Global Research

“I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those (rainbow) flags in God’s face if I were you. …this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor. — Rev Pat Robertson, Christian Fundamentalist tele-evangelist, predicting – and perhaps inciting – violence against the LGBT community in Orlando, Florida. The homophobic Robertson was critical of LGBT organizers who were putting up rainbow flags around the city in celebration of the city’s stance on diversity issues. (Quote from The Washington Post, 06-10-98)

The 2016 Democratic primaries have been frustrating for many progressives who have had their political juices awakened and energized by the nonviolent political revolution of Bernie Sanders, his New Deal/Fair Deal politics, his democratic socialist candidacy and his support of oppressed and discriminated-against minorities (including Latinos, African-Americans, Native Americans, Palestinians, Muslims and the LGBT community, among others).

But the Democratic Party, once the mortal enemy of fascism, governmental rule by wealthy elites and fraudulent elections, has sabotaged, through any number of backroom deals (and with the willing help of the corporate-controlled media), Sanders’ highly respected, altruistic candidacy. The Democratic national leadership has unfairly denied him the well-deserved candidacy of the party. Because of the intransigency of their pro-Wall Street, pro-War Street, wealthy insiders in the party hierarchy, they will soon regret what they have done as much as the GOP will soon be regretting the choice of the xenophobic, paranoid, narcissistic megalomaniacal Donald Trump as their party’s leader.

Both political parties have had their agendas shaped by corporate and militaristic billionaire plutocrats and Wall Street tycoons who have purchased large numbers of mercenary lobbyists, lawyers and federal and Supreme Court judges and also the loyalties of the vast majorities of elected legislators (both at the state and national levels) via massive amounts of campaign cash.The classic truism of “whoever pays the piper, calls the tune” still holds in 2016.

It is truly rare to find altruistic politicians in America who are capable of igniting the imaginations and hopes of millions of folks, especially the younger generations, who have been obviously “feeling the Bern”.

The Wall Street/War Street NeoCons (now tragically in total control of the GOP and in positions of majority power in the Democratic Party) have been somehow allowing a small minority of idealistic politicians to exist in America, I suppose partly for window-dressing. As Rush Limbaugh once proclaimed (after the GOP started feeling its oats in DC in the mid-90s): “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus—living fossils—so we will never forget what these people stood for.”

But there have been other American idealists throughout history that have also felt something resembling “the Bern”. Such people-power movements have happened only a handful of times over the past American century. Each movement’s progressive leadership has been disappeared, snuffed out, either by intimidation, assassination, smear campaigns or some other political intrigue such as imprisonment (as in the case of democratic socialist and labor union leader Eugene Debs who was convicted in 1918 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for his antiwar activism [where he ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket in 1920, garnering nearly a million votes]).

History tells us about the brief appearances of past progressive movements that promised to benefit the “common man”, like “Fighting Bob” LaFollete’s Progressive Party era, Eugene Debs’s persecuted Socialist Party, FDR’s New Deal era, the antiwar, liberal efforts of JFK, RFK and MLK, Eugene McCarthy, Paul Wellstone’s people’s campaign, Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy, Occupy Wall Street’s efforts, the disappearing democratic wing of the Democratic Party and, most importantly, all those millions of eager progressive-minded college-age Bernie supporters who so clearly see the dire need for a true political revolution.

The Democratic Party is shooting itself in the foot by rejecting the idealism of America’s energetic, progressive youth.

Those clear-headed American youth know that there must be a sea-change in American politics and economics before they and their planet are “disappeared” down the rat hole of perpetual war, the hopelessness of perpetual predatory educational loan repayments, unstoppable environmental degradation and enslavement by the many amoral, entrenched elites who are refusing to give them a break or a hand up because such merciful actions might endanger their personal investment portfolios.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the heart and soul of America may or may not be over, but there is information regarding the Democratic Party’s voter suppression and election fraud that has not been reported on. Inquiring minds need to know about it.

To find out more about the backroom deals that occurred during the Democratic primary season, watch:

https://youtu.be/MoGeDGHmwJU

or click on https://youtu.be/MoGeDGHmwJU

(the website of Election Justice USA) or http://trustvote.org/ (the website for the Institute for American Democracy and Election Integrity).

I end this column with an expose of the sabotage of the Sanders campaign, written by my favorite Floridian writer Bill Annett, who has summarized the issue better than I am able. Bill has been writing “A Bernie Sanders Newsletter” for most of the past year. You can get on his contact list to receive his incisive political and economic commentaries by emailing your request to him at: [email protected].

*      *      *

Extinguishing The Bern… and A Phoenix Proposal

By Guest Columnist Bill Annett

from the last edition of Bill’s A Bernie Sanders Newsletter

Amid the current media orgasm over the wonderment of a woman achieving something or other (not quite the Presidency), the corporate media are gratuitously admitting that Bernie Sanders did a wondrous thing in overcoming big money and the status quo.Good show, as the British say.

First of all, big deal. The mountain of America after 229 years has succeeded in bringing forth a mouse, compared to Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher, all of whom many years ago actually pulled it off -something Hillary has yet to do. Hell, closer to home, Kim Campbell was Prime Minister of little old Canada in the 1990’s, and Senator Therese Casgrain won the vote for the women of Quebec 80 years ago, both without the benefit of a $100 million foundation or a sack of gold from Goldman Sachs.

What none of the flacks or jaundiced politicians mention is that Bernie Sanders did infinitely more than that. He took on (and possibly, truthfully won against) the entire Democratic Party, its manipulative arm, the DNC, every senior Democratic bigwig, Congressman and Senator (with the exception of a handful of free thinkers) and the President they rode in on. He, Bernie, overcame the American corporate media and their scandalous partisanship and all of their bias and blatant rigging of public opinion.

How did they burn the Bern? As Smutty Bill sonnetized, let me count the ways:

(1) Debbie (the Washerwoman) Shultz, chair-thing of the DNC, from the outset proceeded to handicap Bernie in the debates, supposedly impartial, by delimiting the number of debates to eight (8?), knowingly fearful that more rather than fewer encounters would allow more people to learn about Bernie and how he has labored in the vineyards for 30 years for all of us, whereas Hillary and her geriatric, formerly cuckholding husband have been boring us for 25 years while parlaying the Presidency into a $100 million personal fortune.

(2) Next, the debates were artfully staged on (a) dates with lots of media opposition – heavy stuff like “Everybody Loves Raymond” and NFL games – or, (b) just as negatively, picking low viewership times. She, the Washerwoman, even pulled off an additional coup by staging one debate on a Saturday, when devout Jews wouldn’t be watching because of their Sabbath. (Both she and Bernie are Jewish.)Bernie’s request that the more debates the better was ignored.

(3) Moving on to the happy hunting grounds of the Primaries, Iowa – where Bernie began as an underdog and rapidly closed the gap– was actually a wash, in fact it was so close that in several precincts the results were a dead heat. Here they used that sophisticated modern technique of resorting to a coin toss. In six out of six precinct coin tosses, magically, Hillary won all six, which must set a Guinness Book of World Records record. Hillary was announced as the winner in Iowa, which nobody among the Iowan burghers contested because they were too busy gearing up for the Bix Jazz Festival.

(4) New York State was an even bigger boff for the Democratic establishment and their complicit reporters – the most concentrated crowd of media machinery in the world. Here, independents were not allowed to vote, but magnanimously they – who probably amounted to 40% of Bernie’s followers – were informed that, had they re-registered as Democrats eight months earlier, although they were not so advised eight months earlier, they would have been able to vote for Bernie. Bernie of course was creamed in New York State. And this strategy was fine-tuned and compounded in California, as we shall see.

(5) With the approach of the final Super Tuesday, it became apparent that to release the results in New Jersey polling at 8:00 P.M. EST might influence the voters in California not to bother, where the results would be released at 11:00 EST. What happened? Hillary won New Jersey and that result was released just as Californians were being subjected to a tougher voting process than even the Republican Governors could have devised in voter suppression.

In California, an Independent voter was required to jump through this series of hoops, which would require a Philadelphia lawyer to navigate: first, application had to be made in advance for a registration card stipulating “no party preference.” This card next had to be taken to the polling place, where it could be exchanged for a Democratic provisional ballot, and these “ballots” werethen tossed into cardboard boxes at each polling place, the contents of which have still not been fully tabulated, according to some precincts. Sound like an election in Rwanda or the most politically sophisticated country on earth?

(6) Even worse than that, the California Primary itself was a nightmare in this, supposedly the most progressive and diverse State in the Union. There is a distinct possibility that as many as 1.5 million California primary votes either disappeared or have still not been counted. You didn’t hear a single word about this in the popular media, although Huffington Post did produce a widely ignored report on California’s messed-up system.

Writing in Dissident Voice and Counterpunch (“Where Are The Missing California Votes”), Rick Sterling reported:

As of noon the day after the election, the total count is shown to be 1.94M for Hillary and 1.50M for Bernie for a total vote count of 3.44 Million votes. This contrasts with a total vote count of over 5 Million in the 2008 California primary election. Where are all the missing votes?How many provisional votes have not yet been counted?

…given the huge excitement over the Sanders campaign and high interest in the election race, it’s hard to explain such a large decline when the population has increased.One might argue that news reports that Hillary Clinton had already won the race, broadcast on the eve of the election, reduced participation. This is evidence of media bias and spin but it’s hard to see it suppressing the participation of Sanders’ supporters who came out in tens of thousands day after day in cities throughout the state.Huge crowds of Sanders supporters waited for hours to participate enthusiastically in Stockton, Vallejo, Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, San Diego and beyond. It’s hard to see them being fooled or dissuaded from voting by a dubious AP story possibly promoted by the Clinton campaign.(And repeated by MSNBC, all of which just happened to occur the night before the California Primary. –Ed.)

(7) And semi-finally, like Hamlet’s marriage table coldly setting forth the funeral meats, President Obama’s gratuitous hosting of Bernie on the Thursday following the California Primary on Tuesday was inconsequential.. Although Bernie graciously acknowledged that Obama and Biden had withheld support for Hillary during the Primaries (they actually did provide support, although obliquely), but before Bernie and his wife Jane had reached the Rose Garden on his way out of the meaningless meeting, the President had already released a lovely video that had been filmed on the previous Tuesday, extolling the virtues of old Dimple Cheeks, the standard bearer for what is arguably the Obama Third Term.

I don’t know, perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but I think there’s something greasy and immoral (even though it may be legal and politically correct) for an incumbent President to support and campaign for a member of his party when he’s supposed to be supporting and equally treating ALL Americans.

(8) And finally, to complete the anvil chorus of Hillary supporters, Senator Elizabeth Warren finally got off the fence, admitting that while her views were closer to Bernie’s than to Hillary’s, she added her endorsement to all the other right-thinking Democrats (Obama is after all a great act to follow). What Clintonesque reward may result isn’t too hard to imagine. In fact, a day later, Hillary mused nationally that Warren “is fully qualified” to be Vice-President.

What is also tempting to imagine is what might have resulted had Warren joined Bernie earlier, and had none of the DNC and Democratic establishment atrocities that we’ve listed taken place.

Instead, the total campaign to extinguish the Bern makes Al Gore’s screwing-over by Florida’s Republican Attorney General and a biased Supreme Court in 2000 look like a cheating game of mumble-peg. And THAT was done by the bad guys.

The year-long hatchet job done on Bernie Sanders is now being sublimated by everybody from Rachel Maddow to Joe Biden, crooning a bygones-be-bygones libretto that Bernie should “work for party unity,” i.e. that all of the 11 million of us should lick the hand that flogged us. As former State Senator Nina Turner (perhaps Bernie’s staunchest surrogate) said on California’s Tuesday night, they screwed us over by blocking independent voters, and now they’re whining to those same independent voters to vote for Hillary.

Not this kid. Regardless of what Bernie does, I’d rather vote for Spongebob Squarepants than the Lilly Maid of Wall Street.

Anybody for a Sanders-Jill Stein ticket? (Imagine what a Sanders-Stein Administration would do to the oriental fish market that is contemporary Washington.) With 11 million voters added to Jill’s current probable 6% following, we might just disrupt the Hillary coronation ceremony.Would we be helping the lunatic in Trump Tower? I doubt if he’ll still be around, the way he’s been alienating the Republicans lately. Maybe Gary Johnson and his Libertarian candidacy will take care of that.

A four-party system. Now wouldn’t that begin to make a little sense?

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

A horrific attack unfolded this week when Omar Mateen entered a nightclub in Orlando, Florida before allegedly opening fire killing 50 and injuring scores more. Mateen would eventually be gunned down himself by police.

At face value it appears to be another “extremist” attack – an extension of America’s ongoing “War on Terror.” In reality Mateen is instead an extension of America’s use of terrorism as a geopolitical tool to fight its enemies abroad and maintain paralyzing fear, division, and hysteria at home.

Mateen, the Latest in Long Line of Known Terrorists West Failed to Stop

The London Guardian’s article, “Orlando gunman known to FBI shows difficulty of ‘lone wolf’ cases,” would cite Erroll Southers, a former FBI counterintelligence and terrorism agent:

“What this illustrates is the difficulty in trying to identify people who would do things like Mr Mateen did today,” Southers said. “There is no profile.”

However, Southers is wrong. There most certainly is a profile to which each and every high-profile “terrorist” attacking targets across the West from North America to Europe adheres. Each and every suspect has been known to Western law enforcement and intelligence agencies before carrying out their deadly attacks.

The Boston bombing suspects were on FBI and CIA watch lists months before their deadly attack in April 2013 according to the US State Department’s own Voice of America news service. The Paris attack suspects were known to European security agencies and tracked for years save for the final 6 months before the attacks were finally carried out. Two of the Brussels attackers this year had been arrested for violent crimes including terrorism before being inexplicably released.
Considering these most recent examples and many others, it is not a matter of the West being blindsided by terrorism – but rather Western security agencies either incapable or disinterested in stopping militants from carrying out attacks which are then shamelessly and very intentionally exploited for political gain both at home and abroad.

What’s more alarming is that the recent case in Florida appears to be a textbook case of a US FBI entrapment case gone wrong. Quite literally every aspect of the case, from Mateen’s background, to how he gained law enforcement’s attention before the attacks, to aspects of his personality including allegations that he was mentally ill, mirrors almost identically two FBI entrapment cases which unfolded last year.

Inspired by Islamic State or by the FBI? 

The Intercept would report in its 2015 article, “Another “Terror” Arrest; Another Mentally Ill Man, Armed by the FBI,” that (emphasis added):

U.S. law enforcement officials announced another terror arrest on Monday, after arming a mentally ill man and then charging him with having guns.

ABC News quoted a “senior federal official briefed on the arrest” as saying: “This is a very bad person arrested before he could do very bad things.”

But in a sting reminiscent of so many others conducted by the FBI since 9/11, Alexander Ciccolo, 23, “aka Ali Al Amriki,” was apparently a mentally ill man who was doing nothing more than ranting about violent jihad and talking (admittedly in frightening ways) about launching attacks—until he met an FBI informant. At that point, he started making shopping lists for weapons.

The Intercept would also reference the FBI’s affidavit (.pdf), stating (emphasis added):

According to the affidavit, Ciccolo first talked to the FBI informant about attacking two bars and a police station. Later, he spoke of attacking a college campus with a homemade pressure-cooker bomb like the one used in the Boston Marathon terror attack; he also talked about using guns and a lot of ammo. Ciccolo, according to the affidavit, then “ordered the firearms from a confidential human source (“CHS”) working with the FBI.”

The list of weapons provided to the mentally-ill suspect by the FBI informant is shocking. Revealed in the official FBI affidavit (.pdf), the weapons included a 9mm Glock 17, a 10mm Glock 20, a .223 Colt AR-15 rifle, (referred to by the media as an “assault rifle”), and a 556 Sig Arms SG550 rifle (also often referred to as an assault rifle). The AR-15 rifle and Glock are the same weapons allegedly used by Omar Mateen in this most recent massacre.

Also included in the affidavit is the same hysterical rhetoric encouraged by FBI informants now evident in the recent actions of terror suspect Omar Mateen in Florida. The FBI quite literally moved Ciccolo from A-Z up to and including placing weapons into his hands before finally arresting him.

In Mateen’s case, it is alleged that he legally purchased his firearms. However, another 2015 FBI entrapment case includes a suspect the FBI was similarly cultivating, and instead of providing the suspect with weapons, he was allowed to purchase them on his own – two M-15 5.56 semi-automatic rifles.

NBC Cincinnati affiliate WLWT5 would report in their 2015 article, “FBI: Cincinnati man bought rifles, planned to attack U.S. Capitol,” that (emphasis added):

Agents said that on Tuesday and Wednesday Cornell met with the informant the final time to plan their trip to D.C. to execute their plan. He purchased two Armalite M-15 5.56 mm semi-automatic rifles Wednesday morning, along with 600 rounds of ammunition, and was arrested.

Cornell bought the rifles at the Point Blank gun store on Harrison Avenue in Colerain Township. He passed a background check and paid $1,900 in cash, $700 for each rifle and about $400 for the ammunition.

The gun store owner, John Dean, said FBI agents notified him that Cornell was going to come in to buy the guns about 10 minutes before he entered the store.

Dean said the agents told him to allow the purchase and agents would stop Cornell after he left the store.

Upon reading the FBI’s own affidavits, it appears the only difference between Ciccolo, Cornell, and Mateen is that the former two were arrested before committing mass murder while Mateen was allowed to carry out his attack. Whether or not FBI informants were handling Mateen before the attack remains a mystery. But it should be noted that the FBI is conducting – according to the New York Times – hundreds of such entrapment cases.

The NYT in its article, “F.B.I. Steps Up Use of Stings in ISIS Cases,” claims that (emphasis added):

The F.B.I. has significantly increased its use of stings in terrorism cases, employing agents and informants to pose as jihadists, bomb makers, gun dealers or online “friends” in hundreds of investigations into Americans suspected of supporting the Islamic State, records and interviews show. 

Undercover operations, once seen as a last resort, are now used in about two of every three prosecutions involving people suspected of supporting the Islamic State, a sharp rise in the span of just two years, according to a New York Times analysis. Charges have been brought against nearly 90 Americans believed to be linked to the group.

It is now revealed that the FBI had interviewed Florida shooting suspect Omar Mateen twice and investigated him on at least two separate occasions in 2013 and 2014. This was also reported by the NYT in their article, “Omar Mateen: From Early Promise to F.B.I. Surveillance,” which stated:

…the Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in after reports from Mr. Mateen’s co-workers that he, the American-born son of Afghan immigrants, had suggested he may have had terrorist ties. The F.B.I. interviewed him twice, but after surveillance, records checks and witness interviews, agents were unable to verify any terrorist links and closed their investigation. 

Then, in 2014, the F.B.I. discovered a possible tie between Mr. Mateen and Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who had grown up in nearby Vero Beach and then became the first American suicide bomber in Syria, where he fought with the Nusra Front, a Qaeda-aligned militant group. Again, the F.B.I. closed its inquiry after finding “minimal” contact between the two men. 

Considering NYT’s report regarding the vast scale of the FBI’s entrapment cases targeting possible “Islamic State” sympathizers, it seems highly improbable that undercover informants were not also working on Mateen. With hundreds of cases ongoing and with many of the cases involving the transfer of real weapons to suspects who have been encouraged sometimes for months by informants to carry out deadly attacks – could the FBI have lost control of such a case – in Florida perhaps?

The FBI Has “Accidentally” Allowed its Own Ops to go Live Before  

Has the FBI ever lost control of such operations? The answer to that question is also provided by the New York Times which in its 1993 article titled, “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast,” reported (emphasis added):

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast. 

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said. 

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars.

The decision by the FBI supervisor eventually led to the successful detonation of the bomb by  terrorists known to the FBI and subject to an undercover investigation. The explosion would kill 6 and injure hundreds more.

At the very least there is a strong possibility that the FBI’s tactics of entrapping suspects and its practice of peddling toxic rhetoric and even placing actual weapons into the hands of mentally unstable individuals led to the tragedy in Florida just as it did in New York City in 1993. At worst – it was intentionally done as a means of using terrorism domestically to manipulate the American people just as the US uses terrorism abroad to fight its proxy wars.

The “Islamic State” Operates Out of NATO Territory

The recent attack in Florida comes at a time when Syria’s border with Turkey is now nearly sealed. While alternative media sources have been reporting for years that the Islamic State has been resupplied and reinforced from NATO territory via Turkey, it is now a fact being reported by prominent Western news services as well.

The London Telegraph in a recent article titled, “US-backed Syrian opposition forces surround Isil in key city and cut off main supply route,” admits that (emphasis added):

…Syrian opposition forces have completely surrounded the Islamic State-held stronghold of Manbij and cut off the group’s main route to the outside world….. 

The loss of Manbij will be a huge loss to the group. It had been a waypoint on an Isil supply line between the Turkish border and the extremist group’s de facto capital, Raqqa.

Also recently, the Washington Times article titled, “Turkey offers joint ops with U.S. forces in Syria, wants Kurds cut out,” would quote the Turkish Foreign Minister himself admitting (emphasis added):

Joint operations between Washington and Ankara in Manbji, a well-known waypoint for Islamic State fighters, weapons and equipment coming from Turkey bound for Raqqa, would effectively open “a second front” in the ongoing fight to drive the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from Syria’s borders, [Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu] said.

The Foreign Minister of Turkey admits that “Islamic State” forces – fighters, weapons, and equipment – are pouring out of Turkey’s own territory “bound for Raqqa,” but never explains how the most notorious terrorist organization of the 21st century could move enough men and materiel through a NATO-member state to wage an entire war with, without being stopped before reaching Syria. Also not explained is where the “Islamic State” is procuring the weapons that it is moving through Turkey.

While the US claims to fight the “Islamic State” as well as pose as a victim of its violence, its NATO partner Turkey is quite literally the source of the terrorist organization’s fighting capacity, with US forces permanently stationed in Turkey for decades and Turkey having been a NATO member since the 1950s. Despite open acknowledgments that the “Islamic State” is operating out of Turkey, the US has used the presence of the terrorist organization inside Syria as a pretext for intervening in the war directly.

If Omar Mateen was “inspired” by the “Islamic State,” he was inspired by a terrorist organization that at any time the US and its NATO allies could crush – but who have intentionally allowed to operate within NATO territory itself.

It seems that both in Syria and at home in America, the special interests running Washington have found in the “Islamic State” a perfect tool with which to advance its various political agendas.

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

The unthinkable has become reality. The global humanitarian and legal entities are now officially in the hands of genocidal psychopaths.

Today Israel, illegal state of extremist settlers built upon the bones of an imprisoned, colonized Palestine, has been elected to the chair of the UNGA.  The United Nations General Assembly sixth committee or legal committee.  This legal committee oversees management of international law.

The lawbreaker has become the lawmaker in one fell swoop, ransacking the regulatory halls of justice and laying waste to what remnants of delusion we had left regarding the efficacy of international law.

“I am proud to be the first Israeli elected to this position,” Israel U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement.

“Israel is a world leader in international law and in fighting terrorism,” he added. “We are pleased to have the opportunity to share our knowledge with the countries of the world.”
~ Danny Danlon

This report from Reuters:

Israel on Monday won an election to chair the United Nations’ legal committee, the first time that it will head one of the world body’s six permanent committees since joining the U.N. in 1949.

While it is a largely symbolic and procedural role, chairing the committee will give Israel a chance to have a higher profile in routine affairs at the United Nations.

The so-called Legal Committee, or Sixth Committee, oversees issues related to international law. The General Assembly has six standing committees that report to it, on: disarmament, economic and financial issues, human rights, decolonization, the U.N. budget, and legal issues.

“I am proud to be the first Israeli elected to this position,” Israel U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement.

“Israel is a world leader in international law and in fighting terrorism,” he added. “We are pleased to have the opportunity to share our knowledge with the countries of the world.”

Israel was a candidate for the regional Western European and Others Group (WEOG) and received a comfortable majority of votes – 109 out of 175 valid votes cast in the 193-nation assembly. Sweden was runner-up with 10 votes.

Normally committee heads are elected by consensus without a vote. Opponents to the Israeli candidacy called for a vote, prompting a sharp reaction from the deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., David Pressman.

“Even a chair from (former leader Muammar) Gaddafi’s Libya was elected by acclamation,” he said in a statement. “A vote should not have been called today.”

“We need a United Nations that includes Israel, that brings Israel closer, not one that systematically pushes Israel away,” he added.

Israel was originally part of the Asia-Pacific Group along with other Middle Eastern and Asian nations, the majority of which are cool or openly hostile toward the Israeli state. Its transfer to WEOG gave it a chance to get elected to leadership posts and play a more active role at the U.N.

The chief Palestinian delegate at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, complained about the results of the election, saying Arab and Muslim countries had tried to prevent an Israeli victory.

Speaking to reporters, Mansour described Israel as “the biggest violator of international law” and predicted that Danon’s election was “threatening the work of the Sixth Committee.”

He said the Arab League and 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation had opposed Israel’s election.”

The 71st session of the UNGA Sixth Committee will be held in October 2016.  The following is  part of the proposed programme:

Statement by Dr Ashrawi, PLO Executive Committee Member, prior to Israel’s election:

Commenting on the Western European and Others Group’s (WEOG) decision to nominate Israel for the chairmanship of the UN General Assembly Sixth Committee, PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi condemned the move and said:

“It is ironic that Israel, a state that continues to breach international law and conventions, international humanitarian law and countless UN resolutions, is being nominated to head a legal committee that aims to promote international law and protect basic human rights and freedoms.

With such a decision, the WEOG is making a mockery of the international legal system and rewarding Israel for its flagrant violations of international law and acts of collective punishment and violence, including Israel’s continued theft of Palestinian land and resources, the expansion of its illegal settlement enterprise, the demolition and ethnic cleansing of entire Palestinian communities and villages, the use of live ammunition and the extra-judicial killing of innocent Palestinians, the revocation of Jerusalem IDs, and the increasing use of administration detention against Palestinian men, women and children.

We call on the WEOG to do what is right, withdraw its nomination of Israel for the chairmanship of the UN General Assembly Sixth Committee, and hold it accountable for its persistent violations of international law and human rights.  As a people under occupation, we will remain steadfast and undeterred in our efforts to pursue all diplomatic and legal channels to counter Israeli violations and safeguard our people’s right to self-determination, justice and freedom.

Even a full ban on all guns of every kind for all private US citizens would not have prevented this tragedy.

In the wake of the tragic Orlando shooting, many have reacted not with objectivity, logic, and courage, but with fear, hysteria, anger, and hatred. Some have also reacted with shameful opportunism – among these many people which includes racists, bigots, and warmongers, is also the gun control lobby.

It should be pointed out that the Orlando shooting suspect was working as a professionally trained and armed security guard at Federal facilities for private security contractor G4S. Omar Mateen also applied to study at the Indian River State College Police Academy – according to the Daily Mail’s article, “How surly Orlando shooter was booted out of police academy LAST YEAR .”

He was also investigated twice by the FBI, including a 10 month long undercover investigation involving FBI “informants.” Yet was still able to keep his job as an armed security guard.This means that even a full ban on all guns of every kind for all private US citizens would not have prevented this tragedy. The suspect was an armed security guard with access to firearms and had been thoroughly investigated, interviewed, and watched by multiple agencies and institutions throughout his career and would have still been able to perpetrate his act of armed mass murder

And it should be remembered that while the Orlando shooting is the largest mass shooting in American history at 50 dead – it is most certainly not the largest act of single-day mass murder.

The ignominious titled for that goes to the attacks on September 11, 2001 which left nearly 3,000 dead. The weapon of choice? Box cutters.

Violence is not a matter of access to weaponry – it is a matter sociopolitical and economic stability, inequality, and an unraveling culture. America is basting in socioeconomic disparity, political injustice, economic instability, and a culture of hatred, fear, and intentionally cultivated ignorance and division.

That’s the problem driving violence in America, and one must start there to reduce senseless violence driven by it.For those simply afraid every time they see a gun, have never touched one, and fear the thought of ever firing one – stop letting irrational fear drive your politics – politics no better than any other fueled by fear, hatred, and ignorance.

Further reading: “How to End the “Gun Debate” Forever.”

From Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, October 2011 as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appeared to be ending:

“There are those on the American political scene who are calling for us not to reposition [to Asia], but to come home. They seek a downsizing of our foreign engagement in favor of our pressing domestic priorities. These impulses are understandable, but they are misguided. Those who say that we can no longer afford to engage with the world have it exactly backward — we cannot afford not to…. Rather than pull back from the world, we need to press forward and renew our leadership. The Asia-Pacific represents such a real 21st-century opportunity for us to secure and sustain our leadership abroad.”

President Obama’s recent journey to Japan and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, beyond visiting Hiroshima and being welcomed by crowds in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, was primarily aimed at strengthening his administration’s most important foreign policy objective — the political, commercial and military encirclement of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Now that Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Obama may rest assured that if she defeats Republican Donald Trump in November, as expected, his “rebalance” to Asia will continue apace. Indeed, a Clinton administration may move faster and more decisively.

Clinton was a strong advocate of the rebalance and thoroughly agrees with Obama that Beijing must never be allowed to diminish Washington’s global hegemony, even within China’s own South Asian region, and, like Obama, she always uses the code words “American leadership” in place of “American domination.”

Obama announced what he first termed a “pivot” to Asia in the fall of 2011 just after a 5,500-word article by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton titled “America’s Pacific Century” appeared in Foreign Policy magazine. It began:

As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States stands at a pivot point. Over the last 10 years, we have allocated immense resources to those two theaters. In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values. One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise — in the Asia-Pacific region.” The “otherwise” meant military.

While in Japan, Obama told the newspaper Asahi Shimbun May 26:

Renewing American leadership in the Asia Pacific has been one of my top policy priorities as President, and I’m very proud of the progress that we’ve made. The cornerstone of our rebalance strategy has been bolstering our treaty alliances — including with Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines and Australia — and today each of these alliances is stronger than when I came into office. We’ve forged new partnerships with countries like Vietnam, which I just visited, and with regional institutions like ASEAN and the East Asia Summit. With the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the highest-standard trade agreement in history, we have the opportunity to write the rules for regional and global trade for decades to come. I believe that America’s position in the region has never been stronger, and I’m confident that the next U.S. President will continue to build on our progress.

A week later in San Diego Clinton delivered a foreign policy speech. Its purpose was to show that she would be much better than Republican Donald Trump in furthering America’s global interests. Accusing Trump of not understanding that Russia and China “work against us,” she declared:

If America doesn’t lead, we leave a vacuum — and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then they’ll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety — and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit. Now Moscow and Beijing are deeply envious of our alliances around the world, because they have nothing to match them. They’d love for us to elect a president who would jeopardize that source of strength. If Donald gets his way, they’ll be celebrating in the Kremlin. We cannot let that happen.

Instead of defining the November election as a contest between the right/far right Republicans and the center right Democrats, Clinton depicted it as a choice between “a fearful America that’s less secure and less engaged in the world [under Trump], and a strong, confident America that leads to keep our country safe and our economy growing.

Clinton has thus committed herself to a continuation of Washington’s decades-long imperial foreign/military policies, replete with cold war rhetoric, the notion of an indispensible America, the commitment to “lead” the world, and targeting China and Russia as virtual enemies. There was no hint of making any efforts to reduce world tensions peacefully. As a result of Obama-Clinton policies the relationship between Beijing and Moscow has become considerably closer in recent years.

Meanwhile the Bush-Obama Middle East wars are expected to continue indefinitely, at least throughout the next administration and maybe much longer. If Clinton gains the White House she is expected to intensify U.S. involvement in these conflicts, particularly in Syria and Libya. Her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, is significantly to Clinton’s left in domestic politics but only moderately less hawkish in foreign affairs. Trump is a dangerous enigma, correctly identified by Clinton as “temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.”

U.S. arms for Vietnam

President Obama was warmly received by the Vietnamese Communist Party, the government and it seems by the people as well during his three-day visit starting May 22. A number of U.S. news articles marveled at the fact that Washington appeared to be totally excused for its brutal two-decade intervention to prevent the unification of temporarily divided North and South Vietnam. After all, some to 3.8 million Vietnamese people died from the American air and ground war, as did nearly two million in Cambodia and Laos combined due to U.S. led attacks on suspected North Vietnamese trails and hideouts in these neighboring countries. U.S. war deaths were 58,193 between 1955-1975.

Part of the reason Vietnam doesn’t hate the U.S. is that it won the long war against the world’s most powerful military state following Hanoi’s victory against French colonialism and the earlier Japanese invasion and occupation. Vietnam was exhausted and in economic difficulty after 30 years of continual conflict when the Americans finally fled South Vietnam in April 1975.

Another reason for cautiously partnering with the U.S. is the existence of China on Vietnam’s northern border. Chinese dynasties dominated Vietnam for over 900 years between 111 BCE and 1427 CE. Both Russia and China supported Vietnam in the fight against U.S. aggression but grave tensions and even the possibility of an armed conflict between the two giant nations was an additional worry for Hanoi, which needed their material support to pursue the war. On Dec. 25, 1978,Vietnam invaded and occupied adjacent Cambodia in order to drive out the ultra-left Khmer Rouge government after a number of border clashes between them. In February 1979, China — which had supported the Khmer Rouge — invaded northern Vietnam in a brief but bloody one-month war, with both sides claiming victory. Several short skirmishes took place until 1989 when Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia. Since then relations between the two neighboring countries with governments that seem to share the same socialist ideology have been peaceful but distant.

