as a whole, is to start building Popular Fronts for National and Social Liberation (PFNSL), in every country which is integrated into the New World Order. Such fronts would fight for the recovery of national and economic sovereignty and the self-reliance of each country, in their struggle for the creation of a new democratic world order based on the values of solidarity and mutual aid, rather than the principle of competitiveness which has led to the present record level of inequality in the distribution of wealth and income throughout the world, as well as to an ecological disaster. Such a process of recovery would necessarily involve the creation of an alternative pole of sovereign self-reliant nations, and Brexit is a precondition for this. (ibid)

Fotopoulos talks as if it’s the left that is behind the success of Brexit but it’s not. Yes, I think we all know what we need, what we don’t know is how to achieve it. Popular Fronts? Popular fronts presuppose the uniting of various strands under one, common umbrella, and strands that actually exist and have force. I don’t see anything like this in the UK. All I see is a divided and ineffectual left that can’t even agree to describe the EU as an imperialist project and in fact, for the most part it’s been campaigning to Remain! Is this the stuff of Popular Fronts?

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Brexit it Is! Cameron Resigns…

June 24th, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliot was wishing to get voters out for the cause, circulating a message that, “There is a very real chance that voters in London and Scotland will vote to keep us in the EU today despite the heartlands of the country voting to leave.”  

The circulated email also sported a picture from a “leafy” part of London, with queues to boot.  “If you don’t want people in London to force you and your family to stay in the EU please email and call all your friends and make sure they Vote Leave today!”

Chuka Umunna, Labour MP for Streatham, retorted in disgust that, “Vote Leave are ending this campaign as they began it – by seeking to divide our country not unite it, turning regions, nations and communities against one another.”

As the votes neared their final tally, Elliot found himself on the right side of history, keeping company with other Leave campaigners.  Almost 52 percent had decided that the Leave campaign had made their case, while the Remain case limped in at 48.1 percent.

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage was truly chipper, calling the referendum result, after expressing initial doubts, an assertion of independence.  June 23, he confidently claimed, would “go down in our history as our independence day.”[1]

The entire Remain campaign was deservedly routed. From the 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron was caught by the populist surge both within his conservative party, and the pressure from UKIP to press for a renegotiation with the EU.

Having marketed himself as John Bull saving Britain from the clutches of continental bureaucracy, he looked out of sorts attempting to argue for a Remain campaign he only ever seemed half-hearted about.  Such untidy minds constitute true punishment indeed.

That has been the nature of the entire debate from the start, with strong resonances from the continent about where the European Union fits in the debate.  The EU is a spouse with visible defects that has resulted in a vote of divorce.  Umunna’s point, along with those of the Remain campaign, was never well made, if, indeed, it was made at all.

When prosperity, wealth and peace might have been framed as both arguments and aspirations, the Remain team decided that mocking critics as bumpkins, village hicks and extremists was the way to go.

A sour taster of this came in the broader, nigh hysterical response to Keith Adams and his expressive pro-leave, near blind “93 year old mum”. Adams, on making a post of his mother’s intentions, was trolled with some rigour, with various accusations about being a liar, a “right wing racist brexiteer” and a fabricator.  (“It can’t have happened because blind people vote using Braille.”)[2]

Umunna’s own Labour party came across as cool and indifferent to traditional blue collar constituents, with Jeremy Corbyn himself a long time sceptic of much of the EU program.  Within its ranks, a populist reassessment has been demanded, taking into account traditional areas which the party has left behind.

While London, Scotland and Northern Ireland fronted up with numbers for Remain, the English shires and Wales went for Brexit.  Traditional labour bastions such as Sunderland gave the Leave campaign a 22 percent margin of victory. Newcastle scraped in with Remain with a mere one percentage point.

All in all, this vote saw a return to the politics of anger and estrangement.  It revealed two classes, “staring at each other across a political chasm.”[3]  It is the message that Podemos is capitalising upon in Spain. Ditto that of those on the Right, such as Geer Wilders in the Netherlands.

Not all have the same view on how best to tackled the EU conundrum.  Genuine concerns about centralised governance and intrusion have been muddled with a terror about refugees, immigrants and life style choices.  A distinct spinelessness from Europe’s leaders on this point has not helped.  Gone are the broader discussion about accountability and liberty.

A perfect illustration as to how problematic any challenge to the way the Union is governed came in the market chatter.  It resembled all too closely the language of the portfolio prospectus, with its monthly updates on shocks and instabilities, rather than political questions of sovereignty.  Forget discussions about reform, or the application of Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union.  Such commentary was far more interested in the wounds that a democratic experiment had inflicted.

The Economist and Wall Street Journal noted with alarm how the pound had fallen to its lowest level relative to the US dollar since 1985. Futures and the S&P 500 fell by five percent.  Stock markets in Asia were given a drubbing.  All of this seemed academic as polls closed, with a sense that the Remain campaign would edge out the Brexiteers by a few good points.  The position was totally reversed.

While there was much mythmaking and manufacture in the grounds for the Leave campaign, the sentiment was sensible enough.  Not all should be dismissed as raw nativism and autarchic romance.  Those on wanting Britain to stay did just that.

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

Notes

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Death of the Bees due to Neonicotinoid Pesticides Produced by Bayer-Monsanto, Sygenta

June 24th, 2016 by Nika Knight

‘What’s happening today to pollinators is no different than what happened 50 years ago with the collapse of the bald eagle due to the use of DDT’

Advocating for a ban on toxic pesticides that have led to massive bee die-offs nationwide, a truck filled with millions of the dead pollinators has trundled across the country to reach its final destination on Wednesday afternoon: the front steps of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters in Washington, D.C.

If we stop keeping bees, who’s going to pollinate your fruits and vegetables? This can’t go on.
—Roger Williams,
Central Maryland Beekeepers Association

The truck’s arrival at EPA headquarters heralds a rally in which environmental groups, beekeepers, organic food advocates and others will “deliver over 4 million signatures urging an immediate ban on bee-killing pesticides” to the agency, writes the conservation group Friends of the Earth.

“In the five years since I started keeping bees, I’ve seen many hives killed by pesticides,” said James Cook, a beekeeper who drove the truck filled with dead bees from Sacramento, Calif., to Washington, D.C. (Photo: U.S. Geological Survey/flickr/cc)

“Bees pollinate most of the world’s most common crops, including summer favorites like peaches and watermelon,” said Environment America in a press statement. “But over 40 percent of U.S. honeybee hives die each year, costing the farming and beekeeping industry more than $2 billion annually.”

As Scott Nash, CEO of Mom’s Organic, said in a statement,

“What’s happening today to pollinators is no different than what happened 50 years ago with the collapse of the osprey, bald eagle, and other bird and aquatic animal populations due to the use of DDT. If we allow the chemical agribusiness industry to continue these short-sighted practices, food costs will increase as food supplies diminish.”

“In the five years since I started keeping bees, I’ve seen many hives killed by pesticides,” added James Cook, a Minnesota-based beekeeper who has been driving the truck across the country since last Monday. “If some fundamental things don’t change, it’s going to be really hard for beekeepers to adapt to the environment around us.”

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As the crisis stretches on, studies continue to show that the so-called neonicotinoid class of pesticides, or neonics, are a major contributing factor to bee population decline, as Common Dreams has reported. (Pesticide giants have lobbied heavily against any regulations of their multi-billion dollar industry.)

And despite “a process to assess four types of neonics and their impacts on pollinators” the EPA launched a year ago, and an agency study that in January confirmed the link between one variety of neonics and widespread bee deaths, further agency assessments of what critics describe as bee-toxic pesticides—and in turn, action—are still outstanding.

Yet the bees—and their keepers—don’t have any time to lose.

“We have so many losses it’s worse than break-even. It is getting harder and harder to keep bees and make a living,” said Roger Williams, president of the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association. “And if we stop keeping bees, who’s going to pollinate your fruits and vegetables? This can’t go on.”

Rally participants documented the event on Twitter under the hashtag #keepthehivesalive.

 

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From Iraq to The Brexit Referendum: Tony Blair’s Toxic Legacy. Yes, He Should Stand Trial for War Crimes

June 24th, 2016 by Felicity Arbuthnot

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair currently back in Britain, cast a dark shadow over those campaigning to stay in the European Union in the 23rd June referendum. Inflicting himself on the Britain Stronger in Europe group, he spoke at every opportunity – reminding even the most passionate Europhile of the last time he assured: “I know I’m right” – Iraq.

If the “Remainers” had an ounce of sense Blair should have been ditched in a nano-second. He is not “Toxic Tony” for nothing.

However, since the long awaited Chilcot Inquiry in to the Iraq invasion is to be published just thirteen days after the referendum (6th July) it is worth revisiting more of the mistruths of which he is capable.

On 18th March 2003, Blair stood in Parliament and listed the times Saddam Hussein’s government had said they had no weapons of mass destruction (1) dismissing them all, including the 11,800 pages or 12,200 pages of accounting of that which they did not possess and delivered by the Iraqi delegation at the UN to the UN UNSCOM offices on 8th December 2002.

Lest it be forgotten, the reason for the uncertainty of the length of the volume is that the US delegation simply appropriated it and returned less than 4,000 pages so heavily redacted as to be indecipherable – and without the hefty index at the back listing the Western arms companies who had, prior to the first Gulf war, sold them weapons.

Blair told Parliament loftily:

“ … the 8th December declaration is false. That in itself is a material breach. Iraq has made some concessions to co-operation but no-one disputes it is not fully cooperating. Iraq continues to deny it has any WMD, though no serious intelligence service anywhere in the world believes them … We … will back it with action if Saddam fails to disarm voluntarily.”

Iraq of course, was telling the truth. Blair had appointed himself  Judge, jury and executioner.

And here is a real whopper: “I have never put our justification for action as regime change.”

And another: “Iraq is a wealthy country that in 1978, the year before Saddam seized power, was richer than Portugal or Malaysia.

“Today it is impoverished, 60% of its population dependent on food aid.

“Thousands of children die needlessly every year from lack of food and medicine.”

What he omitted was stated in a piece I wrote back in 1998 (2) addressing the ever repeated propaganda. The conditions were caused directly by the US-UK driven embargo, overseen by Blair’s envoy to the UN, Carne Ross, who headed the Sanctions Committee after the August 1991 imposed embargo:

“In 1989 the World Health Organization recorded Iraq as having 92-per-cent access to clean water, 93-per-cent access to high quality health care and with high educational and nutritional standards.

“By 1995 the World Food Program noted that: ‘time is running out for the children of Iraq’. Figures – verified by UNICEF – record that 1,211,285 children died of embargo-related causes between August 1990 and August 1997. A silent holocaust in the name of the UN. These numbers are similar to those lost in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia. It is three times the population of Kuwait in small lives.”

‘ “After 24 years in the field, starting with Biafra, I didn’t think anything could shock me,” wrote Dieter Hannusch of the World Food Program in l995. “But this was comparable to the worst scenarios I had ever seen.” ‘

The day after Blair’s address to Parliament, Operation Iraqi Liberation began, to which he had committed the country in his visit to George W. Bush’s Texas ranch in April 2002, without telling Parliament.

Moreover, in 2009 The Mail on Sunday disclosed (3) that: “Attorney General Lord Goldsmith wrote (a) letter to Mr. Blair in July 2002 – a full eight months before the war – telling him that deposing Saddam Hussein was a blatant breach of international law.

“It was intended to make Mr. Blair call off the invasion, but he ignored it. Instead, a panicking Mr. Blair issued instructions to gag Lord Goldsmith, banned him from attending Cabinet meetings and ordered a cover-up to stop the public finding out.

“He even concealed the bombshell information from his own Cabinet, fearing it would spark an anti-war revolt. The only people he told were a handful of cronies who were sworn to secrecy.

“Lord Goldsmith was so furious at his treatment he threatened to resign – and lost three stone as Mr Blair and his cronies bullied him into backing down.”

The then Prime Minister did not alone ignore the Attorney General’s legal advice. In November 2002 “six wise men” gave Blair “bloody warnings” as to the outcome of an attack on Iraq. (4) They were: “ … all academics, expert on Iraq, the Middle East and international affairs. They had been called to the Cabinet Room to outline the worst that could happen if Britain and the United States launched an invasion.

“This was a meeting that could have changed the course of history and, with better planning for the aftermath, saved countless lives – if only the Prime Minister and his advisers had listened and acted on the bloody warnings on that day in November 2002.”

Dr. Toby Dodge, then of London’s Queen Mary University foresaw with extraordinary clarity the near certain outcome, warning: ‘… that Iraqis would fight for their country against the invaders rather than just celebrate the fall of their leader. A long and nasty civil war could follow. “My aim that day was to tell them as much as I could, so that there would be no excuses and nobody saying, ‘I didn’t know.’ ”

Others who shared their extensive expertise were Professor George Joffe of Cambridge University, Sir Lawrence Freedman, Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London and a Blair adviser, Professor Charles Tripp of the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, Steven Simon, Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Professor Michael Clarke, then of Kings College, London. Before the gathering they were warned: “Don’t tell him not to do it. He has already made up his mind”, Dr. Dodge told The Independent.

Blair and his Cabinet had: “… no plan for what would happen after the invasion. The approach was, ‘The Americans are heading this up. They will have a detailed plan. We need to follow them’ ”, said Professor Joffe. However in reality, a year’s planning by the State Department for the invasion’s aftermath: “was junked. They were making up policy on the hoof.”

Professor Joffe also explained the complexities of Iraq’s power structures with Tony Blair seemingly disinterested in the potential cultural, societal and political minefields, responding with kindergarten simplicity (re Saddam Hussein) “ But the man is evil isn’t he?”

A chameleon-like absorption of George W. Bush, his political circle and his Generals’ simplistic “good guys”, “bad guys” rhetoric.

Steven Simon had little faith in bringing democracy to Iraq at the barrels of guns and deliveries of 30,000-pound bunker busters: “If everything had been done differently, there might have been some small shot at avoiding disaster. But only a small shot.”

Incredibly, according to Professor Joffe: “The people who were put in charge in Iraq had very little knowledge or experience of the Middle East.”

Professor Clarke commented that Blair’s attempt to justify the invasion was mistaken: “We knew there was no nuclear stuff in Iraq.” Moreover, he believed: ‘Blair did not actually decide to go to war on the basis of intelligence, but made it look as if he had with his two “dodgy” dossiers. “He presented the case to the public as if they had incontrovertible evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. That was rubbish. They were ridiculous documents, both those documents.” ‘ (Emphasis added.)

Late last year, Blair made what was described as a “qualified apology” for “mistakes” made in Iraq – among them: “our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime”. In the light of the above, blatantly untrue.

Blair’s dodging and weaving over the years since 2003 – in spite of his millions, numerous properties, jet (seemingly leased) and a yacht, accrued from advising some of the world’s most despotic leaders – seems to have worn him down a bit, though.

In an extraordinary television outburst (5) attacking Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn who said of Blair on BBC’s Newsnight last August:

“If he has committed a war crime, yes (he should stand trial.)  Everybody who has committed a war crime should.” Blair responded: “I’m accused of being a war criminal for removing Saddam Hussein  … and yet Jeremy is seen as a progressive icon as we stand by and watch the people of Syria barrel-bombed, beaten and starved into submission and do nothing.”

No mention of the US’ illegal “coalition” which includes the UK which has made 4,024 strikes to 1st June this year, according to the US Department of Defence. Strikes remarkably inept at affecting the countless foreign terrorist groups, but which have caused devastation to the Syrian people whose plight was caused by US plotting (6.)

46,615 bombs and missiles have been dropped Syria and Iraq in the seeming non-fight against ISIS and other criminal groups. (airwars.org)

Apart from his ongoing economy with the truth, Tony Blair also seems to be well past his sell by date. In Northern Ireland, probably the only place on earth which has a tenuous reason to give him some credit for the “peace process”, where he went to speak on the referendum at Ulster University, he was less than welcome.

Derry anti-war campaigner Frankie McMenamin said the former Labour leader was “not welcome” in Derry, telling the Derry Journal:

“I was involved in protests about the Iraqi War which Tony Blair was responsible for, Tony Blair is hated throughout the world and he has blood on his hands over Iraq.

“I will be voting for the U.K. to remain on June 23rd but I think someone like Mr. Blair (urging the stay in vote) will put a lot of other people off.

“Tony Blair is not welcome in our city and the people who organized this visit obviously knew this” – the meeting had not been publicly advertised and the address was to a specially selected audience. The co-speaker was Blair’s former Chancellor, Gordon Brown, near equally unpopular, who wrote the cheques for years of UK bombings before the invasion and then for the invasion’s destruction. Had the meeting been publicly advertised, assured Mr McMenamin, protesters would have been out in force.

On 17th June, Blair was a signatory to an open letter, signed by two former deputy Prime Ministers and a number of MPs and public figures urging voters to stay in the European Union. It included the words:

“ … public life, whether in politics or elsewhere, should be about something else – something better.

“It should be driven by a desire to bring people together when it would be easier to tear them apart. A wish to build bridges rather than erect walls.” To promote that which is “Peaceful, tolerant, compassionate.”

As he added his signature, did he reflect on Iraq’s destroyed bridges – literally and metaphorically, on a nation of walls erected by US and UK troops over one of the most open landscapes anywhere to be found and on the accompanying destruction of peace, tolerance and compassion at the hands of US and UK policies aided by his ignorant determination and

“ridiculous documents.”

Philippe Sands QC, Professor of international law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London, has said (7) ‘he believes, unequivocally, that the 2003 invasion was illegal under international law. “In the UK, beyond those associated with the government’s effort, I cannot think of a single international lawyer who thinks the war was lawful. Not a single name comes to mind. That’s got to be telling.” ‘

It can only be hoped the Chilcot Inquiry’s findings deliver Charles Anthony Lynton Blair and his cohorts in a tragedy which will be his and George W. Bush’s place in history. A sharp and chilly return to reality.

Notes:  

1.     http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/mar/18/foreignpolicy.iraq1

2.     https://newint.org/features/1998/01/05/iraq/

3.     http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231746/Secret-letter-reveal-new-Blair-war-lies.html

4.     http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iraq-invasion-2003-the-bloody-warnings-six-wise-men-gave-to-tony-blair-as-he-prepared-to-launch-10000839.html

5.     http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-jeremy-corbyn-syria-war-criminal-chilcot-inquiry-a7070761.html

6.     http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-and-conspiracy-theories-it-is-a-conspiracy/29596

7.     http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/02/iraq-war-invasion-blair-regime

 

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Canada Supports The ISIS and Every Other Terrorist Group which is Trying to Destroy Syria

June 24th, 2016 by Mark Taliano

Any country that openly or covertly supports illegal regime change in Syria, necessarily supports ISIS  — they have shared goals.

Canada, like the U.S., has been very open about its support for illegal regime change.  Canada’s Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan , for example, publicly stated that Assad “does need to go”.

As with all illegal wars of aggression, Canada’s position is based on well-documented false pretexts, and it categorically rejects international law as well as UN Security Council Resolution 2254, which states that the war on Syria demands a “Syrian-led, Syria-owned political transition to end the conflict.”

ISIS, of course, and all the Western-supported mercenary terrorists invading Syria also want “Assad to go”.

The evidence of the West’s diabolical support of ISIS et al. mercenaries is increasingly transparent.

Apartheid Israel, Canada’s close ally, is now publicly unravelling the ISIS psychological operation (psy op) – where we pretend to be fighting ISIS even as we support ISIS.

Israel’s military intelligence chief, Major General Herzi Halevy recently stated that Israel prefers ISIS over the Syrian government, and he declared unambiguously that Israel does not want to see ISIS defeated.

Furthermore, writer Jason Ditz reports that

Israeli officials have regularly expressed comfort with the idea of ISIS conquering the whole of Syria, saying they find it preferable to the Iran-allied government surviving the war. At the same time, they were never so overtly supportive of ISIS and its survival.

Clearly, should the West’s objectives be realized, Wahhabi terrorist gangs such as ISIS will fill the vacuum left by the illegal “regime change” war.

Israel, like Canada and its allies, including the Persian Gulf Dictatorships/Monarchies, prefers the total destruction of democratic, pluralist, secular, civilized Syria in favour of gangs of Wahhabi-inspired terrorists.

There have never been “moderate” terrorists in Syria.  The “moderate” opposition in Syria attends parliament and does not seek the violent overthrow of its elected government.  The real “moderates” abhor the genocidal violence of the western-supported terrorists.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/disturbing-reality-in-syria-moderate-and-not-moderate-terrorists-whats-the-difference/5529241

Stephen Lendman explains,

All armed opposition groups in Syria engaged in combat against government forces along with slaughtering defenseless civilians are terrorists.

Washington and its rogue allies support them – imported death squads unable to exist without foreign backing.

No so-called ‘moderate rebels’ exist. Speaking last October at the International Valdai Discussion Club’s annual meeting, Putin forthrightly said ‘(w)hy play with words dividing terrorists into moderate and not moderate. What’s the difference?’

We no longer need to draw on historical memory either – a weak spot with Western MSM consumers.

We can almost be forgiven for forgetting that the West destroyed Libya using al Qaeda proxies, and that Libya is now an ISIS stronghold.

We can almost be forgiven for forgetting that the West continues to destroy Iraq, using proxies, or that it did the same thing in Afghanistan, and Bosnia, or the fact that the West supports an illegal neo-Nazi infested regime in the Ukraine.

But in the here and now, ignorance or forgetfulness is not an excuse.

In an interview with neo-con Wolf Blitzer, on the CNN propaganda channel, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard re-iterated what we should all know: The war on Syria is illegal and counter-productive, and a (proposed) “No-Fly Zone” would escalate the war and worsen the current humanitarian and refugee crises.

(embed Blitzer interview here)

She also amplified the fact that Western imperialism has (intentionally) strengthened rather than weakened terrorist groups in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

In an interview with The Nation, she explained that 

Escalating the war to overthrow Assad will make things even worse. It will cause more suffering and chaos and strengthen ISIS and Al Qaeda to the point where they may be able to take over all of Syria,” and the result, she says, would be disastrous,  “including a genocide against religious minorities, secularists, atheists, and anyone who refuses to accept the extremist Wahhabi theology. The refugee crisis will increase exponentially, and it could lead to a direct confrontation with Russia.

The West’s refusal to seek peace and its choice to instead perpetrate an overseas holocaust is consistent with the Israeli intelligence chief’s lament that ISIS is being weakened in Syria.

Evidence demonstrates time and again that the West and its allies actively seek to destroy other sovereign nations by supporting terrorist groups like al Qaeda/al Nursra Front, ISIS, and other terrorists groups.

It’s increasingly a “no-brainer” on many levels:  During the U.S. bombing campaign, ostensibly against ISIS, for example, ISIS territory actually increased dramatically.

Once a country is destroyed and/or balkanized, it is less able to oppose any number of Washington’s toxic agendas, including pipeline plans.

Whenever Canada or its allies talk about peace, and combating terrorism, or whenever they vilify President Assad and the Syrian government, we can be assured that they are lying, or that they are politically ignorant, or that they are blindly following illegitimate diktats from above.

The notion that our governments actually represent “the people”, is increasingly absurd.

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The FBI Criminal Investigation into Clinton’s Email Server: It’s Time for Hillary to Concede to Bernie Sanders.

June 24th, 2016 by Diana Price

Since the beginning of the Democratic primary campaign, Bernie Sanders’ supporters have been complaining about national establishment media skewing their coverage in favor of Hillary Clinton, noting the connections between ownership of those major media outlets to Clinton campaign donations. Now, one writer for a national news site has not only acknowledged Sanders as a viable candidate, but has gone as far as to call for Hillary Clinton to concede the Democratic nomination to Bernie Sanders. 

In a HuffPost Politics opinion piece, H. A. Goodman calls for Clinton to drop out of the race, citing the criminal investigation by the FBI into Clinton’s email server as well as national polls showing that despite being behind in pledged delegates, Sanders has taken the lead in national polls for not only the Democratic party nomination, but fares far better against Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in a national campaign.

“With Bernie Sanders now slightly ahead of Clinton nationally in the latest Bloomberg poll, it’s time to reevaluate the meaning of pragmatism. Hillary Clinton might be ahead of Bernie Sanders in delegates, but Vermont’s Senator has a monopoly on political momentum. Sadly, his opponent has a monopoly on controversy, and will face FBI interviews in the near future.”

Goodman also cited a Los Angeles Times article about how formal interviews are being arranged with Clinton’s closest advisers as well as Clinton herself, indicating the investigation is reaching its final stages. By final stages, they mean that a possible indictment for criminal charges may drop any time, and they want to make sure that readers understand that this is a criminal investigation, which Goodman repeated multiple times throughout the opinion piece.

“The Christian Science Monitor clearly states the nature of the FBI’s investigation, stating ‘The FBI is indeed conducting a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information on the private email server Clinton used for State Department communications.’ Yes, Hillary supporters, ‘The FBI is indeed conducting a criminal investigation.’”

 

hillary clinton benghazi
Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi October 22, 2015 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. [Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images]

 

Other publications making it clear that this investigation is not just about possible misconduct but about criminal charges, include The Washington Post. And, it isn’t just media outlets jumping on the bandwagon to let the public know the gravity of the charges pending against Clinton and that this is not just another far-fetched scandal courtesy of the Republican Party, like so many attacks on the Clintons in the past.

Former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal back in January, claiming the charges were justified. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the retired chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told CNN‘s Jake Tapper that it was time for Clinton to drop out of the race back in February, long before the current surge in support for Sanders.

“If it were me, I would have been out the door and probably in jail… This over-classification excuse is not an excuse. If it’s classified, it’s classified.”

Goodman didn’t mince words on what many Sanders’ supporters have claimed was the DNC’s decision to anoint Hillary Clinton the Democratic Party nominee long before the primaries even began, regardless of who ran against her or what skeletons might lurk in her proverbial closet. He also cited her extreme negative favorability rating and how she fares far worse head-to-head with Trump in polls than her rival Sanders.

“It’s time for Democrats to deal with reality, not just allegiance to a political icon, and rally around the only candidate not linked to an FBI investigation, and other controversies. With recent victories and future wins ahead, Bernie Sanders has all the political momentum heading towards Election Day. Most importantly, Bernie Sanders is the only leading candidate with positive favorability ratings in 2016… Democrats can’t run a winning presidential campaign with the slogan, ‘We’ll save you from Trump with a person who’s less despised.’”

Real Clear Politics polls show Bernie Sanders consistently maintains a double digit lead over Donald Trump, while Hillary Clinton hovers around single digits — and has even dropped to below Trump’s ratings back in February — yet publications like Rolling Stone continue to claim Clinton as the stronger candidate against Trump when all polls indicate the exact opposite. All of this is taking place before the GOP goes on the attack against Clinton should she win the nomination for the general election.

It’s fair to say neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz will say “enough about your d*** emails.” Or that they will give Clinton a pass on the many other reasons Hillary needs to step aside.

Goodman also recorded a video on YouTube, spelling out why Clinton will likely be indicted and how the email scandal in itself disqualifies her from being president, citing the fact that there are 22 emails that still can’t be shown to the American public, which indicates that they are indeed classified, despite arguments from Clinton to the contrary. Goodman says Clinton’s claims that the emails weren’t classified while they were on her private server are false, and that whole issue is irrelevant “spin” that doesn’t change the fact that the email issue alone makes Clinton unfit to be the Democratic party nominee or president.

“So you either have overt criminal activity, or someone who’s just not smart enough to keep state secrets safe. Either way, you’re not fit to be president.”

The HuffPost Politics article says that the subsequent cover-up has been as damaging, if not more so, than the scandal itself, much like Watergate derailed Richard Nixon. Goodman asks when the Democratic Party establishment will finally “admit this fiasco is horrible for a general election?” and notes that if “federal prosecutors are interviewing your candidate for president, even Donald Trump has a good chance at the White House.”

Just in case you didn’t draw the conclusion that Clinton’s email scandal will be her downfall and it’s time for her to drop out, this sums up the political point that only Goodman seems willing to make among the establishment media.

 

Bernie Sanders rally

 

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) campaigns at Chicago State University. [Photo by John Gress/Getty Images]
“Bernie is by far the superior candidate, and already matches up better against GOP rivals; without the myriad of issues faced by Clinton. For the country, and especially the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton should concede the nomination to Bernie Sanders.”

And Goodman did mention this is a criminal investigation. Just in case you didn’t catch it the seven times it’s pointed out in the article.

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US Bombing of Syrian Troops Would Be Illegal

June 23rd, 2016 by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

Secretary of State Kerry met with dissident State Department “diplomats” to hear their call for U.S. airstrikes on Syrian government troops, but the plan is both dangerous and illegal, writes Marjorie Cohn.

In an internal “dissent channel cable,” 51 State Department officers called for “targeted military strikes” against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, a proposal that President Barack Obama has thus far resisted. However, were he to accept the cable’s advice, he would risk a dangerous – possibly catastrophic – confrontation with Russia. And, such a use of military force in Syria would violate U.S. and international law.

While the cable decries “the Russian and Iranian governments’ cynical and destabilizing deployment of significant military power to bolster the Assad regime,” the cable calls for the United States to protect and empower “the moderate Syrian opposition,” seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

However, Assad’s government is the only legitimate government in Syria and, as the sovereign, has the legal right to seek international support as it has from Russia and Iran. There is no such legal right for the United States and other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to arm Syrian rebels to attack Assad’s government.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Aug. 30, 2013, claims to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, but that evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited. [State Department photo]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Aug. 30, 2013, claimed to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, but that evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited. [State Department photo]

The dissent cable advocates what it calls “the judicious use of stand-off and air weapons,” which, the signatories write, “would undergird and drive a more focused and hardnosed US-led diplomatic process.”

Inside Syria, both the United States and Russia are battling the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) as ISIS and other jihadist groups seek to overthrow the Assad government. But while the U.S. is supporting rebel forces (including some fighting ISIS and some fighting Assad), Russia is backing Assad (and waging a broader fight against “terrorists,” including Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front). Reuters reports the U.S. has about 300 special operations forces in Syria for its “counter-terrorism mission against Islamic State militants but is not targeting the Assad government.”

The policy outlined in the dissent cable would change that balance, by having the U.S. military bomb Syrian soldiers who have been at the forefront of the fight against both ISIS and Nusra. But that policy shift “would lead to a war with Russia, would kill greater numbers of civilians, would sunder the Geneva peace process, and would result in greater gains for the radical Sunni ‘rebels’ who are the principal opponents of the Assad regime,” analyst James Carden wrote atConsortiumnews.com.

Journalist Robert Parry added that the authors of the cable came from the State Department’s “den of armchair warriors possessed of imperial delusions,” looking toward a Hillary Clinton administration which will likely pursue “no-fly-zones” and “safe zones” leading to more slaughter in Syria and risking a confrontation with Russia.

As we should have learned from the “no-fly zone” that preceded the Libyan “regime change” that the U.S. government engineered in 2011, a similar strategy in Syria would create a vacuum in which ISIS and Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front would flourish.

Violating U.S. and International Law

The strategy set forth in the cable would also violate both U.S. and international law.

Saudi King Salman bids farewell to President Barack Obama at Erga Palace after a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Saudi King Salman bids farewell to President Barack Obama at Erga Palace after a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Under the War Powers Resolution (WPR), the President can introduce U.S. troops into hostilities, or into situations “where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances,” only (1) after a Congressional declaration of war, (2) with “specific statutory authorization,” or (3) in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

None of three conditions that would allow the president to use military force in Syria is present at this time. First, Congress has not declared war. Second, neither the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which George W. Bush used to invade Afghanistan, nor the 2002 AUMF, which Bush used to invade Iraq would provide a legal basis for an attack on Syria at the present time. Third, there has been no attack on the United States or U.S. armed forces. Thus, an armed attack on Syria would violate the WPR.