During his stay in Vietnam, Obama was publicly critical of what he considered Vietnam’s human rights shortcomings, as though killing five million people in Indochina, millions in the contemporary Middle East, and uncritically supporting dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia gave Washington the international standing to wag its finger in Hanoi’s face.

But Obama’s criticisms of the country were primarily for show, paving the way for him to announce the ending of he 41-year ban on lethal arms sales to Vietnam. In Hanoi, Obama told a press conference that “we already have U.S. vessels that have come here to port [at Cam Ranh Bay and] we expect that there will be deepening cooperation between our militaries.”

According to The Diplomat May 31: “Uncorroborated Vietnamese sources in Hanoi [state that] prior to Obama’s visit, U.S. officials proposed to their hosts the possibility of raising their comprehensive partnership to a strategic partnership [an important upgrading]. Vietnamese officials reportedly got cold feet at the last minute and politely left this proposal for future consideration. At the same time, although U.S. officials, including the president, described bilateral relations as entering a new phase, no new adjective was placed in front of comprehensive partnership in the official joint statement issued by the two presidents to indicate that relations had advanced significantly since 2013.”

China’s Global Times, a party daily tabloid that tends to speak directly, argued May 26 in reference to the U.S. decision to sell arms to Vietnam: “This is a new move by the U.S. to advance its rebalance to the Asia-Pacific strategy, displaying Washington’s desire to reinforce military cooperation with China’s neighboring countries…. Now, Washington is ironically trying to manipulate Vietnam’s nationalism to counter China. U.S. Senator John McCain, a prisoner in the Vietnam War and now Chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee, plays a key role in rescinding the ban on the sale of lethal arms to Vietnam, believing it will rope in Hanoi to counter China’s rise.”

In the same issue of Global Times, Nguyen Vu Tung, acting president of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam in Hanoi, wrote an op-ed that expressed his “personal” views, stating: “In July 2013, Vietnam and the U.S. agreed to elevate their relationship to a ‘comprehensive partnership’ designed to further promote bilateral ties in all fields. 

It is noteworthy that the enhancement of Vietnam-U.S. relations ran parallel with Vietnam’s forging its relations with China, a big neighbor that is of increasing importance to Vietnam’s peace, stability and prosperity….  Vietnam-U.S. relations are not developing at the expense of the links between Vietnam and China. Instead of choosing sides, Hanoi tries its best to promote relations with both China and the U.S. and sees its relations with them in positive-sum terms…..

The independent posture of Vietnam’s foreign policy applies especially to Vietnam’s defense policy where Vietnam strictly follows a ‘three-no principle.’  Vietnam will not enter any military pact and become a military ally of any country, will not allow any country to set up a military base on its soil, and will not rely on any country to oppose any other country. Recently, Hanoi has been under some domestic pressure to review this principle. Yet, adhering to it is still the policy mainstream.

With the arms sales Vietnam is now considered an allied member of the informal U.S. coterie of East Asian and Southeast Asian nations, six of which are contending with China’s claims to most of the South China Sea, with Washington’s backing. Beijing says it is willing to negotiate with the six on a one to one basis but the U.S insists on multilateral talks. In addition to Vietnam the countries involved in the claims include Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Japan.

China’s claim is based on two points: 1. Implicitly, its long history — about 4,000 years, nearly all of it under Chinese dynastic imperial rule until 104 years ago. 2. Explicitly, the 1947 “nine dash line” map produced by the Chinese Nationalist government in 1947, two years before the success of the Chinese communist revolution replaced the semi-capitalist/semi-feudal Nationalist enterprise called the Republic of China with the People’s Republic of China. The Nationalist government, army and many civilians fled to Taiwan, an offshore province of China that still maintains that the nine dash line is absolutely legitimate, as does the PRC. The U.S. — which supported the Nationalists to the extent of keeping Taiwan in China’s permanent Security Council seat until 1971 — did not question China’s claims until fairly recent years. U.S. support for the six claimants is an important political part of the containment of China by increasing the number of regional allies and dependencies that will support Washington’s political goals.

There are military and commercial aspects of the rebalance to Asia in addition to using allies to strengthen opposition to China.

The U.S. has militarily dominated the East Asia region since the end of World War II in 1945 but it has been significantly increasing its military might since launching the pivot to Asia. More Army and Air force units have been ordered to existing bases in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Guam, and other nearby locations, as well as a new base in Australia. Up to 90,000 U.S. military personnel are in the vicinity. Navy aircraft carriers, other warships and submarines have been shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. An aircraft carrier battle group is patrolling the East China Sea. Some U.S. ships navigate extremely close to small Chinese islets that are being upgraded — a practice that could inadvertently spark an armed confrontation.

The principle commercial element of the effort to contain China is the corporation-dominated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — Washington’s neoliberal free-trade proposal for 12 Pacific Rim countries that is intended to enlarge U.S. economic influence in the region at the expense of China, which has not been invited to join. The 12 signatories to the TPP agreement in 2010 included Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States and Vietnam.

Ratification of the trade pact the may not happen, not least because recent political developments in the U.S. may bury this major Bush-Obama initiative. Hillary Clinton, once a strong advocate as secretary of state, turned against the TPP during the Democratic primary in order to opportunistically convey the impression she was as radical as Sanders in order to attract his constituency. She also wanted to retain the support of the AFL-CIO, which strongly opposes the pact. Trump rejects the TPP because many working class supporters believe that such trade deals take away American jobs, which they do. Some commentators suggest Obama may be able to get it passed after the elections and before the new president assumes office, but it’s a long shot.

Vietnam supports the TTP because its economy stands to gain from increased trade. It is of interest that China is Vietnam’s biggest trading partner and will remain so, as is true of most regional nations aligning with the U.S. superpower. Beijing’s rise over the last 20 years has benefitted all these states, not to mention the transfer of reasonably priced reliable goods throughout area.

U.S. President visits Hiroshima

Obama arrived in Japan May 25 to attend a Group of Seven meeting and to further strengthen Japan’s commitment to help in the effort to surround China, but the international media focused entirely on the first American presidential visit to Hiroshima in the 71 years since the United States obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons.

He didn’t apologize to Japan because that would be unpopular with many Americans and also with Korea and China, countries that suffered woefully from the vicious and racist Japanese invasion and occupation. They believe Japan hasn’t sufficiently atoned for its numerous wartime atrocities.

Instead Obama delivered a quite moving speech: “We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are….”

His address was hypocritical, particularly when he declared: “We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity to do evil. So nations and the alliances that we formed must possess the means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them. We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics. And yet, that is not enough, for we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mindset about war itself.”

In reality Obama is not only slower than his three predecessors in reducing nuclear weapons but he has initiated a trillion dollar effort to upgrade America’s entire nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

In his Asahi Shimbun interview Obama also said: “I believe that we’ve substantially enhanced America’s credibility in the Asia Pacific, which is rooted in our unwavering commitment to the security of our allies. We continue to modernize our defense posture in the region, including positioning more of our most advanced military capabilities in Japan. As I’ve said before, our treaty commitment to Japan’s security is absolute. With our new defense guidelines, American and Japanese forces will become more flexible and better prepared to cooperate on a range of challenges, from maritime security to disaster response, and our forces will be able to plan, train and operate even more closely. I’m very grateful for Prime Minister Abe’s strong support of our alliance.”

Abe is a hawk about China. “No one country is more enthusiastic than Japan to advocate containing China,” according to a May 19 commentary by Zhang Zhixin, the head of American Political Studies at China’s Institute of American Studies. He continued:

The strategic competition between the [U.S. and China] is becoming more apparent. In economic and trade areas, the EU and U.S. denied granting market economy status to China. In the South China Sea, where China is trying to secure its maritime sovereignty and rights, the U.S. believes China is challenging its regional hegemony and military dominance in the area. As deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said, the U.S. is intensely focused on China’s ‘assertive and provocative behavior.’ Therefore, the U.S. Navy is pushing for a more aggressive policy of patrolling close to Chinese-fortified islands and caused more dangerous encounters between the U.S. reconnaissance aircraft and Chinese jet planes.

What makes the situation more complicated is that Japan, as an outsider in the South China Sea issue, is trying to insert itself into the conflict. At the end of last year, the Japanese Foreign Minister talked about the possibility of joint patrol with the U.S. Navy in the [South China Sea] area. This year, Japan is becoming increasingly aggressive in charging that China’s a threat in the Asia Pacific region. It is understandable for the Prime Minister Abe to do so to the domestic audience to sell his proposal of revising the pacifist Constitution, but when he was selling his viewpoint to the EU countries, that’s too much. Japan is allied with the U.S., but the latter never restrained Japan’s anti-China rhetoric. Furthermore, Japan actively sold advanced weapons to countries around the South China Sea, participated in more multilateral military exercises, and conducted more port calls in the area, which just made the regional situation more tense.

Another area of sharp Chinese-Japanese contention is in the East China Sea. Both countries claim rocky, uninhabited protuberances known as Senkaku by Tokyo and Diaoyu by Beijing. China scrambled jets to meet Japanese military aircraft in disputed airspace May 21. Japanese officials said it was the closest Chinese jets had flown to their planes. It came as China was holding air-sea naval exercises with Russia in the region. Tokyo officially protested to Chinese ambassador Cheng Yonghua June 9 about a “Chinese and three Russian warships” that entered what Japan called the “contiguous zones” near the disputed Islands. The Chinese Defense ministry responded June 9 calling the navigation legal and reasonable, insisting “China’s naval ships have every right to navigate in waters under its jurisdiction.” The reply came a day a before the beginning of a large-scale eight-day joint military drill in the western Pacific involving the U.S., Japan and India.

According to Stratfor in a June 10 analysis: “Japan under Abe has upset Beijing by broadening the geographic and functional scope of the operations of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, which Japan’s postwar pacifism long limited. Perceptions of Chinese expansionism have prompted Japan to prioritize responding in the South China Sea. In 2015, Japan announced the start of talks with the Philippines on a Visiting Forces Agreement that would permit Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force personnel to rotate through Philippine bases. Later that year, Japan secured an agreement with Vietnam to allow Japanese warships to make port calls at Cam Ranh Bay, which they did in April of this year. Even more ambitiously, Japan has responded that it might be amenable to U.S. calls for regional powers to join freedom of navigation operations in waters far beyond the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s traditional domain in Japan’s near seas. Though these steps are incremental, they represent slow and steady progress toward a clear endpoint most unwelcome in Beijing — the routine presence of Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force operations in the South China Sea.”

The 42^nd G7 summit meeting in Japan May 26–27 accomplished little. It was “an opportunity lost” according to Montreal Star columnist Thomas Walkom, who wrote June 1: The leaders of seven important countries had a chance to do something that would rekindle the sputtering global economy. Some, including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Canada’s Justin Trudeau urged their fellow leaders to foreswear austerity and, among other growth-inducing measures, spend money to stimulate the world economy.

They failed. Italy’s Matteo Renzi was on side with Canada and Japan, as were France’s François Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama. But Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s David Cameron insisted that debt and deficit control were more important than fiscal stimulus. The final communiqué from the session said essentially that each nation would continue to do what it thought best. So what do we make of the G7? In some ways, its time has passed. It no longer represents the world’s major economies. China is conspicuously absent. Russia, briefly a member of what was then called the G8, was summarily expelled in 2014 for annexing Crimea.

The importance of India

As soon as President Obama returned home he put aside time to work out plans for ensnaring rising India more deeply into Washington’s informal anti-China coalition. He met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the White House June 7. This was their seventh meeting in the two years since the Indian leader was elected in May 2014, which must be some kind of record. Modi addressed Congress the next day and his speech was received with great applause. Earlier Indian governments, while friendly to the U.S. were closer to Russia (and the USSR in earlier days) and nonaligned countries than to America.  Modi is campaigning for a much closer relationship with Washington, which is exactly what the Obama administration wants.

The Economist noted June 11: “China worries about signs that Western countries are cozying up to its giant neighbor. It fears that Modi will exploit better ties with America as a source of advantage. For years the Pentagon has pursued India as part of an effort to counterbalance growing Chinese strength, but only in recent months have Indian military officials begun to show eagerness for co-operation. This month the two countries will hold their annual naval exercises not in Indian waters, but in the Sea of Japan, with the Japanese navy, near islands claimed by both Japan and China. In a wide-ranging speech before a joint session of Congress on June 8 Modi said that America was India’s “indispensable partner.” An outright military alliance between India and America remains unlikely, but even the remote prospect of one will concentrate Chinese minds.

In her pivot to Asia article referred to earlier, Clinton foresaw intense U.S. involvement in the region “stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of the Americas…. Among key emerging powers with which we will work closely are India and Indonesia, two of the most dynamic and significant democratic powers of Asia, and both countries with which the Obama administration has pursued broader, deeper, and more purposeful relationships.” India and Indonesia are second and fourth ranking countries in population. (China is first, U.S. third.)

According to the Center for International Studies “Washington has made it clear that Jakarta is central to the U.S. rebalance, toward the Asia Pacific, both in its own right and as a leader in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN.)” It is also the largest Muslim country by far.

India, however, is the big prize. As a result of U.S.-Indian talks after the Modi government took power India has been designated a “Major Defense Partner” by Washington, although it is not entirely understood what this unusual title obligates India to do. For its part the U.S. is supplying India with technology, loans, equipment, and other means of enhancing India’s economy and military.

Commenting on the Obama-Modi meeting June 7 the Associated Press reported “The two governments said they had finalized the text of a defense logistics agreement to make it easier for their militaries to operate together. The U.S. and India share concern about the rise of China, although New Delhi steers clear of a formal alliance with Washington.

In an article published by the Cato Institute April 29 and titled Persistent Suitor: Washington Wants India as an Ally to Contain China, Ted Galen Carpenter wrote:

A growing number of policymakers and pundits see India not only as an increasingly important economic and military player generally, but as a crucial potential strategic counterweight to a rising China…. Strategic ties have gradually and substantially deepened. President Barack Obama has characterized the relationship between the United States and India as ‘a defining partnership of the 21st century,’ and Indian Prime Minister Modi has termed it ‘a natural alliance.’” Perhaps more significant, India has contracted to receive some $14 billion in supposedly defensive military items from the United States in less than a decade. Washington has now edged out Moscow as India’s principal arms supplier.

Bilateral strategic ties received an additional boost in mid-April 2016 with the visit of U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to Delhi. That trip generated considerable uneasiness in China, where opinion leaders noted not only was it Carter’s second trip to India during his relatively brief tenure as Pentagon chief, but that he cancelled a previously scheduled trip to Beijing so that he could make this latest journey. That move, they feared, suggested a rather unsubtle tilt against China in favor of one of its potential regional geostrategic competitors. The agreement that came from Carter’s visit would do nothing to reassure the Chinese….

Moreover, India maintains an important economic relationship of its own with China.  Indeed, according to most calculations, China has now emerged as India’s largest trading partner. Trade between the two Asian giants topped $80 billion in 2015. In addition to the economic stakes, there are bilateral security issues, primarily unresolved border disputes, as well as security issues throughout Central Asia of concern to Delhi that could be exacerbated if relations with Beijing deteriorated. Shrewd Indian policymakers may well conclude that the best position for their country is one of prudent neutrality (perhaps with a slight pro-American tilt) in the growing tensions between the United States and China.

U.S.-China Relations

The contradiction between Washington’s words and deeds is no better exemplified than in its relations with China. U.S. rhetoric rarely includes threats, except occasionally regarding the South China Sea. Most though not all its multitude of discussions with Chinese leaders are soft spoken and civil. From time to time the U.S. speaks of China as a “partner.” Never stated openly is the fact that Washington will continue pressuring Beijing until it learns how to behave in a fashion acceptable to the world’s only military and economic superpower. Part of that pressure consists of continual exaggerations of China’s military power, which is far behind that U.S.

The Beijing government never threatens the U.S. It is well aware of the meaning behind Washington’s friendly words because it is surrounded by U.S. military power and Washington’s obedient allies in the region, by exclusionary trade deals, the rejection of its claims in the South China Sea and innumerable efforts by the White House to undermine China in all the political and economic associations and coalitions in the East Asia region.

Beijing rarely mentions this publicly and works to develop a cooperative “win-win” relationship with Washington. China clearly recognizes the U.S. as the world’s great power and occasionally appears slightly deferential.

The following June 6 report from Xinhua news agency about the annual China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue held in Beijing that day is typical example of the Chinese approach:

President Xi Jinping urged China and the United States to properly manage differences and sensitive issues and deepen strategic mutual trust and cooperation at a high-level bilateral dialogue. The differences between China and the United States are normal, Xi said.

As long as the two sides tackle differences and sensitive issues in the principle of mutual respect and equality, major disturbances in bilateral relations can be avoided, Xi said, adding that China and the United States should strengthen communication and cooperation on Asia-Pacific affairs.

The broad Pacific Ocean, Xi said, ‘should not become an arena for rivalry, but a big platform for inclusive cooperation. China and the United States have extensive common interests in the region and should maintain frequent dialogues, cooperate more, tackle challenges, jointly maintain prosperity and stability in the region, and “cultivate common circles of friends’ rather than ‘cultivate exclusive circles of friends.’

The Chinese president also called on the two sides to expand mutually beneficial cooperation, uphold the win-win principle, and raise the level of bilateral cooperation…. [He] stressed that China will unswervingly pursue the path of peaceful development and promote the building of a new model of international relations with win-win cooperation at its core.

At the same time, as we have written at length [1], China openly rejects in principle the existence of a unilateral global hegemon — a position the U.S. has occupied for the last quarter century since the implosion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Beijing advocates a form of shared global leadership. Washington is convinced that it deserves the right to in effect rule the world and has no intention of dismantling its shadow empire. This is the principal contradiction between the U.S. and China.

Beijing is doing what it can to avoid a major clash with the United States, short of appearing to kowtow to Washington. The U.S. does not want a clash as well.  Both sides fear the possibility of war and each is aware that one may eventually take place. That is certainly one of the reasons the Obama administration has launched its decades-long program costing a trillion dollars to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal.

China, for all its progress since the 1980s, is still a developing country and behind the U.S. in many ways, but is destined to become a major power in a few decades at most. The U.S. cannot but accept China’s inevitable growth. At issue is whether Beijing will eventually subordinate itself to the U.S. as have other powers, such as Germany, UK, France and Japan, have done, or in any other acceptable fashion.

There are current and historical reasons why China will not do so. At this point the U.S. is drawing upon all its resources to contain and surround the growing giant. This can only lead to big trouble in time, for both countries and the world.

Unfortunately, both U.S. neoliberal capitalist political parties are absolutely dedicated to world domination and ultimately to the use of terrible violence to defend American “leadership.” Unless this changes substantially imperialism eventually will lead to global calamity. This is a matter that goes far beyond the Hillary, Donald, and Bernie political preoccupation of the moment. None of them would substantially transform the existing foreign/military policy. Only a genuinely left wing mass movement in the U.S. has a chance of changing direction.

Note

[1] For article “The Hegemony Games — USA v. PRC,” click on 5-31-15 Newsletter Hegemony Games

Russia says Turkey’s military advisers are commanding Daesh terrorists operating around Syria’s northwestern city of Aleppo, which has been the scene of fierce fighting over the past few weeks.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Friday that up to 2,000 militants are taking part in the Aleppo battle based on mass media reports.

“Journalists say Turkey’s military advisers are commanding them,” she said.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

An intensive traffic of trucks accompanied with armed guards was spotted in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib while “carrying weapons and ammunition” from Turkey, Zakharova added.

“This looks like another stab in the back of the Syrian army,” she stated.

Zakharova further said al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front terrorists have launched another offensive against Syrian army positions to the north and south of Aleppo in a bid to surround the area.

She said the situation in Syria remains tense, with “provocations” continuing in breach of a ceasefire regime in the Arab country.

The nationwide cessation of hostilities, brokered by Moscow and Washington, was introduced in February, but renewed violence, particularly around Aleppo, has left the truce in tatters.

Meanwhile, a Russian ceasefire monitoring center in Syria said that constant attacks on government-controlled regions indicate that militants have abundant ammunition.

“The frequent attacks and mortar shelling show that terrorists have no shortage of ammunition and have a possibility to supply them with arms and ammunition,” said a representative of the center.

Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed the need for stopping the flow of terrorists and weapons to Syria via Turkey.

Turkey is said to be among the main supporters of the militant groups active in Syria, with reports saying that Ankara actively trains and arms the Takfiri elements there and facilitates their safe passage into the violence-wracked state.

Syria has been the scene of a foreign-backed crisis since March 2011. According to a February report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people in total since March 2011.

The United Nations has stopped counting the death toll in Syria, citing widespread violence across the country as well as complexities in checking the credibility of the statistics provided by the government and other sources.

Rational Voters and Irrational Experts

Large swaths of the US electorate are voting for rational choices against a system controlled by an economic and political oligarchy.

Rational choice is based on their experience with political leaders who have pursued policies leading to a trillion dollar financial crisis and bank bailouts while impoverishing millions of mortgage holders and working families – the US tax payers.

Their rejection of the established leadership of both major parties is rational.  It reflects  an understanding that campaign promises are worthless.

They want rational commitments to address growing inequality and end the series of overseas wars which have weakened America.  They identify with the slogan to ‘make America strong again’, emphasizing a dramatic transformation of the domestic economy and security system.

An army of political pundits have ignored the rational socio-economic and political choices exercised by the American electorate and repeatedly turn to psycho-babble, pontificating that contemporary voters are really reacting out of ‘anger’ and ‘irrational emotionalism’ or even ‘racism’ in their preference for non-establishment political figures like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.  The experts deny the objective bases for popular voter choice.

Sanders and Trump:  Appeals to the New Rationality?

The woeful and wilful blindness of political experts is a product of their own arrogance and hostility to the emergence of two Presidential candidates: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who challenge the established party and economic leadership.

The Sanders campaign has proceeded along the lines of a political polarization between big business and the working class; demanding higher taxes for the wealthy and greater social spending for public health and education for the working class.

Sanders has sought to unify racial and ethnic minorities and majoritarian workers with progressive gender, religious and environmental movements.

The Trump campaign, on the other hand, has sought to mobilize the white American majority among workers, small businesspeople and professionals, who have seen their living standards decline over the decades and have been marginalized by globalization and the ‘politics of identity’.

Sanders emphasizes a refurbished class identity.  Trump promotes new nationalist symbols.  Yet in many ways the establishment opposition, the parties, mass media and the economic elite, are far more hostile to Trump’s ‘nationalist politics’ than Sanders’ democratic socialist program and class appeal, which they view as weak and easily manipulated – like the huge anti-war movement was manipulated during the Bush and Obama Administrations.

Sanders apparent willingness to come to terms with the Democratic Party elite and back Clinton’s candidacy when he loses the nomination is far more acceptable to the establishment than Trump.  As in all previous presidential campaigns, the Democratic Party will allow progressive candidates to propose advanced socio-economic campaign platforms in order to secure working class and middle class votes, and drop the progressive façade in favor of  corporate-warmonger policies once in office.

Trump’s initial nationalist-anti-globalist rhetoric has aroused greater animosity from business, liberal and militarist elites than Sanders occasional critical comments.

Trump’s nationalism was rooted in popular and reactionary sentiments.  On the one hand he would speak of relocatingmulti-national corporations back to the US.  On the other hand, he would demand the expulsion of over ten million Mexican immigrants from the US labor market.

His anti-globalization-business relocation strategy is vague and lacks several essential ingredients:  He did not specify which multi-nationals would be affected and he did not describe what policies he would implement to force the trillion-dollar corporate return.

In contrast, Trump was brutally clear about which immigrants would be expelled and his methods of expulsion and exclusion leave no ambiguities.  ‘Build the Wall!’, has become his rallying cry to keep out migrant workers from the southern border.

Trump’s Electoral Victory and Neoliberal Right Turn 

Trump’s unorthodox, controversial and successful campaign to secure the nomination for the Republican Party’s candidate for president has led him to appeal to the big donors for campaign funding and endorsements from Republican neo-liberal establishment leaders like Congressional Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.  This quest for ‘respectability’ has caused Trump to shed his anti- globalization rhetoric and economic nationalist politics, and focus on his more chauvinist ethno-racist appeals.

Trump’s current electoral strategy seeks to unify the hard neo-liberal political elite with the ‘patriotic’ white working class.

Trump’s ideological road to the Presidency is no longer paved with economic-nationalist attacks on globalization.   Instead he relies on arousing public support by stigmatizing minorities as ‘anti-American’ and targeting Clinton’s personal ‘corruption’ and lies, rather than her domestic and foreign policies.

Trumps’ “Make America Strong” rhetoric ties in neatly with President Obama’s tariff wars against China’s steel exports to US markets.

Trump’s “Make America Strong” proposals mirror Obama’s systematic assault on the World Trade Organization’s role in negotiating trade agreement and the recent imposition of Washington’s dictates of the WTO’s settlement process.

Obama blocked the reappointment of an objectionable (read independent) South Korean lawyer who opposed Washington’s blatant violation of WTO rules.  Trump would endorse Obama’s promotion of US business lobbies against the WTO.

Trump also echoes Obama’s policy of favoring globalization only insofar as Washington maintains control of the key international institutions controlling the global economy.  Trump would continue Washington’s policy of packing global institutions with its vassals.

Trump in the Footstep of Sanders

Trump’s embrace of the neo-liberal business elite mirrors Sanders submission to the Democratic Party bosses.  Trump seems to believe that his mass base of supporters will be fooled by his increasing provocations against immigrants accusing them of stealing jobs while spreading crimes and drugs…and not notice his new embrace of the establishment economic elites.

Trump’s mass meetings are composed almost exclusively of white working and middle class voters – especially in parts of California and the Southwest with huge Hispanic and immigrant populations.  These are clearly designed to provoke violent protests.

Trump gains nationalist support by circulating videos of NBC, CNN and ABC reports depicting his peaceful white supporters being ‘terrorized and beaten up by mobs of (Mexican-American) protestors waving Mexican flags and sporting gang insignia.’

Trump calls on his American supporters to ‘stand strong’ against demonstrators who grab and burn the Stars and Stripesand stomp on his “Make America Great” campaign hats.

Conclusion

Trump’s turn to the neo-liberal Republican elite means he will intensify his repressive and anti-immigrant rhetoric.  Trump’s appeal will be aided by mindless violent protestors and provocateurs as they conveniently “overwhelm the police” at anti-Trump rallies.  He effectively promotes in the “propaganda of the deed”: linking disloyal immigrants who wave the Mexican and not the US flag.

The recent realignment of the Republican Party will bring Trump into the arms of the hardline neo-liberal Congressional-Wall Street elite.  This shift means Trump’s ideological and mass base will focus on ‘domestic enemies’ – Mexicans, Muslims, women and ecologists rather than the economic elite and the devastating foreign policies of previous administrations.

Trump expects a wholesale incorporation of the Sanders support machine into the Clinton campaign.  In this scenario, marginalized White workers and downwardly mobile middle class voters will confront the real face of Wall Street’s darling warmonger Mme. Clinton and be less likely to reject Trump’s opportunism with the rightwing Congressional business alliance.

Any working class opposition to his embrace of the neo-liberal Congressional Republicans will be deflected by revelations of Clinton’s big business dealings and covert operations with foreign leaders.  If pursued by the FBI, Clinton’s blatant violation of federal security regulations, her ‘private’ and illegal system of communication and liaison with foreign officials while Secretary of State could blow up her campaign and hand the presidency to Donald Trump.

Trump has gained working class voter support in West Virginia, Ohio and many other rust-belt states because of Clinton’s free trade and anti-working class history, which has shattered any residual illusions about the Democratic Party.

Trump’s electoral victory will hinge on his capacity to mask his turn to the neo-liberal elite and to focus voter attention on Clinton’s militarist, pro-Wall Street politics, her corrupt conspiratorial behavior and her anti-working class policies.

The Orlando shooting which left 50 dead and 53 injured is an American tragedy of momentous proportions. America with its gun culture and the dominant, vociferous and influential gun rights advocates, Orlando was a tragedy waiting to happen. Let’s mourn the victims. More than that let’s take it as a moment to make sure that no such tragedy happens in the future.

Is that what’s happening right now? I doubt. The CNN headline screams “Orlando shooting: 50 killed, shooter pledged ISIS allegiance”. Within hours of the tragedy President Obama addresses the nation and says “We know enough to say this was an act of terror and act of hate”.

Let’s take Obama’s statement first. How does he know, that too within hours of the shooting, with the alleged shooter shot dead by the police “enough to say this was an act of terror”? Well, the public doesn’t know ‘enough’ to know that it was an act of terror. How did the police gather ‘enough’ information within hours and pass on to Obama to say that it was an act of terror? According to police sources, as reported by the media, the alleged shooter is Omar Mateen a 29-years-old of Afghan descent. Is that enough to say that it “was an act of terror”? Does Obama has more information on the alleged shooter that he doesn’t want to share with the public? Now that the alleged shooter is dead isn’t it in public interest that he shares that information with the world so that we should avoid any such tragedy in future?

Obama further said that there was no definitive judgment on the killer’s motives, including whether he was affiliated with any terrorist groups. “What is clear is he was filled with hatred”. Filled with hatred? How did Obama read the mind of a dead shooter? This speech of Obama is irresponsible and is deliberately fanning hatred. This is only going to raise further the tempo of Islamophobia in American society and elsewhere which Donald Trump raised to a crescendo in his campaign speeches.

Now coming back to the CNN headline “Orlando shooting: 50 killed, shooter pledged ISIS allegiance”. All that one can say is that ‘how convenient’! It’s like so many similar ‘terror attack’ stories where the alleged ‘terrorist’, in 99.99% cases a Muslim, leaves his I.D in the spot for the investigative agencies just to pick up and prove the identity of a Islamist terror network behind the attack. In the Pulse Night Club Omar Mateen didn’t leave an I.D card, but called 911 to ‘pledge allegiance to ISIS’. It was a very kind of the shooter to have called 911 while he was busy shooting down people at random, holding at least 50 people hostage and being surrounded by hundreds of police men firing at him.

The same CNN report says,

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen was born in 1986 in New York. Most recently he lived in Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando. Fearing explosives, police evacuated about 200 people from the apartment complex where he lived while they looked through his residence for evidence.

Mateen’s parents, who are from Afghanistan, said he’d expressed outrage after seeing two men kiss in Miami, but they didn’t consider him particularly religious and didn’t know of any connection he had to ISIS.

He was married in 2009 to a woman originally from Uzbekistan, according to the marriage license, but he filed documents to end the marriage in 2011.

Sitora Yusufiy, interviewed by CNN in Boulder, Colorado, said she and Mateen were together about four months, though it took a long time to complete the divorce because they lived in different parts of the country after separating.

Mateen was a normal husband at the beginning of their marriage but started abusing her after a few months, she said. She said Mateen was bipolar, although he was not formally diagnosed. She also said Mateen had a history with steroids. He was religious but she said she doesn’t think his religion played in to the attack.

The same CNN report further says,

At a Sunday afternoon news briefing, FBI Assistant Special Agent Ronald Hopper said the agency was aware of Mateen. The FBI interviewed him in 2013 and 2014 after he expressed sympathy for a suicide bomber, Hopper said.

“Those interviews turned out to be inconclusive, so there was nothing to keep the investigation going,” Hopper said.

Well, the NSA which keeps a tab on our every fart, as revealed by Edward Snowden, couldn’t keep track on a potential ‘terrorist’! Does it sound credible?

To conclude, it’s the responsibility of President Obama and FBI to make their story credible and not put a whole community under suspicion.

Binu Mathew is the editor of www.countercurrents.org and can be reached at [email protected]

IOI – one of the largest palm oil companies in the world – is having a difficult time right now.

Not only has it recently lost its sustainability certification, but as a result its customers are leaving in droves. And with good reason: a new report from Greenpeace International shows how IOI’s operations have led to the destruction of forests and peatlands in Borneo, despite repeated promises to protect these areas.

Since the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) withdrew IOI’s sustainability certification in March, its share price has tanked and its credit rating has been placed under review. Most damning of all, every one of the major brands featured in our recent palm oil scorecard that was buying palm oil from IOI is in the process of cancelling their contracts.

The most recent of these is General Mills which, after receiving tens of thousands of emails from Greenpeace supporters, announced last week it will be phasing out its purchases from IOI. General Mills also stated that it won’t consider renewing its custom until the palm oil giant demonstrates real progress in protecting and restoring the areas it has damaged.

A Greenpeace investigator documents the devastation of a company-identified ‘No Go’ area of peatland in the PT Bumi Sawit Sejahtera (IOI) oil palm concession in Ketapang, West Kalimantan. This area of the concession suffered extensive fires in 2015.

This aspect is key because IOI has made many commitments to good environmental management but has failed to carry them out on the ground.

The new report lists a string of broken promises, most notably a commitment in January 2014 to refrain from draining all areas of peat on its land. But there is clear evidence that since then canals have been dug to drain peat in PT Bumi Sawit Sejahtera (PT BSS), one of IOI’s concessions in West Kalimantan, part of Indonesian Borneo. Dry peat is extremely flammable, and it’s no surprise that large parts of this concession went up in smoke in both 2014 and 2015.

Drone footage documents a primary drainage canal cutting through an identified ‘No Go’ area of buffer forest in the PT Bumi Sawit Sejahtera (IOI) oil palm concession in Ketapang, West Kalimantan.

The impacts of this drainage extend far beyond the boundaries of the PT BSS concession. Surrounding areas also drain and dry out, making them more vulnerable to fire and subsidence as the peat collapses in upon itself. Yet IOI fails to recognise the damage being inflicted on the whole landscape.

IOI has also ignored efforts by the Indonesian government to prevent a repeat of last year’s devastating fires, including ministerial instructions to block drainage canals and refrain from planting oil palms in burnt areas. Field investigations in April revealed that in PT BSS, canals still flow freely and the green fronds of newly-planted palms wave above the scorched earth.

An oil palm sapling brushes against the charred remains of a tree in the PT Bumi Sawit Sejahtera (IOI) oil palm concession. 

IOI is clearly concerned about loss of its RSPO certification and the customers it’s losing hemorrhaging as a result. It has even resorted to legal threats, launching a case against the RSPO itself, despite being a founding member with a seat on the board.

Earlier this week, it dropped the case raising the distinct possibility that it hopes to use today’s RSPO European Roundtable in Milan as an opportunity to lobby for its suspension to be lifted so it can woo back its customers.

IOI has produced a new action plan which it claims addresses the RSPO complaints. Yet it’s little different from existing policies and plans. It’s lacking on many levels, including: weak proposals for mapping peat and forest areas; no measurable goals or timelines; no plans for ending peat drainage and restoring drained areas; and no plans to publish maps of all its concessions.

Young Orangutan hanging on a liana at Nyaru Menteng Orangutan reintroduction project near Palanga Raya, Central Kalimantan.

Many of the customers IOI has lost are also insisting that if it wants their business again, IOI has to go beyond the comparatively weak standards of the RSPO. Given its track record, many are deeply suspicious of any new commitments or policies produced by IOI, so it needs to demonstrate it can put words into practice and make changes on the ground – blocking canals, restoring drained peatlands, and producing public maps of the forests and peatlands in its concessions.

Until that happens, the RSPO should keep IOI’s suspension in place and buyers should definitely beware of any claims IOI makes about its commitments to protect Indonesia’s forests.

Annisa Rahmawati is a Forest Campaigner for Greenpeace Indonesia.

On June 12, the ISIS terrorist group launched a major assault on the government-controlled Badr Base at the southeastern countryside of Syria’s Dumayr city. Dumayr is a city located 40 kilometers north-east of the Syrian capital, Damascus. The Syrian Arab Air Force Al-Dumayr Military Airport is located there. By the end of the day, Syrian Arab Army units repelled an ISIS advance and, following a series of intense firefights, ISIS militants had been forces to retreat. 11 terrorists were killed as result of the clashes.

Near the ancient city of Palmyra, pro-government forces have liberated the seized of Arak and the T-3 Military Airport, opening a way on the village of Al-Sukhanah, located along the highway to the Deir Ezzor province.

In the province of Raqqa, the SAA, supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces, have gained more ground, advancing on the strategic Rusafeh crossroads. On June 12, the main loyalist forces were in 6 km from the strategic area while their forward detachments entered it. Separately, there were controversial reports that the government forces were deployed in only 5 km from the strategic Tabaqa Military Airport. Nonetheless, it hasn’t been confirmed.

On June 10, the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the US-led coalition air power, encircled the ISIS-controlled city of Manbij in Syria’s Aleppo province. The SDF also killed the ISIS governor of Manbij, Osama al-Tounsi. His convoy was exiting the western gate of the city, heading towards al-Bab, when it was targeted by SDF units.

On June 11 and 12, there were no reports yet about attempts to storm the Suni-populated city while an ISIS counter offensive was ongoing in the area of the al Bab-Manbij road. In turn, SDF units were attempting to keep the encirclement and advancing further in Northern Syria. The main direction of the SDF military efforts was the city of Al Bab.

Earlier in June, Christopher Garver, the official spokesman for the US-led coalition against ISIS promised that Kurdish forces won’t advance further in Northern Syria when Manbij is liberated. However, Manbij hasn’t been liberated and Kurds show an intention of advance to the North. And this is a big problem for the US amid the tensions over the “Kurdish issue” with Turkey.

1966 proved to be a turning point in the African American liberation struggle

On June 16, 1966, the recently-elected chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, was arrested and taken to jail in Greenwood, Mississippi for refusing to obey an order given by local police.

Law-enforcement officers had told marchers that they would not be able to erect tents at an elementary school where activists planned to stay overnight during the course of their journey from Memphis, Tennessee to the State Capitol in Jackson. During the early evening of Thursday, June 16, 1966, when the marchers arrived in Greenwood, and tried to set up a temporary camp at the segregated Stone Street Elementary School, Carmichael was arrested ostensibly for trespassing on public property. He was taken into custody for several hours and later rejoined the marchers at a local park, where they were able to establish a camp and hold an evening rally.

At this rally, Carmichael went to the podium and said “We been saying ‘freedom’ for six years. What we are going to start saying now is ‘Black Power.’”

Stokely Carmichael Calling for Black Power, June 16, 1966

The “March Against Fear” had been moving through the state from Memphis after the shooting of James Merideth, the first African American student to enter and graduate from the University of Mississippi at Oxford. On the second day of Merideth’s journey, he was approached and shot in the back of the head with a shotgun by James Aubrey Norvell, a white man.Merideth fell bleeding on Highway 51 and was latter rushed to a hospital in Memphis. Unable to continue the march he would remain hospitalized for another two weeks only returning to the demonstration as it neared Jackson.

Leaders of SNCC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Floyd McKissick of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), pledged to continue the march at a press briefing the day after Merideth was wounded.From Freedom NOW to Black Power

Willie Ricks, a SNCC field organizer, had informed Carmichael that the masses in the Delta Mississippi region were ready for the new more militant slogan and program advancing self-defense, self-determination and opposition to the war in Vietnam. Carmichael had only recently been elected as Chairman of SNCC with a clear objective of moving the organization towards a more radical nationalist political position.

Ricks had been using the slogan as he traveled ahead of the March Against Fear building support for the protest and mobilizing SNCC supporters throughout the region. SNCC had worked in Mississippi since 1961. In 1964, the organization spearheaded the Mississippi Summer Project that brought hundreds of youth into the state to work on voter registration and the building of an independent Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

After the Selma to Montgomery March in early 1965, Carmichael on behalf of SNCC went to the majority African American Lowndes County, Alabama to initiate another independent party. By late 1965, in cooperation with local activists, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) had been established utilizing the Black Panther as its symbol.Although Lowndes County was majority African American, almost no Blacks were allowed to register and vote. The Democratic Party of Alabama was a white supremacist organization even stating so on its emblem.

As a result of the national attention brought to Lowndes County, Carmichael along with his close comrades in SNCC was able to take control of the organization. The March Against Fear, which received broad media coverage on all of the major networks, catapulted Carmichael into the world spotlight.

Carmichael was initially resistant to raising the slogan but after the unjust arrest took the podium in Greenwood and said “We Want Black Power!” The enthusiastic response would usher in a new era in the African American liberation struggle impacting the political discourse for at least another decade.

Even prior to the March Against Fear, the work of SNCC and LCFO had prompted others to form Black Panther organizations in several regions of the country including Cleveland and Detroit where there had been rebellions in the Hough section and later on Kercheval Street on the eastside of the motor city. The August 1966 mini-rebellion in Detroit would be a precursor to the largest urban uprising nearly one year later beginning on 12^th street on July 23, 1967.

Many African American youth and their counterparts within the Latino, Native American, Puerto Rican, Asian and white communities would form similar organizations as SNCC and the Black Panther Party (BPP). University and high school students supported by their parents demanded reforms in educational curriculums as well as community control of the police. What is the Significance of Black Power Today?

Five decades later many of the gains made during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements have been reversed by the courts, the federal government and corporate community. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been eviscerated stripping the law of its enforcement provisions.

Cities in Michigan with majority African American populations were put under emergency management where large-scale theft of public resources, educational services and basic bourgeois democratic rights have been carried out with the tacit support of the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama.

African Americans and other oppressed groups are brutalized and killed by law-enforcement agents and vigilantes on a weekly basis. During 2015, anywhere between 900 and 1200 people had fatal encounters with the police. In most cases these crimes go unpunished where the judiciary, prosecutors, the U.S. Justice Department and the corporate media claim that there is insufficient evidence to try and convict the perpetrators.Jobless rates among African Americans still remains twice as high as whites. Poverty rates among the oppressed far exceed those of the broader majority white population.

U.S. foreign policy continues on its imperialistic path with wars of occupation and regime-change taking place throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Pentagon budget is larger than all other states combined while the Obama administration is launching a renewed nuclear weapons program amid growing poverty and desolation inside the cities, suburbs and rural areas of the country.What Can Youth and Workers Learn From the Black Power Movement?Can any lessons be learned for the contemporary period in light of 2016 presidential elections amid a renewed struggle against racist violence, economic exploitation and poverty? Is there a direct relationship between the “Black Lives Matter” movement and the revolutionary upsurge of 50 years ago?

The lack of historical memory has been a major impediment in the present situation. Even though there was a president of African descent elected twice to the White House, fundamentally there has been no change in the power structure and economic relations of production within U.S. capitalist society.Consequently, a revolutionary movement encompassing various organizational expressions is necessary to address the current crisis. The limitations of spontaneous demonstrations and rebellions has been illustrated since 2013 when public sentiment against the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Grey, Sandra Bland and others sparked mass protests and unrest.

Nonetheless, obviously absent from the present political landscape are organizations such as SNCC and the BPP which places people on the ground in communities and on the campuses to mobilize and agitate for revolutionary change. This is the major challenge of this period and it can only be addressed by the newer generation drawing upon the best in the social traditions among the oppressed and the working clas

Universities have become bastions of managerial madness.  The trends began some time ago, when money became the ultimate pursuit, and Mr Dollar became chancellor and chief.  The obsession with obtaining grants, the panjandrums awarding grants, the siphoning off funds, underwriting projects, have all made the academy a sad state.  Since universities now obsess about having a “marketing unit”, the idea of making education a matter of commercial viability rather than educational worth has become all important.

There is another aspect to this development.  Gone are the days when academic exposure was confined, left to the irate letters to the editor section or the occasionally controversial scribble. The great academics of history also doubled up as intellectuals, revolutionaries and, as A. J. P. Taylor showed so well, teledons.They wore many hats in the pursuit of learning, refusing to be holed up as scholar squirrels. Now, the scholar squirrels are everywhere, and more vulnerable. University establishments watch with eagle attentiveness to see that appropriate behaviour in the public eye is observed.

In such an environment, opinions must be carefully expressed.  It is one thing to go through the coddling set of such a publication as The Conversation, where academics are managed by journalists through the minefield of implications an article might involve.  Suggestions of slander, sauciness and political inappropriateness are culled. Bland outcomes are preferable.

The use of social media to express opinions, a system of communication that has given verbiage a good name, bypasses such control. It keeps managers at arm’s length.  Technological universality is taken to assume that a personal view becomes a global one.  This stance is erroneous, but it is something that corporations or universities accept with religious conviction.  Content is suggestive; view points, dangerous.  There are no concessions to be made to private accounts, be they on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Tweet and be damned.Australia, having a constipated regime when it comes to freedom of expression, tends to be concerned with policing opinion of all shades.  If views are deemed racially suggestive, the Racial Discrimination Act intervenes to cut off and punish opinions that do not match the regulated order.  If the topic is considered by institutions to be unduly sympathetic to ultra-left, gendered ideals, or suggestive of the views of the right, it is permitted only in so far as market ideals are not jeopardised. This is the overall management dogma.

The Roz Ward case, which exploded across the Australian university sector in May, suggested the extent university managerialism will go to remove an academic for something as simple as a Facebook posting in a private capacity.  There was nothing suggestive in what was posted in by Ward, an irate comment, fuming at the Australian flag as “racist”.  (Are there any flags that are not?  Was she being punished for the obvious?)  “Now we just need to get rid of the racist Australian flag on top of state parliament and get a red one up there and my work is done.”

Ward’s jab could hardly have been a problem.  But Ward is known as being one of the architects of the Safe Schools Coalition, a program run in schools to combat bullying of LGBTI individuals.  With little surprise, it has been attacked by Christian groups and conservative politicians as unacceptably transforming.

In the alarmist words of a very noisy Australian Christian Lobby, such a program should not be funded as it promoted “radical sexual experimentation” by accepting people of diverse gender and sexuality.Not all the criticisms of the program were virulently insensible   ACL’s Queensland director Wendy Francis had a more than valid point that teachers, in accordance with the program’s aims, had to “work out ways to integrate gender diversity and sexual diversity across your curriculum” irrespective of subject.[1]  Some people do see sex and gender in everything, and Francis evidently did not.  But such views belong to the cut and thrust of academic argument.

As for Ward, fearing that such a figure might be, if not actually, affecting potential revenues, or the brand label, the La Trobe University establishment rounded up on her. We are not to know at this stage if her initial suspension was cover for naked vengeance, a form of assassination by means of censorship.The letter from the university sent to Ward claimed that she had been suspended from work for “engaging in misconduct”.  In all likelihood, it was the sense that Ward was attracting undue attention, and being harassed by such Murdoch outlets as The Australian for her Marxist and pro-LGBTI stance.  What followed was scandal, union action, and the eating of humble pie.  Ward was back before the cock had crowed.  Legal action against the university is being considered.

This police state reflex suggests stupidity as much as clumsiness. The institutional brain frays and frazzles in desperation before intense debate and discussion, confusing it with unwarranted controversy.  In the war of ideas, it is best not to flinch.  Unfortunately, such struggles are taken to be dangerous to the dull suits running the modern university.The modern university needs to be reformed.  Not least of all, a return to basic roots, the true radical sense that it be an educational, not a business institution. The corporates have the upper hand at the moment. The first step in making sure that management’s hand, with its cold grip, is lessened by letting academics, at least the good lot of them, speak out. Some of their ideas will be on the daft side, but the only market place permitted should be one stocked with the currency of ideas.

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

Note

[1] http://www.theage.com.au/queensland/acl-says-school-antibullying-program-encouraging-cross-dressing-20150728-gimhz4.html#ixzz49rTmIGDx

Credit downgrades, trade war and terrorist threats strain relations with Washington

A nationwide election for local offices in 278 municipalities across South Africa will take place on August 3.

South African officials recently announced the formation of an Inter-ministerial Committee (IMC) which is making preparations for the fourth of such elections since 1994 when the first non-racial vote was held on a national level bringing the African National Congress (ANC) to power.

The IMC is led by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister, Des van Rooyen, who is in charge of facilitating these tasks. The Committee is responsible for monitoring the efficient conducting of the elections and guaranteeing that all registered voters are able to fully participate in an atmosphere that is safe and impartial.

An Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is responsible for providing information on the terms of the ballot and to ensure that the necessary materials are printed and distributed to various centers across the country. Candidates running on behalf of political parties and as individuals will be contesting for seats in councilor bodies and mayoral offices.

Baloyi says of the South African government: “We are now left with less than two months to ensure that we have free and fair 2016 local government elections. Whilst we are awaiting an important Constitutional Court decision on the clarification of the challenges relating to citizens and households without formal addresses.” (South African Government Statement, June 10)

More than 200 different political parties and nearly one thousand independent candidates will appear on the ballots in the coming municipal elections according to the (IEC). The IEC has already announced that the number of participants in the August poll represents an increase of 69 percent in comparison to the last of such elections in 2011.

A report from the Rand Daily Mail said “South Africa has seen a relatively steady growth in the number of political parties contesting municipal elections since 2000. In that year‚ there were a total of 79 political parties which contested the various municipalities. Six years later that number grew 23% to 97 — and it grew a further 25% between 2006 and 2011.” (June 8)

This same report continues noting “The 2016 Municipal Elections will see a record number of political parties contesting the eight metropolitan municipalities‚ 205 local municipalities and 44 district councils. A total of 204 political parties submitted candidate lists by last week’s deadline — almost 69% more than the 122 which contested in 2011. The Western Cape will have the highest number of parties contesting (77) followed by Limpopo (56)‚ Gauteng (45) and the Eastern Cape (43). The smallest number of parties will contest in the Northern Cape (18).”

ANC Campaign Escalates

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) is facing challenges from the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), and the smaller Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).

On June 4 the ruling party held a rally at the FNB Stadium in Soweto to launch its manifesto for the upcoming elections mobilizing tens of thousands of supporters.

ANC Women’s League is calling upon the party to run at least 50 percent women candidates on August 3. A list of mayoral candidates will be released by June 17. (Eyewitness News, June 13)

Gauteng provincial African National Congress (ANC) Chairperson Paul Mashatile during the manifesto launch stressed to supporters to conduct peaceful campaigns, adhering to the IEC rules on avoiding violence.  Mashatile said during his speech to the crowd that the concerns of youth would be high on the party agenda.

Mashatile also said he was confident that all Gauteng metropolitan areas would be taken by the ANC. The provincial leader pledged to those in attendance that the delivery of municipal services will be improved in the weeks and months to come.

There has been an upsurge in violence surrounding demonstrations over concerns involving municipal services. These actions have created a potentially volatile atmosphere which could impact the character and outcome of the elections.

Bloomberg reported on June 6 that “The lead-up to South Africa’s local elections in August has turned increasingly violent as poor communities use the campaign as leverage to demand better living standards and politicians vie for control of the 278 municipalities. Communities staged 70 protests against a lack of decent housing, education and other services in the first four months of the year, up from 44 in the same period last year, according to Municipal IQ, which monitors the municipalities. Perceptions that the authorities only respond to grievances when demonstrations turn violent is fueling the unrest, according to Kevin Allan, the research company’s managing director.”

In KwaZulu/Natal Province violent clashes occurred between supporters of the ANC and the rival EFF, headed by expelled ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema. Stones were thrown at Malema when he attempted to speak at a rally at Richards Bay, north of Durban, during May.

Police fired rubber bullets and teargas to disperse ANC and EFF supporters who fought at the location. EFF leaders said the ANC was attempting to prevent their organization from campaigning in KwaZulu-Natal — a charge the ruling party rejected.

Economic Crisis Continues

This election is taking place amid an economic decline inside the country exemplified through a recent credit evaluation by Standard & Poor designating the country just one level above junk bond status.

In a statement published on the ANC website on June 3, the party sought to place a positive spin on the recent S&P evaluation, stressing “The decision is a reward for the collective efforts of all South Africans doing everything to put South Africa first in placing our case before the rating agencies. The President and the Minister of Finance have been working with a number of CEOs and the labor movement in trying to turn the economy around and building confidence on the economy. This comes shortly after Moody’s confirmed confidence in our economy.”

Unemployment is rising throughout the country and the value of the national currency, the rand, slipped 0.2 percent during the first week of August.

Worsening Relations with Washington

This uncertainty was fueled over the last few days after the United States embassy issued a warning saying South Africa could be a target for an attack by the Islamic State.  The ANC government refuted the security advisory saying there were no credible threats.

Relations between Washington and South Africa have been strained since late last year when the Obama administration temporarily suspended Pretoria from a preferential trade agreement based on the African Growth & Opportunity Act (AGOA). Earlier this year the ANC Secretary General accused the U.S. of plotting regime-change inside the country.

These sentiments have been shared as well with neighboring states where in the state-run Zimbabwe Herald newspaper on June 10, correspondent Christopher Farai Charamba wrote “one must be critical of these alerts. The South African government has labelled the information ‘dubious and unsubstantiated.’ Should this be the case then what motive would the U.S. have to issue this second alert?”

Charamba went on saying “In 2013 there were reports that the Botswana government, member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), had given the American military permission to start construction of facilities inside the Thebephatshwa air base in Gaborone. This was seen as the first step in plans to relocate the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) from Stuttgart, Germany to the Southern African country.”

This same journalist emphasized that “Under the guise of the war on terror the USA has invaded countries, disposed governments, established military bases in a number of countries. With these new alerts in what is arguably one of the most peaceful regions in the world, SADC countries should be skeptical of U.S. intentions.”

Técnico del Olympique de Marsella durante la temporada 2014-2015, Marcelo Bielsa obsequió al campeonato de Francia el fútbol más bello de los últimos veinte años.

Marcelo Bielsa sólo se quedó un año a la cabeza del Olympique de Marsella (OM) pero marcó para siempre la historia del club. La proeza es aún más notable dado que no consiguió ningún título, contentándose con clasificar al equipo para la Liga Europa obteniendo el cuarto lugar al cabo del campeonato. No obstante el rosarino logró la unanimidad entre los hinchas del club más popular de Francia, quienes se identificaron con el estilo de juego propuesto y la personalidad del carismático entrenador argentino.

Llegada a Marsella

La llegada de Marcelo Bielsa a la cabeza del Olympique de Marsella tardó en concretarse. Erudito del fútbol, analista fino, perfeccionista hasta la obsesión, minucioso en los menores detalles, intransigente con los principios, trabajador incansable, el entrenador argentino deseaba tomar en cuenta todos los parámetros del club así como el potencial de los jugadores antes de dar su respuesta. Así, visionó varias veces todos los partidos del Marsella de las dos temporadas anteriores haciendo fichas técnicas de cada jugador. También asistió a varios partidos antes de dar su acuerdo definitivo.

La ciudad de Marsella sedujo a Marcelo Bielsa. Apreció particularmente el estadio Vélodrome: “Uno de los motivos por los cuales vine a trabajar aquí era para ver lleno, por lo menos una vez, el estadio Vélodrome. Es uno de los espectáculos más hermosos que pueda ofrecer el deporte.[1] […] Es un estadio único, muy bello. Vacío es majestuoso. Lleno es emocionante”.[2] Por su parte los habitantes de la ciudad más popular y exuberante de Francia sólo podían apreciar a un personaje con semejante carácter, apodado El Loco.

La oficialización de la firma del contrato suscitó la alegría de los aficionados, que le reservaron una calurosa acogida digna de los más grandes jugadores. En la historia del Olympique de Marsella ningún entrenador desató semejante pasión entre los hinchas. Samir Nasri, mediocampista de Manchester City formado en Marsella, se acuerda del entusiasmo extraordinario que generó la llegada del argentino: “Cuando llegó Bielsa parecía que hubiéramos fichado a Cristiano Ronaldo”.[3] Daniel Bravo, antiguo jugador del Marsella, también expresó su entusiasmo: “Un coach como él es la mejor cosa que le pueda suceder al OM”.[4] Carlos Valderrama, leyenda del fútbol colombiano que jugó varios años en el campeonato de Francia, se alegró de la llegada del técnico rosarino, “uno de los mejores entrenadores del mundo”.[5] Por su parte Jean-Michel Larqué, antiguo internacional francés, aclamó “la llegada de un crack”.[6]

Situación del club y plantilla

Marcela Bielsa encabezó un grupo que acababa de terminar la temporada 2013-2014 en un laborioso sexto lugar, con un total de 60 puntos. Con un balance de 16 victorias, 12 empates y 10 derrotas, el equipo había marcado 53 goles con 40 goles en contra, consiguiendo una modesta diferencia de goles de +13. Sin estilo de juego, los aficionados que aspiraba a ver un espectáculo más atractivo no tenían interés en ir al estadio.

El técnico argentino asumió entonces un plantel disminuido por una confianza mermada que salía de una temporada difícil. Pero Marcelo Bielsa también tuvo que enfrentar otro obstáculo de envergadura. Mientras que había elaborado una lista de doce jugadores que fichar, la presidencia del club no reclutó a… ninguno. “Yo propuse doce opciones y ninguna se pudo concretar. Yo pedí a Manquillo, a Isla, a Montoya, a Coke, a Ocampos, a Rekik, a Tello, a Medel, a Alerweireld y a Stambouli. Y de esos no vino ninguno”, señaló el coach argentino.[7] Peor aún, la dirección procedió a la venta de importantes jugadores de la plantilla tales como Mathieu Valbuena y Lucas Mendes, canceló los contratos de Benoît Cheyrou y Morgan Amalfitano y prestó a Jordan Ayew, sin ni siquiera dignarse a consultar al entrenador. La constatación de Bielsa fue contundente: “Me enteré de la venta de Mendes cuando faltó su primer día de entrenamiento por estar viajando a Catar. […] La dirección del club me engañó”.[8]

Valbuena se acuerda de este episodio y de su última conversación con Marcelo Bielsa, la víspera de su salida hacia el campeonato ruso: “Bielsa me dijo: “Quisiera que supieras que todos los que dicen que no formabas parte de mis planes son unos mentirosos. Fuiste el mejor jugador del equipo de Francia durante el Mundial. Estaría loco si no quisiera incluirte en mi grupo.’ Tuvo palabras gentiles conmigo y me deseó buena suerte”[9]. El internacional francés, obligado a marcharse a causa de una lógica económica que adoptó el club en detrimento del imperativo deportivo, lamentó no haber podido jugar bajo las órdenes del técnico argentino: “Me habría gustado trabajar con él. Es un gran entrenador con métodos que pueden parecer duros, pero bien vemos lo que aporta a los jugadores”.[10]

Por otra parte el club procedió al reclutamiento de cuatro jugadores (Michy Batshuayi, Romain Alessandrini, Abdelaziz Barrada y Matheus Doria) sin solicitar la opinión del rosarino. “Ninguno de los jugadores que llegaron al Olympique de Marsella fue una iniciativa mía”, recordó Bielsa. El caso de Doria es emblemático. En efecto, la presidencia decidió reclutarlo en los últimos momentos del mercado… contra la opinión del entrenador. El técnico se expresó al respecto: “Me opuse a la llegada de Doria. […] A mí analizar la llegada de un jugador me lleva veinte partidos […]. La decisión de sustituir a Mendes por Dorio no mejora el potencial del equipo. Sale sorpresivamente un jugador como Mendes que tenía dos años en el club, un año de titularidad, una ambientación y todo eso se pierde. […] Un jugador confirmado e instalado en el fútbol francés por una gran promesa de 19 años con todo el proceso que tiene por delante y con el agravante que yo no pude ni manifestarme […]. Fue el mismo presidente quien me dijo ‘No pensemos en futbolistas extranjeros porque no tenemos la estructura necesaria para evaluar futbolistas juegan fuera de la liga francesa”. El tiempo dio la razón a Bielsa. En efecto, Doria no jugó ni un solo minuto en el Olympique de Marsella y su préstamo al club español de Granada fue un fracaso completo.[11]

Apegado a los principios y a la palabra empeñada, Marcelo Bielsa expresó su descontento durante una memorable conferencia de prensa, fustigando el comportamiento de Vincent Labrune, Presidente del club, y lamentando las promesas no cumplidas. Cuando se firmó el contrato, el Olympique de Marsella prometió un plantel de 22 jugadores con dos jugadores por posición y una inversión mínima de 35 millones de euros para fortalecer al grupo.[12] El argentino sólo pudo constatar la diferencia entre las promesas hechas y la realidad: “[Debía] tener un grupo de 22 jugadores de nivel similar para tener emulación. […]. La cifra pasó luego de 22 a 20. Después comprendí que ni siquiera llegaríamos a 18. Y ahora apenas tenemos 16”.[13] Su conclusión fue contundente: “Ha finalizado el periodo que permite definir el plantel y las conclusiones son negativas. […] El presidente asumió conmigo compromisos que él sabía que no iba a cumplir cuando los tomó. Las realidades que me toca afrontar si me son planteadas sinceramente las acepto. En caso contrario me genera rebeldía”.[14]

Criticado por una parte de la prensa por expresar públicamente su descontento, una leyenda del fútbol tomó la defensa de Marcelo Bielsa. En efecto, Zinedine Zidane brindó su apoyo a su colega argentino: “¿Acaso yo habría reaccionado como Bielsa? Sí. Porque si elaboras ejes de trabajo y grandes líneas con tu presidente y que al final todo no se desarrolle como estaba previsto, obligatoriamente, estás en tu derecho de pedir explicaciones”.[15]

Así Marcelo Bielsa empezó la temporada con un plantel limitado y jugadores no elegidos. El obstáculo era entonces de primera magnitud y los observadores no dejaron de declarar su escepticismo en cuanto a las probabilidades de éxito del entrenador argentino con un grupo tan restringido. Eric Di Meco, antiguo jugador del club con el cual ganó la Champion’s en 1993, señaló los recursos limitados puestos a disposición del técnico: “Si tiene éxito con este plantel ¡Será un mago!”. Esta opinión se emitió antes de las salidas de Valbuena, Mendes, Amalfitano, Cheyrou y Ayew, las cuales debilitaron considerablemente al grupo.[16] Jean-Michel Larqué, ahora comentarista deportivo, también señaló el nivel de los jugadores puestos a disposición de Bielsa: “Si consigue resultados con Mendy, Lemina, Imbula, lo felicitaré. Pero hoy, con estos jugadores, tiene más probabilidades de fracasar que de triunfar”.[17] Daniel Riolo, el comentarista radial más popular de Francia, también declaró sus reservas: “¿Qué puede hacer con Dja Djédjé, Mendy? La mitad del equipo me parece muy débil y poco importa quién lo dirija”.[18] Fue entonces, en esas condiciones adversas, que el técnico argentino tuvo que cumplir su misión.

Juego ofensivo y fútbol total

A pesar de este hándicap demostrado, Marcelo Bielsa se refugió en el trabajo y fiel a su filosofía de juego y sus principios futbolísticos elaboró un equipo generoso y valiente con vocación ofensiva, que ejerce un pressing alto y constante, con líneas cerradas y transiciones defensa/ataque rápidas. El bello juego que propuso el Olympique de Marsella sedujo rápidamente a los amantes del fútbol. El primer partido oficial de la temporada 2014-2015 contra Bastia terminó con un espectacular resultado final de 3-3. Claude Makelele, antiguo internacional francés que ganó dos veces la Champion’s y jugó la final del Mundial 2006, entonces entrenador del equipo corso, declaró su admiración: “Nos tocó un entrenador muy bueno que supo elaborar un sistema que nos causó muchos problemas”. Makelele lanzó luego una advertencia: “Marsella va a causar problemas a muchos equipos”.[19]

Acertó el técnico del Bastia. Tras una derrota contra Montpellier, el equipo de Marcelo Bielsa realizó una serie de ocho victorias consecutivas y gracias a su fútbol “heroico” encabezó el campeonato de Francia hasta la tregua invernal, dominando incluso al poderoso Paris-Saint-Germain catarí con sus innumerables estrellas. El Olympique de Marsella ocupó el primer lugar durante catorce jornadas. Ningún otro equipo permaneció tanto tiempo a la cabeza de la clasificación, ni Lyon, ni el Paris-Saint-Germain. Más allá de estos espectaculares resultados, el rendimiento colectivo y la belleza del juego del equipo de Bielsa impresionaron al mundo del fútbol, como lo ilustran numerosos testimonios.