Even if a military attack on Syria did not run afoul of the WPR, it would violate the United Nations Charter, a treaty the U.S. has ratified, making it part of U.S. law under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. Article 2(4) of the Charter says that states “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

The Charter only allows a military attack on another country in the case of self-defense or when the Security Council authorizes it; neither has occurred in this case. Assad’s government has not attacked the United States, and the Council has not approved military strikes on Syria.

Indeed, Security Council Resolution 2254, to which the cable refers, nowhere authorizes the use of military force, and ends with the words, “[The Security Council] decides to remain actively seized of the matter.” This means that the Council has not delegated the power to attack Syria to any entity other than itself.

If the U.S. were to mount an armed attack on Syria, the Charter would give Assad a valid self-defense claim, and Russia could legally assist Assad in collective self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter. Moreover, forcible “regime change” would violate Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has also ratified.

Although it’s true that the “dissent” cable eschews the use of U.S. “ground forces,” its recommendation that the U.S. should bomb Assad’s government would involve U.S. military personnel who would fly the bombers or fire off the missiles. And, such an operation would invariably necessitate at least a limited number of U.S. support troops on the ground.

Opposition to Violent ‘Regime Change’

Many commentators have warned of dangers from a U.S. military attack on Syria, risks that are either ignored or breezily dismissed by the “dissent” cable.

Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative, known as Jihadi John and identified as Mohammed Emwazi, the target of a drone attack that the Pentagon announced on Thursday.

Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative, known as Jihadi John.

Jean Aziz cautions in Al-Monitor, “the recommendation of military strikes against the Syrian government – no matter how well intentioned – is, in the end, escalatory, and would likely result in more war, killing, refugees, less humanitarian aid reaching civilians, the empowerment of jihadis and so on.”

The United States is already empowering jihadis, “going out of its way to protect the interests of al-Qaeda’s closest and most powerful ally in Syria, Ahrar al-Sham,” Gareth Porter wrote in Truthout. Porter reported that Ahrar al-Sham, which works closely with the Nusra Front, “is believed to be the largest military force seeking to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, with at least 15,000 troops.”

So, in seeking Assad’s ouster, the U.S. has terrorist bedfellows. So much for the “global war on terror.”

As CIA Director John Brennan recently told the Senate Intelligence Committee, “Our efforts have not reduced [Islamic State’s] terrorism capability and global reach,” adding, “The branch in Libya is probably the most developed and the most dangerous.”

No wonder President Obama told Fox News “the worst mistake” of his presidency was not planning for the aftermath of U.S. regime change in Libya, although he stubbornly maintains that ousting President Muammar Gaddafi was “the right thing to do.”

The Center for Citizen Initiatives, a group of U.S. citizens currently on a delegation to Russia in order to increase understanding and reduce international tension and conflict, issued a statement in strong opposition to the “dissent” cable. Retired Col. Ann Wright, anti-war activist Kathy Kelly and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern are part of the group.

“It is not the right of the USA or any other foreign country to determine who should lead the Syrian government,” the statement says. “That decision should be made by the Syrian people.”

The statement urges the State Department “to seek non-military solutions in conformity with the UN Charter and international law.” It also urges the Obama administration to “stop funding and supplying weapons to armed ‘rebels’ in violation of international law and end the policy of forced ‘regime change’.” Finally, the statement calls for “an urgent nation-wide public debate on the U.S. policy of ‘regime change’.”

This is sage advice in light of the disasters created by the U.S. government’s forcible regime change in Iraq and Libya, which destabilized those countries, facilitating the rise of ISIS and other terrorist groups. There is no reason to believe the situation in Syria would be any different.

Instead of saber-rattling against Assad, Russia and Iran, the Obama administration should include them all in pursuing diplomacy toward a political, non-military settlement to the Syrian crisis.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. A member of the national advisory board of Veterans for Peace, Cohn’s latest book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Visit her website athttp://marjoriecohn.com/ and follow her on Twitter at @marjoriecohn.

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University of Alaska Study to Examine 9/11 Controlled Demolition of WTC Building 7

June 23rd, 2016 by 21st Century Wire

This is long overdue.

The University of Alaska is sponsoring a study that will examine whether of not WTC Building 7 was brought down by a controlled demolition on September 11, 2001.

For those who may not be aware, standing some 47 stories high, Building 7 was the thirdskyscraper that collapsed later in the afternoon on 9/11, dropping at free-fall speed in less than 7 seconds- and yet, it was not struck by any plane and was located over 100 metres away from WTC 1 and 2.

The official version of events is that fire spread to Building 7, from the main towers, devastating the structure, and causing it also to fall in on itself, but many have questioned how exactly every single support column in the building could have failed simultaneously without the use of pre-planned explosives.

Dr J Leroy Hulsey, chair of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, has partnered with Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth to begin a rigorous academic study into what really caused it to collapse.

Dr Hulsey said:

Over the next year, with a team of PhD students, I will be rebuilding World Trade Center building 7, using the same drawings that were used to build it originally we will reconstruct it digitally.

NIST says the building fell down due to office fires. Our investigation will evaluate the probability that this was the cause of the collapse.

Ted Walter, Director of Strategy and Development for A&E 9/11 Truth added:

We hope to gain significant traction in the engineering community by providing an authoritative refutation of NIST’s report, by showing that there is no way that fires could have brought down building 7.

On the day of 9/11 the BBC reported that Building 7 had collapsed 20 minutes before it actually had, which only raises suspicions that somebody knew it was about to come down. See that monumental screw up, which happened live on TV, here:


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Watch the collapse of Building 7 here:


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Do you believe explosives brought down Building 7?

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Clinton E-Mail on Libyan Conquest: We Came, We Saw, We Got Oil

June 23rd, 2016 by Ann Garrison

On Oct. 20, 2011, Muammar Qaddafi was grotesquely murdered on camera. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had said, “I want him dead,” and after his death she made her famously imperial boast, “We came, we saw, he died,” refiguring Julius Caesar’s message to the Roman Senate after one of his conquests in the same Mediterranean region.

Less than a month later, in a Nov. 16, 2011, “Tripoli Situation Report” in Hillary Clinton’s e-mail archive, “country managers of the three U.S. firms comprising the Waha Group (Marathon, Conoco Phillips and Amerada Hess) said meetings with its Libyan joint venture partner and the National Oil Company [NOC] this week were ‘extremely positive’ and that they were encouraged by an apparent sea change in the NOC’s attitude toward its U.S. partners.”

WikileaksOne would have had to be extraordinarily naive to believe that the U.S. and NATO attacked Libya to “stop genocide and mass atrocities,” as Secretary of State Clinton, NSC advisor Samantha Power and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice claimed at the time. Or to believe Ambassador Rice, who traveled to Libya after the conquest and then traveled on to Rwanda, where she pronounced: “This time, the Security Council acted. And acted in time. Having failed in Rwanda and Darfur, it did not fail again in Libya. Within less than two days, American firepower played a decisive role in stopping Qaddafi’s forces and saving Benghazi.” That should be enough to make anyone wonder what really happened in Rwanda and Darfur.

Most anyone paying serious attention knew that there was a lot of blood for oil involved in the NATO war on Libya, but now we have confirmation in the Wikileaks searchable database of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mails, which were made available in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

This particular e-mail also illustrates Secretary Clinton’s interest in:

1) An official from the Central Bank of Libya’s tour of Washington, London and New York to negotiate removal of restrictions on its assets,

2) U.N. control of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and cobalt in Libya,

3) Money to be made in “the country’s reconstruction,”

3) U.S. ally Qatar’s role in the 2011 creation of Libya Al-Ahrar TV, a channel broadcast by satellite from its headquarters in Doha, Qatar, and

4) U.S. educated and exiled Mahmoud Shammam, Al-Ahrar TV’s co-founder, who had by then become Libya’s new minister of communications.

On Oct. 25, 2011, Mahmoud Shammam had told Telegraph.co.uk.video that Qaddafi had been buried in a secret location that was not a Moslem cemetery.

I highlighted key text, spelled out acronyms, and corrected a few typos in this Nov. 16, 2011, e-mail to Secretary Clinton for easy reading:

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05783460

Date: 02/29/2016

RELEASE IN PART 1.4(B),B1,1.4(D)

Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 7:25 PM

To: H

Subject: Fw: Tripoli Situation Report — November 16, 2011

Classified by DAS, A/GIS, DoS on 02/29/2016 — Class: CONFIDENTIAL — Reason: 1.4(B), 1.4(D) —

Fyi Declassify on: 11/16/2026

From: Abbaszadeh, Nima

Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 03:16 PM B1

To: Wells, Alice G; Sullivan, Jacob Cc: S_SpecialAssistants 1.4(B)

Subject: Tripoli Situation Report — November 16, 2011 1.4(D)

(SBU) [Sensitive But Unclassified]

(SBU) Waha Group returns: In a November 16 meeting with Ambassador, country managers of the three U.S. firms comprising the Waha Group (Marathon, ConocoPhillips and AmeradaHess) said meetings with its Libyan joint venture partner and the National Oil Company [NOC] this week were “extremely positive” and that they were encouraged by an apparent sea change in the NOC’s attitude toward its U.S. partners. The Waha Group, the only majors that have not yet resumed production in Libya, will visit its 7 fields for the first time in the coming weeks and will be producing 50,000-70,000 bpd before ramping up to 100,000 bpd by year’s end. The consortium will have to invest in some replacement parts and logistical equipment before it returns to last year’s production levels of 350,000 bpd. Initial production will come from its Samah and Dahrah, deemed the safest of its oil fields, while larger fields closer to Sine still face security issues.

(SBU) Waha continued: The TNC [Transitional National Government] likely will announce the formation of a Ministry of Petroleum in this interim period that will assume the regulatory role previously exercised by the NOC, they said. The favored candidate to lead the Ministry is Abdulrahman Benyeza, a respected and knowledgeable technocrat educated at the University of Texas. The TNC and NOC will be focused on production restoration for the next 18-24 months and it is unlikely they will risk the loss of time and money in reviewing contracts during this period. They welcomed a shift in attitude toward “partnership,” and noted with optimism that the country’s reconstruction will provide an economic driver largely absent from the Qadhafi-era kleptocracy.

(SBU)CBLassets: SamiRais, the Central Bank of Libya lead on frozen assets, said he is planning a tour of Washington, London and New York to appeal to the US, UK and UN to delist the CBL and lift remaining restrictions on its assets. Rais said the TNC will need funds to carry out any weapons-buyback programs and resolve the domestic liquidity crunch.

(SBU) IAEA: According to UNSMIL [United Nations Support Mission in Libya], IAEA is planning to visit Libya in early December. Based on Libya’s full compliance with its HEU [Highly Enriched Uranium] obligations in December 2009, the IAEA is satisfied that all of the GOL’s former nuclear weapons facilities are under appropriate safeguards but is concerned about the medical and commercial uses of cobalt and uranium.

(SBU) Libya Al-Ahrar TV: In a meeting with PAO, Libya Al-Ahrar [TV] Executive Manager Seraj Beshti dismissed rumors about Qatar’s purported “60 days’ notice” and eventual expulsion order for the network to leave Doha. Beshti noted that some financial issues have arisen with the Qatari government; salaries are delayed and at some point the Qataris did ask the network to reduce its staff footprint. However, Beshti affirmed that Doha has never interfered with the channel programming or news editorials. Beshti said that within the network’s offices there is debate about the proper role and longevity of Minister of Communications Mahmoud Shammam’s tenure at the station. Although Shammam founded the network, there is growing discomfort with him retaining a management position– albeit an absentee position– while retaining a government post in Tripoli. Following November 14 protests by the Warshafana tribe regarding comments made by Shammam, the network issued a formal apology but further stoked debate and dissent within the network’s offices regarding Shammam’s role.

Oakland writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Black Agenda Report, Black Star News,Counterpunch and her own website, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, KPFA Evening News, KPFA Flashpoints and for her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at[email protected]. In March 2014 she was awarded the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa through her reporting.

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French Construction Firm Lafarge Paid “Taxes” to ISIS to Continue Operating in Syria

June 23rd, 2016 by Stuart Hooper

French construction material giant Lafarge paid ‘taxes’ to ISIS in order to continue its business operations in Syria throughout the still on-going conflict.

The company had a plant located in Jalabiya, northern Syria – an area under the control of ISIS – which was opened in 2010 just before the outbreak of war

Lafarge paid ISIS a ‘tax’ that meant their vehicles were allowed to pass through ISIS controlled areas and checkpoints unhindered.

Lafarge is the world leader in building materials and one of the biggest players in cement, aggregates and concrete businesses.

ISIS eventually seized the site in Syria in 2014, but until then Lafarge was absolutely guilty of providing material support to terrorists.

Kurds secured the area in February 2015 and it is now a base for Western coalition special forces.

Corporations are regularly allowed to break and bend laws, and HSBC was a favoured bank of terrorists and faced absolutely no repercussions, but openly funding terrorism is perhaps new territory for corporate crime.

Do you expect criminal charges to be brought against Lafarge?

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Israeli Rabbi Asks Settlers to Poison Palestinian Water “In Order to Kill Them”

June 23rd, 2016 by Days of Palestine

Israeli Jewish Rabbi Shlomo Mlma asked on Sunday Israeli Jewish settlers to poison Palestinian water resources in order to kill them.

Mlma, the chairman of the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank settlements, asked the settlers to do so in order to cleans the Palestinians from the West Bank cities and villages.

According to Israeli anti-occupation organisation “Breaking the Silence,” the rabbi wanted the Israeli Jewish settlers to push the Palestinians to leave their villages and pave the way for settlers to take over their lands.

Dozens of similar orders were made by rabbis that called for killing Palestinians, robbing their lands and farmlands and destroying their property.

International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all Jewish settlement building on the land to be illegal.

About 800,000 Jewish settlers currently live on more than 100 Jewish-only settlements built since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967.

Inspired by such incitement, Israeli Jewish settlers several times killed Palestinians and destroyed their properties in the occupied West Bank.

 

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Why Does It Look Like The U.S. Is Rescuing ISIS?

June 23rd, 2016 by Rep. Ron Paul

The ongoing war in Syria may see some escalation soon. A report that 51 State Dept. employees (out of 13,000 foreign service officers) signed a memo urging President Obama to change his focus in Syria from fighting ISIS to fighting the secular Assad government has caused quite a stir.

The fact that such a small number of individuals could make this a noteworthy story shows that propaganda continues to reign supreme. It makes no sense that U.S. can weaken ISIS by attacking the main opponent of ISIS (i.e., Assad).

We’re constantly smothered in rhetoric about how America “must stop ISIS.” Yet, ISIS has been on the ropes, and in trouble. The group has been on the run, and what does the U.S. want to do? They want to hurry up and bomb Assad, which they’ve been trying to do for five years now.

There’s agitation in the Congress right now to give the authority to Obama to do something that he ‘seems’ to be reluctant to do. If we would have had an aggressive neocon as a president, Congress wouldn’t have mattered. He would have went ahead with the bombings by now.

I think we’re really playing with fire here. Is it really worth the risk to stir up a war with Russia? It makes no difference to Americans whether or not Assad remain in power in Syria. It has nothing to do with our freedoms or economy. Yet the rhetoric keeps building nonetheless.

An American in Orlando lost his mind and shot 50 people dead, and the response is to go across the world and attack Assad in Syria? Such illogic reminds me of the U.S. attacking Iraq after 9/11. It made no sense then (or now) and it accomplished nothing but the creation of chaos (and ironically) ISIS itself!

Are we witnessing opportunism once again?

If we want to be safer and enjoy more liberties, we much change our foreign policy. We have to mind our own business, have a strong national defense, and practice non-intervention abroad with other nations. That idea is much better than the nonsense coming from the State Department and the government at large.

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Selected Articles: Brexit: What Is It About? What is at Stake?