Christophe Dugarry, antiguo jugador del Olympique de Marsella, ganador del Mundial y de la Eurocopa, aclamó el rendimiento extraordinario el técnico argentino a pesar de un plantel limitado: “Lo que hace Bielsa es tan impactante a la escala de la Liga 1 que puede suscitar vocaciones, pues, si miramos bien, tiene buenos jugadores pero ¿cuántos con nivel internacional? Tres, quizás cuatro. Lo que selecciono de la primera mitad del campeonato es el OM de Bielsa. No sólo por los resultados. […] Nunca he visto a un entrenador dejar su impronta en el equipo de modo tan rápido. Es apasionante porque es casi un caso de manual: cómo, con un equipo similar, un puedo hacerlo jugar de modo tan distinto y con un rendimiento ampliamente superior”.[20]

Zinedine Zidane, impresionado por el trabajo de Marcelo Bielsa, decidió realizar su práctica de observación en Marsella. Su testimonio es instructivo: “Bielsa es un apasionado. Es alguien que llega a las 8 de la mañana y se va a las 8 de la noche. Se pasa todo el día en jogging. Es un hombre que adora lo que hace, que es meticuloso. Eso lo notamos”.[21]

Laurent Blanc, antiguo internacional francés que ganó el Mundial y la Eurocopa y entrenador del Paris-Saint-Germain con el cual realizó dos cuádruples consecutivos (Campeonato, Copa de Francia, Copa de la Liga y Trofeo de los Campeones), resultó seducido por el estilo de juego que propuso Marcelo Bielsa. Se expresó al respecto y declaró su admiración por su colega: “Es un técnico que propone juego y ello sólo me puede gustar.[22] […] Lo que me gusta de él es que tiene ideas y no las reniega […] Pienso que su método puede adaptarse a la Liga 1 y yo quisiera que se quedara.[23] Es un entrenador muy bueno con carácter fuerte. Tuvo resultados con Bilbao y tiene resultados con Marsella. Lo felicito”.[24]

Willy Sagnol, entrenador de Burdeos que realizó una brillante carrera de futbolista, resultó encantado por el técnico argentino, de quien alaba las virtudes: “Uno sólo puede sentir admiración por lo que trae a Francia pues ningún otro entrenador lo había hecho antes de él. Como jugador y amante del fútbol, le digo gracias”.[25]

Hubert Fournier, entrenador de Lyon, también aclamó el trabajo de Bielsa a la cabeza del Olympique de Marsella: “Transformó al equipo. Es el principal responsable de la recuperación deportiva. También hubo una responsabilización individual de los jugadores claves del plantel como Gignac. Trajo rigor y voluntad de poner a trabajar a todos”.[26]

Daniel Casanova, entrenador de Toulouse, también rindió homenaje al rosarino, alabando su propuesta futbolística generosa y la transformación del grupo: “Este equipo no se parece para nada a lo que era el OM los últimos dos años. Es un equipo que tiene principios y que domina muy bien tácticamente todos los partidos. Este equipo está preparado para ir lejos con todos los ingredientes necesarios. Todos los jugadores admiten y entienden el rigor y la disciplina que exige el entrenador”.[27] También declaró su respeto por su homólogo suramericano: “Lo sigo desde hace mucho tiempo. Es alguien que ha sabido imponer un estilo agradable y eficiente en todos los lugares donde ha estado, con una metodología muy distinta a la que se suele usar. Siempre le he tenido aprecio sin conocerlo personalmente. Es un técnico que tiene ideas y que conoce muy bien el fútbol. Es capaz de sacar lo mejor de su equipo, de darle un estilo y de tener resultados”. Casanova lo considera un modelo: “Trato de inspirarme de los buenos y él forma parte de ellos. Me identifico con muchos de sus principios, con sus ideas, con el juego que quiere que practique su equipo. La posesión del balón, la reacción cuando se pierde la pelota, el pressing alto: ello forma parte de mi filosofía de entrenador y del juego que quiero practicar.[28] Pienso que es un gran entrenador que tiene mucha influencia sobre los jóvenes entrenadores como nosotros. Hay mucho que aprender del funcionamiento de sus equipos”.[29]

Robert Herbin, leyenda del AS Saint-Etienne que ganó cuatro campeonatos como entrenador, enalteció a su colega argentino Bielsa y alabó su trabajo: “Marcelo Bielsa está transformando profundamente al Marsella, un equipo irregular que había caído en la monotonía. Es un entrenador exigente y riguroso. El OM se compromete cabalmente en todos los partidos. Con los mismos jugadores que el año anterior, el cambio es bastante extraordinario. Bielsa coloca al colectivo encima de todo. Transformó a once jugadores en un equipo”.[30]

René Girard, entrenador de Lille y miembro del cuerpo técnico de la selección francesa que ganó la Eurocopa 2000, expresó su opinión sobre el argentino: “Bielsa es una gran figura del fútbol. Es una persona que conoce bien el fútbol y saca lo máximo de su equipo. Es una visión distinta del fútbol. El OM es líder y realiza un campeonato admirable”.[31]

Raymond Domenech, seleccionador del equipo de Francia finalista del Mundial 2006, también alabó la obra de su colega suramericano: “El trabajo que está haciendo, sobre todo en Marsella, es bueno, por sus resultados. Tiene un método muy claro y exige mucho a sus jugadores. Tuve la suerte de asistir a los entrenamientos con mi formación de técnico. Es alguien que pasa mucho tiempo con sus jugadores, hace mucho trabajo individualizado y pienso que es un método bueno […]. Si vemos lo que hace con el mismo plantel que el año pasado, es algo extraordinario. Es admirable”.[32]

Didier Deschamps, exjugador y entrenador del Olympique de Marsella y actual técnico de la selección francesa, destacó la acción del rosarino: “Si el OM ocupa ese rango es porque se lo merece […]. El OM tiene un gran entrenador y obviamente ello influye en el comportamiento del equipo y en los resultados. […] Actualmente los resultados dan toda la razón a Bielsa”.[33]

Por su parte Eric Gerets, exentrenador del Marsella muy popular entre los hinchas, expresó su admiración por su homólogo argentino: “Bielsa tiene un nombre fantástico en el fútbol. He leído y oído comentarios sobre él, de Guardiola por ejemplo o de otros. Todos dicen que es una persona extraordinaria”.[34]

Guy Roux, mítico entrenador francés que tiene el record de partidos dirigidos en el campeonato de Francia, expresó su admiración por Marcelo Bielsa: “Este equipo desarrolla por ahora un juego excepcionalmente bueno. Y único, porque ningún otro juega como él y no sólo a nivel del ritmo, sino sobre todo en la elaboración de la recuperación. Los marselleses son irresistibles. […] Bielsa demuestra grandes cualidades profesionales”.[35]

Bernard Lacombe, antiguo entrenador de Lyon y actual asesor de su presidente Jean-Michel Aulas, destacó la obra del técnico argentino a la cabeza del Olympique de Marsella: “Lo descubrí cuando entrenaba al Bilbao. Bielsa es una gran figura. Lo criticaron mucho al inicio, pero siguió con sus ideas y no las abandonó. Hizo un trabajo enorme en todos los clubes donde estuvo. […] Es la persona más influyente del club”.[36]

Rudy García, entrenador del AS Roma, se alegró de la llegada de Bielsa en el campeonato de Francia: “Estoy muy feliz de ver lo que hace en Marsella, gracias a todas sus ideas, sus convicciones, sus principios”.[37]

Albert Cartier, técnico del FC Metz, aplaudió la visión del fútbol de Marcelo Bielsa y el aire nuevo que trajo al campeonato de Francia: “Los verdaderos competidores se reconocen en Bielsa. Criticaron al señor Ancelotti, y digo ‘señor’ para expresar mi respeto. Para el señor Bielsa es lo mismo. ¡Son personas que ayudan al fútbol! Bielsa va a marcar a los jugadores del OM como Ancelotti marcó a los del PSG. Son dos entrenadores que aman apasionadamente su profesión. Regalan felicidad a la gente, a los espectadores”.[38]

Frédéric Antonetti, antiguo técnico de Rennes, es un gran admirador de Marcelo Bielsa. Expresó su opinión: “Adoro al entrenador del OM, su comunicación y sus principios. Es atípico y tiene mucho que dar al fútbol francés. Lo vimos contra París. Acepta que su equipo esté desequilibrado. Y este desequilibrio engendra hermosos partidos. Que tenga resultados con esta visión del fútbol es algo sumamente positivo para nuestro campeonato”.[39]

Jean-Pierre Papin, elegido jugador del siglo del Olympique de Marsella y ganador del Balón de Oro, destacó el aporte del técnico argentino y militó a favor de su mantenimiento a la cabeza de equipo: “Trajo algo especial. Tener a semejante entrenador en nuestro campeonato es un privilegio. […] Hay que conservarlo”.[40]

Carlos Mozer, defensor emblemático del club en los años 1990, se alegró de la llegada del técnico de Rosario a la ciudad sureña: “Espero que Marcelo Bielsa se quede el año próximo porque a él se deben los progresos. Tiene una buena mentalidad y quiere un equipo concentrado, agresivo y ofensivo. Me gustaría que permitiera al Marsella subir más alto”.[41]

Eric di Meco, otra figura legendaria del club, no pudo contener su admiración frente al “juego vertical, rápido en la transición y siempre dispuesto a ir hacia el campo del rival”. Incluso confesó lo siguiente: “Cuando veo los ataques de los dos laterales, a veces me digo ‘¡Cuánto me habría gustado jugar bajo sus órdenes!’”.[42]

Enzo Francescoli, leyenda uruguaya que hizo la gloria de Marsella en los años 1990, se mostró elogioso con el argentino: “Bielsa es un grandísimo entrenador, muy querido en Argentina. Hablamos muchas veces de él con el técnico de River, Marcelo Gallardo. Jugó con la selección argentina y estuvo bajo las órdenes de Bielsa. Guarda buenos recuerdos. Es un entrenador que ama el juego y que es ofensivo. Hizo grandes cosas en Argentina. Francamente, es una buena cosa que esté dirigiendo el OM”.[43]

David Trezeguet, exinternacional francés de origen argentino, campeón del mundo y de Europa, expresó su entusiasmo hacia su compatriota de quien alabó “el trabajo extraordinario […] con un equipo y recursos incomparablemente inferiores a los del PSG, Mónaco y Lyon”, enfatizando el mérito del rosarino. “Su juego suscita la alegría [y] el público lo adora porque es un apasionado”, apuntó.[44]

Opinión de los jugadores del Paris-Saint-Germain

Los jugadores del principal club rival, el Paris-Saint-Germain, observaron con mucho interés el trabajo de Marcelo Bielsa, particularmente Silva, Maxwell, Pastore, Matuidi y Aurier. Thiago Silva, capitán del PSG, se mostró impresionado por la transformación del equipo: “Marsella tiene los mismos jugadores que el año pasado. Pero el coach ha construido un equipo muy fuerte. Pienso que ha dado mucha confianza a los jugadores”.[45]

            Maxwell también destacó el aporte del rosarino: “Yo sabía que era el hombre idóneo para cambiar la intensidad de juego de Marsella. Lo demuestra cada semana. Físicamente el OM está muy fuerte ahora, diferente del año anterior. Bielsa trabaja mucho y desarrolla una táctica particular. Siempre es difícil jugar contra sus equipos. Cuando vemos los partidos de los marselleses, sea en la intensidad, en la agresividad, ya no son los mismos”.[46]

            El argentino Javier Pastore compartió este punto de vista: “Es un gran entrenador. Hizo cosas buenas en todos los equipos que dirigió. Todos mejoraron con él. Y es el caso con Marsella. Va a ser muy difícil vencer al OM este año”. Reconoció su influencia en el campeonato de Francia: “La Liga 1 no lo olvidará de pronto”. Pastore también expresó su consideración hacia su compatriota: “Es una persona muy famosa y muy respetada. Tiene verdaderos valores e hizo un trabajo excelente en todos los clubes y en todas las selecciones que dirigió. Desafortunadamente nunca me entrenó […]. Sé que es alguien que trabaja mucho, con una precisión por el detalle. Es un verdadero especialista. Personalmente, yo admiro a Marcelo Bielsa”.[47]

            El mediocampista Blaise Matuidi también destacó la labor de Bielsa: “Hace un buen trabajo. Con su método logró cambiar a los jugadores. Veo ahora a marselleses que ha recobrado la plenitud de su talento”.[48]

            El lateral Serge Aurier también se mostró impresionado por el OM de Bielsa: “Siempre he dicho que era el equipo que había que seguir atentamente este año. Es un equipo que juega, juega y juega, con jugadores que multiplican los esfuerzos y que practican un fútbol hermoso. Lo vimos contra nosotros. Ganamos el partido 2-0 pero tuvieron mucho mérito con todas las situaciones de gol que se crearon. Sigue siendo un equipo fuerte y hay que tomarlo en serio”.[49]

Unanimidad en torno al fútbol de Marcelo Bielsa

Hasta Frédéric Thiriez, Presidente de la Liga Profesional de Fútbol, no pudo dejar de expresar su admiración hacia el argentino, olvidándose del tradicional deber de reserva que exige el cargo: “¡Bielsa es el talento y el genio en estado puro! Es genial que el OM ocupe el primer rango”.[50]

Gérard Gili, exjugador y famoso entrenador del Olympique de Marsella bajo la era de Bernard Tapie, resume bastante bien el impacto de Bielsa en la ciudad sureña: “él, apenas en tres meses, ha logrado formar parte de la historia del club”.[51]

La belleza del juego que propuso Marcelo Bielsa, los resultados y su personalidad incluso sedujeron al mundo político. Patrick Mennuci, diputado de las Bouches-du-Rhône, brindó un testimonio sobre el prestigio del entrenador argentino: “Recién estuvo en Tindouf, Argelia, en el fondo del desierto, para una visita oficial. La gente me habló de Bielsa, del OM. También me hablan de él en la Asamblea Nacional”.[52]

El expresidente francés Nicolas Sarkozy, gran aficionado de fútbol e hincha declarado del Paris-Saint-Germain, fue seducido por el juego propuesto por Marsella. Destacó el trabajo de Marcelo Bielsa: “Me gusta mucho el OM. Vi el magnífico partido contra Lyon. Hubo 1-0 gracias a un gol fabuloso de Gourcuff pero el resultado final podría haber sido 2-0 para el OM. Bielsa, como entrenador, trae un toque de originalidad”.[53]

Italia incluso recompensó con un premio especial a Marcelo Bielsa por su “fútbol innovador” durante la ceremonia de “Banquillo de Oro” encargada de coronar al mejor entrenador de campeonato italiano.[54] Del mismo modo la UEFA designó al argentino como mejor entrenador del campeonato de Francia para el año 2014-2015 y explicó los motivos: “A Bielsa se le quiere o no. Nosotros lo queremos y nos gusta todo. La heladera, el respeto de los árbitros, el jogging, el café, el café en el jogging, la exigencia hacia los jugadores, la personalidad, la despreocupación del equipo campeón de invierno, todo […] En una palabra, ¡Bielsa no se va!”.[55]

Balance deportivo

            Durante los primeros seis meses de la temporada, el Olympique de Marsella de Marcelo Bielsa practicó el fútbol más bello de Europa e hizo honor al deporte más popular del mundo. El argentino logró demostrar que era posible rivalizar con los más grandes, a pesar de un plantel limitado en cantidad y calidad, adoptando un estilo de juego ofensivo basado en la generosidad, la solidaridad y el espíritu de sacrificio. Gracias a su personalidad y su capacidad de convicción, el rosarino logró infundir una confianza extraordinaria a jugadores que salían de una temporada mediocre, colmando de alegría y orgullo a los hinchas del club.

            A nivel de los resultados, el OM de Bielsa consiguió 21 victorias, 6 empates y sufrió 11 derrotas, con un total de 69 puntos y una clasificación al cuarto puesto. El equipo marcó un total de 76 goles y encajó 42, o sea una diferencia de goles de +34. El Olympique de Marsella no había marcado tantos goles en una temporada desde el año 1971-1972, o sea más de cuarenta años. Incluso durante la época gloriosa de Bernard Tapie, en los años 1990, cuando el club tenía uno de los mejores planteles de Europa y dominaba el campeonato de Francia, el equipo no había alcanzado semejante número de goles. En la historia del Olympique de Marsella, sólo las temporadas 1947-1949 y 1970 y 1972 resultaron más prolíficas.[56]

            A nivel individual, el delantero André-Pierre Gignac terminó la temporada con un total de 21 goles, con sólo dos penales, clasificando segundo detrás de Alexandre Lacazette de Lyon que marcó 27 goles (con ocho penales). Por su parte, el mediocampista Dimitri Payet realizó un total de 16 pases, terminando la temporada como mejor pasador del campeonato. Ambos enfatizaron el aporte decisivo de Marcelo Bielsa en su rendimiento[57].

            No obstante la clasificación final no refleja el rendimiento del Olympique de Marsella de Marcelo Bielsa. Dos factores distorsionaron el campeonato: el arbitraje y la Copa de África de Naciones.

Arbitraje

            Marcelo Bielsa siempre adoptó una actitud respetuosa hacia el cuerpo arbitral, negándose a comentar las decisiones y los eventuales errores de apreciación de éste. Pascal Garibian, director técnico nacional del arbitraje francés, destacó este comportamiento y lo citó como ejemplo: “Es importante que un coach como él transmita el mensaje. Ello permite a los jugadores y a los árbitros estar mucho más serenos y a los jugadores tomar conciencia de que es inútil enfocarse en las decisiones arbitrales, incluso equivocadas”.[58]

No obstante, esta actitud noble hacia el cuerpo arbitral no premunió al Olympique de Marsella contra las decisiones litigiosas. En efecto, el equipo de Marcelo Bielsa fue víctima de al menos nueve errores flagrantes de arbitraje –entre ellos siete contra Lyon y el PSG que terminaron el campeonato respectivamente en el primer y segundo puestos– que costaron sin duda el título de Campeón de Francia a Marcelo Bielsa[59].

Las primeras decisiones discutibles se remontan al 26 de octubre de 2014 y al partido Lyon-Marsella. En el minuto 27 el defensor lionés Henri Bedimo agarró por la cintura a Florian Thauvin en el área de penalti. El penal era evidente. Pero el árbitro no tomó la decisión correcta y siguió el juego. En el minuto 78 Thauvin es otra vez víctima de una falta en la misma zona por parte de Samuel Umtiti. De nuevo el penal era flagrante. Pero el árbitro se negó a rendir justicia. El partido terminó con una victoria de Lyon 1-0 y Marsella perdió injustamente tres puntos cruciales.

El 9 de noviembre de 2014 se celebró la primera confrontación entre el Paris-Saint-Germain y el OM. Mientras que el PSG ganaba 1-0, el árbitro expulsó a Giannelli Imbula, en duelo con un jugador parisino, por una falta inexistente, perjudicando el equipo sureño. Tras el partido Clément Turpin reconoció su error y la Comisión de Disciplina canceló posteriormente la tarjeta roja. No obstante, esta decisión privó al OM de la posibilidad de empatar cuando el rival sólo ganaba por un margen mínimo. El partido terminó finalmente con una victoria 2-0 del PSG.

El 22 de febrero de 2015, el OM se enfrentaba a Saint-Etienne en el estadio Geoffroy Guichard. El equipo de Marcelo Bielsa ganaba 2-1. Mientras que se perfilaba la victoria, en los últimos instantes del partido el jugador marsellés Romain Alessandrini fue atropellado violentamente en su zona de penal por Théofile Catherine durante una fase defensiva. En vez de señalar la falta, el árbitro dejó que siguiera el juego y el rival aprovechó la ocasión para empatar, privando al OM de dos puntos preciosos.

El 15 de marzo de 2015 otra vez el arbitraje se mostró desfavorable a Marsella durante el partido contra Lyon. En el minuto 80, Lucas Ocampos marcó un gol evidente. Pero el árbitro estimó que el balón no pasó la línea mientras que las imágenes televisivas mostraban lo contrario. En el siguiente minuto Benoît Bastien decidió expulsar al defensor marsellés Jérémy Morel por una falta inexistente, como lo ilustró otra vez el video. Al final Marsella empató y perdió a uno de sus mejores defensores para el siguiente partido. Esos dos errores acumulados costaron de nuevo dos puntos al OM.

El 5 de abril de 2015, durante el partido contra el PSG, mientras que el resultado era de 3-2 a favor del club de la capital, el defensor parisino Marquinhos desvió con la mano el tiro de André-Pierre Gignac. La falta era flagrante pero el árbitro se negó a conceder el penal. Al final de partido André Ayew expresó su exasperación por los múltiples errores que perjudican a su equipo: “Estamos hartos de eso”. Ruddy Buquet decidió expulsarlo privando a Marcelo Bielsa de un jugador importante para el próximo encuentro crucial contra Bordeaux. Se le quitó injustamente un punto al OM.

            El siguiente partido contra Bordeaux, el 12 de abril de 2015, sin la presencia de André Ayew, no estuvo exento de errores de arbitraje. Al contrario, se multiplicaron. En el minuto 45, Alessandrini fue víctima de una falta en el área de penal pero el árbitro se negó a tomar la decisión correcta. En el segundo tiempo, un defensor bordelés desvió con el brazo un cabezazo de Gignac. Otra vez el árbitro se negó a sancionar la falta con un penal evidente. El partido terminó con una victoria 1-0 para Bordeaux y privó a Marsella de tres puntos merecidos.

            Según los observadores ningún otro club del pelotón de cabeza sufrió tanto las decisiones arbitrales erróneas durante la temporada 2014-2015. Eric Carrière, antiguo internacional francés y hoy comentarista, señaló los múltiples errores del cuerpo arbitral y destacó la actitud del entrenador marsellés: “Hay que ser digno en la victoria y en la derrota, como Marcelo Bielsa después de Lyon por ejemplo”.[60]

            Incluso el periodista Pierre Ménès, uno de los grandes detractores de Marcelo Bielsa en Francia, se disgustó del arbitraje desfavorable al Olympique de Marsella. “Cada partido o casi sufre de un error de arbitraje […]. Mis respetos a Marcelo Bielsa por su reacción tras el partido [OM-Lyon]. Mucha clase e inteligencia”.[61]

            Así, el equipo de Marcelo Bielsa fue privado de un total de 11 puntos a causa de las decisiones equivocadas del cuerpo arbitral. En vez de terminar la temporada en el cuarto puesto con un total de 69 puntos, Marsella debería haber terminado con 80 puntos en el segundo puesto, con sólo dos puntos menos que el PSG coronado campeón de Francia. Y ello sin tomar en cuenta el impacto negativo de la Copa de África de Naciones.

Copa de África de Naciones

Otro factor perjudicó al Olympique de Marsella en la carrera hacia el título. Con un plantel limitado a causa de las promesas no cumplidas de la presidencia del Club, el equipo fue disminuido considerablemente con la Copa de África de Naciones que privó a Marcelo Bielsa de dos titulares indiscutibles: el mediocampista André Ayew y el defensor Nicolas Nkoulou.

Durante su ausencia, el OM multiplicó los resultados negativos con una derrota en Montpellier 2-1, una derrota en Niza 2-1 y un empate en Rennes 1-1. A ello se agregó la larga ausencia de Nicolas Nkoulou tras una operación en la rodilla izquierda en febrero de 2015, cuando regresó de la CAN. Durante du convalecencia Marsella perdió puntos contra Reims (2-2), Saint-Etienne (2-2), París (2-3) y Bordeaux (1-0). Marcelo Bielsa recordó la importancia de Nkoulou en el dispositivo del OM: “Es un futbolista necesario por la jerarquía individual, por el rendimiento que tuvo durante todos los partidos que jugó. Es uno de los dos o tres mejores rendimientos del equipo. Por supuesto contar con él es una ventaja”.[62]

No cabe la menor duda de que el rendimiento defensivo habría sido mejor si Lucas Mendes no hubiera sido transferido o si uno de los defensores deseados por Marcelo Bielsa (Medel, Rekik, Isla, Jara, Alderweireld…) hubiera integrado el plantel. Del mismo modo, la conservación de Mathieu Valbuena o el fichaje de un jugador ofensivo reclamado por el técnico argentino, habría permitido compensar la ausencia de André Ayew.

Impacto de Marcelo Bielsa sobre las finanzas del club

Marcelo Bielsa, por su filosofía de juego y su personalidad, contribuyó al prestigio del Olympique de Marsella en Francia, Europa y en el mundo. El técnico argentino fue la figura deportiva más mediatizada de Francia. Según un estudio realizado por el gabinete Kantarsport, el rosarino se benefició de una presencia mediática superior a la de Zlatan Ibrahimovic, la estrella del Paris-Saint-Germain.[63]

Bernard Lama, exportero del PSG e internacional francés que ganó el Mundial 1998, evocó la influencia de Marcelo Bielsa, la cual contribuyó ampliamente a extender el renombre del club: “En el OM sólo hay una estrella, es el entrenador. Su personalidad lo aplasta todo”.[64]

Así Marcelo Bielsa, gracias al juego propuesto, atrajo a los canales televisivos como Canal+ y Be in Sport, que difundieron los partidos. Ello le permitió al club conseguir derechos audiovisuales a la altura de 43 millones de euros, estableciendo un récord histórico, mientras que el argentino dirigía un equipo con buenos jugadores pero sin estrellas. Sólo el PSG, con sus innumerables figuras, consiguió más ingresos con 45,5 millones de euros, o sea apenas dos millones más que el OM.[65]

            Además la belleza del juego llenó de felicidad a los hinchas, quienes ocuparon masivamente el estadio Vélodrome. Durante todo el año, casi todos los partidos se jugaron con el estadio lleno, lo que permitió al Olympique de Marsella conseguir ingresos superiores a 30 millones de euros, una suma dos veces superior a la de la temporada anterior.[66] A nivel de comercialización de productos, la buena temporada que realizó Marcelo Bielsa permitió al club prorrogar su alianza con Intersport para el año 2015-2016 con un contrato superior. Jacky Rihouet, Presidente ejecutivo del grupo, aceptó aportar “una contribución más importante”, dado el nuevo prestigio del club.[67]

            Por otra parte el trabajo de Marcelo Bielsa permitió valorar a numerosos elementos del grupo que fueron cedidos a precios importantes, lo que permitió al club conseguir notables plusvalías. Así, Giannelli Imbula vio su valor multiplicarse por tres en el espacio de un año. Dimitri Payet fue cedido por el doble de su precio de adquisición. Ambos fueron vendidos por una suma global cercana a los 40 millones de euros, llenando las cuentas del Olympique de Marsella. Del mismo modo muchos jugadores como Gignac, Ayew, Morel o Fanni, realizaron la mejor temporada de su carrera bajo las órdenes del argentino, lo que les permitió firmar importantes contratos con clubes atraídos por su rendimiento. Otros, como Mario Lemina, integraron prestigiosas instituciones tales como la Juventus de Torino. Todos, tanto el club como los jugadores, tienen una deuda de gratitud hacia el rosarino como lo ilustran los siguientes testimonios.

Testimonios de los jugadores

            Muchos de los jugadores que trabajaron a las órdenes del técnico argentino le rindieron un vibrante homenaje. Todos declararon que Marcelo Bielsa había cambiado su visión del fútbol y les había permitido realizar fulgurantes progresos. Varios de ellos pudieron participar en grandes campeonatos y ser fichados por clubes prestigiosos.

            Florian Thauvin, mediocampista transferido a Inglaterra, expresó su gratitud a Marcelo Bielsa: “Es una persona que me enseñó mucho en el fútbol […]. Confió en mí y me titularizó en cada partido. Me enseñó una cultura diferente. Trabajábamos muchísimo con él y es una cosa que no se hace mucho en Francia. Ahora estoy en otro país y me doy cuenta de ello. Quiero darle las gracias por todo cuanto hizo”.[68]

            Mario Lemina, joven mediocampista, realizó una gran temporada bajo las órdenes del rosarino, al punto de suscitar el interés de la Juventus de Torino, club con el mejor palmarés de Italia, que decidió hacer la adquisición. Lemina reconoció que sin su mentor argentino nunca habría podido aspirar a semejante carrera: “Bielsa me mejoró muchísimo, sobre todo a nivel mental. Me llevó a mis límites y ello me ayuda mucho ahora”.[69] No dejó de expresar su gratitud: “Ser entrenado por Marcelo Bielsa me permitió realizar progresos. Un coach que vive por el fútbol como él es único. Quiero decir gracias mil veces”.[70]

            André-Pierre Gignac, que volvió a la selección francesa gracias a Marcelo Bielsa, es consciente de su influencia: “Lo que viví en un año con Marcelo Bielsa nunca lo había experimentado en mi carrera. Sus métodos, su manera de hablar con nosotros, sus videos. Era muy enriquecedor. Realicé muchos progresos gracias a él e incluso para mí que soy delantero, aprendí mucho en términos de pressing, de reposicionamiento defensivo. También mejoré mucho mi juego de cabeza. Era casi una transformación”.[71]

            Los jóvenes jugadores como Bill Tuiloma fueron los grandes beneficiarios de la llegada de Marcelo Bielsa a Marsella. En efecto, el técnico argentino dispone de la capacidad de sacar lo mejor de cada elemento. El internacional neozelandés, que dio sus primeros pasos en el equipo primero con Bielsa, expresó su gratitud hacia el entrenador: “Marcelo Bielsa organizaba muy buenas sesiones de entrenamiento gracias a las cuales pude mejorar mi juego. Es un coach increíble que conoce muy bien el fútbol. Jugué dos partidos de Liga 1 con él y estoy muy orgulloso de ello. Es un entrenador único en el mundo. No hay dos como él”.[72]

            Gaël Adonian, quien dio también sus primeros pasos con Bielsa, guarda buenos recuerdos de su entrenador: “Hizo cosas buenísimas con el OM. Los hinchas no se han olvidado de él. Bien vemos las banderolas a su efigie. Dejó una buena imagen para el club a nivel del juego. No vaciló en solicitar a los jóvenes y ello siempre es positivo”.[73]

            Michy Batshuayi, joven delantero belga seleccionado para la Eurocopa 2016, también se expresó sobre Marcelo Bielsa. Reconoció haber realizado progresos fulgurantes gracias a él: “El periodo en que más aprendí en mi vida fue el año que pasé con Bielsa. Aprendí a dominar mejor mis carreras. Con Bielsa, aprendí a ser más agresivo, más concentrado y más profesional”.[74]

            Jérémy Morel, defensor lateral, recordó la epopeya marsellesa y tejió elogios a su antiguo entrenador: “Bielsa se atrevió a ponerme en defensa central […]. Producíamos juego y era el éxtasis en la cancha”.[75]

            Giannelli Imbula, mediocampista en Inglaterra, expresó su gratitud hacia el argentino: “¿Bielsa? Es el mejor entrenador que he tenido. Es un entrenador que puede aportar a muchos clubes”.[76]

            El testimonio de Dimitri Payet, cuya progresión con Marcelo Bielsa le permitió convertirse en un elemento clave de la selección francesa, es edificante: “La temporada con Marcelo Bielsa me hizo crecer como hombre y como jugador. Me dio bases importantes que me sirven todavía. Es un entrenador que fue clave para mí”.[77] El jugador es consciente de que superó una etapa: “En una temporada me enseñó muchísimo. Me posicionó como número 10 y me dio la regularidad que me hacía falta. Después de todo eso sólo lo puedo agradecer […]. Gracias a él pienso que he realizado la mejor temporada de mi carrera. Fue la primera vez que se me exigió tanto y que me mostré tan decisivo”.[78] La influencia del entrenador argentino era tan importante que Payet había condicionado su porvenir al de su técnico: “Formo parte de los jugadores que han aprendido mucho con Marcelo Bielsa. Lo que me dio en una temporada sé que me va a servir hasta el final de mi carrera pero también en toda mi vida. Me dio una lección de fútbol y también una lección humana. Humanamente es un personaje fuera de lo común. Cuando trabajas con él eres otra persona, no cabe la menor duda”.[79]

            Tras una temporada 2015-2016 caótica, el defensor central Nicolas Nkoulou no dejó de expresar su nostalgia de Bielsa. Recordó la época en que Marsella proponía un bello espectáculo a toda Europa: “Nos divertíamos mucho. Nos generaba placer. Teníamos mucha seguridad y estábamos acostumbrados a trabajar juntos”.[80]

            Steve Mandanda, capitán emblemático del OM, compartió la nostalgia de su compañero y recordó con orgullo la temporada pasada bajo las órdenes de Marcelo Bielsa: “El partido que más me marcó, quizás porque fue uno de los primeros en el Vélodrome, con un ambiente extraordinario, fue el que jugamos contra Saint-Etienne. Ganamos 2-1 pero en el primer tiempo, jugamos un fútbol magnífico. Durante el primer gol realizamos una acción increíble”.[81]

            El mediocampista Alexis Romao se acuerda de la confianza que insufló el técnico argentino entre los jugadores, lo que les permitía abordar los partidos con mucha ambición. Recordó con nostalgia esa época: “Con Bielsa, cuando entrábamos en la cancha, sabíamos que íbamos a ganar”.[82]

Conclusión

            A pesar de un plantel limitado y no elegido del cual importantes elementos (Valbuena, Lucas Mendes) fueron cedidos durante el mercado sin el consentimiento del entrenador, a pesar de las tensiones inherentes a la falta de lealtad por parte de la dirección del club hacia el técnico con promesas de contratación de jugadores no cumplidas, a pesar de las ausencias debidas a la Copa de África de Naciones no compensadas, a pesar de un arbitraje singularmente desfavorable al Olympique de Marsella, a pesar de las lesiones de jugadores claves, Marcelo Bielsa logró colocar el club en el centro de debate futbolístico gracias al extraordinario juego ofensivo propuesto a todos los amantes de la pelota.

            Conviene plantear algunas preguntas para poner en su justo valor la obra del rosarino a la cabeza del OM. ¿Qué clasificación habría conseguido el equipo si Vincent Labrune hubiera cumplido sus promesas e invertido 35 millones de euros para componer un plantel de 22 jugadores profesionales? ¿Cuál habría sido el rendimiento del grupo si el club hubiera fichado a sólo tres jugadores de la lista de Bielsa? ¿Qué nivel habría alcanzado el plantel en términos de resultados y clasificación si se hubiera beneficiado de un arbitraje normal? Indudablemente, Marcelo Biela habría podido luchar hasta los últimos instantes para el título de campeón de Francia.

            Ningún otro actor del fútbol tocó tanto el corazón de los marselleses, ni Basile Boli que marcó el gol victorioso de la final de Champion’s en 1993, ni Jean-Pierre Papin, elegido Jugador del Siglo, ni Didier Drogba y su fabulosa epopeya en la copa UEFA en 2004. Para entender el fervor que suscitó Marcelo Bielsa, resulta importante considerar su comportamiento basado en un compromiso total con su pasión por el fútbol, una rectitud moral y una ética a toda prueba en un mundo pervertido por el dinero y la hipocresía. Así, más allá de sus innegables competencias profesionales, destacadas por el mundo del fútbol, son su lealtad a los principios, su anticonformismo y sus virtudes humanos los que inspiran el respeto y el cariño de los hinchas.

Salim Lamrani

Eight years after releasing its first report on land grabbing, which put the issue on the international agenda, GRAIN publishes a new dataset documenting nearly 500 cases of land grabbing around the world.

In October 2008, GRAIN published a report called “Seized: the 2008 land grab for food and financial security”. It exposed how a new wave of land grabbing was sweeping the planet in the name of addressing the global food and financial crises.

“On one hand”, we wrote, “‘food insecure’ governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits in the midst of the deepening financial crisis, see investment in foreign farmland as an important new source of revenue.”[1]

In the annex to the 2008 report, we documented more than one hundred cases of these new and emerging land deals that, until then, had been buried in the business sections of newspapers like the Vientiane Times and the Sudan Tribune. Little did we know that by merely pulling the news clips and analysis together, the report would trigger a tsunami of global media attention, social activism and political struggle—not to mention corporate headaches. 

The global farmland grab is far from over. Photo: Friends of the Earth International

Eight years later, we went back to look at the data—the myriad reports of land grabbing for food production that we have been following and assessing. Over the past several years, GRAIN staff and allies in different regions have been tracking media and other information sources on a daily basis and posting reports on land grab developments to the open-publishing platformfarmlandgrab.org. We used this website as the basis for constructing this dataset, which holds 491 land deals covering over 30 million hectares spanning 78 countries.[2] This new research shows that, while some deals have fallen by the wayside, the global farmland grab is far from over. Rather, it is in many ways deepening, expanding to new frontiers and intensifying conflict around the world. We hope this updated dataset will be useful tool for movements, communities, researchers and activists fighting against land grabbing and defending community-based food systems.

Eight years later: overall assessment

The big picture view that we draw from this exercise is disturbing. First of all, the emerging new trend we wrote about in 2008 has continued and become worse. While most countries are not currently experiencing the extreme price hikes in basic foodstuffs that triggered riots from Haiti to Egypt back in 2008, prices remain stubbornly high and access to food is a daily struggle for most people.[3]Today, that situation is compounded by the mounting impacts of climate change. Harvest losses due to extreme weather have become so acute in places like the southern Philippines that farmers are in the streets begging for food and getting killed for it.[4] We now have even more evidence that climate change is caused not just by burning coal and oil for transport and energy, but by the industrial food system itself and the corporate quest for profits that drives its expansion. Indeed, climate change and land grabs are inextricably linked.

Some of the most egregious land deals we witnessed over the past several years have since backfired or failed for different reasons. In 2009, public outrage over the 1.3 million hectare Daewoo project in Madagascar helped bring down the government leading to the suspension of the deal. In 2011, the assassination of Libyan leader Mouamar Gaddafi put an end to his regime’s 100,000-hectare rice project in Mali. Other large-scale deals have been scaled back. In Cameroon, for example, after much protest, the Herakles deal was slashed from 73,000 to 19,843 hectares. Some deals have morphed into less direct forms of land takeover. In Brazil and Argentina, for instance, Chinese companies facing concerns about foreigners grabbing land have tried to work out deals to secure the production from farms rather than purchasing the land themselves. Increasingly, such deals are being labelled “responsible investments”, but they are still, in many ways, land grabs.[5]

While some of the worst land grabs have been shelved or toned down, a number of new deals are appearing, many of which are “hard-core” initiatives to expand the frontiers of industrial agriculture. We say hard-core because these deals are large, long-term and determined to avoid the pitfalls that earlier deals ran into. Much of the Asian-led oil palm expansion in Africa, and the advance of pension funds and trade conglomerates to secure access to new farmlands, fall into this category.[6] Increasingly, gaining access to farmland is part of a broader corporate strategy to profit from carbon markets, mineral resources, water resources, seeds, soil and environmental services.

As land deals rise and fall, policymakers and corporate boards are hard at work trying to facilitate their success. Instead of the wild land rush of before, we now have multiple “frameworks” and “guidelines” on how to conduct these deals while minimising social and environmental costs. All of these new rules are voluntary, however, and do more to obfuscate the problem than to solve it. Many argue that the heightened political attention around land grabbing has helped bring land and agrarian reform back into public debates in parliaments and other legislative fora. But the main objective of regulatory processes is still to formalise land markets and titles, which experience tells us will lead to further concentration of land in the hands of few.[7]

On the positive side, one thing that has changed radically compared to eight years ago is the level of resistance and mobilisation these deals have triggered. People are now more informed and taking action like never before. There are numerous coalitions and campaigns against land grabbing operating at local, national and regional levels. In many places, these struggles are converging, bringing together farmers, migrant groups, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, pastoralists and others. These movements are developing new strategies to challenge corporations and governments and building international solidarity.

Meanwhile, journalists and other media workers have become important allies in getting the word out—often at great peril to their personal safety. As resistance to land grabbing grows, the difficulties and dangers of engaging in this work are intensifying. Activists are detained and imprisoned; journalists are harassed with libel cases and even killed; and peasant and indigenous leaders are routinely murdered. But this challenging, courageous work is crucial if we are to turn the tide of land grabbing and corporate-led agriculture and create a thriving global movement for food justice and food sovereignty.

What exactly does the data tell us?

Our first land grab dataset in 2008 exposed about 100 initiatives, launched by both governments and corporations, many of which were still in an exploratory phase at the time.[8] In 2012, we updated the dataset to reach 400 projects covering 35 million hectares.[9]

The 2016 dataset documents 491 large-scale land grabs taking place over the past decade. The deals cover over 30 million hectares of land in 78 countries. This means that the number of land deals is continuing to grow, but the growth has slowed since 2012. In particular, several of the largest “mega” projects have collapsed, resulting in a decline in the total number of hectares. The problem, however, is not going away.

As with our previous datasets, this is not an exhaustive list of land deals and, as such, is not representative of the full scale of land grabbing around the world. It draws mainly from thefarmlandgrab.org website and accounts for only those deals that:

• were initiated after 2006,
• have not been cancelled,
• are led by foreign investors,
• are for the production of food crops and
• involve large (> 500 hectares) areas of land.

Below are the main conclusions we have gleaned from this new and improved dataset, though we also expect and encourage others to analyse the data for themselves.

Despite many failed deals, the problem is real

The shock of the early years of the global farmland grab has subsided. Gone are news reports of diplomats shuttling in from Gulf countries to sign deals for half a million hectares with poor, agriculture-based countries. Gone are many of the opportunistic businessmen peddling farmland investments in faraway countries to pension fund managers. Gone, too, are a number of companies that signed serious deals for tens or even hundreds of thousands of hectares, with ambitions to become top multinational agribusiness companies.

The Indian-owned Siva Group, for instance, amassed a farmland portfolio of nearly one million hectares for oil palm plantations in only a few years. The company is now facing bankruptcy proceedings in the Seychelles. In another example, Foras, the private sector arm of the Islamic Development Bank—which was on its way to acquiring 700,000 hectares of farmland across Africa for a massive rice project—has vanished. Even Karuturi, whose 300,000-hectare concession in Ethiopia made him a poster child of the new farm owners, now has nothing to show for it. His flower business in Kenya has been liquidated and his Ethiopian farms have been sitting idle for the past two years.

We culled 126 failed deals and placed them in a separate table. The large number of abandoned projects attests to the frenzy that erupted in 2008, much of which eventually backfired. Whether due to incompetence, hubris, inexperience or poor planning, their collapse helps to explain why the growth in farmland deals has slowed since 2012 and why the overall number of hectares has declined.

The food security agenda is still a factor driving farmland deals

On the heels of a global food price crisis, the initial wave of farmland deals was driven largely by “food security” concerns. Much of the media attention on the early negotiations emphasised the geopolitics with images of wealthy sheiks taking over the lands of poor and hungry peasants in Mali or Pakistan in order to export food back to their home countries. Our new database complicates this early view somewhat, as a number of today’s land grabs involving companies from China, Japan or the Gulf states have little to do with the food security agendas of their home governments.

The quest for food security has not, however, disappeared completely from the land grabbing story. Despite early difficulties, Gulf governments are still promoting overseas farming and building or buying farms abroad. Hassad Food, for instance—the agribusiness arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and one of the pioneering Gulf firms in overseas farming—is even starting to worry about competition for available farmland.[10] Anyone who doubts the seriousness of the Gulf companies should watch the latest video put out by UAE-based Jenaan Investment on its new farm in Sudan—which is gigantic, high tech and fully operational.[11]

China, Japan and South Korea have also maintained official policies on overseas farming as part of their food security agendas. This mainly translates into support for their national corporations, which are not only acquiring lands overseas for farming but, just as importantly, securing control over trading routes to ship commodities back home and compete with the big Western multinationals on global markets. Africa remains a small, albeit important, part of food security-driven land grabbing, though these companies are currently focused on more accessible areas like Brazil and Australia.

Agribusiness expansion is the main objective

While the food security hype has died down, plain old profit-driven agribusiness expansion is now the dominant agenda. The new database provides a stark picture of this, with companies integrating their operations both vertically and horizontally. Food corporations like China’s COFCO are expanding by getting more deeply engaged in farming itself. In addition, more companies are getting into agribusiness and more finance is flowing in. Geographically, plantations are expanding into new territories.

Oil palm plantations alone are responsible for a large portion of land grabs in the food and agriculture sector in the last few years. Much of this expansion is led by Asian conglomerates like Wilmar, Olam and Sime Darby, which are carving out massive chunks of territory in Africa, as well as Latin America, East Asia and the Pacific. Governments play a key role here. They are building infrastructure, revising regulations and entering into new “public-private partnerships” that facilitate private sector investment in agriculture, including farmland acquisitions. They are also signing new trade and investment agreements and aid packages aimed at facilitating the expansion of agribusiness.

The financial sector is a big player

Several of the early players from the financial sector have by now vanished, and others have fallen extremely short of their initial projections. The New York-based hedge fund Galtere is a good example. In 2010 it announced it was setting up a US$1 billion farmland fund. Galtere bought a couple of farms in Brazil and then dropped off the map.

But new players from the financial sector are popping up all the time. Most have their sights on profiting from the real heavy weights among institutional investors: pension funds. The last few years have seen a spectacular rise in farmland investments by pension funds.[12] In 2008, only a few pension funds were investing in farmland. By 2012, several more were showing interest. Today the number has ballooned. Pension funds are the source of much of the capital behind companies buying farmland globally. Some, such as the US-based TIAA-CREF, are even running their own farming operations.

Another key set of players from the financial sector is the development finance institutions (DFIs), the for-profit cousins of national development aid agencies. Farmland companies still have a hard time raising funds from the private sector, as farmland is viewed as a risky investment, so they turn to DFIs—many of which have adopted “agribusiness investment” as their main vision for agricultural development. Without the involvement of these agencies, which are investing in land grabs using taxpayer money, there would be significantly fewer deals in our database.

Offshore and illicit finance underpin these deals

Offshore structures and illicit financial flows play an important role in today’s farmland grab. Had we listed the origin of the foreign investors according to where they are registered, tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Singapore would rank as top land grabber countries! Nearly all the companies grabbing land in Mozambique, for instance, are registered in Mauritius. While they may be legal, such offshore structures can conceal corruption, hide the true owners and allow companies to avoid paying taxes.

Communities and organisations on the ground are often the first to notice that companies acquiring farmland are not much interested in agriculture and appear to have been set up for entirely different purposes—such as money laundering, tax evasion or to con people out of their savings. For example, African Land Limited of the UK, which ran a scheme to sell farmland in Sierra Leone, was found guilty of misleading investors. Local farmers and pastoralists in Senegal have long suspected the company Senhuile of money laundering.[13] The Kenya Revenue Authority for years pursued Karuturi, one of the largest farmland investors in Ethiopia, for transfer pricing in its flower operations there.[14] Unsurprisingly, several farmland investors are found in the Panama Papers, such as Russian billionaire Rashid Sardarov who bought large tracts of land in Namibia.[15]

Proving the link between farmland investment and corruption or criminality is not easy, of course.[16] In Colombia, the government’s own Court of Audits estimates that drug traffickers owned nearly half of the country’s farmland.[17] In Romania, the courts have chased numerous investors for tax evasion and money laundering. More recently, several deals entered into by Dutch Rabobank in Romania were investigated for forgery and fraud. The French government even has its eyes on hot money coming into the country’s wine industry. Seeing land grabbers put behind bars, however, is a rare occurrence.

With offshore and illicit finance so tightly connected to farmland investing, we are increasingly led to the conclusion that “due diligence” is a farce—it is easy to claim, but often proves hollow. In Cambodia, the Thai sugar giant Mitr Phol persistently boated about its standards of excellence, all the while being accused of illegally confiscating thousands of hectares from rural communities. In 2015, the company finally withdrew from its plantations and the EU and Cambodian governments are now trying to audit the concessions. In Peru, the Czech-led Plantaciones de Pucallpa—member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Soy, which requires due diligence of its members—was linked to massive deforestation and human rights abuses and finally ordered to cease operations.[18] Just in the past year, Rabobank and TIAA-CREF, perhaps the most esteemed and supposedly responsible farmland investors in the world, were exposed for land grabbing. Despite their lofty claims of due diligence, both Rabobank and TIAA-CREF were found to be buying lands from crooked businessmen known for using fraud and corruption to amass lands in Romania and Brazil, respectively.

Narrower geography

The geographic scope of foreign investment in farmland has narrowed in the new database. Only a few deals have gone forward in some of the major initial targets such as Mali, Senegal, South Sudan, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Argentina. In Latin America, companies very active a few years ago in multi-country land deals such as El Tejar, Calyx Agro (Louis Dreyfus) and Cresud struggled to achieve profitability and eventually pulled out. Attention has now turned to countries where agribusiness is already established and the legal environment favours foreign investors and exports (e.g. Australia) and countries where the export infrastructure is being built and large areas of land can be cheaply obtained (e.g. Mozambique). As a result, there is less farmland investment buzz in Asia and the Americas in the current database, while the prominent regions are Africa, Eastern Europe and the Pacific.

There are also overtones of a colonial carve-up in the creation of these new frontiers as certain countries favour investments in specific regions. Japanese companies, backed by their government, are focusing on northern Brazil and Mozambique for soy production. Chinese companies are aggressively buying farmland in New Zealand and Australian, as well as Russia’s far east. Russia’s western farmland is a favourite destination of European companies, as are Romania and the Ukraine. Indian companies are keen on Ethiopia. French and Portuguese companies favour their former colonies in Africa. (US and UK companies, however, are pretty much everywhere.)

Farmland grabs are also water grabs

The global farmland grab remains as much about water as it is about land.[19] With a few exceptions, land deals in the database include access to water. In many of the cases for which we have been able to see the legal agreements—as in Mali, Senegal and Cameroon—rights to water and access to water are explicitly guaranteed in the text. This does not mean that land deals only occur where water is abundant, however. A frightening number of water guzzling operations are being erected in water conflict zones (e.g. along the Nile), upstream from water dependent communities (e.g. the Lurio River project in Mozambique) or on top of non-renewable underground reserves (e.g. Sudan). When drought hits, as it did in much of Asia and Africa in the first half of 2016, communities living next to these plantations see their access to water evaporate. This is what is currently happening in communities living next to the new sugarcane plantations in Cambodia and Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley.

The data we have today shows how far and how fast agribusiness is expanding. It also highlights how inefficient these investments are in the sense of how little they do to resolve rural poverty or make a dent in global hunger. But most importantly, it shows the tremendous resistance growing to counteract these deals. In case after case, we see staunch opposition to these investments from local communities and the organisations that support them. The resistance stems from conflicting claims over land and territories and arises as companies tear down forests, dig up burial sites, fence off pastoral zones and pollute the air and water. It grows as security forces clash with communities and as lawyers harass civil society, activists and journalists. It often becomes fatal and leaves people traumatised. The pressure behind these deals is intense and the stakes are very high for all involved.

Groups around the world have launched campaigns to stop the financing of land grabs at the source, whether from the World Bank, European governments, pension funds or shareholders in major corporations. Some of these efforts have been successful at stopping loans (e.g. to Calyx Agro in Latin America) or in making the case for divestment (e.g. Ecoenergy in Tanzania), while others are still trying to influence the halls of power (e.g. the governments invested in Feronia in the DRC). Some groups focus on legal work, whether it’s challenging land grabbers in court (e.g. Wilmar) or creating public political space (e.g. through African churches or parliaments) to rewrite rules in favour of communities and get them enforced. This kind of work is gaining momentum from Ethiopia to Sierra Leone as activists learn to tap into legal resources and support groups and use crowdfunding tools to raise awareness and support for jailed community leaders and their families.

Resistance is also growing as barriers between different frontline struggles are breaking down. In Senegal, for example, farmers’ organisations are supporting pastoralists who are the first affected by certain projects. In Mali, urban groups displaced by industrial development projects are now the first to travel to rural areas to help farmers defend their lands. Similarly, communities in different countries where the same corporation is taking control of land (e.g. Dominion Farm), are getting together to learn from and support each other, sometimes through well structured alliances (e.g. around Socfin/Bolloré). People are also engaging in more cross-sector struggles, for example creating solidarity between those fighting biofuel initiatives and those fighting mining projects.

Resistance against land grabs is at the forefront of many of today’s struggles for social, political and economic transformation, putting corporations and governments colluding complicit with land grabbing on the defensive. This makes it all the more critical to avoid traps like that of “responsible investment”. We have to keep the focus on reversing the expansion of agribusiness—stopping the problem at its root. As this new research shows, the global farmland grab is massive and it is extending its reach to new frontiers. We must redouble our resistance efforts to ensure that more lands can stay under the control of food producing communities.

Note: Translation of this report and accompanying datasets into French and Spanish is currently underway.

Going further

PDF:

Click here to download this report as a pdf

Click here to download Annexe 1. Land deals 2016 (the complete list of current land deals) in pdf format

Click here to download Annexe 2. Discarded land deals 2016 (list of deals that were discarded from the main dataset because they were sold, cancelled or had insufficient recent information) in pdf format

XLS:

Click here to download the main dataset of current land deals as an excel spreadhseet

Click here to download the dataset of discarded deals as an excel spreadsheet

*For full references, please contact [email protected]

Notes:

Sometimes all it takes is a single visual to drive home the point. For Israel’s most read newspaper, visuals have become a way to race-bait and incite against Muslims, and specifically against Israel’s Arab population.

On Monday morning, pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom published a photo montage comparing Omar Mateen, the American citizen whomurdered 50 people at an Orlando gay club on Sunday, and Neshat Melhem, who murdered three Israelis in a shooting spree in Tel Aviv on New Year’s day. Above the side-by-side mugshots of the two killers, the editors of the paper decided to print the words: “A chilling similarity.”

The background: Israel Hayom is owned by far-right American casino mogul and Republican bankroller Sheldon Adelson. The paper, which is handed out for free, was created by Adelson as a platform for Netanyahu’s politics, all while circumventing Israel’s extremely strict campaign finance laws. He finances the paper reportedly at a considerable loss, selling ad space significantly below market value to put his competitors at a disadvantage. The paper, now the country’s most widely read, has dramatically upended Israel’s media landscape, and is considered just one of the ways Netanyahu, who also serves as the country’s communications minister, is able to maintain control over the public discourse.

The reason: Mateen and Melhem both wear glasses, and their heads are shaved. Oh, and they are both Muslims who have committed acts of terrorism and murdered innocents. And because it is not convenient to mention the more obvious parallel — between Mateen and Yishai Schlissel, who attacked the Jerusalem Pride Parade in June 2015 and murdered a teenage girl with a knife. Their crimes are far more similar; the only significant difference being that Schlissel was not able to use an assault rifle to inflict mass damage in the crowded parade. Mateen, on the other had, had little difficulty purchasing his weapons in Florida.

The context: The photos were used to illustrate an article by Israel Hayom columnist Boaz Bismuth — known for his ties to Sheldon Adelson and support for Donald Trump — who writes about the Orlando attack as proof that Obama cannot contend with Islamic terrorism let alone recognize it. The schadenfreude is hard to miss:

Bismuth’s refers to Israel only in passing when he writes about last week’s attack by Palestinian gunmen, which left four Israelis dead in a central Tel Aviv restaurant:

According to Bismuth, Israel and the United States are fighting a common enemy. The only difference is that unlike “Obama’s America,” Israel is not bogged down by nuisances such as political correctness. Unlike our liberal friends in the United States, we have no issues with speaking openly about the problem, and know exactly what it takes to deal with it.

And finally, the image: The decision to publish Melhem’s photo alongside Mateen’s amounts to race-baiting and incitement of the worst kind against a fifth of Israel’s population. As The Seventh Eye’s Shuki Taussig put it, the subtext of the photo isn’t difficult to parse: “The Arabs are murderers, and they live among us.” Apparently the author of the article missed that message, though, because the text never actually mentions Melhem’s Tel Aviv attack at all.

And there’s a reason Bismuth didn’t make the comparison himself. Nearly 100 percent of terrorist attacks in Israel are not carried out by Palestinian citizens, Muslim or otherwise. Over the course of 68 years, terror attacks by Palestinian citizens, or even cases in which they were an accomplice, have been exceedingly rare. Melhem, from the northern village Ar’ara, was known to have a troubled mental history and has sparked no copycat attacks among Israeli citizens. His actions were horrific and deadly, but were shocking mainly as anexception to overwhelming majority of Israel’s Arab citizens.

The photo montage is an accurate depiction of Israel Hayom‘s patron’s worldview. If Netanyahu believes that Israel is besieged by predatory beasts from both within and outside, then there is certainly no reason his newspaper to take a different editorial line. Unfortunately the decision won’t likely cause a ripple outside limited media and political circles, while many Israel Hayom readers, and perhaps even most Israelis, will simply view it as ordinary, normal — and self-evident. The lack of desire to think critically and embrace immutable, almost divine truths is on full display, courtesy of Israel’s prime minister and his foreign backer.

For additional original analysis and breaking news, visit +972 Magazine’s Facebook page or follow us on Twitter. Our newsletter features a comprehensive round-up of the week’s events. Sign up here.

Kurdish fighters allegedly backed by the US, have crossed the Euphrates River in Syria and have moved against fighters from the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) holding the city of Manbij. The city is about 20 miles from Jarabulus, another Syrian city located right on the Syrian-Turkish border. Jarabulus too is held by ISIS.

The initial push toward Manbij came from the Tishrin Dam in the south, however, another front was opened up and is hooking around the city’s north – successfully cutting off the city and its ISIS defenders from roads leading to the Turkish border – including Route 216 running between Manbij and Jarabulus.

Planning an assault on an urban center requires that an attacking force cut off city defenders from their logistical routes. Doing so prevents the enemy from fleeing and regrouping, but also diminishes the enemy’s fighting capacity during the assault. It is clear that the fighters moving in on ISIS in Manbij have determined that Jarabulus and Turkey just beyond the border, constitutes the source of ISIS’ fighting capacity.

Western Media Admits ISIS Entering Syria From Turkey 

Jarabulus is increasingly being referred to across the Western media as the “last ISIS border-crossing point into Turkey.” A 2015 article written by the Guardian’s Jonathan Steele titled, “The Syrian Kurds Are Winning!,” would explain that (emphasis added):

In July of this year the YPG, again with the aid of US airpower, drove ISIS out of Tal Abyad, another town on the border with Turkey. This meant ISIS had lost two of the three crossing points from Turkey through which it could bring foreign volunteers, finance, and weaponry to strengthen the jihad. 

Idriss Nassan, the Kurdish spokesperson of the Kobanî canton, told me that the YPG now plans to liberate the last ISIS border-crossing point into Turkey at the town of Jarabulus.

Steeles’ article gives the impression that the US was actually trying to stop ISIS by helping the Kurds wage war inside of Syria. However Steele, for whatever reason, never addresses his own implications that ISIS is literally being reinforced from Turkey – a NATO-member since the 1950’s which hosts a US Air Force base at Incirlik, and who has allowed US, British, French, and Persian Gulf state intelligence agencies and special forces to operate along its border with Syria with impunity since the conflict began.

More recently, in a Washington Times article titled, “Turkey offers joint ops with U.S. forces in Syria, wants Kurds cut out,” it would quote the Turkish Foreign Minister himself admitting (emphasis added):

Joint operations between Washington and Ankara in Manbji, a well-known waypoint for Islamic State fighters, weapons and equipment coming from Turkey bound for Raqqa, would effectively open “a second front” in the ongoing fight to drive the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from Syria’s borders, [Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu] said.

The Foreign Minister of Turkey admits that ISIS forces – fighters, weapons, and equipment – are pouring out of Turkey’s own territory “bound for Raqqa,” but never explains how the most notorious terrorist organization of the 21st century could move enough men and materiel through a NATO-member state to wage an entire war with, without being stopped before reaching Syria. Also not explained is where ISIS is procuring the weapons that it is moving through Turkey.

It is a reality that directly and damningly implicates Turkey and its allies as state sponsors of terrorism, and calls into question both the legitimacy and relevance of NATO itself. At the very least – NATO is exposed as a military alliance so impotent that it cannot even secure its own territory from being used as a springboard for full-scale ISIS military operations.

US-NATO Harbored, Protected ISIS for Years 

It should be noted that as a “collective act” by NATO, at one point in the conflict, the United States and Germany would even place Patriot missile systems along the Turkish-Syrian border to discourage Syrian aviation from approaching too close – a strategic reality that did not shift until Russia began its own direct military intervention in the conflict on Damascus’ behalf, as Defense News reported at the time.

In retrospect – it appears that both the US and Turkey were complicit in ensuring Syrian efforts to interdict terrorists including ISIS were ineffective – establishing what was essentially a defacto buffer zone inhabited by among other groups – Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front and ISIS itself.

Russia’s entry into the war and its subsequent operations directly along the Syrian-Turkish border disrupted ISIS’ logistical support from NATO-territory and has been the primary factor leading to ISIS’ weakening within Syria.

Time is Up for the West’s Narrative 

With the Western media itself now admitting ISIS is crossing into Syria from Turkey – even without explaining the obvious context and implications this has for both Turkey and NATO  – it will become quickly apparent to all that more should be done by Turkey and NATO to contain ISIS within Turkey itself, rather than beyond Turkey’s border with Syria.

For the United States in particular to have substantial military assets located in Turkey for its Syrian operations, but appear oblivious to the ISIS threat passing by its own troops, intelligence officers, and military trainers and advisers, will become an act even the most naive Americans and Europeans will find difficult to believe.

In the meantime, efforts to continue securing Syria’s borders, north and south, must be made in order to confront the West’s proxies on the battlefield. Meanwhile, across information space, efforts must be made to continue raising awareness that a war fought by fighters moving from one country into another is not a “civil war,” it is a foreign invasion – and those nations participating in it along the invaded nation’s borders must be held accountable.

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

NATO prepares a veritable military buildup in Eastern Europe: German soldiers are operating in Lithuania, the British take over Estonia, and US soldiers move in to protect Latvia. The Canadians will be in Poland. Also in the Mediterranean, combat units are being increased. Russia perceives the activity as a threat, but hasn’t yet announced any countermeasures.

At the NATO summit during July 8th-9th in Warsaw, the Alliance will adopt a massive military presence along Russia’s border. Russia is classified by NATO as a threat. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently said in Washington that the US and the EU have the right in the form of NATO to defend its territories on foreign soil. Critics of this strategy believe that it’s possible this upgrade will increase significantly the danger of a conflict between the superpowers. Wednesday in Brussels, the defense ministers want the military alliance to take decisions which will then be sealed by the leaders in Poland. NATO wants to strengthen its military presence on its eastern borders significantly, and to position foreign combat troops battalions in Poland and the three Baltic states. Germany is the core of the Association in Lithuania, the British in Estonia, and the United States is expected to be that in Latvia. What remains unclear, however, is who will be sending troops to Poland.

Maybe Canada will take on this task, it was last reported from Polish diplomatic sources as quoted by Reuters. “’The summit in Warsaw will be President Obama’s last (NATO summit) and the U.S. wants it to be a success. It will ensure that the fourth framework country is found, possibly by leaning on Canada,’ the source said. ‘Washington will bend over backwards here.’”

Germany wants to send at least 600 soldiers to Lithuania, which will constitute the core of the local battalion there with about 1,200 soldiers.

The battalions are to include around 1,000 soldiers each, and are not permanently stationed in the eastern countries, but replaced regularly. By means of this rotation, the military alliance wants to avoid a formal breach of the NATO-Russia Founding Act 1997, which prohibits the permanent stationing of a “substantial” number of combat troops in the east. What specifically “substantial” means, however, is controversial. [In other words: Obama wants to be more aggressive than the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 might allow; he wants to violate the treaty in such a way that he’ll be able to say he’s not really breaking the treaty.]

Poland and the Baltic countries want to push NATO to be even more aggressive. They demand among other things, increased aerial surveillance by fighter jets of the alliance partners on the Baltic. Poland had in the past also repeatedly demanded the permanent stationing of NATO combat troops [which would clearly violate the NATO-Russia Founding Act]. The Baltic States and Poland have been feeling threatened since Russia’s March 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

NATO defense ministers will also discuss a new mission in the Mediterranean. What exactly is planned there, is difficult to judge. Officially the rise of extremist ISIS militias and the refugee crisis are given as reasons for that expansion of NATO. ISIS is financed and otherwise supported by Saudi Arabia, the closest ally of the West in the Middle East. A good reason why NATO, the most powerful fighting force in all of the world’s military, have not coped with that group of more or less random ragtag mercenaries, is not known. Russia is fighting on the side of Syria against ISIS and against previously officially the US-backed al-Nusra Front [Al Qaeda in Syria — the Syrian affiliate of the group that did 9/11].

The NATO alliance is looking for a new combat mission in the Mediterranean, as the 11 September 2001 NATO response “Active Endeavor” patrolling the Mediterranean to stop terrorists there, has actually become obsolete. The ministers therefore want to consider whether the mission should be transformed into a more general one to strengthen security in the Mediterranean. Also being considered is to transform that mission to a closer cooperation with the European Union, which maintains its own naval deployment off the Libyan coast against human traffickers and the rescue of refugees in distress under the name “Sophia”. At dinner on Tuesday therefore also the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and government representatives from the non-NATO countries Finland and Sweden will also be in NATO headquarters.

The agenda on Wednesday also includes the future of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. According to current plans, the US wants to reduce the number of its troops in Afghanistan from its current 9800 to 5500. Whether Obama will hold to that objective despite the poor security situation in Afghanistan isn’t yet clear.

As with most mass shooting cases in the United States, initial news reports are sensational and uninformative, focusing mainly on the number of dead and wounded.  There is also an emphasis on the criminal’s use of unattractive firearms, usually AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, generally obtained legally. 

After a time, embarrassing facts start to trickle out, usually tied to prior official knowledge of the shooter’s dubious background along with statements from long-time friends, relatives, and acquaintances, noting that the person was always known to be mentally unbalanced.

The Orlando, Florida killings follow this pattern–but with a great difference.  The actor’s father, Seddique Mateen, according to the Washington Post, praised the Taliban, saying “Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in [the] Taliban movement and the national Afghan Taliban are rising up.”   The elder Mateen was also a candidate for president of Afghanistan.

Omar Mateen, the shooter, had earlier been under investigation by the FBI for ties to Moner Abusalha, an American suicide bomber in Syria.

Omar was an armed security guard at a firm, G4S, founded in Denmark at the beginning of the last century.  A major company supplying, inter alia, guard services, risk consulting, and investigations worldwide, it bought Wackenhut Corp., a similar purveyor of investigations and security services, in 2010.  G4S unsurprisingly, has offices in Crystal City in Arlington, Va., a Washington, D.C. suburb known for its ties to the U.S. armed forces and intelligence services.

Wackenhut, begun by George R. Wackenhut, a former FBI official, in 1954, has long had ties to the American armed forces and intelligence services.  Some of these include one-time FBI Director Clarence Kelley, past Defense Secretary and CIA Deputy Director Frank Carlucci, previous Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Joseph Carroll, and Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, former Director of the National Security Agency and Deputy Director of the CIA.  William J. Casey, before becoming Director of Central Intelligence, was outside legal counsel to Wackenhut Corp.

Terrorism expert and CIA analyst William Corbett noted that Wackenhut had been closely connected to the CIA and other intelligence organizations.  According to Corbett, the company would allow the CIA to place “non-official cover” officers (i.e., intelligence officials posing as legitimate businessmen) in the firm to conduct clandestine activity.

Wackenhut was involved in Iran-Contra in Central America in the 1980s, producing and supplying explosives to the Contras in Nicaragua (through the Cabazon Indian Reservation in California).

Still other odd facts are emerging.  NBC noted that Omar Mateen (whose wife had divorced him for physical abuse and mental health issues)  had traveled several times to Saudi Arabia for umrah, essentially the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca outside Dhu al-Hijja (the last month of the Islamic year).  CNN claimed that a U.S. official stated Mateen had also traveled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) about the same time as the Saudi trips.

Saudi Arabia, known for its exceedingly conservative brand of Islam, Wahhabism, is the paymaster for much of the ISIL/ISIS/IS activity in the Arab world.  Whether the Kingdom is somehow involved with the Orlando events is yet unclear.  The UAE, which helped finance the Yugoslavia war in the 1990s, has long served as a safe haven for elements practicing and supporting terrorism in Iraq.  Again, as with Saudi Arabia, whether the Emirates were connected to the murders in Florida is unknown.  As yet, there is still a dearth of hard, provable facts, not unusual in the increasing series of mass shootings in the United States.

The press, in North America and elsewhere, should start  asking hard questions as to what is really happening and why.  Repeated media hand-wringing and blaming firearms makers do not help our understanding of current events, alleged terrorism, or government obfuscation.