June 23rd, 2016 by Global Research News

brexit-1462470589PAa (1)

Brexit: What Is It About? What is at Stake?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, June 22 2016

If you read the presstitute media, Brexit—the referendum tomorrow on the UK’s exit from the EU— is about racism.  According to the story line, angry rightwing racists of violent inclinations want to leave the EU to avoid having to accept…

Cameron-Brexit

Brexit Referendum Is Non-Binding. UK Parliament Not Voters has Final Say

By Stephen Lendman, June 23 2016

All the fuss and bother about Brexit largely ignores its non-binding status – parliament, not voters deciding if Britain stays or leaves the EU, the latter extremely unlikely. Writing in the Financial Times, British lawyer David Allen Green explained Brexit…

Brexit R-U

The Inhumanity of Brexit

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, June 23 2016

While the Brexit debate has become a matter of colliding blocs of speculators and crystal ball gazers, a glaring aspect has come to the fore.  Virtually nothing has been said about the role played by human rights, Britain’s role in…

Goldman Sachs

Brexit: Goldman Sachs Pledged Substantial Six-figure Sum to British pro-EU Group

By Anthony Bellchambers, June 22 2016

This article was first published by GR in January 2016. A former Goldman official who is not even a British citizen currently runs the Bank of England. How convenient… Goldman Sachs has inside information from within the Bank of England…

Euro-Symbol-Money-Europe-Debt

EU Basics – Your Guide to the UK Brexit Referendum on EU Membership

By Professor Richard A. Werner, June 22 2016

The British people should be clear about just what they will be voting on at the EU referendum this Thursday. What does it actually mean to stay in the EU? What does it mean to exit?

pound-sterling-today

Brits Dump Pound Sterling Ahead of Brexit Vote. Long Queues Outside Foreign Exchange Bureaux

By Tyler Durden, June 23 2016

When one thinks of lines of people waiting patiently to obtain “hard currency”, one may think Russia, as was the case in December 2014 when the currency was plunging… “long queues stretched outside foreign exchange bureaux in the City of…

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Syria: ISIS Terrorists Regain Control of Southeastern Raqqa Province

June 23rd, 2016 by South Front

The ISIS terrorist group has regained control of the al-Zakia Junction and al-Zayn Hills in the southeastern part of Raqqa province after the Syrian Arab Army withdrew to Ithriyah. Pro-government sources argue that this was a tactical move and no heavy clashes have been observed, recently.

Ground sources provide different reasons of the recent setbacks, but the most important of them are:

  • surprise vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) attacks;

  • a lack of the air support from the Russian air grouping located in Syria.

While the effectiveness of countering VBIED attacks lays in in the sphere of tactical measures implemented on the ground, the location of the Russian airbase in Latakia complicates significantly close air support because a big flying time to the target doesn’t allow to hit evading targets that move fast in the desert. Information of forward air controllers becomes outdated very fast. This is why the main striking force of the Russian military grouping in Syria – warplanes – is focused on stationary targets in different regions of Syria.

The SAA grouping at the border of Raqqa province is receiving reinforcements in order to counter-attack ISIS units in the area. Recently, a convoy of the Desert Hawks Brigade has arrived to the east Hama countryside in order to participate in the SAA’s advance on the Tabaqa military airport.

Meanwhile, Russian warplanes and helicopters raided the areas of T3-Airbase and Arak near Palmyra that had been seized by ISIS militants. Now, SAA units are deployed at the al-Talilah crossroad, east to the ancient city, preparing for fresh offensive operations.

Norway might deploy its troops and speical operation forces in Syria, the government said on June 22, following the authorization of the move by the country’s parliament. Norway is going to send some 60 troops to Jordan this summer. They will train and support “Syrian opposition “fighting the ISIS terrorist group. Most likely, this Syrian opposition is the so-called New Syrian Army.

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

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Who Should Formulate Policy in America, the People or the Politicians? The Essentials of “Good Government”

June 23rd, 2016 by William John Cox

In the midst of what undoubtedly will be the nastiest and most expensive presidential campaign in American history, it is important to remember that the question is not so much whether a candidate is a good or bad person, but rather what should and will be the policies, objectives, and consequences of her or his administration? What do the People of the United States really want and expect their government to do on their behalf? Who should make political policy, the People, or the politicians they elect to represent them?

Founded as a republic in which representatives are elected to administer the government for the People, the United States has become increasingly more democratic as the vote has been extended from a few wealthy property owners to include most adult citizens. President Abraham Lincoln not only established that the United States could not be dissolved, but he also expanded the definition of its government from being for the People, to being of and by the People. Thus, it is the People themselves who have the inherent power to define their own government, rather than being forced to accept the kind of government offered by competing political candidates. In a democracy, it is supposed to be the people (demos) who have the power (kratia), rather than the politicians (poltikos).

The Democrats and Republicans are currently nominating the two candidates with the highest unfavorable ratings in the history of presidential elections. Before hiring their next president, shouldn’t American voters be telling the candidates what the task involves, rather than listening to the candidates lie about what they will do if they get the job?

Political Party Platforms

Currently, political policy, on the national level, is set forth in the platforms adopted by the major political parties at their presidential nominating conventions every four years.  During the primaries, the competing candidates tout their proposals about what their party’s platform should contain. Once they obtain enough delegates to receive the nomination, the successful presidential candidates take control of their political parties and the committees that draft the platforms. Conceptually, the American People vote for these competing party platforms, and the presidential candidates are supposedly pledged to follow these policies, if elected.

In truth—given the present merchandising approach to political campaigns—the party platforms are carefully designed as bait to sell the party’s political package to the voters. Once in office, however, successful candidates are free to switch from their advertised promises, which they usually do to the detriment of those who bought their product.

Hillary Clinton’s website lists 31 key programs she will fight for as president—from curing Alzheimer’s disease to teaching new workforce skills. Mislabeled as policy, these programs include improving access to affordable health care, preserving Social Security and Medicare, and reducing the cost of college. Although Bernie Sanders may push the Democratic platform committee toward adopting more progressive positions, the ultimate result of a Hillary Clinton presidency will be a continuation of the pro-corporate philosophy of the “New Democrats”, such as her husband and President Barack Obama. This centralist orientation is largely indistinguishable from mainstream Republican policies in the critical areas of the economy, environment, and militarization.

Donald Trump’s website offers a mishmash of proposals—also referred to as policies—including tax reform by reducing taxes, immigration reform by forcing Mexico to build a border wall, health care reform by repealing the Affordable Care Act, and compelling China to live up to its trade obligations by being a tough negotiator. Given his erratic nature, these proposals offer little or no guidance as to what a President Trump might actually do when confronted with real world problems, instead of the programming requirements of reality television.

Even with the best of intentions, these propositions—in the absence of well-considered policy guidelines—provide little direction in the event of changes of circumstance, such as another major terrorist attack, or increasing crime, riots, and racial violence resulting from economic failures. Most pertinent is the inability of political parties to adopt policies that actually benefit the People whenever beneficial policies conflict with the dictates of the wealthy elite and corporations who control the politicians in both major parties?

In many respects, the current political policy-making process treats American voters like children. Just as parents quickly learn to ask their young children whether they want green beans or carrots—rather than telling them to eat their vegetables—the electoral choices offered to voters by the major parties are different tastes of the same artificially-flavored political Kool-Aid.

Policy and Programs

The concept of policy is widely misunderstood. Policy is a philosophical guideline or a path to a goal or objective. It differs from laws, rules, regulations, and procedures, which are more mandatory. Although often used interchangeably—especially in politics—there is also a difference between policy, and the programs that implement policies.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the last big-picture political policy maker. His “New Deal” included a wide variety of government programs and lasted for decades, as the United States enjoyed its greatest period of political stability and economic progress. The platforms of subsequent presidents—Eisenhower’s “Peace and Prosperity,” Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” Johnson’s “Great Society,” Nixon’s “Bring Us Together,” Reagan’s “Make America Great Again,” Bush senior’s “Kinder, Gentler Nation,” Bill Clinton’s “Putting People First,” Bush junior’s “Compassionate Conservatism,” and Barrack Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In”—have been marketing slogans primarily designed to peddle a variety of special-interest programs, rather than broad-scale statements of public policy. These political catchphrases are in the same category as Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Hillary Clinton’s “Stronger Together.”

While one could say that the New Deal was also a slogan, it was much more than a label for the presidential orders and government programs adopted pursuant to it. In response to the devastation of the Great Depression, the New Deal was a vision—expressed as a policy—which proposed a new contract between the People and their government. More than words, the New Deal actually provided relief for the destitute, recovery of the economy, and reform of the financial system.

Urging the United States to become an “Arsenal of Democracy” to help the Allies defend themselves against fascism and to unify the spirit of the American People, President Roosevelt looked forward to a world founded on the Four Freedoms of speech and expression, of worship, from want, and from fear. In January 1941—when Roosevelt identified these freedoms—the world was engaged in a great war against fascism which threatened every person on Earth. Today, fascism is once again rearing its evil head, and it is being fed by the fear tactics of reactionary politicians and the militarization of the government. Fascism is threatening an American society made vulnerable by social, environmental, and economic problems far beyond the comprehension of those who lived 75 years ago. At a time when the People desperately want peace and prosperity, they are being told by their presidential candidates that war and austerity are inevitable.

The Essentials of Good Government

Irrespective of culture or national origin, from the most ancient tribal-based settlements to the unimaginable societies of the future, there have been and will continue to be certain essential organizational functions required to preserve the integrity of the group. As basic public policy, good government must:

• Provide every child with equal access to nutrition, health care, and education;

• Provide economic security to ensure the ability of all parents to care for their families;

• Provide and enforce laws to guarantee equal opportunity and individual rights for everyone;

• Provide physical security to defend the society and its people; and

• Provide coordination of large-scale efforts to serve the public good.

The People Can Make Their Own Policy

If the American People are capable of earning their own living, raising their children, paying taxes, and being emotionally and physically maimed and dying in the defense of their Nation, aren’t they smart enough to have a more direct say in the policies that govern their future and the destiny of their children? Have the money interests become so entrenched in both major political parties that the politicians no longer address the needs of the People? Are the People once again being taxed without representation? What, if anything, can be done? The United States Voters’ Rights Amendment (USVRA) may provide an answer to these questions.

The USVRA is a comprehensive Voters’ Bill of Rights intended to transform the United States government into one that cares for and nurtures the many who elect it, rather than benefiting the few who bribe its representatives. Primarily, the USVRA guarantees—for the very first time—the right of all Americans to cast effective votes in all elections. In doing so, it:

• defines equal rights for women;

• maximizes voter participation and prohibits the suppression of voting;

• eliminates corporate personhood and controls political contributions;

• ensures public funding of elections and limits the lengths of campaigns;

• provides paid voting holidays and hand-countable paper ballots;

• improves political education and public information;

• eliminates the Electoral College; and it

• curtails lobbying and prohibits conflicts of interest.

Assuming the ratification of the USVRA—and the effectiveness of its provisions to ensure the quality of everyone’s vote and to improve the performance and dedication of their representatives—let us examine the policy-making provisions of the USVRA to see just how the People would go about making their own policy to guide their elected representatives.

Policy Formulation Under the USVRA

In order to finally actualize America’s representative form of democracy—and to transform its government—the USVRA provides the mechanism for the formulation of policy questions, and it prescribes the method by which the People vote on the issues.

While there is no way that the American People could—or should—presently trust their representatives to faithfully identify and formulate the most pressing political issues facing their Nation for the next four years, ratification of the USVRA presupposes that it’s adoption will only result from a mass, nonpartisan political movement. Thus, the future members of Congress will be far more disposed to pay attention to the needs and aspirations of an energized electorate than the present office holders. Even so, Section 10 of the USVRA directs Congress to solicit public comment “regarding the political issues that most concern the People” during the calendar year preceding a presidential election.

Prior to midnight on December 31st, Congress is mandated to adopt a joint resolution identifying the 12 most critical policy issues to be addressed by the next president and Congress. Recognizing that Congress might be reluctant to act as required, the USVRA punishes a failure to act by disqualifying “all sitting members of Congress to be eligible for reelection.” Is there any doubt that the members of Congress will act to save their jobs? Isn’t it far more likely that the questions they formulate will be more relevant to the American People than those currently being debated in the election of 2016?

Section 11 requires that federal elections be “held on a national voters’ holiday, with full pay for all citizens who cast ballots.” Moreover, all federal elections “shall be conducted on uniform, hand-countable paper ballots and, for the presidential election, ballots shall include the twelve most critical policy questions articulated by Congress, each to be answered yes or no by the voters.”

Once the questions have been published, there will be a valid standard by which all political candidates in the United States can be evaluated in determining their qualifications to hold public office. While the present art of politics teaches candidates to never take a position on any question in order to avoid losing votes, the USVRA would not only force candidates to take concrete positions, but to defend them as well. Moreover, enactment of the USVRA will help avoid the intentional creation of volatile issues intended to excite fear voting.

At the same time—motivated by the USVRA and cognizant of the power of their vote—the People would be far more likely to think about the important questions facing the future of their Nation and to arrive at responsible answers.

Questions for a National Policy Referendum

Rather than responding to billions of dollars in negative advertising about the inadequacies of opposition candidates, a barrage of slick promotional propaganda concealing such deficiencies, and misleading party platforms, voters in the 2016 election should have the right to decide real issues. They should be asked if international trade pacts should be approved; if the cap on Social Security withholding taxes should be eliminated; if a supplemental national retirement system should be enacted; if solar energy should be collected in outer space to energize the national highways in lieu of a reliance on polluting petroleum products; and if the crumbling national infrastructure should be repaired and upgraded.

Those most affected by domestic policies should decide if everyone has a right to national health care; if paid maternity leave is to be provided by employers; if women have the freedom of choice in matters of childbearing; and if everyone has the right to marry whomsoever they chose.

Working people and small business owners are certainly qualified to decide if a national minimum wage should be guaranteed; if public education should be privatized; if the right to education should be extended through college; if all existing student loans should be forgiven; and if military spending should be reduced.

Concerned for the safety and security of their families, everyone should have the freedom to offer their opinion about ending the war on drugs; prohibiting private, for-profit prisons; and if the Second Amendment allows for the reasonable regulation of firearms.

Irrespective of one’s own political position on any and all of these questions, isn’t it far better for each individual’s personal happiness—and for the future of the Nation—if everyone is encouraged to understand and to advocate their differing point of view, and to vote their conscience?

Wisdom of the Crowd

Unlike public opinion polls—in which respondents often provide snap answers influenced by the last political advertisement they were exposed to—the answers to a national policy referendum would be much more deliberative. Moreover, unlike statutory ballot initiatives—which often produce unforeseen and regrettable outcomes—answers to a USVRA referendum would create policy to guide the making of a law, rather than the law itself. For example, the People might vote overwhelmingly for universal health care, and then leave it up to Congress to work out the details.

It is estimated that more than 225 million Americans should be eligible to vote in the 2016 presidential election. With voter suppression taking place in many states, unfavorable candidates, and the possibility that millions of Sanders supporters and mainstream Republicans will boycott the election, the turnout could be less than 30 percent. The result might be a president chosen by fewer than 15 percent of the eligible voters. If, however, the People had the right and opportunity to make their own policy and to vote for those candidates who offer the best solutions to achieve their goals, voter participation could exceed all expectations, and the United States would evolve into a true democratic republic.

Would the policies resulting from a national policy referendum be responsible? The answer is an unqualified yes, and the reason is that the People—collectively—are much smarter that the most brilliant political candidates, or their panels of experts. The “wisdom of the crowd” can be easily proven. If one were to carefully count a large number of marbles and place them in a glass jar and then ask a group of 100, or even 1,000 people, to estimate how many are present, the responses will vary widely as participants make their best guess. On average, however, the crowd working together will almost perfectly identify how many marbles are in the jar. In the same way, 225 million voters would be much more likely to formulate wholesome policies—than the politicians who sell their positions of trust to the highest bidder.

Warning to Politicians

Given the opportunity, the American People are not only capable of charting their own future, but they are also smart, wise, and brave enough to seize the chance to do so. There is no alternative—the People of the United States of America will either take control of their own government, or their experiment in self government will ultimately fail.

The consent of the People to be governed should no longer be taken for granted.

William John Cox is a retired public interest lawyer. He filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979 alleging that the government no longer cared for the voters who elected it, and he asked that a national policy referendum be ordered as a remedy. He is the author of “Transforming America: A Voters’ Bill of Rights” and can be contacted through his website, WilliamJohnCox.com.

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Donald Vs. Hillary: Leading Antiwar Progressives Speak Favorably of Certain Aspects of Trump’s Foreign Policy

June 23rd, 2016 by John V. Walsh

Until recently the progressive mind has been resolutely closed and stubbornly frozen in place against all things Trump.

But cracks are appearing in the ice.  With increasing frequency over the last few months some of the most thoughtful left and progressive figures have begun to speak favorably of aspects of Trump’s foreign policy. Let us hear from these heretics, among them William Greider, Glen Ford, John Pilger, Jean Bricmont, Stephen F. Cohen andWilliam Blum.  Their words are not to be construed as “endorsements,” but rather an acknowledgement of Trump’s anti-interventionist views, the impact those views are having and the alternative he poses to Hillary Clinton in the current electoral contest.

First let’s consider the estimable William Greider, a regular contributor to The Nation and author of Secrets of the Temple.  He titled a recent article for the Nation, “Donald Trump Could be The Military Industrial Complex’s Worst Nightmare: The Republican Front Runner is Against Nation Building.  Imagine That.”

Greider’s article is brief, and I recommend reading every precious word of it.  Here is but one quote: “Trump has, in his usual unvarnished manner, kicked open the door to an important and fundamental foreign-policy debate.” And here is a passage from Trump’s interview with the Washington Post:

I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’d be blown up,’ Trump told the editors.  ‘And we’d build another one and it would get blown up. And we would rebuild it three times. And yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn.… at what point do you say hey, we have to take care of ourselves. So, you know, I know the outer world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that but at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially in the inner cities.

Trump talks about building infrastructure for the inner cities, especially better schools for African American children, rather than bombing people of color halfway around the world! That is hardly racism.  And it is not how the mainstream media wants us to think of The Donald.

*****

Next, Glen Ford, the eloquent radical Left executive editor of Black Agenda Report, a superb and widely read outlet, penned an article in March, 2016, with the following title: “Trump Way to the Left of Clinton on Foreign Policy – In Fact, He’s Damn Near Anti-Empire.” Ford’s piece is well worth reading in its entirety; here are just a few quotes:

Trump has rejected the whole gamut of U.S. imperial war rationales, from FDR straight through to the present.

If Trump’s tens of millions of white, so-called ‘Middle American’ followers stick by him, it will utterly shatter the prevailing assumption that the American public favors maintenance of U.S. empire by military means.

Trump shows no interest in ‘spreading democracy,’ like George W. Bush, or assuming a responsibility to ‘protect’ other peoples from their own governments, like Barack Obama and his political twin, Hillary Clinton.

It is sad beyond measure that the near-extinction of independent Black politics has placed African Americans in the most untenable position imaginable at this critical moment: in the Hillary Clinton camp.

*****

Next let’s turn to John Pilger, the Left wing Australian journalist and documentary film maker who has been writing about Western foreign policy with unimpeachable accuracy and wisdom since the Vietnam War era.   Here are some of his comments on Trump:

…Donald Trump is being presented (by the mass media) as a lunatic, a fascist.  He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure.  That alone should arouse our skepticism.

Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.

In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as ‘a world substantially made over in [America’s] own image’.  The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. …

Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn’t want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted ‘exceptionalism’ is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.

The money quote is: “The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton.”  When Pilger submitted his article to the “progressive” magazine Truthout, this sentence was deleted, censored as he reported, along with a few of the surrounding sentences.  Such censorship had not been imposed on Pilger by Truthout ever before. Truthout’s commitment to free speech apparently has limits in the case of The Donald versus Hillary, rather severe ones.  So one must read even the progressive press with some skepticism when it comes to Trump.

*****

Trump has also been noticed by the Left in Europe, notably by the sharp minded Jean Bricmont, physicist and author of Humanitarian Imperialism who writes here:

(Trump) is the first major political figure to call for ‘America First’ meaning non-interventionism.  He not only denounces the trillions of dollars spent in wars, deplores the dead and wounded American soldiers, but also speaks of the Iraqi victims of a war launched by a Republican President. He does so to a Republican public and manages to win its support. He denounces the empire of US military bases, claiming to prefer to build schools here in the United States. He wants good relations with Russia. He observes that the militarist policies pursued for decades have caused the United States to be hated throughout the world. He calls Sarkozy a criminal who should be judged for his role in Libya. Another advantage of Trump: he is detested by the neoconservatives, who are the main architects of the present disaster.

*****

And then there is Stephen F. Cohen, contributing editor for The Nation and Professor Emeritus of Russian History at Princeton and NYU.  Cohen makes the point that Trump, alone among the presidential candidates, has raised five urgent and fundamental questions, which all other candidates in the major parties have either scorned or more frequently ignored. The five questions all call into question the interventionist warlike stance of the US for the past 20 plus years. Cohen enumerates the questions here, thus:

Should the United States always be the world’s leader and policeman?

What is NATO’s proper mission today, 25 years after the end of the Soviet Union and when international terrorism is the main threat to the West?

Why does Washington repeatedly pursue a policy of regime change, in Iraq, Libya, possibly in Ukraine, and now in Damascus, even though it always ends in “disaster”?

Why is the United States treating Putin’s Russia as an enemy and not as a security partner?

And should US nuclear weapons doctrine include a no-first use pledge, which it does not?

Cohen comments in detail on these questions here. Whatever one may think of the answers Trump has provided to the five questions, there is no doubt that he alone among the presidential candidates has raised them – and that in itself is an important contribution.

*****

At this point I mention my own piece, which appeared late last year.  Entitled “Who is the Arch Racist: The Donald or Hillary?”  Like Cohen’s pieces it finds merit with the Trump foreign policy in the context of posing a question.

*****

Finally, let us turn to Bill Blum, who wrote an article entitled, “American Exceptionalism and the Election Made in Hell (Or Why I’d Vote for Trump Over Hillary).”  Again there is little doubt about the stance of Blum, who is author ofKilling Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, a scholarly compendium, which Noam Chomsky calls “Far and away the best book on the topic.”

Blum begins his piece:

If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.

My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted.

And he concludes:

He (Trump) calls Iraq ‘a complete disaster’, condemning not only George W. Bush but the neocons who surrounded him. ‘They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.’ He even questions the idea that ‘Bush kept us safe’, and adds that ‘Whether you like Saddam or not, he used to kill terrorists’.”

Yes, he’s personally obnoxious. I’d have a very hard time being his friend. Who cares?

*****

I conclude with Blum’s words because they are most pertinent to our present situation.  The world is living through a perilous time when the likes of the neocons and Hillary Clinton could lead us into a nuclear Armageddon with their belligerence toward Russia and their militaristic confrontation with China.

The reality is that we are faced with a choice between Clinton and Trump, a choice which informs much of the above commentary.  Survival is at stake and we must consider survival first if our judgments are to be sane.

John V. Walsh can be reached at [email protected]. Read other articles by John V..

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ISIS as a Mirror

June 23rd, 2016 by J. B. Gerald

In part, the rapacious ugliness of ISIS is a reflection of the policies which formed it.

We flinch at recognizing in ISIS atrocities the embodiment of the cruelty in NATO’s policies,…the callousness of Madeleine Albright evaluating the lives of Iraqi children, the swagger and glee of Hilary Clinton at Gaddafi‘s murder, the effects on millions of insisting on regime change in someone else’s country and the Euro-American refusal to accept Syria’s democratically elected president. Assad was demonized by the press and allegations of war crimes, as Saddam Hussein was, and Milosevic, and Gaddafi. In a competition of atrocities one longs for the common voice of reason, for the Chorus of Greek Tragedy, for the poetry of daily life.

The United Nations “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic” has released a new report, “’They came to destroy’: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis,”(1) to deal specifically with the horrific treatment of Yazidi peoples by ISIS. Much of its evidence concerns Sinjar of northern Iraq, but many of ISIS captives are kept in Syria. The Commission’s report substantiates evidence of a genocide in progress against the Yazidi people in Iraq and Syria, limiting the scope of its inquiry to one minority.

Jews and Christians are often able to pay ISIS the “jizya” tax for their religious affiliation and so may escape conversion, death or slavery.(2) This option is denied Yazidis who face the outright murder of their men, the enslavement of their women, and the acting out of threats to rid the world of Yazidi people.

However ISIS is more tolerant than French Catholics of the 16th Century in the sudden slaughter of all Protestants. The religious difference doesn’t have to invoke genocide. Martyrdom is avoidable. Yazidis can be spared if they convert. With respect to martyrdom, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, a history of Protestant martyrs, is generally discouraged by the intellectual management of Western societies, for its fanaticism. This aspect of religious choice isn’t discussed in the report.

Much of the Commission’s report deals with the institution of slavery, sexual slavery and rape, as applied to Yazidi women sold by ISIS to its soldiers. Gang rape is used as punishment. The enslavement of women or of a people is barbaric and ultimately genocidal. North Americans and Europeans are buffered from connecting genocide to slavery due to the conveniences of slavery to our national histories, and due to the lives of the very poor under capitalism, and of prisoners. In the Commission report slavery has strong emotional value as propaganda. The total deprivation of human rights, the dehumanization of women by this slavery, is traumatic information. While young girls are taken from slave mothers at the age of nine and then sold as slaves, young boys are taken at seven, indoctrinated and trained to fight for ISIS. The report doesn’t find ISIS using young boys as sex slaves (“bacha bazi”), a practice among U.S. allied and installed police, army officers and warlords of Afghanistan.(3)

While a case for genocide is made, it noticeably shies off identifying specific perpetrators.

It doesn’t recognize that the attempted destruction of the group of Yazidis, is a microcosm for the destruction of the Syrian people as a     national group. From January 7, 2013:

“On Dec. 25, the UN announced it would cut food supplies to 1.5 million Syrians due to overburdening demands. Half the hospitals of a once advanced health care system, are destroyed. The U.S. has deployed patriot missiles and troops to Turkey. According to the BBC U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron says, “My message to Assad is go…He has the most phenomenal amount of blood on his hands.” Following French recognition of Syrian “rebel” forces, on Dec. 12th U.S. President Obama recognized the opposition coalition as “the legitimate representative of the Syrian people” (Globe and Mail).

The U.N. estimates 60,000 dead so far. The UN World Food Programme may have to feed 755 thousand refugees displaced in Syria and surrounding countries. A continuing genocide warning for Syrians as a national group, and particularly for targeted minorities: Adama Dieng, U.N. Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, has shown specific concern for Alawites, Armenians, Christians, Palestinians, Kurds, Turkmen, among other minority groups. Webster Griffin Tarpley has warned of an unimaginably horrible genocide all across Syria targeting Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Melkites, Maronites, Syriacs, Orthodox among all prone to victimization, if the NATO backed “rebel” forces take over the country…”(4)

Ignored, as in the destruction of Libya, is NATO’s insistence that the country’s democratically elected leader be replaced. This is primarily responsible for the disintegration of Syrian society, the huge number of displaced people and refugees, the ‘civil war’ itself. According to the Commission, outside of blaming ISIS generally and its fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic codes, the inception of ISIS isn’t discussed. Why did it come into being ? To whose advantage and profit ?

Funding and arms sources are not considered.

While making a case for genocide, the specifics of prosecution are missing leaving the Commision of Inquiry’s report to function primarily as a persuasion.

The Commission ignores a “tactical” complication in its selecting ISIS to accuse of obviously genocidal policies. If the Security Council agrees with the Commission proposal that genocide is committed against the Yazidi people, Council members are bound by the Convention on Genocide to intervene. If countries choose to intervene in Syria without a Security Council mandate there’s a risk of (nuclear) war. It is more likely that the Security Council would refer the issue to the International Criminal Court. A resolution to do this was vetoed by Russia and China in 2014. So now the Commission encourages legal actions in individual nations as possibly the only practical current way to apply the Convention on Genocide to the actions of ISIS against the Yazidis.(5)

The ‘complication’ is that if major powers want to “intervene” or invade a sovereign state, they can covertly promote a genocide which will require intervention. There’s a suspicion of this in Burundi, and some likelihood in Syria. TheWashington Post has provided evidence that the U.S. has funded the Government opposition in Syria since 2005.(6) It is suspected that ISIS has been covertly managed by the U.S.. (7) Many enemy combatants in the ‘civil war’ against Syria’s president Assad were recruited from Libya after NATO’s war on Gaddafi.(8) NATO leaders have recognized the government’s opposition as the ‘legitimate’ government of Syria which is much like a declaration of war, with no excuse to actually invade Syria except in response to the crime of genocide.

Some have found previous Commission of Inquiry’s reports slanted, partisan, favouring NATO. The Commission chairman (Brazil) has taught at Brown, Columbia, Notre Dame, and received a Guggenheim fellowship, American honours familiar to those who have earned them. Another of the three original Commission members is an American. A third was Turkish currently replaced with representatives from Thailand and Switzerland.

Mother Fadia Laham, Head of the International Team for Reconciliation in Syria, among others, has withdrawn cooperation with the Commission which is faulted for selective information gathering. Following the American lead, the Commission was led to blame the Assad government for war crimes at Al-Houla and subsequently had to modify its claims, but after these had served U.S. intentions.(9) The effectiveness of the Commission of Inquiry is limited since the Syrian government doesn’t allow the Commission access to its country which is why so much of the report relies on the treatment of the Yazidi people in northern Iraq.

The report asks the International community to “Recognize ISIS’s commission of the crime of genocide against the Yazidis of Sinjar”(10). In areas beyond the Syrian army’s control, a case against ISIS could be made for the genocide of most minority groups within Syria. One can fault the Human Rights Council for selective application of the genocide convention, or for trying to minimize the scope of an inter-related genocide, but the basic arguments of this Commission report are recognizing a genocide. Genocide of a small group amid the national group is manageable to recognize. The genocide of entire nations of essentially Muslim peoples is unimaginable and yet provably real.

There is then a genocide warning in Syria and Iraq for the Yazidi peoples, and for each of the minorities out of favour with fundamentalist Islam or supporting the government of Syria. There is a genocide warning in both countries for the people as a national group.

To place the Commission of Inquiry’s report in context, ask why a similar Commission has not applied the Convention on Genocide in such a straightforward manner to the situation of the people in Gaza, or Palestinians as a whole.

In Canada, in response to the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic”, on what is basically a genocide of the Yazidis of Iraq, under a government created by the countries which have bombed and invaded it, the Canadian Minister of Defence, Stephane Dion, has announced ISIS is committing genocide against Yazidi’s. The Liberal Party waited to recognize this until the allegation was made by the Commission of Inquiry’s report. Dion assures Parliament that Canada will encourage the UN Security Council to take action.(11) The Liberals previously rejected a Conservative Party bill eager to declare the genocide in Parliament once the U.S. Secretary of Defense, John Kerry, determined that the Yazidis among others were victims of a genocide. While the U.S. military in conflict in Syria professes increasing care to avoid damage to civilians, a recent letter signed by 51 State Department officials(12) encourages the U.S. to thoroughly bomb Syria’s government forces which are the primary adversary of ISIS in Syria.

Efforts to displace President Assad are another attempt to destroy an essentially Muslim national group. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. The societies remain de-stabilized. International support for Assad and the country’s stability would be the most immediate way to stop the genocide against the Yazidis, Christians, and Syria’s other religious minorities. Among the Commission on Inquiry’s recommendations, are that the Security Council turn the issue over to the ICC and that the Security Council consider the use of its powers under Article VII, but most practically it asks the government of Syria(13) to embed the Genocide Convention in its national legislation and rescue, protect and care for the Yazidi community.