The attack on a gay club in Orlando in which 50 people were killed and more than 50 wounded — now the largest mass shooting in U.S. history — demonstrates how potential threats are escaping the FBI’s vast counterterrorism dragnet.

While it’s unclear whether gunman Omar Mateen’s inspiration was hatred of gays, the Islamic State, or something else, attackers like him are the intended targets of the FBI’s post-9/11 prevention program. Federal law enforcement’s top priority today is to stop the attacker of tomorrow.

A month since the May 2016 polls, the electoral battle rages on in many provinces and cities.

MANILA, Philippines – It has been a month since the May 2016 elections, but the fight is not yet over in many provinces and cities.

At least 42 election protest cases (EPC) in connection with local polls have been filed before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) as of Friday, June 10.

These were filed against 6 provincial governors, 3 vice governors, the regional governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), 21 city mayors, and 4 city vice mayors. One protest questioned the results for a seat in the Antique provincial board, while 7 cases involved city council elections.

One electoral protest contested the victories of both the governor and vice governor of Sulu.

In Metro Manila, losing mayoralty candidates in the cities of Manila, Caloocan, Makati, Muntinlupa, and San Juan filed electoral protests against the proclaimed mayors.

Elsewhere, Cebu City mayor-elect Tomas Osmeña is likewise facing an electoral protest filed by his closest rival Michael Rama. In Cagayan de Oro City, reelected Mayor Oscar Moreno’s qualification to assume office is questioned by Vicente Emano.

The narrowest vote margin involved in these protests was in the South Cotabato vice gubernatorial election. Independent candidate Bernie Palencia lost by only 144 votes (or 0.35%) against Vic de Jesus of the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC).

Other protests with vote margins less than 5% in the official election results were:

• Mayor, Manila – Alfredo Lim (38.17%) vs Joseph Ejercito Estrada (38.54%)
• Mayor, Marawi City, Lanao del Sur – Omar Ali (49.66%) vs Majul Gandamra (50.28%)
• Mayor, San Jose del Monte City, Bulacan – Reynaldo San Pedro (49.26%) vs Arturo Robes (50.15%)
• Mayor, San Juan City – Francis Javier Zamora (48.91%) vs Guia Gomez (51.08%)
• Mayor, Cabuyao City, Laguna – Julio Alcasabas (31.57%) vs Rommel Gecolea (34.28%)
• Vice Governor, Tarlac – Pearl Angel Pacada (37.63%) vs Carlito David (41.04%)
• Governor, Cagayan – Cristina Antonio (34.68%) vs Manuel Mamba (38.20%)

Click the icons on the map below for details on each of the 42 EPCs filed before the Comelec as of June 10, 2016.

Due to devastating environmental factors North Cotabato declared their province under a state of calamity on January 20, 2016.  This took place while Cabanatuan City, Zamboanga City and Oriental Mindoro had declared their state of calamity earlier.

There was no rice and there was no food.

Thousands of North Cotabato peasants marched to the capital at Kidapawan City at the end of the month of March to push for the release of the calamity funds from the provincial government. The farmer protesters were members of the national confederation of farmers organizations in the Philippines known as the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP; Movement of Peasants in the Philippines).

At the third day of protest (April 1 2016), a composite team of police and military forces sprayed bullets to the protesting farmers that immediately killed two and wounded a hundred others of the poor and hungry farmers.

The protest was violently dispersed thereafter.

While only a count of two deaths were reported, many were injured and  70 protesting citizens were illegally detained. Trumped up charges on assault against the police were charged against the 70 that included pregnant women and senior citizens as old as 78 years. They were eventually release on bail at P12,000.00.

The detained farmers appealed to lower bail at P2,000.00.  They got their appeal approved at P6,000.00.  However, because these are poor and hungry farmers facing economic hardship, the problem remains to be how to raise the amount needed by them to pay their bail money.  To resolve the issue, friends and various sympathetic organizations raised the amount to pay bail.

When the exact amount was raised, another issue was raised by authorities. This time about authorities demanded identification documents from the poor farmers who do not have identification cards, including PhilHealth cards and other documents necessary to comply with the government requirements for release order, because they cannot afford the costs that are demanded by officials for these IDs.

None of this is new to the Philippines, and so the fight of the farmers in North Cotabato and elsewhere continues.

Prof. Phoebe Sanchez is a sociologist, professor, and life-long community activists in the Philippines.

Due to devastating environmental factors North Cotabato declared their province under a state of calamity on January 20, 2016.  This took place while Cabanatuan City, Zamboanga City and Oriental Mindoro had declared their state of calamity earlier.

There was no rice and there was no food.

Thousands of North Cotabato peasants marched to the capital at Kidapawan City at the end of the month of March to push for the release of the calamity funds from the provincial government. The farmer protesters were members of the national confederation of farmers organizations in the Philippines known as the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP; Movement of Peasants in the Philippines).

At the third day of protest (April 1 2016), a composite team of police and military forces sprayed bullets to the protesting farmers that immediately killed two and wounded a hundred others of the poor and hungry farmers.

The protest was violently dispersed thereafter.

While only a count of two deaths were reported, many were injured and  70 protesting citizens were illegally detained. Trumped up charges on assault against the police were charged against the 70 that included pregnant women and senior citizens as old as 78 years. They were eventually release on bail at P12,000.00.

The detained farmers appealed to lower bail at P2,000.00.  They got their appeal approved at P6,000.00.  However, because these are poor and hungry farmers facing economic hardship, the problem remains to be how to raise the amount needed by them to pay their bail money.  To resolve the issue, friends and various sympathetic organizations raised the amount to pay bail.

When the exact amount was raised, another issue was raised by authorities. This time about authorities demanded identification documents from the poor farmers who do not have identification cards, including PhilHealth cards and other documents necessary to comply with the government requirements for release order, because they cannot afford the costs that are demanded by officials for these IDs.

None of this is new to the Philippines, and so the fight of the farmers in North Cotabato and elsewhere continues.

Prof. Phoebe Sanchez is a sociologist, professor, and life-long community activists in the Philippines.

Global Research Publishers has launched the print version of Professor Tim Anderson’s essential book on Syria. 

This important and timely book is available for pre-order now

Reviews:

Tim Anderson  has written the best systematic critique of western fabrications justifying the war against the Assad government. 

Orlando Shootings: Terrorism or False Flag?

By Stephen Lendman, June 13 2016

It’s too soon to know whether Sunday’s Orlando incident was terrorism or false flag deception.  Yet it has distinct earmarks of the latter, likely the latest example of domestic state terror, another fear-mongering pretext for out-of-control militarism, endless wars of…

US Law Enforcement Knew Florida Gay Club Shooter BEFORE Shooting

By Tony Cartalucci, June 13 2016

If this sounds like a familiar narrative, that’s because virtually every high-profile “terrorist attack” carried out in North America and Europe in recent years has been done so by suspects long under investigation by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The 2015 Ciccolo Affair: Another “Terror” Arrest; Another Mentally Ill Man, Armed by the FBI

By Dan Froomkin, June 13 2016

This 2015 report by The Intercept sheds light on FBI procedures pertaining to the recent shootings in Orlando, Florida: U.S. law enforcement officials announced another terror arrest on Monday, after arming a mentally ill man and then…

How America’s Mass Shooters Now Use Weapons of War

By Mark Follman, June 13 2016

America is in a fog of grief, anxiety, and rising partisan rancor as the nation comes to grips with the deadliest mass shooting in its history. But when it comes to the most basic question of how the massacre took…

False Flag Terrorism and Class Struggle: From Paris to Abidjan

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin, June 13 2016

As the Euro championship games draw thousands of supporters to the French capital, social tensions remain high as workers continue to take to the streets in protest against the Government’s proposed reforms of labour laws. The entire French nation is…

What is a Conspiracy Theory? What is the Truth?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 12 2016

A good versus evil dichotomy prevails. We must go after the bad guys. War is peace. The ‘big lie’ has now becomes the truth … and the truth has become a ‘conspiracy theory’. Those who are committed to the Truth are categorized as “Terrorists”.

The launching of the European missile defense system (Aegis) by the United States in May has repeatedly been criticized by Russia as an attempt by the US to take away first mover advantage in the event that the US ever decided to attack.

While Russia has already indicated that the deployment of of Iskander missile systems would be one certain response to neutralize the the anti-ballistic missile defense system, Russia has wasted no time in developing future responses.

Russia’s new Yu-74 ultra-maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicles may be the next response that will be unveiled. Russia has been developing hypersonic weapons during the past few years, and as Sputnik reports, those weapons would have a speed between 3,840 mph (Mach 5), and 7,680 mph (Mach 10). The system uses sophisticated technologies for maneuvering against a wide range of missile defense systems, and allows precise and rapid delivery of warheads.

Although the system specifications are top secret, reports say that the gliders are developed to be loaded onto onto Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat, the state of the art heavy liquid propelled ICBM which is currently being developed for the Russian Army. The RS-28, which has been given the codename “Satan” by NATO, has been in development since 2009 and is alleged to render all current missile defense systems obsolete.

Designed to carry up to 24 nuclear-loaded Yu-74 gliders, each Sarmat ballistic missile will be able to hit any target located within a 6.2 thousand mile radius in one hour. Each glider can be equipped with a nuclear warhead, electronic warfare (EW) applications (disruption of communication systems), or false target simulators.

“These features guarantee penetration of any existing and prospective missile defense system of a potential adversary. By adopting such systems, Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces will significantly increase their efficiency” said one analyst.

Last year, Russia conducted a series of tests of the Yu-71 hypersonic attack aircraft. The Yu-71 is part of a secret missile program codenamed “Project 4202”, and the during the tests the glider was said to reach speeds of up to 7,000 mph. Furthermore, Russia has reportedly successfully tested the Yu-74 as well. The glider was launched from the Dombarovsky missile base in the Orengburg region and hit a target located at Kura Missile Test Range in northern Kamchatka region, the Russian far east.

French journalist Victor Ayoli noted that Russia is taking NATO’s saber rattling in Eastern Europe very seriously and will do whatever it takes to secure Russia’s borders.

“Russians are ordinary people. They are afraid of war and they really want to avoid it. The last one cost [the Soviets] more than twenty-eight million lives. But once lured into war, they fight it to the bitter end. This unique trait of the Russian national character the West has misunderstood countless times in the last 1,000 years,” Ayoli emphasized.

* * *

As the US led NATO continues to play around with Russia, it is crystal clear that when Russia announced that it will respond to NATO’s actions “Totally Asymmetrically“, they very well meant it.

Climate change is a complex phenomenon involving unknown changes in planetary biophysical systems.  However, there is now scientific consensus, that climate change is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel combustion is considered the primary cause of carbon emissions and climate change worldwide. Scientists warn that unless we are able to bring down carbon emissions rapidly to below 350 ppm in this century, the effects on planetary life will be catastrophic. We are at 400 ppm (parts per million molecules) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and are adding 2 ppm of carbon dioxide every year. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) reports that last month, April 2016, was the warmest month recorded and that 2016 is likely to be the hottest year ever, surpassing the previous annual record of 2015, by the largest historical margin.

We are seeing the realities of climate change: rising temperatures, declining Arctic sea ice, extreme weather events, heatwaves wildfires, floods, droughts, stronger storms and hurricanes and so on. The number and range of species on Earth are expected to decline greatly as temperatures continue to rise. Biodiversity is declining at a rate of more than 100 per million species every year with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly headed towardextinction by mid-21st century. Due to rising sea levels, five islands in the South Pacific have sunk. The Pacific islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean are also preparing for extinction seeking to relocate their populations.

Given intimate connection of their livelihoods to their ecosystems, indigenous people and farming communities worldwide are the most vulnerable to climate change. According to UN estimates, there will be 1 billion ‘climate refugees’, i.e. victims of disasters induced by climate change in the world by 2050. India is now experiencing the highest temperatures ever with a heatwave and drought which has left many people with little access to water. Bangladesh got pummeled again by heavy rains leaving two million people homeless. Sri Lanka which has experienced significantrise in sea levels in recent years just faced unprecedented floods and landslides which have left some 500,000 people homeless and over 200 families buried in the landslides. Those most affected by climate change are those least responsible: the poor nations and communities of color that have historically provided the natural and human resources for the enrichment of the privileged classes in the industrialized nations. While responsibility for climate change is spread across the global society, the industrialized and rapidly industrializing countries account overwhelmingly for carbon emissions.  In 2011, China, the USA and the EU account for more than 50% of total global carbon emissions: China, 28%, USA 16% and the EU 10%.

Fossil Fuel Economy

The extraction, refining and distribution of fossil fuels is an enormous industry representing the engine for global economic production and growth. Five of the top six companies in the Fortune Global 500 including BP, ExxonMobil and Shell are in the petroleum refining industry. As a July 2015 Report by the Union of Concerned Scientists points out, the fossil fuel industry’s concentration is as remarkable as its size. Almost two thirds of the world’s industrial carbon emissions over the past two and a half centuries is attributable to just 90 coal, oil, and natural gas companies which have produced and marketed fossil fuels and cement (which has very high carbon intensity). Almost 30 % of all industrial emissions since 1850 is traced to just 20 investor and state owned companies. Even more significantly, the Report by the Union of Concerned Scientists points out that

“…more than half of all industrial carbon emissions have been released into the atmosphere since 1988, after major fossil fuel companies indisputably knew about the harm their products were causing to the climate”.

Based on an eight month investigation of internal documents of the major fossil fuel corporations, the environmental publication, Inside Climate News has revealed that the fossil fuel companies, especially Exxon which was doing cutting-edge climate research, were already aware of the connection between fossil fuel combustion and global warming by the late 1970s.Inside Climate News argues that without revealing what their own scientists confirmed, the world’s largest fossil fuel companies sought to ‘manufacture uncertainty’ and deceive the public about climate change. The companies put in place a massive campaign to fund climate denial scientists and organizations (many fake ‘astroturf’ groups) and lobby Congress to block climate action. Corporate funding, lobbying and the silence of the mainstream media have enabled polluting companies to project an environmentally friendly public image while at the same time contributing to derailing legislation for emissions reduction. Indeed, there is still no comprehensive U.S. federal policy to address climate change.

Notwithstanding growing demands for corporate accountability and government action, the U.S. and other governments are providing massive subsidies to companies for fossil fuel production and exploration. According to July 2014 estimates of the activist group, Oil Change International, the U.S. fossil fuel subsidies were $37.5 billion annually. Multilateral Banks including the World Bank which is backed by governments also provide billions of dollars each year to oil, gas and coal production internationally. According to the latest 2016 estimates of Oil Change International, global fossil fuel subsidies are between $775 to $1 trillion annually. Since 2011 a number of proposals have been made in the U.S. Congress, such as, the ‘Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act’ and the ‘End Polluter Welfare Act’ to cut tax payer handouts to fossil fuel companies, But, none of them have passed.

The U.S. is estimated to spend anywhere from $10.5 to $500 billion annually to militarily defendits oil interests overseas. As US energy experts point out, military activity is a ‘direct production component’ of the trade and as ‘necessary for imports as are pipelines and supertankers’. Oil is an important driver of U.S. military force in the Persian Gulf, the political destabilization and loss of lives in the region being casualties of the relentless pursuit of oil. Heavy use of jet fuel for military activities is a major source of carbon emissions worldwide. The Pentagon is estimated to be the “largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general,” but is exempt from all international climate agreements.

The short-term costs of ending dependence on fossil fuels are significantly less compared to the staggering long-term environmental and social costs of accelerating climate change. However, the international policy frameworks  in place are far from adequate to address the urgency of the climate crisis.

International Policy Frameworks

The Kyoto Protocol, linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changeadopted in 1997, though flawed and never fully implemented, committed parties to internationally binding emission reduction targets. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, it placed a heavier burden on developed nations based on the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.”

In the decades following the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, conflicts intensified between the global North and South. Even minimal efforts to address climate change became derailed by international economic competition. Industrializing countries such as China, India, and Brazil wanted the “rich, powerful and deeply fossil-fuel addicted” countries in the Global North to take the lead in drastic emissions reductions allowing them room to industrialize and advance economically. Fearing loss of their economic edge, the Global North wanted to move away from the targets and obligations to which they had previously agreed. Lobbied heavily by the fossil fuel industry, The United States government never even ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Pointing out that the ability of populations to adapt and mitigate against climate change are shaped by political and economic realities, civil society organizations mostly from the global South declared the Bali Principles of Climate Justice in 2002. It framed the climate crisis as apolitical and ethical issue, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=3748not simply an environmental and physical phenomenon. The countries of the global South demanded the rich Northern nations to pay their ‘climate debt’, that is, compensation for their historically disproportionate emission of greenhouse gases which has contributed to extensive environmental and societal damage in poor countries.

The global South, however, is not a monolithic group. Emissions from developing nations now exceed those of developed countries, with China being the largest contributor of greenhouse gases. Heavy polluters like China and India have refused to take on specific reduction goals while the poorest and most vulnerable countries have demanded them. The lack of a coherent set of tactics and strategy towards climate justice has also created confusion and differences within the global civil society movement over climate action.

Given these on-going contentions, the U.S. China bilateral Climate Deal of November 2014 has been welcomed as an important achievement by the two most polluting nation states. Unfortunately, however, this Deal is merely a statement of aspirational goals: it has no binding targets, no specific plans to cut emissions and no penalties for non-compliance. According to this Deal, China will not begin reducing emissions until as late as 2030. While the US agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26%-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 is significant, it is not considered sufficient to reach the target of below 2 C increase in temperature by the end of the century. There is no guarantee that President Obama’s successor who will have to implement the deal will do so. Likewise, the multilateral Paris Climate Agreement adopted in December 2015 fails to provide the significant changes in energy use required for climate stabilization.

Paris Climate Agreement

The Climate Treaty signed in Paris in December 2015 is hailed as a historic achievement in international consensus and a turning point in climate policy. Practically all countries in the world opted to sign agreeing to hold the increase in the global average temperature increase to 1.5 ˚C.175 countries have already signed the Agreement which will go into effect in 2020. US Secretary of State John Kerry signed on behalf of the United States holding his little granddaughter in his arms.

Symbolism and rhetoric aside, the Paris Agreement, unlike the previous Kyoto Protocol,provides no detailed timetables or country-specific goals for emissions reduction. It leaves every country to decide its own cuts in pollution (so-called “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions”) according to its own criteria. It provides no clear, measurable targets, no accountability no legal obligations. Each country that ratifies the agreement will be required to set a target for emission reduction, but the amount will be voluntary. There will be neither a mechanism to force^, a country to set a target by a specific date nor enforcement measures if a set target is not met.

The Agreement was a victory for the United States given its opposition to mandatory emissions reduction targets and the Kyoto Protocol. It was, however, a failure for the smaller nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change who wanted to include stricter emissions targets and enforcement mechanisms.  Apparently, the U.S. gained their compliance through backdoor diplomacy and offers of international funding for climate adaptation. The United States also succeeded in ensuring that the Agreement was not legally binding and countries were not open to litigation for non-compliance of the Agreement.

The Paris Agreement will not be binding on its member states until 55 parties who produce over 55% of the world’s greenhouse gases ratify it. Thus far, only 17 countries, overwhelmingly vulnerable small island nations, have ratified the Agreement. There is doubt that given global economic competitiveness if some countries, especially high polluters, such as, China, the US, India, Brazil, Canada, Russia, Indonesia and Australia will do so. There is also no guarantee that the developed countries will honor the pledge to mobilize $100 billion per year for climate financing for the poor countries starting in 2020.

The Paris Climate Agreement does not even mention fossil fuels let alone the need to leave 80% of it in the ground which many experts consider a requirement to mitigate climate change. It does not address the need to cut government fossil fuel subsidies, military expenditures, air travel, shipping, etc. as keys to global de-carbonization. Hardly anyone expects countries to do much for climate protection under this arrangement. No wonder fossil fuel companies were thefinancial backers of the Paris Climate Conference which was dominated by market based solutions to climate change, notably emissions trading.

Carbon Trading

Carbon trading, which constitutes the bulk of emissions trading was introduced as the main mechanism for meeting emissions reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol. Within this system, a country  having more carbon emissions can purchase the ‘right’ to pollute more if it exceeds its cap by purchasing the permits of less polluting countries. As Carbon Trade Watchexplains: “emissions trading partitions and privatizes the atmosphere and institutes the buying and selling of ‘permits to pollute’ just as any other international commodity”. This strategy for commodification of emissions was pushed by the US in response to heavy corporate lobbying.

Critics argue that there have not been measurable reductions in carbon emissions attributable to the mechanisms established under the Kyoto Protocol. They point out that the two most important carbon markets, the EU Emissions Trading System and the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism have essentially failed. They argue that the market-based cap and trade system, designed to reduce carbon emissions has http://www.carbontradewatch.org/downloads/publications/PathsBeyondParis-EN.pdfactually aggravated the problem by giving unfair financial advantages to major polluters to continue polluting while putting the onus of climate protection and maintenance of carbon sinks on the poorer countries and inhibiting their economic development. Moreover, emissions trading takes attention away from the search for less complicated strategies, such as, a straightforward carbon tax on polluters and changes in patterns of economic production and energy use.

Despite these problems, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change still strongly supports carbon trading. International financial interests are now gearing up to expand carbon trading under the new Paris Agreement. They see a huge new market and business opportunity in carbon trading. The World Bank has established a Carbon Finance Unit to create an international system to price carbon. The World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim recently stated that there is an ‘obvious consensus’ among World Bank economists studying the problem, and that ‘putting a price on carbon pollution is by far the most powerful and efficient way to reduce emissions’ Christine Legarde, the director of the International Monetary Fund has called carbon pricing the ‘crown jewel’ of efforts to mitigate climate change.

Many environmental justice activists, however, are deeply concerned about the possible effects of this approach motivated by profit. As scholar-activist Patrick Bond from South Africa states, carbon trading will lead to increasing ‘financialization of nature’, the commodification of everything that can be seen as a carbon sink, especially forests but also agricultural land and even the ocean’s capacity to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) for photosynthesis via algae’.  The Pope’s June 2015 Encyclical also voices the grave concerns that many people have over the status-quo’s push for carbon trading:

“The strategy of buying and selling carbon credits can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather it may simply be a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.”

The limits and failures of the dominant neoliberal approach requires that we look beyond the climate crisis at the broader trajectory of global political and economic development and its underpinning consciousness and values.

Global Political Economy

The capitalist economy has advanced since the Industrial Revolution integrating the entire world within one interconnected market and technological system. Driven by private accumulation and modern technology this economic system has now become a monolithic global “market fundamentalism.” Trade liberalization in the last few decades has led to a consolidation of corporate control in every sector of the global economy contributing to deepening economic inequality. A few large transnational corporations control greater shares of global wealth and resources and wield more power over people’s lives and the environment than most nation states.  So-called, ‘world empires of the 21^st century’, they have increasingly ‘captured’ governments and multilateral institutions compelling governments to adjust their policies to suit corporate interests, as in the case of the fossil fuel industry.

The capitalist system has brought forth tremendous advances in material development but without balanced human inner development. When corporate profit prevails over social, environmental and ethical criteria, production and marketing of goods and services with negative use values become common. Thus, defense has become the biggest sector of the global economy and fossil fuel extraction continues despite overwhelming evidence of its harm to life on the planet. Even when solutions are sought to problems created by market expansion, economic growth and the profit motive prevail as evident from the trade in carbon pollution poised to become a highly profitable financial sector.

As the market values seep into all areas of life, the environment and humanity increasingly become mere resources and outlets for production and consumption. (Figure 1.1 in Bandarage,Sustainability and Well-Being).The modern economy disrupts and dissects the natural integration of planetary life seeking instead to reintegrate, recreate and control human society and the environment through modern science, technology, and the market. The extension of this approach is clearly evident in current technological and market developments to redesign life and to create, what some scientists call a ‘post-nature’, ‘post-human’ world.

Genetic modification is projected to become the norm as more and more bioengineered transgenic fruits, vegetables, trees, and animals are released into the environment. According to some scientists, in 50 years there could be more lab-created forms of plant and animal life on the planet than those identified in nature. Is this, then, the technological and market based solution to species extinction resulting from climate change, deforestation and other human induced changes to the environment?  Likewise, as earth-based indigenous people and communities in low lying coastal areas are extinguished from the face of the Earth, genetic engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence and other new types of cognitive tools are being utilized by some scientists to design a new human species increasingly merged with technologyand more and more divorced from nature.

As the environment and humanity become mere resources and appendages of technology and the economy, we face an existential crisis of what it means to be human in nature. The visions of technological domination over nature fail to recognize that if the climate is not stabilized, we will unleash long term planetary forces far beyond our capacity to control. Human induced natural forces, such as droughts, wildfires and floods will once again come to dominate and radically curtail our activities, as they appear to be doing already. As Karl Polyani warned in The Great Transformation: “ To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment…would result in the demolition of society.”

The contemporary global crisis, however, is more than a crisis of capitalism, a competition between capitalism and socialism, or a clash between modernity and tradition. Our challenge today is not merely political, but human and ecological—how we see and conduct ourselves personally and collectively toward both the environment and each other.

Technology and the market per se are not the problems. It is the underlying consciousness and the intention that determine their advancement. Is the motivation, profit for a few or the sustainability and well-being of all? At the root of the crisis we face is the disjuncture between the exponential growth of the profit-driven economy and the lack of an equivalent development in human consciousness, ethics and morality, compassion, generosity and wisdom.

Psycho-Social Change

The environment—planet Earth—encompasses human society and the economy within its fold. The economy, the production and distribution of the material means of existence, is only one subsystem of society (Figure 1.3 in Bandarage, Sustainability and Well-Being). The environment has primacy over the human-created spheres of society and the economy. The natural world does not need humanity for its survival, but humanity cannot survive without the natural environment, the soil, water, air, sunlight, etc. The central idea of the ecological approach is that we are part of the Earth, not apart and separate from it. This does not negate the fact that in the process of adaptation and evolution humanity has made a great impact on the environment.

Today, “ego consciousness” and its ethics of individualism, domination, and competition is the driving force at the personal level as well as at the societal levels of nations, ethno-religious groups, and in how humans relate toward other animal and life forms.  This myopic consciousness is leading to massive destruction of the environment, widening economic disparities and social conflicts. The alternative to ego consciousness, rooted in the psychology of fear and ‘self vs. other’ mentality, is a universal consciousness grounded in the truth of unity within diversity. This higher consciousness sees the other as an extension of the self and the well-being of the self and the other as inherently interdependent. It contributes to an ethic of partnership.

The challenge today is not to tear apart the dominant social and economic system through left or right political extremism but to shift to an ethical, balanced and sustainable path that upholds genuine climate protection, environmental sustainability, social justice and democracy. We need to shift to a path of socio-economic development grounded on compassion, courage and generosity instead of fear, anger and hatred. The dominant egoistic consciousness overlooks the capacity of the human mind for conscious transformation. Even Charles Darwin who popularized the idea of the survival of the fittest, paid homage to the importance of empathy and altruism in human evolution.

Instead of attempting to dominate and subsume society and the environment within the logic of unbridled economic growth (Figure 1.1 in Bandarage, Sustainability and Well-Being), the components of the economy—technology, property relations, the market, and finance—must be redesigned to serve the needs of environmental sustainability and human well-being. Rather than upholding and extending the extremist growth oriented system through new strategies, such as, carbon trading, the world’s economic structures must be transformed so that the exploitation of people and plunder of the Earth and the relentless pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are replaced by systems that honor environmental sustainability and social justice. The Green Party of the United States succinctly sums up the kinds of changes required for a transition to renewable energy:

‘…a complete reorientation of our national energy priorities, beginning with the elimination of subsidies for petroleum and coal energy, divestment from fossil-fuel companies, enactment of carbon fees and dividends to reflect the true cost of fossil fuel extraction, and phasing out of off-shore drilling, mountaintop removal mining, hydrofracking, and new pipeline construction. Ending dependence on fossil fuels requires massive investment in hybrid and electric vehicles, low-cost public transportation and new ecologically sound electricity transmission infrastructure. We must develop safe and clean energy technologies — excluding nuclear power, which has its own risks — and retrofit homes and buildings for energy efficiency…

There is plenty of evidence that the shift to solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy can be achieved soon. Leading scientists and organizations have put forward plans for transforming the United States from dependence on fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. Germany, which is the fourth largest economy in the world has a plan in place to obtain 45% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, showing that other countries too can make the shift.

Such changes do not come by themselves but through increased citizen participation. It is only by building social movements and strengthening political will that the required qualitative changes can be achieved. As the climate reporter and activist, Johann Hari puts it:

“At least we know now: scientific evidence and rationality are not going to be enough to persuade our leaders …Nobody is going to sort this out – unless we, the population of the warming-gas countries, make them…The time for changing light bulbs and hoping for the best is over. It is time to take collective action….The cost of trashing the climate needs to be raised.’

It must be emphasized that while the shift to renewable energy is most urgent, it will not suffice for addressing the interrelated environmental and social crises. Ecological worldviews and environmentally progressive legislation have coexisted with social class, ethnic and gender oppression in modern times including in Nazi Germany. We have to be careful that eco-fascist views and movements do not gain ground as economic conditions deteriorate and social and environmental dislocations worsen around the world. Changes towards renewable energy has to be accompanied with changes in the control over resources and production and access of wider groups of people to economic opportunities. Bioregionalism, local entrepreneurship and other approaches to economic decentralization, economic diversity and democracy carry within them a critique of corporate monopoly capitalism and unsustainable technological growth. However, the strategies for broader social and economic restructuring require much greater exploration from a climate justice perspective.

Social Movements 

There is growing fear, anger, despair among people about the political and economic realities and the future of our planet. Some of it is undoubtedly misplaced and expressed in violent and destructive ways as ethno-religious fundamentalism and hatred towards others. There is also climate denial, climate fatigue, emotional paralysis and escapist behavior on the part of some people who are numbed by excessive exposure to the combined effects of consumerism, technology and the modern media.

Still, there are also thousands of organizations and people all around the world engaged in positive nonviolent and collective action. Indigenous people have been at the forefront of struggles to protect Mother Earth from the very beginning of their encounter with European colonization. There are hundreds of indigenous environmental struggles around the world, from the US and Canada to Central and South America and Asia and Africa, resisting fossil fuel and other corporations from building pipelines, mining terminals and other controversial projects. Indigenous people have faced and continue to face backlash, often violent reprisals, in protecting their land and natural resources. For example, there has been a spate of killings of environmental activists in Honduras following the U.S. backed regime change there in 2009, which calls for international attention.

Climate consciousness and the global movement for climate protection have expanded greatly since the historic People’s Climate Mach which brought hundreds of thousands of people to New York City in September 2014. President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline in November 2015 was a historic victory for the climate movement. One of the most catalytic global movements today is 350.org which is focused on solving the climate crisis by reducing the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere to the 350 ppm threshold. The movement uses online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions in nearly every country in the world to bring bottom-up pressure to cut down fossil fuel usage.

In the face of dramatic recent acceleration in the warming of the planet, the failure of the Paris Agreement to address divesting from fossil fuel and the support of governments for new fossil fuel projects, climate action is intensifying around the world. The small Himalayan kingdom ofBhutan has committed itself to a carbon neutral policy in its constitution setting an important global precedent. The largest global civil disobedience on behalf of the climate justice concluded in May 2016 after 12 days of action in six continents. Under the banner of ‘Break Free from Fossil Fuel’,

‘Tens of thousands of activists took to the streets, occupied mines, blocked rail lines, paddled in kayaks and held community meetings in 13 countries, pushing the boundaries of conventional protest to find new ways to demand coal, oil and gas stay in the ground’

As a Nigerian activist from the Health of Mother Earth Foundation put it, “Breaking free from fossil fuels is a vote for life and for the planet”. The fossil fuel industry is being ‘weakened by financial and political uncertainty’ and the revelations that it knowingly hid the scientific evidence linking fossil fuels and global warming from the public for many decades. Currently, there areinvestigations underway in the US by the Attorney Generals of 17 states including New York, California, Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands on Exxon’s role in the alleged climate deception. The US Department of Justice has also requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine if ExxonMobil violated federal laws by publicly denying climate change for decades.

Activists are confident that just as the struggle against the tobacco industry, which hid the connection between smoking and health from the public, was won, the people’s struggle against the fossil fuel industry can also be victorious. We must believe that the larger goals of environmental sustainability and social justice can be achieved and that ‘Another World is Possible’ if we work together to ‘Change the System, not the Climate’.

Asoka Bandarage, Ph.D. is the author of Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) and many other publications. She serves on the Board of the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate.    This article is based on her presentation at the Embrace the Earth Conference in San Francisco in May 2016. www.bandarage.com

An earlier abridged version of this post was published by Middle East Eye under a different title on June 5, 2016. The focus is upon the misuse of anti-Semitism by those defending Israel to deflect a rising tide of civil society activism and public criticism of Israeli policies and practices.

Zionism as Racism? Zionism and the State of Israel

8 Jun 2016 – More than 40 years ago the UN General Assembly adopted controversial resolution 3379 by a vote of 72-35 (with 32 abstentions), determining “that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” This resolution was bitterly opposed by Israel and its friends in 1975. According to Zionists and others this resolution was an unacceptable assault on the dignity of the Jewish people, a blatant expression of anti-Semitism, exhibiting hurtful insensitivity to the long dark shadow cast by horrific memories of the Holocaust.