In part, the rapacious ugliness of ISIS is a reflection of the policies which formed it.

Notes:

1 http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/A_HRC_32_CRP.2_en.pdf 
2. #154, “’They came to destroy’: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis,” June 15, 2016. A/HRC/32/CRP.2 Human Rights Council.
3. Anuj Chopra. “Taliban use ‘honey trap’ boys to kill Afghan police,” June 16, 2016, Yahoo! news.
4. J.B.Gerald. “2013 Suppressed News”, January 7, 2013, nightslantern.ca.
5. #200. A/HRC/32/CRP.2 .loc.cit.
6. Craig Whitlock. “U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by WikiLeaks show,” April 17, 2011, Washington Post(apprec. Cartalucci).
7. 14-L-0552/DIA/ 287-291, Aug. 12, 2012, Defense Intelligence Agency. “Newly-Declassified U.S. Government Documents: The West Supported the Creation of ISIS,” May 24, 2015, Washingtons Blog.
8. Tony Cartalucci. ” The Architecture of Insurgency,” 2012. War on Syria [access:< https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzf5hXPESLSdbTd0V2dIY3hvVGM/view?pref=2 >].
9. “US ready to act on Syria outside UN?” May 31, 2013, RT.
10. #212(a). A/HRC/32/CRP.2.loc.cit.
11. “Stéphane Dion declares ISIS killings of Yazidi people a genocide”, June 16, 2016, CBC News.
12. Jason Ditz. “State Dept Officials Demand US Attack Assad Instead of ISIS in Syria,” June 16, 2016, antiwar.com.
13. #208. A/HRC/32/CRP.2. loc.cit. 

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The US Economy Is Unable to “Emerge from the Mud”

June 23rd, 2016 by Ariel Noyola Rodríguez

The US labour market has begun to stumble.

In the past month of May, non-agricultural labour added 38 thousand new jobs while the Wall Street investors hoped for an increase of 160 thousand, Janet Yellen, the President of the Federal Reserve System, had no alternative but to leave the reference interest rate intact after the June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. The risk of a new recession in the United States is more of a threat than ever, although the Western media insist on promoting the idea that the principal dangers are the deceleration of the Chinese economy and the possible abandonment of the United Kingdom from the European Union.

After the most recent meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), realized in mid June, the President of the Federal Reserve (FED), Janet Yellen, announced that the reference interest rate would remain intact, that is, in the range between 0.25 and 0.50%[1]. With this, everything indicates that the FED will not raise the cost of interbank credit until a day before the proximate month of September.

With this, the propaganda of the Barack Obama government to convince us of the “full recovery” of the North American economy has lapsed into disbelief. It has been over six months since the FED raised the federal funds rate and to the moment there are no signs of an anticipated new increase.

In repeated occasions the FED has adjusted downwards it projections of economic growth: while in March it estimated an expansion rate for this year between 2.1 and 2.3%, recently this was reduced to a range between 1.9 and 2%[2]. The economy is in free fall. In December of 2015 the prognostic of growth of the FED for 2016 oscillated between 2.3 and 2.5%[3].

Without doubt the growing weakness of the strongest economy of the Group of Seven (G-7) has obliged monetary authorities to act with caution, since any false move will increase the risks of accentuating recessive tendencies, with high possibilities of deflation (a fall in prices)[4].

In the first quarter of the year the rate of expansion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the US economy hardly reached 0.80%. The recovery of the labour market continued too fragile even though it was presumed to be the main achievement of the policies implemented by the FED. We recall that last December, when the FED raised by 25 points base the reference interest rate, the official unemployment rate was at 5%, a figure that according to some members of the FOMC, amounted to a situation of “full employment”.

Nevertheless, we know today that the central bank headed by Janet Yellen was mistaken. The recent data leave no place for suspicions: the winds of a new recession are threatening[5]. In the month of May non-agricultural employment added only 38 thousand jobs, the lowest increase since 2010. In addition, the data from March and April were revised downwards, employers contracted 59 thousand fewer persons than those originally reported[6].

Because of this no member of the FOMC emerged to celebrate that the unemployment rate would fall to 4.7% while, in parallel, the rate of labour participation fell to 62.6%: thousands of persons abandoned the search for work when faced with the lack of opportunities[7]. The official rate of unemployment masked massive unemployment, if one counted both the persons occupied in part time work as well as those who have recently abandoned the labour market, the figures are completely changed. There are alternative measures, the methodology U-6 if one considers these two areas, puts the unemployment rate at 9.7%, that is, over twice the official unemployment rate[8].

It must be pointed out that the lack of dynamism of the US economy is fundamentally the consequence of the extreme weakness of business investment, the product of a rate of capital profitability that is too low, or at least insufficient to establish new productive plants, capable of generating massive employment and with it, unleash a large process of recovery. It happens that US businessmen not only resist investing but also to raise wages, a situation that has failed to support a substantive increase in inflation: the index of consumer prices CPI, increased hardly 1.1% in annual terms over the past month.

The image of a buoyant economy appears increasingly further away since the Conference Board of the United States, the institution charged with supervising competition on a world scale, revealed that the US economy will this year undergo the first contraction of its level of productivity over the past three decades[9]. Faced with the lack of innovation, US productivity will fall by 0.2%. “Over the last year it appears that we were entering a crisis of productiveness, now we are in the midst of this”, according to Bart van Ark, chief economist of the prestigious centre of research.

In spite of everything, the traditional mass media insist in promoting the idea that the alert signs for the FED are localized outside of the United States. In a first moment they told us that the economic deceleration of China represented own odd the principal dangers for the world, more recently, they have advised us that the strong financial turbulence will come in the event that the United Kingdom decides to abandon the European Union (the so-called “Brexit”).

Very few have dared to investigate the high danger that the United States represents for the global economy: according to the estimations of the Deutsche Bank, the principal investment bank of the European continent, the probability that the American Union falls into recession during the next twelve months is already at 55%[10]. Everything indicates that sooner or later, the dramatic economic reality will end imposing itself in the face of the twisted information.

 Ariel Noyola Rodríguez is an economist graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Translation: Jordan Bishop.

Source: Russia Today (Russia).

Notes:

[1] «Yellen espera subir las tasas, pero no será una decisión automática», Michael S. Derby, The Wall Street Journal, 15 de junio de 2016.

[2] «US: Economic projections», US Federal Reserve Bank, June 2016.

[3] «US: Economic projections», US Federal Reserve Bank, December 2015.

[4] «Deflation is the worst nightmare for the United States», by Ariel Noyola Rodríguez, Translation Jordan Bishop, Russia Today (Russia), Voltaire Network, 20 September 2015.

[5] «The winds of a new recession gather force in the United States», by Ariel Noyola Rodríguez, Translation Jordan Bishop, Russia Today (Russia) , Voltaire Network, 1 April 2016.

[6] «America’s economy: When barometers go wrong», The Economist, June 11, 2016.

[9] «US productivity slips for first time in three decades», Sam Fleming and Chris Giles, Financial Times, May 25, 2016.

[10] «U.S. Recession Odds Climb to 55% as Yield Curve Flattens: Chart», Mathew Boesler, Bloomberg, June 14, 2016.

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Brexit Referendum Is Non-Binding. UK Parliament Not Voters has Final Say

June 23rd, 2016 by Stephen Lendman

Update:

Prime Minister Cameron has announced his resignation effective in October, a new Conservative Prime minister is to appointed following the Conservative Party conference.

Among the contenders for the Conservative Party leadership are former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, both of whom were firm supporters of the Brexit campaign. Home Secretary Theresa May is also a potential contender.

The implementation of Brexit is in part dependent upon the new leadership of the Conservative Party. There are divisions in both Conservative and opposition parties with regard to Brexit.

At this stage, there is, however, no assurance that the Brexit proposal will be ratified by Parliament. (read Lendman’s analysis below)

Moreover, Cameron’s decision to resign in October contributes to delaying the process.

Michel Chossudovsky. GR Editor, June 24, 2016

*       *      *

All the fuss and bother about Brexit largely ignores its non-binding status – parliament, not voters deciding if Britain stays or leaves the EU, the latter extremely unlikely.

Writing in the Financial Times, British lawyer David Allen Green explained Brexit voting is “advisory,” not “mandatory.” Parliament has final say.

MPs can legally disregard the public’s will either way, they alone empowered to decide the path Britain chooses.

What happens ahead is “a matter of politics not law. It will come down to what is politically expedient and practicable,” said Green.

Various options exist, including supporting Thursday’s outcome, ignoring it, or “re-negotiating another deal and put(ting) that to another referendum” – repeating the process “until voters eventually vote the ‘right’ way,” what’s best for monied interests, not them.

Invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is another matter entirely, legally binding, unlike Thursday’s vote. It states as follows:

“1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union.

That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.”

Green highlighted key points. Member states can choose how to vote on withdrawal – by referendum, parliament or other means.

The withdrawal process begins with formal notification. Once “given, the member state and the EU are stuck with it.”

Member states wishing to withdraw have up to two years maximum to complete the process “unless this period is extended by unanimous agreement.”

Once withdrawal intentions are announced and initiated, there’s no going back. At the same time, what’s “created by international agreement can be undone” the same way.

Brussels could “come up with some muddling fudge which holds off the two year deadline,” or a new treaty amendment could be adopted.

Politics alone will drive what happens ahead, not the will of the people. Britain is no more democratic than America – nor are any other EU countries.

Special interests decide things. Whatever they want they get. However voting turns out, government policy “is to remain in the EU,” said Green.

Leaving would require Prime Minister David Cameron invoking Article 50, unlikely given his vocal opposition to Brexit.

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.

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Brits Dump Pound Sterling Ahead of Brexit Vote. Long Queues Outside Foreign Exchange Bureaux

June 23rd, 2016 by Zero Hedge

When one thinks of lines of people waiting patiently to obtain “hard currency”, one may think Russia, as was the case in December 2014 when the currency was plunging…

“long queues stretched outside foreign exchange bureaux in the City of London on Thursday as people cashed in their pounds ahead of the EU referendum.”

 … or Greece in the summer of 2015…

… one would certainly not expect it in the city considered by many as the capital of capitalism: London.

And yet, as the FT shows in what may be the first of many such stunning images, “long queues stretched outside foreign exchange bureaux in the City of London on Thursday as people cashed in their pounds ahead of the EU referendum.”

Behold: London, circa right now.

Line in front of a Longon foreign exchange bureau.

More from the FT:

In scenes reminiscent of the queues that formed outside branches of Northern Rock and led to its collapse in 2007, City workers queued impatiently around the block outside forex bureaux on Wednesday afternoon. Summaya, a 31-year-old employee of a retail bank who declined to give her surname, lined up outside the Foreign Exchange Services shop on Cannon Street. She said she was going to change “several thousand pounds” into US dollars and euros because she was convinced the public mood was shifting in favour of Brexit. 

“I’m protecting my money. I will stick it under the mattress until Friday,” she said, adding that Tuesday night’s televised debate had swung opinion among her friends and colleagues in favour of Brexit. “People are changing their views.”

Odd: one would not get that impression based on the several moneyed bettors who were skewing the bookies lines. Luckily, sentiment on the ground is avaiable and much more actionable than manipulated indirect data. In any case, this is what is really taking place in the UK as of this moment:

The Post Office said Tuesday’s sales of foreign currency were nearly four times higher than the same date last year, while sales in branches were nearly 49 per cent higher. Currency sales on Tuesday were up 74 per cent year on year, said the Post Office.

Thomas Cook said: “There’s been a surge in customers buying euros in the last six weeks and euro sales have been consistently strong, building day by day.” 

Several economists predict a Leave outcome would trigger a dramatic fall in the pound when markets open on Friday, while a vote to Remain should see the pound rally. But several analysts said this week’s sharp sterling recovery probably limited the scope of the currency’s rise.

Daniel Priori, an Italian who has been working as a cashier at the International Currency Exchange kiosk at Waterloo station for a year, said he and his two colleagues had dealt with many more customers than usual. 

Asked why, he replied: “Because they are scared about tomorrow.” He said the majority of transactions were people changing sterling into euros.

To be sure, not everyone is terrified of the inevitable collapse in sterling in case of Brexit (which is what the Scaremongering campaign is all about). Some just want some vacation money…

[S]everal of those queueing were exchanging their holiday money. Standing in a queue outside Thomas Exchange on Cannon Street, 44-year-old Chris Nobbs, who works in insurance, said: “I go to Alicante in Spain in a couple of weeks, so I’m just taking my euros out today instead of next week. I do not take more than what I need on holiday, but who knows, maybe this will earn me some extra cups of coffee.”

In the queue outside City Forex, on Leadenhall Street, City worker Ed was planning to change “a few hundred quid” before travelling to Greece on holiday next week. “I don’t have a strong sense of the [referendum] result, but just want to hedge against the downside. I’ll change half now and half later,” he said.

… But it’s safe to say that the vast majority of those lining up have far more existential concerns. Whether or not these are validated will be revealed as soon as the FX markets open for trading after the Brexit vote is released.

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The UK’s ‘Brexit’ Vote Is Actually a Referendum on Xenophobia

June 23rd, 2016 by Ellie Mae O'Hagan

The EU referendum may have ramped up tensions around the issue of migration, but it is only pushing the limits of an already hostile political climate.

The British public are not voting on whether to leave the EU on Thursday. That might be what it says on the ballot paper, but that isn’t the decision we are making.

Since the official “leave” campaign launched, the level of xenophobia and imperialistic self-righteousness it has indulged in has changed the question completely. The fault line in the EU referendum is now the issue of immigration, and so on Thursday the British public will really be answering a moral question of how we want to treat people who have moved to the U.K. from abroad—indeed, whether we should even regard those people as human.

That is the political reality here.

The nadir of the cesspool of discourse that has opened up around the EU referendum came last Thursday, when key “leave” advocate Nigel Farage—leader of the hard right political party UKIP—unveiled a poster apparently depicting a queue of immigrants coming to the U.K. underneath the slogan “Breaking point.” The picture, which was actually a photograph of Syrian refugees making their way towards Slovenia, bore a striking resemblance to a Nazi propaganda film in the 1930s which purported to show a queue of refugees walking to Germany.

How did Britain, a country whose national mythology rests heavily on its role in defeating 20th Century fascism, get here?

The answer cannot be boiled down to a few months of campaigning on the specific issue of the EU. The number of British people who say that the impact of immigration has been “very bad” has almost doubled from 11 to 21 percent in the last decade. Most mainstream politicians and a huge chunk of the media have stoked these feelings of resentment. From the last Labour leadership promising controls on immigration (and trumpeting this promise so loudly that it was featured on Labour Party merchandise) to the tabloid press scaremongering about lazy eastern European families coming to Britain to claim benefits, and the current Conservative Prime Minister warning of “swarms” of people, the rhetoric of the “leave” campaign should be understood as merely a distillation of the general political rhetoric that the British electorate have been receiving for at least a decade. The EU referendum may have ramped up tensions around the issue of migration, but it is only pushing the limits of an already hostile political climate. This has not come out of nowhere.

Regardless of the outcome on Thursday (although I would suggest anyone who does not want to hand more power to the likes of Nigel Farage should vote remain), the question the British establishment should be asking itself now is how to close the Pandora’s Box that has been opened. One way it could do this is to have honest and difficult conversations about its own failures; its refusal to respond to the financial crisis of 2008 and the ongoing impact of that, its inability to deal with the problems facing ordinary people’s lives, and its propensity to deflect blame from itself onto those who can easily be depicted as outsiders. This has come both in the form of the right cynically manipulating people’s fears, and the liberal left (if the Labour Party of the past 20 years could even be called that) refusing to take a definitive position for fear of turning off voters.

These factors have caused many in the electorate to search outside the establishment for answers, and with British socialism significantly weakened by harsh trade union laws, the incompetence of the left, and marginalization in Parliament, the hard right has been waiting to welcome new supporters with easy solutions and seductive promises. Indeed, the most frightening element of the “leave” campaign is just not the repugnant arguments it has been making in the public sphere, but that these arguments actually seem to be working for a significant number of people. Polls over the weekend suggest “remain” is edging ahead, but even so—the result is likely to be a dead heat. Nobody can reasonably say that a vote to remain means there is not a problem. The sentiments the referendum has whipped up will not simply dissolve once the campaign is over.

Hard lessons must be learned from this ugly period in our politics; one of the most important ones being that rhetoric has material impacts in people’s lives—people are listening and sometimes they take politicians at their word. As Alex Massie wrote in The Spectator, “When you encourage rage you cannot then feign surprise when people become enraged. You cannot turn around and say, ‘Mate, you weren’t supposed to take it so seriously. It’s just a game, just a ploy, a strategy for winning votes.’”

There are too many people in British politics who cannot absolve themselves of complacency over this issue, including myself. Despite being someone who has publicly defended freedom of movement, even I hadn’t realised how deep-rooted xenophobia was becoming in my own country. For now, the best we can do is hope that the result on Thursday is not used by the hard right to implement its political program through the back door. After that, a post-mortem must begin, and the entire political class must take part. It’s been a long time coming.

Ellie Mae O’Hagan is regular columnist for a range of U.K. outlets writing mainly on worker’s rights unions, activism, feminism and Latin America. She tweets @MissEllieMae.

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Brexit Would Hit the UK Economy much Harder than its Promoters Expect: “Potential Dismemberment of the U.K.”

June 23rd, 2016 by Jeff Faux

On June 23, British voters will accept or reject a proposal that Britain leave the European Union. The latest polls show the vote in favor of the British exit, or “Brexit,” narrowly ahead.

The case for getting out has largely been driven from the political right, on the grounds that dropping out of the EU would allow Britain to close off immigration and free British businesses from rules made in Brussels that protect labor and the environment. A liberated Britain, goes the argument, would have the freedom to pursue policies that would bring it more prosperity.

But after an initial shock, the prolonged economic uncertainty following a win for Brexit would hit the U.K. economy much harder than its promoters expect. It would take at least two years to negotiate the terms of the pullout with the remaining 27 countries, which are unlikely to give Britain anywhere near its current privileged access to member countries’ customers or financial markets. It will then take even longer for the U.K. to find and negotiate trade deals for other export markets at a time of spreading deflation and rising protectionism throughout the globe. Pile on the political complications of disentangling British business regulations from rules made in Brussels, and the adjustment process could take as long as a decade.

By that time, Britons may well end up with less sovereignty over their lives than they have today. Membership in the EU comes with constraints, although the British already have an arrangement that gives them special flexibility. But membership also provides the average Brit some protection against the brutalities of unregulated global markets. Divorced from the bargaining power of the EU, Britain’s social safety nets could be further sacrificed to future governments’ desperate searches for new trade and investment deals to compensate for the loss of markets on the continent.

Perhaps the most serious danger is the potential dismemberment of the U.K. itself. Scotland is very pro-EU, and the Scottish first minister has already promised that in the event of a Brexit win there will be a new referendum on independence to allow Scotland to join Europe as an independent nation.

Ironically, a rejection of the Brexit might also have some unintended consequences for the U.K. conservatives who put the referendum in play. Depending on its margin, a reaffirmation that Britain’s future is tied to Europe might ultimately move the ideology of the British electorate closer to the social democracy of its continental neighbors. Thus, for example, reinforcing the efforts by Jeremy Corbyn to return the Labour Party to its socialist roots.

Across the English Channel, a divorce from Britain might ultimately benefit the EU. In the short run, disruption and uncertainty will take its toll on both sides. But without the drag of British neoliberal ideology, the core continental governments might be freer to tackle the economic contradictions that have stunted their collective growth and led to the revival of the nationalism that the EU was designed to overcome. The European policy paralysis that followed the 2008–09 recession showed the folly of integrating markets without creating sufficient collective political authority for macroeconomic stability. The result has been a default policy of austerity. A Brexit might just be a catalyst for a new grand bargain—perhaps involving only the Eurozone—that would marry authority for common fiscal and monetary policy with a commitment to fully shared prosperity.

This is an adaptation of the original essay, which appeared in “Brexit: The Unintended Consequences,” in The International Economy, Spring 2016

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MISSING DETAILS: Orlando Shooting 911 Transcripts Questioned, Alleged Survivor’s Story Challenged

June 23rd, 2016 by Shawn Helton

The FBI have finally released the written transcripts from shooter Omar Mateen’s supposed 911 call – and now apparently unredacted.

Meanwhile, another story of survival at Pulse nightclub is called into question.

Will this tell us anything new about this event, or will it just prompt even more questions?

NIGHT OF TERROR? – A serene setting following the Orlando shooting attack on June 11th.  (Image Source: twitter)

Shaky Storyline, Missing Details

While the focus on Orlando shooter Omar Mateen’s 911 transcripts is over what was included and what was not, and while the national media argue endlessly over the need for more gun control in the US – the most important aspect of the FBI supplied transcript seems to have gone virtually unnoticed. There’s no discussion of an actual shooting occurring inside of the Pulse nightclub.

While the report has a basic outline of “America’s largest mass shooting” it fails to account for any of the shootings said to have occurred within the Pulse nightclub, with no mention of individuals being shot at or reportedly shot at in the FBI’s official narrative. It’s as if they just left out the biggest piece of the puzzle.

This has become an all to common theme, as media press conference rituals shape a narrative within the first hours of a mass casualty event and even if that story turns out to be mostly false, the media runs with it anyway, whether or not law enforcement information and crime scene analysis belies the original narrative pushed by media. The most clear example of this happened during the aftermath of the WTC 1993 bombing, where major media outlets exposed it as an FBI run sting with their operators in control – yet still, media anchors called it an al-Qaeda led attack.

So when you consider what happened in Orlando, one should question the lack of shooting details- why is this aspect of the story left open for interpretation when every other part of the official timeline appears to be accounted for?

While the media conveniently overlook this important detail, the implications of this could be very significant in determining who shot who, and when.

Interestingly, the description of the Orlando shooting even includes mention of the Orlando Police Department pulling an air conditioning unit out of a Pulse “dressing room” to evacuate victims, a multi-call crisis negotiation, the alleged shooter’s outrageous claims of a ‘bomb-laced vest’ and authorities breaching the back wall of the nightclub with an explosive charge – and yet, no mention of additional shots fired at patrons inside the club?

Here’s a portion of the FBI’s summary of events that excludes any mention of shots fired within the interior of the club itself:

“Based on OPD radio communications, there were no reports of shots being fired inside Pulse between the initial exchange of gunfire between responding officers and shooter, and the time of the final breach. During this time, the shooter communicated with an OPD 911 operator and an OPD crisis negotiator, and OPD radio communications reported that victims were being rescued.”

Here’s a more basic chronology of the Orlando shooting, as told by the FBI:

“2:02 a.m.: OPD call transmitted multiple shots fired at Pulse nightclub. 

2:04 a.m.: Additional OPD officers arrived on scene. 

2:08 a.m.: Officers from various law enforcement agencies made entrance to Pulse and engaged the shooter. 

2:18 a.m.: OPD SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) initiated a full call-out. 

2:35 a.m.: Shooter contacted a 911 operator from inside Pulse.

3:03 a.m.: Second crisis negotiation call occurred lasting approximately 16 minutes. 

3:24 a.m.: Third crisis negotiation call occurred lasting approximately three minutes.

4:21 a.m.: OPD pulled an air conditioning unit out of a Pulse dressing room window for victims to evacuate.

4:29 a.m.: As victims were being rescued, they told OPD the shooter said he was going to put four vests with bombs on victims within 15 minutes.

5:02 a.m.: OPD SWAT and OCSO Hazardous Device Team began to breach wall with explosive charge and armored vehicle to make entry.

5:14 a.m.: OPD radio communication stated that shots were fired. 

5:15 a.m.: OPD radio communication stated that OPD engaged the suspect and the suspect was reported down.”

The Orlando shooting details state “multiple shots [were] fired at Pulse nightclub at 2:02 am, as “Additional OPD officers arrived on scene,” at 2:04 am, with law enforcement engaging the shooter at 2:08 am – there is no other mention of shots fired until police exchange fire with the alleged suspect after breaching the wall at 5:15 am.

Question: Would it really be possible for Mateen to have accurately shot over 100 people, take hostages and engage in a fire fight with officers in just a 6 minute time frame?

This scenario is hardly likely, if not impossible.

Additionally, what happened during the apparent crisis negotiation from 3:24 am to 4:21 am, why have the FBI chosen not to elaborate on those details?

Matten’s weapons of choice during the apparent attack were a Sig Sauer MCX .223 caliber rifle and a Glock 17 9mm semi-auto pistol –  and according to the official story, was far more accurate than most well-trained law enforcement agents, defying statistical averages as examined by the Rand Corporation.

Let’s take another look at the extensive Rand study involving the NYPD, here are the following statistics as it relates they firearm accuracy:

“According to a 2008 Rand Corporation study evaluating the New York Police Department’s firearm training, between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate during gunfights was just 18 percent . When suspects did not return fire, police officers hit their targets 30 percent of the time.

Another aspect of the Orlando shooting attack was the possibility that many club goers could have been injured by authorities, something that also seemed to be absent from the official story. Here’s a passage from WFAA8, an ABC affiliate discussing this point:

“Orlando Police Chief John Mina and other law enforcement officers offered new details about the shooting, including the possibility that some victims may have been killed by officers trying to save them.

“I will say this, that’s all part of the investigation,” Mina said. “But I will say when our SWAT officers, about eight or nine officers, opened fire, the backdrop was a concrete wall, and they were being fired upon.”

Police also used an explosive charge and a Bearcat armored vehicle to breach the wall as civilians were allegedly holed up in a bathroom. This has led some critics to consider the possibility that non-combatants could have become collateral damage during the SWAT siege at Pulse.

Political Fallout & Media Engineering

Also of note regarding the Orlando shooting event, was the obvious attempt to ramrod new ready-made gun legislation (struck down just two days ago) – just over a week after the incident.

Back in November of 2012, it was reported that the White House, along with other Democrats were already busy rewriting old gun-ban legislation just prior to the Sandy Hook shooting. The Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2007, otherwise known as H.R. 1022 of the 110th Congress, it introduced an early list of gun-bans and restrictions but was dropped due to lack of public support. A similar set of laws failed after the Oregon campus shooting in 2015.

While big media has been busy trying to sell the public on the most tragic shooting in America. They’ve also been attempting to fill in a series of unexplainable blanks by seemingly re-writing the Orlando narrative, with a wave of contradictory information. In essence, the corporate media has boiled down two choices in the motive for the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting – suggesting it’s either a hate crime or terrorism.

And since then it’s become problematic to blend certain elements of the official story in the Orlando shooting case, prompting Attorney General Loretta Lynch to state the motive may never be known in the alleged crime – after key aspects of the 911 transcript were redacted and a decision was made to block audio from the 911 call.

No motive, no audio, redacted transcripts and conflicting reports of the shooting, isn’t that convenient.

The whole episode immediately recalls the much fabled death of Bin Laden and the political and media fiasco that followed the Abbotabad raid in Pakistan – all of which failed to reveal any realforensic evidence, as President Obama withheld post-mortem images of Bin Laden, including ‘video’ of the sea burial of the purported terror leader.

The fact is, none of the media’s grandstanding or politicized hyperbole has offered anything in terms of actual evidence – as the public has been deliberately steered towards multiple storylines – while politicians go through another gun control/gun reform ritual on the Senate floor.


‘QUIET EMERGENCY?’ – A calm scene at Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital prior to apparent Pulse nightclub victims arriving for medical attention. (Image Source: twitter)

Orlando’s Staged Elements & False Claims

Recently here at 21WIRE, we discussed much of the corporate media’s theatrical depiction of the Orlando shooting and the widespread characterization of the event, which has been reduced to two categories – that of a “lone gunman” and a saddened community centered on the sociopolitical ramifications of the incident, rather than an in-depth forensic analysis of the alleged crime itself.

In addition, we outlined some of the various Hollywood and media connections observed in the aftermath of the apparent Orlando shooting attack, as it was revealed that the world’s largest security firm G4S, who had employed the man named in the Orlando pulse nightclub shooting, Omar Mateen – is also client of the mass casualty and crisis actor staging company called CrisisCast.

As if that wasn’t enough, we’re also now being told that alleged Pulse nightclub ‘survivor’ Clint Lampkin’s account of the shooting has been called into question by media. The following is a YouTube clip from Wochit news reviewing the inconsistencies found by the CBS-affiliated television station WHNT-TV… 

 

The following was released by FOX6 on June 21st, examining WHNT-TV’s findings over the weekend that have since been removed from the network’s website:

“On Saturday, hundreds of people in Alabama were captivated by an impromptu speech by Clint Lampkin, a man who claimed to be a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.”

“I was in the bar when it all happened,” Lampkin told the crowd at the Rocket City Pride Memorial Service in Huntsville. “It’s been hard on me… seeing people get shot.”

Lampkin said the hate he witnessed first-hand is still overwhelming.

“It’s really strong. I mean not just for my friend but all the others that lost their lives. It’s hard you know. It really is. It’s really sad,” Lampkin says.

Continuing, the recently published article outlined the contradictory nature of Lampkin’s comments made during a memorial service and a Facebook post on his personal account on the morning after the shooting:

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The Inhumanity of Brexit

June 23rd, 2016 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

While the Brexit debate has become a matter of colliding blocs of speculators and crystal ball gazers, a glaring aspect has come to the fore.  Virtually nothing has been said about the role played by human rights, Britain’s role in building it up and inspiration in the European Convention of Human Rights, or the issue about citizenship.

In that sense, Brexit mirrors broader European failures: the excision of the human experience from broader managerial and corporate arguments.  In its stead is a reflection about what the price of camembert cheese might be in a post-Brexit regime, or wine for that matter.  This is middle class snobbery run wild, a fear borne from comfort rather than crisis.

The crude economic arguments speak, in many ways, to European problems, rather than strengths. The broader human issues are neglected before those of the purse and assets, bank balances and trade.  This has made the Remain Campaign vulnerable in its sterility.

To emphasise this very point, currency transfer sites are limiting if not suspending operations.  Transferwise, to make its point, is suspending its service during the course of the Brexit vote.

Not to matter, argues the Leave campaign front man and former London Mayor, Boris Johnson.  Britain, he argues, would be able to “prosper mightily” outside the zone.  He gives no examples how, and avoids the bolstering effect Europe has had for Britain’s economy.  But even more seriously, he avoids the humane aspect of the European regime, and the modifying effects of the convention on British jurisprudence.

His critics, taken aback by his surging success, can only resort to personal invective. Arguments on the human side and the European legacy have been left behind by pomposity.  “The Leave campaign,” argued former conservative leader William Hague, “is really the Donald Trump campaign with better hair.”

Evidence is less important to Johnson than faith. “Our campaign,” he assures voters, “is about belief.  It is about trusting the instincts of the British people, trusting in our democracy, trusting in the institutions that have evolved over a long time.  Our campaign is about accountability.”[1]

In of itself, the argument about accountability and self-reliance is a statement that resounds across Europe.  Never mind that much of it is, as expressed by the Leave campaign, a simple argument to simply do what one damn well pleases, be it paying lower wages or reducing better work conditions in the name of profit.

There are countries (France, the Netherlands) where the EU fares even worse by reputation than it does in Britain, and there, the issue of “accountability” and “self-reliance” also feature. But Johnson’s statements resemble those of autarchic ambition.

The crudest arguments of all have come from parts of the Leave Campaign, haloed by a less than holy crown of terrifying promises should Britain actually retain its current arrangements.  To not leave now, while things are moderately bad, will lead to something infinitely worse.

Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party has been so vehement in this campaign he has become a caricature.  With characteristic indifference to the facts, Farage was happy to be photographed before a poster titled in bold capital letters “Breaking Point”.  Few would argue that the “EU has failed us all”; more would disagree with the idea of using a stream of Syrian refugees to demonstrate the point.