The Israeli ambassador at the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, was unsparing in his denunciation: “For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value.” The American Ambassador, with a deserved reputation as an outspoken diplomat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was hardly less severe. In the debate preceding the vote Moynihan used exaggerated language of denunciation: “The UN is about to make anti-Semitism international law..The [US] does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act..a great evil has been loosed upon the world.”

Such harsh language was an effective tactical maneuver by Israel and the United States to mislead as to the purpose of the anti-Zionist resolution by waving the red flag of anti-Semitism. With a few notable exceptions, the governmental supporters of the initiative at the UN were never motivated by hatred of Jews, although the resolution was an unwise way to exhibit anger toward Israel because it was so susceptible to being discredited as unacceptable due to its anti-Semitic overtones. The primary backers of the resolution were seeking to call attention to the fact that Israel as a state was proceeding in a racist manner by its treatment of the indigenous Palestinian population. In fact, the focus on Zionism rather than Israel reflected a continuing commitment by the main representatives of the Palestinian people and their allies to accept, however reluctantly, the reality of Israel as a state, while rejecting certain of its policies and practices that were being attributed to the Zionist ideology that did shape Israel’s governing process.

The context of the resolution is also important. It came after a decade of international frustration concerning the refusal of Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian (and Syrian) territory occupied in the 1967 War in the manner prescribed in the unanimously passed iconic UN Security Resolution 242. By 1975 it seemed that Israel had no serious intention of ever withdrawing fully or soon. True, there were interpretative ambiguities surrounding the exact conditions of withdrawal, yet Israel’s expansion of the metropolitan area of Jerusalem together with its annexation combeined with the establishment of settlements in occupied Palestine was generally perceived in UN circles as confirming this suspicion that Israeli ambitions far exceeded the scope of what had been agreed upon in 1967 at the Security Council. Subsequent developments have only hardened the perception the belief that Israel will defy international law and UN authority whenever it suits their purposes.

Inappropriately and ineffectively, the anti-Zionist resolution was seeking to mobilize the international community in 1975 around the idea that Palestinian suffering and humiliation resulted from illegitimate Israeli behavior that would not be overcome by statecraft or UN diplomacy, both of which had been tried and failed. Over time this interpretation of the situation has given rise to a growing skepticism about whether any inter-government effort, including even that undertaken by the Palestinians themselves, will secure the Palestinian right of self-determination, as long as the balance of forces is so strongly in Israel’s favor. Against this background it is not surprising that the Palestinian struggle increasingly relies upon civil society militancy currently epitomized by the BDS Campaign to correct this imbalance.

Asserting its geopolitical muscle over the years Israel finally managed to induce the General Assembly to reverse itself in 1991 by Res. 46/86. This single sentence text simply revokes the earlier resolution condemning Israel without offering any explanation for the new posture. Israel secured this vote by making conditional its participation at the Madrid Peace Conference that same year, insisting on a formal repudiation of the 1975 resolution.

In retrospect, the General Assembly had made a serious mistake by equating Israel with Zionism. It should been earlier realized that Zionism is a political project devised by Jews in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, and while responsible for the world movement that successfully established Israel against great odds, it does not represent the Jewish people as whole, nor is it an authoritative expression of Judaism whether conceived as a religion or an ethno-historic tradition. From the inception of Zionism, Jews as individuals held wildly divergent, even contradictory, views about the wisdom of Zionism in theory and practice as well as about the validity of its relations with Judaism. Zionism was never institutionalized as the governing ideology of the Israeli state, and many Jewish critics of Israel emphasized the failure of the state to live up to Zionist ideals and Judaic traditions.

Among the most fundamental of these disagreements related to whether Jews should aspire to a state of their own in Palestine, or should limit themselves to the Balfour pledge of support for a homeland in historic Palestine. The whole idea of an ethnic state is problematic given the geographic intermingling of ethnicities, and can be reconciled with the ideal of protecting the human rights of every individual only by artifice. In practice, an ethnic state, even if its activities are constitutionally constrained, dominates the governing space and discriminates against those with other ethnic identities. And so has been the case with Israel despite Palestinian voting rights and participation in the Knesset. Again, Zionism championed Israeli statehood as the fulfillment of the vision of a Jewish homeland, but the state that emerged is a political actor whose behavior needs to be appraised by its policies and practices, and not by its founding ideology.

Such general speculation raises somewhat different issues than posed by the anti-Zionist resolution. Now the much more difficult issue is raised in the form of allegations that Israel as of 2016 has become a racist or apartheid state, most clearly with respect to its oppressive and discriminatory administration of the West Bank and Gaza. To be clear, it is not Zionism as an ideology that should be evaluated as racist or not, despite its ethnic exclusivity, but Israel as a state subject to international law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination(1966) and the International Convention on Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973).

BDS as Anti-Semitism?

At this time, complaints about anti-Semitism have taken an entirely different course, although emanating from a similar source. Instead of deflecting criticism at the UN by angry claims of institutional bias verging on anti-Semitism, Israel is now actually invoking the prestige of the UN to carry on its fight against the BDS Campaign and an alleged delegitimation project aimed at discrediting and isolating, if not destroying, the state of Israel. On May 31,^, 2016 Israel convened a day-long conference under the willfully misleading title, “Ambassadors Against BDS—International Summit at the UN.” Invited speakers were limited to pro-Israeli extremists who took turns deploring BDS as a political initiative and denouncing its activist supporters as vicious anti-Semites. The Israeli ambassador, acting as convenor of the conference and known mainly as an inflammatory leader of the settlement movement, Dani Danon, set the tone of the event with these words: “BDS is the modern incarnation of anti-Semitism,” spreading an “..ideology of hate.”

The program was unabashedly one-sided. The conference sponsored by a series of leading Jewish organizations. The audience consisted of more than 1500 invited guests who possessed strong anti-BDS credentials and were encouraged to be militant in their opposition to BDS activities. The conference call relied on language that highlights the political significance of this extraordinary initiative: “The BDS movement continues to make strides in their campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel. They are gaining increased support on campuses around the world as they promote initiatives on local and national levels calling to divest and boycott the Jewish state.” Such a statement accurately recognizes that BDS has become the main vehicle of a rapidly strengthening global solidarity movement that aligns itself with the Palestinian national movement, is effectively mobilizing beneath the BDS banner, and has been shaped since its inception in 2005 when endorsed by 170 Palestinian NGOs and a wide spectrum of civil society activists.

It should be clarified that the so-called anti-BDS ‘summit,’ appearances not withstanding, was not a UN conference, nor did it have the blessings or participation of top UN officials. It was an event organized by the Israeli delegation at the UN that was allowed to make use of UN facilities. Calling itself ‘Ambassadors Against BDS” is deceptive, suggesting some kind of collective diplomatic undertaking by the international community or at least its Western segment.

Contrariwise, and more to the point, several European governments normally supportive of Israel, including Sweden, Ireland, and even the Netherlands have recently officially indicated that support for BDS is a legitimate political activity, entitled to the protection of law in a democratic state, and its supporters should be treated as exercising their right to freedom of expression in a lawful manner.

The BDS goals are set forth clearly in its founding document and do not include the delegitimation of Israel as a state: (1) withdrawal of Israel forces from Arab territories occupied in 19 67, including the Syrian Golan Heights as well as West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza; (2) respect for the right of return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with General Assembly Resolution 194; (3) protection of the human rights of Palestinians living in pre-1967 Israel on the basis of full equality. Without question the BDS movement endorses an ambitious program, but it does not question Israeli sovereignty over pre-1967 Israel, despite its territorial control of 78% of the Palestine mandate, which is far more than what the UN considered fair in 1947 that was about 45%, and was rejected by the Palestinians as being grossly unfair given the demographics at the time.

In a growing reaction to the growing influuence of BDS, Israel and pro-Israeli civil society actors have been pushing back in a variety of settings with tactics that violate the written and unwritten rules of democratic society. Among those most salient of these tactics have been the successful efforts of the organized Jewish community in Britain to have an academic conference at Southampton University canceled for two consecutive years, the frantic defamatory assault on Penny Green, the distinguished British criminalist who had been proposed as the first choice to be the next UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Occupied Palestine, a travel ban imposed by Israel on Omar Barghouti, the widely admired worldwide leader of BDS, and sundry outrageous efforts throughout the United States to have as many state legislatures as possible pass laws that criminalize BDS by associating its advocacy and activity with anti-Semitism.

Above all, this ugly effort to stigmatize BDS represents a double shift in the essential battlefield of the Israel/Palestine struggle. The first shift is from armed struggle to a series of symbolic encounters concerning the legitimacy of Israel’s policies and practices. The second interrelated shift is away from inter-governmental diplomacy and toward civil society militancy. It is possible that the second shift is temporary or provisional, having as its objective the revival of normal diplomacy at a future time under conditions where both sides are treated equally, and the process facilitated by a genuinely neutral intermediary. In effect, an authentic peace process in the future must correct the flaws that doomed the diplomacy undertaken within the Oslo Framework of Principles to failure, and what is worse operated to enable a steady dynamic of Israeli expansionism at Palestinian expense. One way of thinking of BDS is as a corrective to this failed diplomacy of the past.

In the meantime, both Israel and its civil society adversaries will reflect their contradictory agendas with respect to a variety of struggles centering on what is legitimate.

In important respects the double shift should be welcomed. The BDS Campaign concentrates on university campuses, churches, and labor unions. To challenge the legality and propriety of its tactics is to attack the most fundamental values of constitutional democracy. BDS-bashing also lends indirect credibility to those who argue that only political violence can achieve justice for the Palestinian people that alone can end their unspeakable ordeal. It is reasonable, of course, to question whether BDS is effective, or to argue over its proper scope and tactics, but attacks on BDS as a valid political instrument should be rejected.

Comparing Anti-Zionism in 1975 and Anti-BDS in 2016

This deadly dance between Zionism and the UN has now come full circle. In the 1970s Zionism was condemned by the General Assemly at the UN, and the condemnation was sharply criticized by Israel as being so anti-Semitic as to contaminate the Organization as a whole. In 2016 Israel in a dramatic turnabout relies on the stature and access associated with its UN membership to empower Zionist forces throughout the world to engage in BDS-bashing. In the end, we should appreciate that neither Zionism nor BDS are racist as such, and any serious inquiry should be directed at the behavior of Israel as a member of the UN obliged to respect international law with respect to race and on the actual claims and initiatives of BDS as a transnational civil society initiative seeking the implementation of international law and fundamental human rights.

It was a mistake to play the anti-Zionist card in 1975 as the real grievances of Palestinians and the UN were obscured behind the smokescreen of a false debate about whether or not deep criticisms of Israel were anti-Semitic. It is an even bigger mistake to play the anti-Semitic card in the current global setting as a way of evading the demands set forth by BDS, which seem on their face in accord with international law and morality, and have as a principal virtue the clear commitment to pursue political ends by peaceful means.

The scale of this mistake is enlarged by blurring the boundaries between a proper concern with anti-Semitism as a virulent form of ethnic hatred that has given rise in the past to bloody persecutions and fascist extremism, and most abhorrently to the Holocaust. Opposing BDS on its pragmatic or normative merits is an entirely reasonable posture for those who disagree with its premises, methods, and goals. What is not acceptable is to engage in these provocative efforts to discredit and punish the proponents of BDS, and to threaten adherents with punitive pushback as happens when tenure is abrogated or steps are taken to brand activists by name as targets for vilification and intimidation.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in thePalestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights(2009).

A surprisingly small number of corporations control massive global market shares. How many of the brands below do you use?

It’s a Small World at the Top:

Banking
Largest banks hold a total of $25.1 trillion:[1]
1.) ICBC, China, $2.95 trillion in assets, over 18,000 outlets, 108 branches globally
2.) HSBC holdings, UK, $2.68 trillion in assets, 6,600 offices in 80 countries, 55 million customers
3.) Deutsche Bank, Germany, $2.6 trillion in assets, 2,963 branches, 70 countries, 46 million customers
4.) Credit Agricole Group, France, $2.58 trillion in assets, 60 countries, over 21 million clients
5.) BNP Paribas, France, $2.51 trillion in assets
6.) Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan, $2.49 trillion in assets
7.) Barclays PLC, United Kingdom, $2.41 trillion in assets
8.) JPMorgan Chase & Co., U.S., $2.39 trillion in assets
9.) China Construction Bank Corp., China, $2.36 trillion in assets
10.) Japan Post Bank, Japan, $2.12 trillion in assets
Enough to fund the federal U.S. government for over 7 years.[2]
Or roughly $3500 per person on earth.

Media 
1.) Comcast Corporation: $62.5 billion revenue, $6 billion in profit
Owns:
MSNBC
NBC Universal
MLB Network
E! Entertainment
Golf Channel
Xfinity
AT&T Broadband

2.) The Walt Disney Company:$42 billion revenue, $5.5 billion in profit
Owns:
ABC
ESPN
Pixar
Marvel Comics
Touchstone Pictures
Lucasfilm
Walt Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Disney Music Publishing
The Baby Einstein Company
50% of A&E Networks

3.)Time Warner Company
Owns:
HBO
Time (Southern Living, Sports Illustrated, Time, Golf Magazine, Health, Entertainment Weekly)
IPC Media
Grupo Editorial Expansion
Turner Broadcasting (TNT, TruTV, TBS, TCM, NBC, Cartoon Network, March Madness, CNN)
Warner Bros. Picture Group
4.) Viacom $15 billion revenue and $2 billion profit
Owns:
Paramount Pictures
MTV
VH1
BET
Nickelodeon
Spike
Comedy Central

5.) News Corporation, $34 billion revenue, $1.1 billion profit
Owns:
Fox
Wall Street Journal
Times of London
Barron’s
Harper Collins

Food and Beverage Companies
1.) PepsiCo Inc
Makes:
Gatorade
Propel
Pepsi
Aquafina
Sobe
Mountain Dew
Sierra Mist
Cheetos
Doritos
Frito Lay
Funyun’s
Lay’s
Ruffles
Tostitos
Quaker
Amp Energy
Lipton
Rockstar Energy
Seattle’s Best Coffee
Starbucks: Doubleshot, Frappucino, Iced Coffee

2.) Tyson Foods Inc–World’s largest Chicken Processor
Supplies:
KFC
Taco Bell
McDonalds
Burger King
Wendy’s
Wal-Mart
Kroger
IGA
Beef O’Grady’s

3.) Nestle (U.S. And Canada)
74 brands of water
38 brands of ice cream:
including Haagen-Dazs
Dreyer’s
And Nestle Drumstick
Frozen food:
Stouffers
Lean Cuisine
Hot Pockets
Tombstone Pizza
DiGiorno Pizza
California Pizza Kitchen
Candy:
Wonka brands,
Baby Ruth
Chips Ahoy!
Goobers
Icebreakers
Pet Food:
Alpo
Beneful
Fancy Feast
Friskies
Gourmet
Mighty Dog
ONE
Pro Plan
Purina
Tidy Cats
Cosmetics:
30% share in L’Oreal, Garnier, Maybelline, and Lancome, and The Body Shop Stores

4.) JBS USA–Subsidiary of the world’s largest beef processor
Beef Brands:
Swift
G.F. Swift 1855 Brand Premium Beef
Aspen Ridge Natural Beef
Swift Black Angus
Cedar River Farms
5 Star Beef
Chef’s Exclusive
Showcase Premium Ground Beef
Chicken Brands:
Pilgrim’s
Pierce Chicken
Wing Dings
Wing Zings
Speed Grill
Country Pride
To-Ricos
Pork Brands:
1855 Premium Pork
Swift Premium Dry Rubbed Pork
Swift Premium Natural Guaranteed Tender Pork
Swift Premium Natural Pork
Swift La Herencia Natural Pork

5.) Anheuser-Busch InBev
Over 200 beer brands made in 30 countries
Sold in 130 countries
Including:
St. Pauli Girl
Stella Artois
Spaten
Rolling Rock
Michelob
Hoegaarden
Busch
Budweiser
Bud Light
Beck’s
Bass

Oil
The top five oil producing companies produce almost twice what the US’s refined petroleum product consumption per day is.
1.) Saudi Aramco
Saudi Arabia
12.5 million barrels a day
$1 billion plus in DAILY revenue
2.) Gazprom
Russia
9.7 million barrels per day
$40 billion a year profits
3.) National Iranian Oil Co.
Iran
6.4 million barrels per day
State owned
4.) ExxonMobil
America
5.3 million barrels per day
$40 billion in profit
5.) PetroChina
China
4.4 million barrels per day
$21.93 billion in profits

Notes:

1. Bankrate, 10 largest banks of the world
2. WIkipedia, 2013 United States Federal budget
3. Wikipedia, ICBC
4. HSBC
5. Deutsche Bank
6. Deutsche Bank at a Glance
7. Assets Owned by Comcast
8. Assets Owned by Disney
9. Assets owned by Time Warner
10. Assets Owned by News Corp
11. Food processing Top 100
12. Tyson Acquisitions
13. Nestle Brands
14. JBS US Beef Brands
15. JBS US Pork Brands
16. JBS US Chicken brands
17. InBEv Brands
18. Forbes, top oil producers
19. US Oil Consumption
20. What Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy Infographic

America is in a fog of grief, anxiety, and rising partisan rancor as the nation comes to grips with the deadliest mass shooting in its history. But when it comes to the most basic question of how the massacre took place in Orlando early Sunday morning, the picture couldn’t be clearer: America’s mass shooters increasingly are using weapons of war.

What the data shows is stark: There have been nine mass shootings in the United States over the past year alone. (The one-year anniversary of the slaughter at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel church is this Friday.) In at least eight of these attacks the killers used guns that they obtained legally. (Authorities have yet to disclose the source of the firearms in one case.) And two-thirds of these mass shooters, including the Orlando attacker, wielded AR-15s, AK-47s or the equivalent—semi-automatic rifles that were designed to be used in military battle.

This continues a long-running pattern. According to our database of mass shootings in America going back to 1982, most of the perpetrators got their guns legally—in at least 65 out of 81 cases, including Orlando. This now includes six of the seven deadliest attacks carried out since 2012, as the accompanying graphic shows. (The graphic is from a new investigation into America’s gun industry thatMother Jones will publish online soon.)

In addition to semi-automatic rifles, many mass shooters have used semi-automatic handguns. But perhaps most consequential with regard to their weapons of choice is this: In a majority of cases the attackers used their guns in combination with high-capacity magazines, which can hold 15, 30, or even as many as 100 rounds.

Such ammunition devices enable attackers to maximize the number of bullets they can fire before stopping to reload. The perpetrator who struck in Tucson in 2011 squeezed off 31 shotsfrom a Glock handgun in 30 seconds. In a matter of minutes at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the attacker there used an assault rifle to strafe schoolchildren and their teachers withmore than 150 bullets. The killers who struck in San Bernardino fired upwards of 75 shots at their victims, and roughly as many at police who pursued them.

It may not be clear for days yet how many rounds were fired inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; investigators there face a daunting crime scene to process. But the ghastly body count already tells us more than we need to know. As one veteran ATF special agent described it to me after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, the weaponry taken up by most of America’s mass shooters—in many cases easily purchased by them in stores—is well-suited for their purpose: “It turns a killer into a killing machine.”

This article was first published by Who What Why 

Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed concern about entrusting presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump with the country’s nuclear codes. Some have wondered aloud if the ultimate weapons of mass destruction should be under the control of someone so erratic and vindictive.

The prospect of Trump’s finger on such a trigger makes a lot of people across the globe uneasy. But the truth is, no matter who serves as commander-in-chief, a nuclear holocaust has always been closer than we think — because of faulty equipment, dumb accidents and apparently irreducible human error.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has now put together a list of some of the near misses the world has survived. Each one is hair-raising. Taken together, they are utterly terrifying.

Road marker in Eureka, NC, commemorating the 1961 B-52 crash.
Photo credit: RJHaas / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Bombs on a Plane

Putting nuclear weapons on manned airplanes has led to near disasters several times. In 1966, a bomber carrying four nuclear warheads collided with a refueling plane and crashed over Spain (the link will take you to a Pentagon memo detailing 32 accidents involving nuclear weapons from 1950-1980).

Two of the bombs exploded but neither nuclear warhead was triggered. Another bomb landed in a riverbed and was recovered, while the fourth fell into the Mediterranean and was not secured for several weeks.

While none of the nuclear warheads went off, some plutonium was released at the crash site, which remains contaminated to this day.

Five years earlier, a B-52 bomber broke apart in flight and the two nuclear weapons it carried dropped on North Carolina. The arming sequence of both bombs began, and one slammed into the ground after its parachute failed. While the chute of the other nuclear weapon deployed, five of its safety devices failed and the one that prevented the bomb from going off was later found to be defective in other nuclear bombs.

A uranium-containing part of one of the bombs was never recovered.

The horror stories of close calls do not end in the 1960s. Less than ten years ago, a bomber was mistakenly loaded with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles and sat unguarded at an Air Force base in North Dakota overnight. Then the plane took the weapons to Louisiana, where they were once again left unguarded until a maintenance crew realized that it held live nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Command and Control System
Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from DoD Inspector General

Faulty Chips and Crossed Wires

But nuclear weapons are not just a risk while in the air. There have been many instances in which things went mind-numbingly wrong on the ground.

In 1961, the US assumed it was under attack and ordered all bombers to prepare for takeoff.

The assumption was based on an inability to reach either an early warning radar system in Greenland or the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD), which led officials to think that an attack might be underway.

It was later determined that a faulty AT&T switch was to blame and that the company had not installed a backup system — even though it said it had.

Nearly two decades later, at a high point of tension between the US and the Soviet Union, a defective computer chip costing less than 50 cents caused US missile-defense officials to believe that the Soviet Union had launched more than 2,000 nuclear missiles.

It took six minutes to correct the mistake. Had this incident not taken place in the middle of the night, it is conceivable that the US could have “retaliated.”

In 2010, there was another significant malfunction: the launch control center at Warren Air Force Base lost contact with 50 nuclear missiles for an hour. The reason: an incorrectly installed circuit card.

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
Photo credit: MSGT Hiyashi / Wikimedia

Wrenches, Bears, and Simulations

And then there are the cases that seem stranger than fiction.

In 1979, NORAD computers showed a massive Soviet attack on the US — with missiles raining down from mobile launch sites and silos alike. American bombers were readied for a retaliatory strike that was only called off when US early warning stations and satellites could not confirm the inbound missiles.

What had happened? A technician had mistakenly loaded a tape with a training exercise onto an operational computer.

Another time, a maintenance worker dropped the socket from a socket wrench into an underground missile silo, releasing the missile’s propellant. Despite efforts at containment, the fuel exploded and the nuclear weapon shot up in the air and crashed near the entrance of the base. That particular warhead was more powerful than all bombs used in World War II combined.

In another incident, a bear breached the perimeter fence at a base in Minnesota — and was mistaken for a saboteur.

All surrounding bases were alerted that a Soviet sabotage effort might be under the way. Because the alarm at Wisconsin’s Volk Field was wired incorrectly, nuclear-armed fighters there were ordered to take off. As they were sitting on the runway waiting for clearance, a staffer rushed out to alert the pilots that they should stay put. He saved the day by flashing the headlights of his truck — because the base had no control tower!

Some of these stories might qualify as slapstick-comical if they had not nearly resulted in the deaths of thousands — or even the end of the world as we know it. And these are only the incidents we know about on the US side.

Not surprisingly, the Soviet Union has had plenty of near misses, which the Union of Concerned Scientists also details.

While many of these cases show that it does matter whose finger is on the trigger, together they add up to unblinkable evidence that the mere existence of nuclear weapons — combined with poor regulation and an ever-fertile fund of human stupidity — constitutes a clear and present danger to us all.

America’s political process is notoriously corrupt, electoral fraud rife at the federal, state and local levels. 

Democracy is pure fantasy. Monied interests control everything. Back room deals decide things. Has the winner of November’s run for the White House already been decided?

Clinton is the establishment favorite, Trump the outsider, reluctantly accepted at best by GOP power brokers after going all-out to undermine his campaign – media scoundrels largely in lockstep against him.

Dubious primary and caucus practices suggest what’s perhaps coming. Clinton stole Iowa by rigged coin-flips,Massachusetts, Nevada and Arizona by old-fashioned fraud – New York and California likely the same way.

Tactics include mass voter disenfranchisement. Around 18 million California residents were registered to vote last week.

Yet only six million votes were counted – the process tainted by widespread voter purges, rigged voting machines and involuntary party affiliation changes.

Sanders wasn’t included on the state’s mail-in ballot as a Democrat candidate. Clinton won California before the first vote was cast and counted. Will she beat Trump in November the same way?

Investigative journalist Greg Palast called California’s primary “grand theft,” voters “by the tens of thousands” disenfranchised.

The steal (was) baked into the way California handles No Party Preference (NPP) voters (independents).

In counties throughout the state, it’s hard or impossible for them to participate in the Democrat primary. In some areas, they get “ballot(s) without the presidential race.”

Nearly half of Californians vote by mail. According to Palast, “(m)ost NPP voters don’t realize that to vote in the Democratic (sic) primary…they must bring in their NPP ballot with the envelope and say…’I want to surrender my ballot in return for a Democratic (sic) crossover ballot.’ “

Otherwise you’re disenfranchised. Lots more shenanigans make things worse. On the one hand, Palast said no smoking-gun evidence links them to the Clinton campaign.

On the other, “the voting system is run mostly by the Democratic (sic) party which is totally in Hillary’s pocket.”

Is a money-controlled bipartisan conspiracy planned to anoint her president-elect in November? Will an unindicted racketeer, war criminal, Sino/Russian hating, anti-populist Wall Street tool succeed Obama?

Will unthinkable WW III follow, perhaps in her first year in office?

The extreme danger of a Clinton presidency should terrify everyone worldwide – an unstable neocon with her finger on the nuclear trigger.

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.

Dear Mr. President Xi Jinping,

Dear Mr. President Vladimir Putin,

The re-emerging specter of nuclear catastrophe is once again haunting the world.

The West is trying to isolate and provoke two great, proud, powerful and sovereign countries; China and Russia. It appears that the pathological desire to gain (or more precisely, re-gain) full control over the entire world is fully restraining all remaining flickers of rationale and humanism inside the brains of the politicians and business ‘elites’ in Washington, London and elsewhere.

The danger is real. It is enough to take a brief look at the map depicting the world at the beginning of the 20^th Century, to realize that the West is capable of enslaving almost the entire Planet, by forcing through its colonialist and imperialist designs.

Western imperialism has already exterminated hundreds of millions of human beings, in all corners of the globe. And even now, it is still murdering millions, directly and indirectly.

Both China and Russia experienced the horrors of Western invasions. On several occasions, both nations had to turn to steel, in order to resist and to survive. And both nations are now, once again, standing tall, proudly facing those who are trying to break them, to force them into submission.

It is becoming clear now that China and Russia will not back up. It is because they both want, above all, peace and justice for this world. They suffered terribly from the invasions and wars. They know how high the price of freedom and independence is. But if attacked, they will not yield. They will fight, no matter how high the cost. They would fight to defend their own people, and to defend the humanity, as they already have done on several occasions, losing millions, but in the end always defeating evil!

*

China and Russia are not alone! They have allies all over the world. Some allies are simple people in the oppressed countries; others consist of entire countries from different parts of the World, like South Africa, Iran, Syria or Cuba.

Until very recently, almost the entire Latin America stood by China and Russia and vice-versa. Great changes were taking place in Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and elsewhere. Politically and economically, many South American countries began moving close, closer, towards Beijing and Moscow. The war against imperialism (re-) gained its new front.

Attempts to destabilize Latin American revolutions arose almost immediately. The West began ‘organizing and then supporting the opposition movements’; funding hostile NGO’s, plotting and financing coups, demonizing new governments through propaganda and indoctrination campaigns.

Treasonous and morally corrupt local ‘elites’ quickly joined forces with Washington; their loyalties were, for centuries, with Europe and then with North America, as well as with multi-national companies.

I have been living and working in Latin America for many years. I know some of the continent’s greatest thinkers and revolutionaries, but I am also familiar with their oligarchs and feudal rulers. South American elites have no mercy with their common people. They cannot even be called “nationalists”. Just as the Western imperialists, they would easily sacrifice millions of innocent “un-people” (to borrow Orwell’s definition), in exchange for maintaining their privileges.

As happened in Chile before the 1973 US-sponsored coup against the socialist President Salvador Allende, the local elites are now, once again, determinedly ruining the local economies all over South America, ‘creating shortages’, organizing and mobilizing right-wing unions, while withdrawing billions of dollars from their countries. For them it is no longer about business or making profits (they have plenty of money stored abroad) but about retaining control over their countries, often on behalf of the West.

Recently, Argentinian socialism collapsed, and the neo-fascist President Macri gained power. Brazil was hit by a coup, which gave corrupt, mostly evangelical, and right-wing pro-Washington politicians, de-facto control over the country. Both Argentina and Brazil began dismantling their social policies, signing ludicrous deals with the North, including those that will soon allow the United States to build military bases in Tierra del Fuego and elsewhere.

The West is achieving its goal; to torpedo BRICS, to weaken the anti-imperialist global alliance, and to discredit the Latin American model through its indoctrination channels.

Almost overnight, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Cuba had lost two of their economically most powerful Latin American allies.

And the West will not stop. Venezuela is next on its mafia-style hit list, as well as Ecuador, most likely followed by Bolivia!

I have just returned from South America. Argentina is waking up to a horrible nightmare. Brazilian people feel that they were swindled, fooled. There are protests shaking Argentinian and Brazilian cities. But many feel almost hopeless, faced by such Machiavellian, complex and ‘perfectly’ organized operations of their West and the local ‘elites’.

I have also worked, recently, in Ecuador, where I got convinced that the West would never give up its attempts to destroy all progressing governments and regain full control over what it believes is its ‘backwater’.

The tactics that are used to destabilize entire countries are the same everywhere. For many years I have been travelling to virtually all corners of the world, wherever the Empire has been trying to break the will of the people: from Ukraine and China, to Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Iran, South Africa, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, to mention just a few most ‘obvious’ places. My latest book: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”, is more than 800-pages ‘heavy’, and full of examples of how those tactics are applied, on all continents.

But in South America, the West is now attacking almost the entire continent, and it does it openly, with no shame.

*

To defend the independence of this continent – South America – is essential for the survival of our humankind.

This is the frontline now! But it is the frontline where one nation after another is collapsing, under the terrible pressure of destructive, mainly foreign forces. It goes without saying that if the Empire wins here, it will try ‘not to lose momentum’; it will immediately move to another part of the world that is still standing. The destructive work will continue, (while hundreds of millions lives get ruined) until the Empire’s final victory, or until it gets decisively confronted and stopped!

In Caracas, Quito and La Paz we are now witnessing an epic fight for the entire continent, but also indirectly for Moscow, Beijing, as well as for those still defenseless countries scattered all over the world.

It is because the fight is essentially for the survival of the basic principles of humanism, decency and solidarity. It is a battle against the most cynical and oppressive forces on Earth! In short, it is a battle against ‘imperialism’, which is synonymous to ‘fascism’!

*

Venezuela is still standing, but it is screaming, suffering, and in terrible pain.

It cannot go on like this for too long; it cannot survive alone!

It either receives some substantial help, or it will eventually collapse.

The economic scavengers are already encircling its weakened body; even speculating and betting on its foreign debt. The ‘opposition’ is so sure of its upcoming macabre victory that it is already allocating to its members, posts in future governments.

The point has reached when Venezuela cannot defend itself alone, anymore. For years it topped the hit list of the Empire. For years no effort to ruin it was spared: coups, assassinations, economic blackmail, and a media war!

And still, for so many years, Venezuela has been showing great solidarity with the rest of the world. It has stood at the vanguard of the fight against imperialism. It was spreading foreign aid all over the world, while it was flying (via TeleSUR) those optimistic and inspiring voices of the Latin American revolution, to all corners of our Planet (I made five documentary films for TeleSUR, in several conflict zones of the world, under almost impossible circumstances; something that makes me, until now, immensely proud).

Like China and Russia, Venezuela refused to crack even under tremendous pressure.

It began building a new, great and united South American fatherland, returning optimism, zeal and hope to the people of the continent that has been, for centuries, tormented and continuously raped by the West/North.

Not everything was done ‘perfectly’, but nothing in this world is or should be expected to be perfect. Venezuelan (Bolivarian) Revolution is called the process; it is a long and complex journey, but a breathtaking journey nevertheless – from slavery to freedom, to internationalism and social equality.

Venezuelan people are now paying an immense price for not abandoning their principles. They are castigated mercilessly by the Empire, for making their own choices, for defending their freedom, and for refusing to return to subservience. But above all, they are punished for returning hope to others, for inspiring others, millions of others, all over the world!

Because hope is what the Empire tries to strangle, mercilessly.

Venezuela clearly demonstrated that a different world is possible, that solidarity is still alive, and that the revolution can serve the people.

If Venezuela dies, at least it would die standing.

“Here, nobody surrenders!” These were words of Hugo Chavez, printed on the iconic election poster, after his death. Here Chavez, already gravely ill, with his face covered by raindrops, was defiantly clenching his fist.