Maps have been produced by the thousands promising a surge of immigrants from countries wishing to be admitted to the EU.  In a spike of xenophobia, and selective thinking, Britain has become the exemplar of fractured Europe.

The good of Europe has been lost in favour of parochialism without oversight.  The issue is not that there is a project worth shaping and saving, but one worth abandoning. “People feel at the moment,” asserts Johnson, “that nothing ever changes in politics.  That is party because so much is governed centrally from Brussels.”

Those of the left who should have been guarding the sacred flame of Europe’s benefits have been conspicuously absent in that regard.  The champagne set have stolen the argument over the working individual who can actually thank the EU for working standards and security.

The absurd premise of pure British indigenousness and exceptionalism demands a good deal of scoffing rebuke. But when it comes out of the mouth of Johnson, it sounds different, striking an idealistically mellow note. He offers a vision without substance, while the Remain campaign have offered what they think is substance without vision.  As Britons go to the polls, the difference will be those undecided ones whose minds will be made up as the mark is made on the ballot paper.

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

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Global Financial Warfare: Neoliberalism and the New World Order

June 23rd, 2016 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Historically, impoverishment of large sectors of the World population has been engineered through the imposition of IMF-style macro-economic reforms. Yet, in the course of the last 15 years, a new destructive phase has been set in motion. The World has moved beyond the “globalization of poverty”: countries are transformed in open territories. 

State institutions collapse, schools and hospitals are closed down, the legal system disintegrates, borders are redefined, broad sectors of economic activity including agriculture and manufacturing are precipitated into bankruptcy,  all of which ultimately leads to a process of social collapse, exclusion and destruction of human life including the outbreak of famines, the displacement of entire populations (refugee crisis).

This “second stage” goes beyond the process of impoverishment instigated in the early 1980s by creditors and international financial institutions. In this regard, mass poverty resulting from macro-economic reform sets the stage of  a process of outright destruction of human life.

In turn, under conditions of widespread unemployment, the costs of labor in developing countries has plummeted. The driving force of the global economy is luxury consumption and the weapons industry.

Guns and Butter:

Global Financial Warfare: Neoliberalism and the New World Order,

Bonnie Faulkner interviews Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Global financial war as outlined in professor Chossudovsky’s article, Wall Street Behind Brazil Coup d Etat;

The role played by the IMF and World Bank in the economies of debtor nations,

The Real Plan in Brazil, the imposition of the Washington Consensus;

Loss of national sovereignty, neoliberal institution funding of grassroots movements;

The main corporate actors of the New World Order;

The function of propaganda and the process of global impoverishment and destruction of nation states.

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Hillary Clinton Pushes GMO Agenda, Hires Monsanto Lobbyist, Takes Huge Dollars from Monsanto

June 23rd, 2016 by Mike Adams

First published in May 2015

Democrats who had been programmed to blindly vote for Hillary Clinton are picking their jaws up off the floor after learning the truth about Hillary’s ties to Monsanto. The ties run so deep that she’s now being dubbed the “Bride of Frankenfood.” (Tweet this story)

Shockingly, Hillary Clinton’s ties to Monsanto are new information to her liberal support base. It drives home the important point that nearly everyone supporting Hillary Clinton has no idea who she really is, as evidenced by this stunning new video from Mark Dice and Luke Rudkowski.

“Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ties to agribusiness giant Monsanto, and her advocacy for the industry’s genetically modified crops, have environmentalists in Iowa calling her ‘Bride of Frankenfood'” reports the Washington Times. “A large faction of women voiced strong support for Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy until the GMO issue came up, prompting them to switch allegiances to Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont, a liberal stalwart challenging her for the Democratic nomination.”

Oh my, how little they really know about the real Hillary Clinton… keep reading to find out more…

Monsanto and Bill Gates are top donors to the Clinton Family Foundation

A quick look at this table of Clinton Family Foundation donors reveals both the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Monsanto as two of the heavy-hitting donors to the Clinton Family Foundation.

Bill Gates, of course, pushes vaccines on the world, while Monsanto pushes GMOs. It’s a toxic one-two punch for global depopulation.

Hillary Clinton’s donors also include the drug maker Pfizer, ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and many more. It’s a who’s who compilation of the most evil corporations and institutions on planet Earth, and they’ve all given huge money — tens of millions of dollars — to Hillary Clinton.

All the corporations are, of course, buying influence with the Clintons. This obvious fact was wildly attacked by extreme leftist Democratic party operatives like George Stephanopoulos, who turned out to have hidden his own $75,000 in donations to the same Clinton Foundation. He claims he thought he was donating to halt “deforestation.” Hillaryious!

Hillary Clinton hires former Monsanto lobbyist to run her campaign

If you’re still not convinced that Hillary Clinton has strong ties to Monsanto, ask yourself why she just hired a prominent Monsanto lobbyist to run her campaign.

As True Activist reports:

Hillary Clinton recently announced that she will be appointing long-time Monsanto lobbyist Jerry Crawford as adviser to her “Ready for Hillary” super PAC… Over the years, Crawford has been instrumental in fighting against small farmers in court and protecting Monsanto’s seed monopoly.

Crawford is an “equal opportunity payola operative” who hands out political bribes to members of both parties. “Crawford has mostly worked with Democratic politicians in the past, but has also put his support behind Republican candidates as well. Anyone who was willing to support Monsanto’s goals would receive support from Crawford,” says TrueActivist.com.

Hillary Clinton’s law firm used to have Monsanto as a client

Back in the 1990s, during the era when Vince Foster was murdered for what he knew about the Clintons, Hillary Clinton was a partner at the Rose Law Firm. This law firm counted Monsanto as its client:

“Her history of backing GMO dates back to her early days in Arkansas as a lawyer with the Rose Law Firm, which represented Monsanto and other agribusiness leaders,” reports the Washington Times.

Almost none of today’s activist voters are even old enough to remember the Rose Law Firm, the Clintons’ Whitewater scandal, or even the fact that Hillary Clinton ran the media attacks on all the women who tried to go public with claims of being sexually violated by Bill Clinton. (Yes, Hillary ran the “blame the victim” campaign to protect Bill!)

Yet in an age where progressives demand full transparency on all the issues that matter to them most — immigration, gay marriage, gun control and so on — Hillary finds herself squarely on the wrong side of the GMO issue. She’s a puppet for Monsanto and all its toxic practices that destroy life and destroy the environment.

Hillary Clinton pushes toxic pesticides, herbicides and other agricultural chemicals

At every opportunity, Hillary Clinton pushes toxic chemicals, pesticides and herbicides that contaminate the food supply, promote human diseases like Alzheimer’s and even threaten destruction of the environment. Hillary Clinton, Bride of Frankenfood, is also a “chemical holocaust” pusher who works hard to make sure every woman and child in America eats food laced with cancer-causing glyphosate.

“In the GMO debate, Mrs. Clinton has consistently sided with the chemical companies,” says the Washington Times. “A new scientific study bolstered environmentalists’ concerns by finding the herbicide Roundup could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson’s, infertility and cancers. The study published last month in the scientific journal Entropy also reported evidence that residue of glyphosate, a chief ingredient in the weed killer, has been found in food.”

That food, of course, enriches Monsanto and the other biotech firms, many of which kick back huge donations to Hillary Clinton as long as she keeps pushing poison.

A vote for Hillary, it turns out, is a vote for Monsanto.

Hillary Clinton hands nuclear fuel resource deal to Russia

It’s not just GMOs, either, that haunt the real history of Hillary Clinton. As The Atlantic reported this year, Hillary Clinton was also instrumental in handing the Russian government a near-monopoly over nuclear weapons uranium supplies.

All the while, money was flowing into the Clinton foundation from uranium interests:

In total, people affiliated with Uranium One or its predecessor gave more than $8 million to the Clinton Foundation between 2008 and 2010. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow, paid for by a bank boosting Uranium One stock.

Why does this matter to the Clinton voter support base? Because progressives are rightly anti-nuclear power and anti-nuke weapons. Yet their gender champion Hillary Clinton is out there promoting the proliferation of nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons, all while raking in millions of dollars for her own foundation in exchange for selling her influence to the highest bidder. Suddenly a Clinton presidency doesn’t sound so “progressive,” does it?

Hillary Clinton parrots Monsanto’s talking points as speaker for the Biotechnology Industry Organization

Just to make sure no one is confused about where Hillary Clinton really stands on the issue of GMOs and biotech, she openly parrots Monsanto’s quack science talking points in public.

In 2014, she spoke at the Biotechnology Industry Organization and practiced running Monsanto’s talking points, saying:

I stand in favor of using seeds and products that have a proven track record … And to continue to try to make the case for those who are skeptical that they may not know what they’re eating already. The question of genetically modified food or hybrids has gone on for many many years. And there is again a big gap between what the facts are and what perceptions are…

During the speech, Clinton basically says that all anti-GMO people are anti-science idiots who don’t know “the facts.” Those “facts,” of course, are all contrived by Monsanto itself and its deep network of financial influence over scientists, universities and even the lamestream media. Hillary Clinton basically concludes that since you don’t know you’ve already been eating GMOs, then it’s safe to keep doing so.

See the video here:

Will anybody stand up and challenge the Bride of Frankenfood?

If you’ve ever wondered why there’s almost no willingness among 100+ million Democrats to challenge Hillary Clinton for the nomination, it’s because Democrats are terrified of Hillary.

For decades, the Clintons were able to control the official narrative and construct a false image of who they really are and what they really believe. But now, thanks to the Independent Media which is now dominating in viewership and is trusted far more than the mainstream media, the Clintons can’t roll out their usual revisionist history and expect it to work.

The simple truth — to the great horror of progressives everywhere — is that Hillary Clinton has long sold out to chemical agriculture and biotech.  And she wants your vote because she’s gonna dethrone the one percent? Seriously? Pathetic. Hillary Clinton is FUNDED by the one percent!

If you think Hillary Clinton opposes the one percent, you must also believe ExxonMobil opposes drilling for oil.

What you can expect from a Clinton / Monsanto presidency

There are so many ties between Clinton and Monsanto that the evil biotech corporation is practically Hillary’s running mate.

Clinton / Monsanto for President, 2016!

And if Clinton becomes president, you can expect the full Monsanto agenda to be aggressively pushed as national policy:

• A nationwide federal ban on GMO labeling.

• Immediate USDA approval of all experimental GMO crops.

• Extreme, politically motivated attacks against all anti-GMO activists, scientists and journalists.

• Huge increases in taxpayer-funded subsidies for farmers who grow GMO crops.

• Aggressive corporate imperialism push to overturn bans on glyphosate and GMOs by other nations.

• Possibly even attempts by the FDA to outlaw non-GMO Project Verified labels in the same way they attacked hormone-free labels for cow’s milk.

Make no mistake: A vote for Hillary is a vote for Monsanto

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Brexit, Financial Volatility and the Bank of England. Mark Carney, Governor of the … “Bank of Goldman Sachs”

June 22nd, 2016 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

This article was first published by Global Research in March 2016.

Dr. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England is Goldman Sachs’ Trojan Horse. The lucrative manipulation of financial markets including currency markets is a multibillion undertaking. With inside information on Central Bank monetary policy in both Frankfurt and London, Brexit is a “Silver Platter” for the institutional speculators. 

In the event of a vote in favour of Brexit, The Governor of the Bank of England Dr. Mark Carney reassured the British public: “we will do everything in our power to discharge our responsibility to achieve monetary stability and financial stability…”

Carney intimated that “financial instability” and “poor economic outcomes” are associated with the Brexit process: a rather unsubtle message to investors, brokers as well as speculators. He also warned MPs that Brexit could lead to an exodus of banks and financial institutions from the City of London.

“[There is no] blanket assurance that there would not be issues in the short term with respect to financial stability and that potential reduction in financial stability could be associated – and normally would be associated – with poor economic outcomes, as we have seen in the past”.

The governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney (image right) is a former official of Goldman Sachs, the World’s foremost “institutional speculator”. He spent thirteen years with Goldman before heading the Bank of Canada.

At the time of his 2013 appointment to the Bank of England, he was not a citizen of the United Kingdom: Mark Carney was the first foreigner to occupy that position since the founding of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England in 1694.

Were there powerful interests involved in the recruitment of the Governor of the BoE? Who was behind Carney’s candidacy? At the time of his appointment, the issue of U.K. “sovereignty” and Carney’s citizenship were hushed up by the British media.

Brexit and Financial Instability

Carney was fully aware that an “authoritative statement” pertaining to “financial stability” would have an immediate impact on financial markets. On whose behalf was he acting when he made those statements?

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused Mark Carney, of “speculative statements”:

“It is speculative and beneath the dignity of the Bank of England. To be making speculative pro-EU comments.”

The Goldman Sachs Report

In February, Goldman Sachs warned that in the case of Brexit, the pound sterling “could lose 20 per cent of its value”  Mark Carney’s statements at the House of Commons not only point in the same direction, they also provide legitimacy and “credibility” to Goldman’s assessment.

As an institutional speculator, Goldman’s intent is to influence expectations regarding financial markets (backed by authoritative statements from the Bank of England).

Coinciding with Carney’s recent statements, Goldman Sachs released a report on the detrimental economic and financial impacts of Brexit:

“However, given the substantial unpredictability regarding the UK’s post-Brexit trading and regulatory arrangements, quite how damaging Brexit would be in the long term is subject to a great deal of uncertainty. Arguably of more immediate concern is the effect that the uncertainty itself would have on UK growth.

The EU Treaty sets out a two-year timeframe for departure. During this period, the UK government would have to negotiate the terms upon which it could continue to trade with EU countries…

Some of these trade negotiations and many of the regulatory/legal decisions would be relatively straightforward. But many would not. …

During this period, UK-based businesses would face considerable uncertainty: exporting companies would not know the terms on which they would be able to supply export markets abroad once Brexit is complete; importing companies would not know the terms on which they would be able to import; and all companies would be confronted with increased regulatory/legal uncertainty. (Excerpts of report)

Carney dismissed the claims of Goldman in early February. But now he supports them.

Where do Mark Carney’s statements originate, from the Bank of England or from Goldman Sachs, his former employer?

Goldman is known to be the World’s foremost “institutional speculator”. Foreknowledge of statements and decisions by central banks are often used by financial institutions in speculative operations. Inside knowledge and connections are part of this process, they are the “bread and butter” of the “institutional speculator”.

The important question which the British media has not addressed: what is the relationship between Mark Carney and Goldman Sachs.

The Goldman Trojan Horse

Is there a Trojan Horse within the Bank of England with Goldman Sachs sitting on the inside?

While Carney was appointed by Her Majesty, unofficially, he still has “links” to Goldman Sachs.

Is he in conflict of interest?

Next time there’s a financial meltdown, your money could be rescuing Goldman Sachs.

Yes, thanks to a new deal struck by Mark Carney, the former Goldman man now running the Bank of England, the US investment bank could end up enjoying the next round of British taxpayer bailout money. (The Independent, 20 August 2015)

Moreover, several key senior positions within the Bank of England are held by former Goldman officials. Mark Carney was appointed in 2013. The following year (2014), Dr. Ben Broadbent, a Senior Economist for Goldman Sachs was appointed Deputy Governor in charge of Monetary Policy.

Bankers from Goldman are strewn across key policy-making arenas across the world like no other financial institution.

As well as the Governor of the Bank of England, his deputy Ben Broadbent is ex Goldman, as were two previous Monetary Policy Committee members, David Walton and Sushil Wadhwani.

Across the Channel, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi is a Goldman man, while in the US, Goldmanites make up a quarter of the Federal Reserve system’s regional presidents. (Ibid).

Concluding Remarks

Central Banks are complicit in the manipulation of financial markets including stock markets, commodities, gold and currency markets, not to mention the oil and energy markets which have been the object of a carefully engineered “pump and dump” speculative onslaught.

Who controls the central banks? Monetary policy does not serve the public interest.

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