When the poster appeared, I was in Caracas. I stood there, in front of it, for at least one hour, in the middle of the square, unable to move. I thought, as many others most likely did: “A true revolutionary should go all the way! If he doesn’t dare to, he should better stay where he is and go nowhere at all.”

Chavez went all the way and Venezuela followed him – a true revolutionary and his remarkable Bolivarian motherland.

Yes, if it would have to die, Venezuela would die standing. But it should never be allowed to perish!

*

I have both Russian and Chinese blood in my veins. I was born in Russia. And I spent many years in Latin America, writing, making films, covering wars and then revolutions. And followed then, by the Western subversions!

For me an alliance, and even some sort of unity between China, Russia and South America, is the essential pre-condition for the survival of the humanity.

The West knows that such an alliance would break its monopoly on power; that all three models are now inspiring billions of people all over the world. These models may be different to some extent, but the bottom line is always the same: putting the people first, while trying to deter neo-colonialism and imperialism.

If that bottom line were to prevail, that would mean the end of a long and bloody period of Western global dictatorship. It is that simple!

The West would rather murder billions than to accept its defeat. Because ‘defeat’ would mean that its countries would have to finally behave as equals towards the rest of the world, something culturally and psychologically unacceptable to most of North Americans and Europeans.

The world has to finally defend itself. It has to defend its people. Too many lives have already been lost, too many nations plundered and ruined. Now countries under the attack should embrace each other, help each other, and not to allow each other to fall.

The Western propaganda machine is spreading sinister but very effective lies that “all large countries are the same, that they have identical imperialist tendencies”.

The only way to contradict such fabrications is to offer concrete and bright examples to the contrary.

The world has been drowning in the cynicism and nihilism administered by the Empire. In order to snap out from depression, in order to erect the great flags of the resistance again, people need a substantial dose of emotions, optimism, poetry, and human warmth. They also need true leadership.

They need big and powerful countries like China and Russia to show the way.

To inspire the world, it is not enough to do “economically well”, or to be “strong” (although those are essential pre-conditions for progress and even for survival). What people all over the world are longing for, are solidarity, social commitments and internationalism.

Both China and Russia are offering exactly those, and have already been for many decades. But it is often done in a subdued and modest way. And therefore, for the lackey Western mass media, which still controls the flow of information in most parts of the world, it is still easy to omit, and even to deny the truth.

To bail out, to rescue Venezuela, would send a powerful message to both the Empire and to the rest of the world.

It would be a truly positive message, full of optimism, decency and pride.

In Russia, a country that suffered immensely from countless foreign invasions, there is one important term – “наши” (“ours”). The world is clearly divided between those who are “ours” (our loved ones, our comrades, compatriots, friends and allies), and enemies.

By nature, the Russian people are immensely loyal to those whom they have already accepted as their close ones, as “ours”. They are loyal to their comrades to the point that they would, without even blinking, die defending them or give them their last shirt or a piece of bread. There is no limit to the generosity towards those that Russian people love.

And Chinese solidarity is legendary as well. Otherwise, how could this enormous country lift almost all of its citizens out from poverty?

If Venezuela is defended and saved, the message to the Empire and to the world would be powerful and clear: “Do not touch ‘our’ brothers and sisters! If you harm them, you would be confronted.”

*

In Russia, during the old days, the rallying cry, the call to battle was often “they are beating our people!”

And this is exactly what is happening now. “They are beating our people!” Venezuela, our beautiful and proud sister, our comrade, our ally, is being tortured, humiliated and devastated!

Let us stand up. Let us not allow Venezuela to be violated.

I have lost all my hope for the hypocritical, toothless Western “Left”. With some bright exceptions, it will do nothing, absolutely nothing practical to help! As it did nothing to rescue Cuba when Cuba was bleeding. It had to be China, after all, which extended its powerful hand across the seas towards Havana saving the revolution!

And now, again, only Beijing and Moscow would be able to make that decisive and powerful epic gesture!

As was demonstrated when China rescued Cuba, and is now being shown where Russia is fighting for Syria; these two great and brave nations are willing to get engaged when the time is ripe, and therefore capable of saving Venezuela!

*

President Xi Jinping, President Vladimir Putin, I am writing this letter with great respect for both of you personally, and with profound admiration for your countries. In many ways I also belong to both Russia and China, despite my determined internationalism, and my perpetual lack of “home”.

I also write this with great hope.

I do not know how to resolve the situation practically – how to save Venezuela in a sensible but also truly determined way. I cannot offer any practical political advice to the two of you – great leaders of two enormous countries.

I have merely outlined the global situation, the murderous drive of the Empire and the plight of Latin America, the continent, which is so deeply engraved in my heart.

And I am stating the obvious: now it is only China and Russia that can save Venezuela. And I am also repeating what we all already know, in South America, in China and in Russia: “Only if united, we will never get defeated!”

With great respect,

Andre Vltchek

*

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.  Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

Attorney Hassen Abdellah, my colleague and erstwhile radio co-host (www.RadioTahrir.org) had just returned from the jenazah service for Muhammad Ali in Louisville. Abdellah and I plan an hour-long radio special this Wednesday at 7pm on a local radio station (www.wjffradio.org). It would be an opportunity to share Hassen’s testimony, to talk about sports and social activism, and to dialogue with listeners about the great, departed Muhammad Ali.

Now what?

The full impact of Sunday’s mass shooting at an LGBT club in Florida has not yet hit America’s public consciousness; be assured however, it will soon be taken over by the monster anti-Muslim anti-immigrant machine here. That horrible and saddening event in Orlando will surely feed Donald Trump’s alarmism and his campaign against Muslims. It will provoke even the most tolerant and patient to reassess their positions.

Before Wednesday evening, our WJFF station director may cancel the planned program. If not, how can we proceed with our celebration of Muhammad Ali in what will doubtless be a volatile atmosphere when the media begin their attacks? I am unsure how we can handle it.

Most troubling is how this kind of disruption, interruption and diversion from our essential activist and educational agenda occurs with awful regularity month after month for decades. Whether a dictator’s dangerous whims, or a raging Zionist campaign, The Hague tribunal’s pursuit of selected war criminals, a careless remark by an inarticulate member of our community or by a Muslim head-of-state, a lop-sided TV debate with a media-illiterate Arab spokesman, a PLO miscalculation, a school textbook with too much truth about Palestinian history, humdrum statements by our talented writers decrying violence and reminding the public what we are not –always what we are not— never getting to what we are; daily bombings in our homelands, young talented journalists assigned to cover war and suffering rather than education, architecture or literature, relentless accounts of hardships endured by any Muslim woman, kidnapped schoolgirls, flogged journalists.

It’s so hard to maintain our noble agenda— to follow the sisters’ proud declarations at last week’s beautiful memorial: “I Am Muhammad Ali”.

Stay tuned Wednesday evening (www.wjffradio.org). Pray that Allah awards us the patience and journalistic prowess we so need moving forward.

Meanwhile consider setting aside a few hours to view the 2 hour, 15 minute procession of Ali’s final journey through his hometown in Kentucky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ZDZMLfgqY

and the full 3 hour memorial service

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYFb97j7Ro&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop

(now distributed –co-opted, as always–by NYT but originally filmed, I believe, by Fox10 TV Phoenix, Arizona).

Then decide for yourself what Muhammad Ali signifies and can still give meaning to.

Germany’s Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) is playing an increasingly prominent role in the NATO deployment in Eastern Europe, which is openly preparing for war against Russia.

As part of the current Anakonda 2016 manoeuvres, the largest NATO military exercise since the end of the Cold War, German combat engineers, along with British soldiers, built a 300-plus metre amphibious bridge over the Vistula on Thursday. A short time later, heavily armoured NATO tanks rolled over the bridge on their way east, towards the Russian border.

For days, the Bundeswehr web site has carried propaganda articles and videos documenting the move of German troops into Eastern Europe. They have titles such as, “Exercise Anakonda 2016—Minden Pioneers on the way to the Vistula”; “On the final straights to the NATO summit”; “Dragoon Ride II—Dragoons ride into the Baltic”; “By convoy into the Baltic—Advance to the Saber Strike exercise” and “Howitzers into the Baltic—The transfer begins”.

The reports provide an overview of the growing German contingent in the east. As part of the “Persistent Presence” manoeuvre, on May 30, “the 3rd Battery of Artillery Battalion 295, under the command of Captain P., left for exercises and training in Lithuania”. In the current naval exercise “BALTOPS” in the Baltic Sea, which includes a total of 45 vessels, 60 aircraft and 4,000 troops from 14 countries, the German Navy is involved with nine units, including the combat support ship “Berlin”, the frigate “Sachsen” and the P-3C “Orion”, a maritime patrol aircraft designed for hunting submarines.

The “march diary” of a certain Captain Bumüller of the 12th armoured brigade in Amberg provides an insight into the provocative “Dragoon Ride II”, described as a “massive land march via Poland” to Estonia, where the Bundeswehr is participating with 16 vehicles. According to media reports, the Bundeswehr is dispatching a total of 5,000 soldiers to Eastern Europe this year alone.

The historical and political significance of the German deployment cannot be exaggerated. June 22 marks the 75th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the attack by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union that claimed the lives of 40 million Soviet citizens and was conducted throughout Eastern Europe as a war of extermination. Every square metre over which German tanks and soldiers are once again trampling recalls dark memories of the past crimes of German imperialism. The Nazis initially used occupied Poland as a staging area for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Later, they constructed their extermination camps there.

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, and after the full scope of the Holocaust became known, Germany was forced to observe military restraint for a long time. This began to change with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification twenty-five years ago. In the last two years, the German ruling class has completely dropped its flowery post-war pacifist phrases. It has returned to an aggressive foreign policy with ominous parallels to that of 1941.

According to a report in Die Welt, a new Defence White Paper, which provides for the deployment of the Bundeswehr domestically and for other missions abroad, no longer describes Russia as a “partner”, but rather as a “rival”. Of particular concern to the German government is the increasing use “of hybrid instruments for the targeted blurring of the boundary between war and peace”, and the “subversive undermining of other states”.

This narrative has nothing to do with reality. Moscow’s militaristic behaviour is not progressive and increases the danger of war. But in Eastern Europe, it is not Russia that is the aggressor and that “undermines states” and “blurs the boundary between war and peace”, but the Western powers. In Ukraine, Washington and Berlin organized a coup against the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014, working closely with fascist forces. Since then, Germany has used the predominantly defensive reaction of Russia in order to systematically beef up its military and go on the offensive.

The decisions of the last few weeks to increase defence spending by 130 billion euros and the army by at least 7,000 soldiers are just the beginning. The stated goal of the German government is to gradually increase military spending to two percent of gross domestic product, as required by NATO.

News weekly Der Spiegel anticipated that Germany’s defence budget would have to “increase by five and a half billion euros year on year, by the 2024 target date”. The magazine concluded, “In the end, Germany would be the largest military power on the continent by far. Not all European neighbours will like that”.

At present, the German offensive is supported by the United States. Only last weekend, the New York Times published an ode to the return of German militarism. It wrote:

“It has taken decades since the horrors of World War II, but Berlin’s modern-day allies and, it seems, German leaders themselves are finally growing more comfortable with the notion that Germany’s role as the European Union’s de facto leader requires a military dimension”. All this comes “perhaps none too soon”, according to the Times. “The United States and others—including many of Germany’s own defense experts—want Germany to do even more for Continental security and to broaden deployments overseas”.

Although Berlin is presently stepping up its defence spending within the framework of NATO, and is deploying its troops to the East as part of the US-led offensive against Russia, there can be no doubt that the future struggle for control of Eurasia, as well as the Middle East and Africa, will lead to violent tensions and conflicts between the imperialist powers, as happened before in the First and Second World War.

A current strategy paper of the German Council on Foreign Relations by Joseph Braml, published in business daily Handelsblatt on May 17, accuses the US of following the “motto of the Roman Empire ( divide et impera )”, dividing the world into blocs “in order to better control them”. The editorial culminates with the demand: “Europe, especially the leading European power Germany, should in its own interest, prepare for the United States’ ever clearer concept of the enemy”.

At the end of May, writing in Die Zeit under the headline “What unites Obama and Trump”, Theo Sommer railed against American forces in Europe. “The main purpose of their continued presence” is “hardly the defence of Europe”, he complained. “Only the smallest part of their deployment serves the deterrence of Russia”, with the rest aimed at “the protection or assertion of American interests elsewhere in the world”.

Sommer added:

“Without their upstream positions in Europe, without the ports, air bases, hospitals and command centres in Italy, Spain, Germany and Turkey, the Americans would be as good as operationally incapable in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean, in the Arctic”. The same applies to Africa, he added, and one could also “ask why America’s Africa Command was based in Stuttgart”.

Sommer, the long-time editor of the liberal weekly Die Zeit, and Braml, formerly a legislative adviser in the US House of Representatives, have traditionally held a more transatlantic orientation. Their editorials are an indication of the ferocious tensions that are developing below the surface again between the post-war allies, as the imperialist redivision of the world enters a new and dangerous phase.

This 2015 report by The Intercept sheds light on FBI procedures pertaining to the recent shootings in Orlando, Florida

*        *        *

U.S. law enforcement officials announced another terror arrest on Monday, after arming a mentally ill man and then charging him with having guns.

ABC News quoted a “senior federal official briefed on the arrest” as saying: “This is a very bad person arrested before he could do very bad things.”

But in a sting reminiscent of so many others conducted by the FBI since 9/11, Alexander Ciccolo, 23, “aka Ali Al Amriki,” was apparently a mentally ill man who was doing nothing more than ranting about violent jihad and talking (admittedly in frightening ways) about launching attacks—until he met an FBI informant. At that point, he started making shopping lists for weapons.

The big twist in this story: Local media in Massachusetts are saying Ciccolo was turned in by his father, a Boston Police captain. The FBI affidavit says the investigation was launched after a “close acquaintance … stated that Ciccolo had a long history of mental illness and in the last 18 months had become obsessed with Islam.”

According to the affidavit, Ciccolo first talked to the FBI informant about attacking two bars and a police station. Later, he spoke of attacking a college campus with a homemade pressure-cooker bomb like the one used in the Boston Marathon terror attack; he also talked about using guns and a lot of ammo. Ciccolo, according to the affidavit, then “ordered the firearms from a confidential human source (“CHS”) working with the FBI.”

“You get the rifles, I’ll get the powder,” Ciccolo allegedly told the informant. “The next time we meet I want us to have at least those two things.”

The FBI then surveilled Ciccolo as he bought a pressure cooker at a Walmart. When the  informant showed up with the guns, Ciccolo had no black powder. He was, however, soaking Styrofoam strips with motor oil in an apparent attempt to make explosive “Molotov cocktails,” the affidavit alleged.

The Justice Department’s press release referred to these as “Terrorist Attack Plans,” and alleged that he was a supporter of the Islamic State. But Ciccolo was notably not charged with any of the actual terror charges, such as use of weapons of mass destruction or providing material support to terrorists, that are most commonly employed by the Justice Department.

Our thoughts are with the families of the victims. (M. Ch. GR. Editor)

Recent Bloodbath Looks Almost Identical to FBI-Staged Entrapment Cases in 2015.

A horrific mass shooting unfolded in Florida claiming the lives of at least 52 with scores more injured. The British Independent would report in its article, “Omar Mateen: Orlando gay club gunman identified by police,” that:

Police have identified the gunman in the mass shooting at a gay club in Florida as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, an American citizen whose parents are from Afghanistan. 

Authorities in Orlando said they were investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism, as the death toll rose to 50 with a further 53 wounded.

At face value – it appears to be another senseless tragedy perpetrated by a “terrorist” inspired by militant groups the US claims to have been fighting for now nearly two decades. However the Independent reports another fact further down in the body of its article, claiming that:

ABC News reported he had been on police’s “radar”, though not subject to an investigation.

If this sounds like a familiar narrative, that’s because virtually every high-profile “terrorist attack” carried out in North America and Europe in recent years has been done so by suspects long under investigation by US, Canadian, and European law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

CNN’s article, “50 killed in Florida nightclub, shooter pledged ISIS allegiance,” would further elaborate on Mateen’s background, stating: 

Two officials tell CNN that the FBI had investigated Mateen at some point for possibly having ties to or sympathizing with Islamic extremism. A law enforcement official said there were two cases opened involving Mateen but the probes didn’t result in enough evidence to charge him with anything.

In the past two weeks Mateen legally purchased a Glock pistol, found at the shooting scene, from a St. Lucie County area gun store, a law enforcement official said.

What CNN fails to mention is the long history the FBI has of taking “sympathizers” through a series of steps to acquire “enough evidence,” including posing as terrorists and providing suspects with weapons and plans for attacks precisely like the one that just unfolded in Florida.

To understand the implications of yet another high-profile terror attack involving a suspect already known to law enforcement agencies, one must examine previous examples of admittedly set up attacks “foiled” at the last moment by the FBI, as well as attacks that have been carried out by individuals tracked for years and even arrested multiple times by Western police and intelligence agencies only to be let go time and time again until finally carrying out “the big one.”

ISIS Inspired? Or FBI Inspired? FBI Set Up Multiple Attacks in 2015 Almost Exactly Like the Florida Shooting

A terror suspect armed to the teeth storming a public place and killing scores is actually a very familiar script. The FBI wrote several such scripts in 2015 alone, including entrapping and arresting a mentally-ill suspect after providing him with an arsenal of deadly weapons almost identical to the arsenal recently employed in Flordia.

The Intercept would report in its article, “Another “Terror” Arrest; Another Mentally Ill Man, Armed by the FBI,” that:

U.S. law enforcement officials announced another terror arrest on Monday, after arming a mentally ill man and then charging him with having guns. 

ABC News quoted a “senior federal official briefed on the arrest” as saying: “This is a very bad person arrested before he could do very bad things.” 

But in a sting reminiscent of so many others conducted by the FBI since 9/11, Alexander Ciccolo, 23, “aka Ali Al Amriki,” was apparently a mentally ill man who was doing nothing more than ranting about violent jihad and talking (admittedly in frightening ways) about launching attacks—until he met an FBI informant. At that point, he started making shopping lists for weapons.

The Intercept would also reference the FBI’s affidavit (.pdf), stating (emphasis added):

According to the affidavit, Ciccolo first talked to the FBI informant about attacking two bars and a police station. Later, he spoke of attacking a college campus with a homemade pressure-cooker bomb like the one used in the Boston Marathon terror attack; he also talked about using guns and a lot of ammo. Ciccolo, according to the affidavit, then “ordered the firearms from a confidential human source (“CHS”) working with the FBI.”

The list of weapons provided to the mentally-ill suspect by the FBI informant is shocking. Revealed in the official FBI affidavit (.pdf), the weapons included a 9mm Glock 17, a 10mm Glock 20, a .223 Colt AR-15 rifle, (referred to by the media as an “assault rifle”), and a 556 Sig Arms SG550 rifle (also often referred to as an assault rifle). Also included in the affidavit is the same hysterical rhetoric encouraged by FBI informants now evident in the recent actions of terror suspect Omar Mateen in Florida.

The FBI literally provided a mentally-ill man they helped plan a terrorist attack together with, an arsenal of deadly weapons – arresting him just before he committed his crime. The only factor that prevented the 2015 entrapment of Ciccolo from becoming a live Florida shooting-style attack was the fact that the FBI arrested Ciccolo before he carried out his planned attack – while those following Mateen did not arrest him.

The role of the FBI in Mateen obtaining his weapons will never be known since Mateen is now – conveniently – dead. Even if he purchased them “legally” at a gun store, it should be noted that in other FBI entrapment cases, suspects were encouraged to purchase weapons themselves, with the FBI arresting them only after they left gun stores with their newly acquired arsenal.

Image: Another patsy set up by the FBI in 2015 was allowed to purchase two
semi-automatic rifles at a gun store before being arrested upon leaving with the weapons. 

NBC Cincinnati affiliate WLWT5 would report in their 2015 article, “FBI: Cincinnati man bought rifles, planned to attack U.S. Capitol,” that (emphasis added):

Agents said that on Tuesday and Wednesday Cornell met with the informant the final time to plan their trip to D.C. to execute their plan. He purchased two Armalite M-15 5.56 mm semi-automatic rifles Wednesday morning, along with 600 rounds of ammunition, and was arrested. 

Cornell bought the rifles at the Point Blank gun store on Harrison Avenue in Colerain Township. He passed a background check and paid $1,900 in cash, $700 for each rifle and about $400 for the ammunition. 

The gun store owner, John Dean, said FBI agents notified him that Cornell was going to come in to buy the guns about 10 minutes before he entered the store. 

Dean said the agents told him to allow the purchase and agents would stop Cornell after he left the store.

What if agents didn’t stop him after he left the store? He had two semi-automatic rifles and 800 rounds of ammunition – more than enough to carry out a Florida shooting-style attack. Some may be immediately tempted to conclude that the FBI would never allow an attack they played a role in planning to go “live.” However, they would be wrong.

A Notorious FBI-Staged Attack that Went Live

The FBI in fact was presiding over the terrorists who carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The role of the FBI leading up to the deadly attack would most likely have gone unreported had an FBI informant not taped his conversations with FBI agents after growing suspicious during the uncover operation. The New York Times in their article, “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast,” reported:

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars.

The FBI and other US, Canadian, and European law enforcement and intelligence agencies “accidentally” failing to stop terror suspects they have long-known about and have even arrested multiple times has since become endemic. In recent years, virtually every suspect has either been known by such agencies beforehand, or has been involved in a history of crime and terrorism before carrying out their final acts of grand terrorism.

Such was the case in the various French attacks. Many from the network that carried out the French attacks were then directly involved in the Belgium attacks. To explain away the fact that virtually all the suspects had been within European security agencies’ grasp for years but were still able to carry out their deadly attacks – the Western media has attempted to cite a lack of resources.

In reality, what is playing out is an engineered strategy of tension using both the threat of terrorism and actual terrorism to create hysteria, fear, division, and ultimately obedience and capitulation across Western populations.

It should be remembered that Al Qaeda itself began as a US-Saudi joint venture to fight proxy warfare against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan where conventional Western forces could not go. It should also be pointed out that since then, Al Qaeda and its more recent affiliate, the self-proclaimed “Islamic State,” have enjoyed logistical support from the US and NATO for years in proxy wars ranging from Libya to Syria to Iraq and the frontiers of Iran, southern Russia, and western China.

More recently it has been admitted even within the Western press that the “Islamic State” is being resupplied and reinforced from NATO territory itself, with the UK Telegraph admitting in its article, “US-backed Syrian opposition forces surround Isil in key city and cut off main supply route,” that:

…Syrian opposition forces have completely surrounded the Islamic State-held stronghold of Manbij and cut off the group’s main route to the outside world….. 

The loss of Manbij will be a huge loss to the group. It had been a waypoint on an Isil supply line between the Turkish border and the extremist group’s de facto capital, Raqqa. 

Again, we see that while the US claims to fight the “Islamic State,” its NATO partner Turkey is quite literally the source of the terrorist organization’s fighting capacity, with US forces permanently stationed in Turkey for decades and Turkey having been a NATO member since the 1950s. Despite open acknowledgments that the “Islamic State” is operating out of Turkey, the US has used the presence of the terrorist organization inside Syria as a pretext for intervening in the war directly.

Were the US truly interested in stopping the “Islamic State,” it and its allies in Ankara would be easily able to wield maximum force within Turkey’s territory to cut the group off before it even reached Syrian territory.  That both Washington and Ankara are feigning an inexplicable inability to do this, and insist instead that the war must be fought inside Syria exposes the cynical nature with which the West uses – not fights – terrorism to further its geopolitical and domestic political agendas.

As special interests attempt to leverage this latest terrorist attack – all of these actual facts must be kept in mind to ground us to a reality Western politicians and media outlets will attempt to detach us from in the coming days and weeks.

The best reporting on the depth of America’s dictatorship is probably that being done by Atlanta Georgia’s NBC-affiliated, Gannett-owned, TV Channel “11 Alive”, WXIA television, “The Investigators” series of local investigative news reports, which show, up close and at a cellularly detailed level, the way things actually work in today’s America. Although it’s only local, it displays what meets the legal standards of the US federal government in actually any state in the union; so, it exposes the character of the US government, such that what’s shown to be true here, meets America’s standard for ‘democracy’, or else the federal government isn’t enforcing federal laws against it (which is the same thing as its meeting the federal government’s standards).

The links to three of these local TV news reports will be provided, along with a summary of each of the videos; and then the broader context will be provided, which ties the local picture in with the national, and then the resulting international, picture. So, this will be like a zoom-lens view, starting with three selected close-ups, and then broadening the view to wide-angle, showing the context in terms of which what’s happening in that fine detail (those close-up views) makes sense.

The central video will be the second of the three, which deals with the impact that the national organization called ALEC plays in creating the entire situation in the US, and which ties the Georgia-state reality in with the reality of the US federal government.

Here are the three videos, and their respective summaries:

Georgians are prohibited from seeing Georgia’s laws unless they pay over $300 to buy the law books. (Thus, for example, Georgians get arrested, then charged, then judged, then perhaps imprisoned, according to laws they can’t even so much as see beforehand.)

Georgia’s laws are written in secret by the Kochs’ and other billionaires’ ‘charity’ (like NGOs but operating only within a nation, not internationally) called ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), which pays legislators to approve the laws that it writes, and which requires them to pass these laws (or else they’ll lose their legislative seats as being ‘representatives of the people’).

NOTE: Perhaps because of the explosive nature of news reporting such as this, that TV station prohibits the Web Archive, web.archive.org, from archiving their investigative reports, but this particular TV report was also recently posted by someone to YouTube.

This TV report’s transcript also was once available at another of Gannett’s Georgia TV stations, and that station didn’t block web-archiving, so this transcript, though no longer online, was web-saved and will thus permanently be available.

Georgians have no way of knowing who or what will be charged to them on their medical bills. Patients who have a medical emergency are especially flying blind into deep indebtedness and possible bankruptcy, over which they’ve got no control.

He signals to the Sheriff’s deputy.
I’m a guest of the hotel sir.
Not for long, not for long.
I’m here – I’m a paying guest of this hotel sir.

We’ll take care of that.
Let me escort you up to your room to get your things.
Did we violate some law or something? I mean, are we violating a law here?…
WXIA Reporters say they filed half a dozen open records requests with Georgia legislators including the speaker of the house – asking for receipts and reimbursements to ALEC events – but had their requests denied because the general assembly exempted themselves from the Georgia Open Records law.

This, then, is the reality in the nation that now is trying to impose upon the entire world the same corporate type of government that already exists in America. This is what, in the West, is now the reality of its ‘democracy’. It is Newspeak ‘democracy’, not what used to be called “democracy”.

And, so, it was with remarkable honesty, courage, and frankness, that the best-known living Georgian, America’s former President Jimmy Carter, said recently of the US government:

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

And that’s what we just now saw in practice at the state level, in that middle video.

Former President Carter was describing there the ‘democracy’ that now presents itself to the global public as being the model that the entire world must copy– or else!

According to this government, the nations that resist, do it because they are “corrupt” and “not democracies”. America, and NATO, and its allies (including Saudi Arabia, etc.?), demand to be obeyed, on that basis– as being the world’s opponents of corruption and of dictatorship. For this, their enemy nations (e.g., Iraq, Libya, Syria, and– via a coup in February 2014 – Ukraine) are being invaded, to impose compliant governments: millions are killed, and tens of millions are forced to flee and become unwanted refugees. And America and its allies then blame other nations, especially Russia (their favorite bogeyman), for that. By contrast, ‘the West’ is supposed to stand for clean government, ‘transparency’, and ‘democracy’.

So, how corrupt is America? It’s become corrupt enough to threaten to take over the entire world. And, perhaps soon after the NATO Summit on 8-9 July, we’ll know whether or not the national aristocracies that are subordinate to the US aristocracy, are, indeed, willing to join the American aristocracy’s willingness to use nuclear weapons to achieve the objective.

Washington wants Latin and Central America recolonized, US-controlled tyranny replacing sovereign independence throughout the hemisphere.

At an Association of Caribbean States summit last week in Havana, Cuban President Raul Castro expressed alarm about Latin American and Caribbean “turbulence,” calling it the result “of an imperialist and oligarchic counteroffensive against popular and progressive governments.”

Washington orchestrated Brazil’s coup, wrongfully impeaching President Dilma Rousseff, forcing her to step down for 180 days, facing Senate trial controlled by right-wing fascists sure to convict her – despite no legitimate grounds. She committed no crimes.

Washington wants neoliberal harshness replacing Venezuelan Bolivarian fairness. Its tactics include making its economy scream, causing enormous hardships for ordinary people, orchestrating violent street protests, and wanting President Nicolas Maduro ousted by coup, recall referendum or perhaps assassination if other methods fail.

A previous article explained the following. Article 72 of Venezuela’s Constitution states

(a)ll magistrates and other offices (including the president) filled by popular vote are subject to revocation.

Once half (their) term of office…has elapsed, 20% of (registered) voters (by petition may call for) a referendum to revoke such official’s mandate.

When a number of voters equal to or greater than the number of those who elected the official vote in favor of revocation (provided the total is 20% or more of registered voters), the official’s mandate shall be deemed revoked…

Things aren’t as straightforward as they seem. Verifying the authenticity of signatures collected precedes any further action.

According to Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) president Tibisay Lucena, rampant fraud was discovered. Over 605,000 signatures were found defective and disqualified – including thousands belonging to deceased Venezuelans, others to minors too young to vote, as well as people with nonexistent identity cards.

An investigation into massive fraud may follow. Venezuelans wishing to withdraw their names may do so. Others will have their fingerprints checked for authenticity.

At that point, CNE authorities have 20 working days to determine if opposition elements may move on to try collecting signatures from the required 20% of the electorate needed to hold a recall referendum.

If gotten and verified, a process requiring months to complete, one will be organized within 90 days. Removing Maduro requires support from more than the 50.6% of voters supporting his 2013 election.

On Saturday, he ruled out a referendum this year, saying if its “requirements are met, it will be (held) next year, and that’s it.” Otherwise, no recall vote will be held.

Timing is important. If held by January 10, 2017, a new election will be called if Maduro loses. If things go against him after this date, Vice President Aristobulo Isturiz will serve as president until January 2019, when his term expires.

A recall petition submitted on May 2 got 1.8 million signatures, over one third so far disqualified as fraudulent or ineligible. Verifying the remaining numbers must be completed before taking any further action, months of effort required.

Dark forces in Washington and Venezuela may not wait. Past coup attempts against Hugo Chavez and Maduro failed. Perhaps Obama intends another before leaving office.

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.

There is something so fundamentally wrong about equating the joy and genius of scientific discovery with profit and markets. Initial discoveries in quantum physics had nothing to do with the idea of pursuing a remorseless “bottom line” or some specious market concept.  The results of such discoveries were, however, gargantuan.  Eventually, applications arise, with various economic benefits.  Patience, however, is a golden virtue in that regard.

Australia’s scientific management (these comprise scientists who attempt to straddle the world of practice and business, and petty bureaucrats) have not taken kindly to the field of pure scientific endeavour.

The Turnbull government has continued what the previous government did: savage the fund lines, turning off the taps.  Australia’s core scientific institution risks becoming a rump, while other countries pour money into theirs with intoxicating enthusiasm.

The climate change modelling unit at the main scientific organisation, CSIRO, has been devastated, with the government feeling that sufficient work has been done in the area.  Having tooted the Australian horn of achievement, Turnbull and scientific management feel that money might be better spent elsewhere.

The entire sense of Australian science as business can be gathered by a skirt through the website.  The reader stumbles across the “Operating Model” which was obviously written by a technocrat versed in painful MBA jargon: “Our operating model underpins the successful execution of our strategy and delivery of our goals.”[1]

The language is cold and uninspiring.  There is a reminder where the body comes from, notably the provisions of the Science and Industry Research Act 1949.  The message from the minister speaks about government “providing the catalyst for collaboration and transformation of our industries while capitalising on the depth of our innovative and highly skilled workforce.”[2]

There is nothing in the minister’s statement of 2015 (that of Ian Macfarlane of Industry and Finance) that reflects the deeper values of the scientific enterprise as science per se. Scientists are encouraged to foster business acumen, charging into brave futures with bright advertising credentials.

The idea is to reward Australian “industry” rather than add to the annals of discovery. What is sovereign is never in dispute.  It is made clear that CSIRO “had a central role in the translation of science and technology into products and services that benefit our nation and enhance our productivity and our prosperity.”

Policy documents that would have sat very comfortably in a Soviet government ministry have been produced, proclaiming strategic directions and aspirations.  Strategy 2020: Australia’s Innovation Catalyst, is one such ghastly product, glowingly administrative and heavily managerial.

CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall’s statement from 2015 uses all the language of spin in his vision.  There are “inputs”; there are “crowd sourced ideas from more than 7000 of our creative people, customers, thought leaders and the public”.  There is that word that Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has made a Tibetan mantra: innovation.

For Marshall, the CSIRO is a business mechanism with a purpose.  The body must “help reinvent existing industries and strive to create a new industry for a changing Australian economy.”  His message is delivered like a party official in full regalia.  “Australia must be a high performing innovation economy.”

This is emphasised in the CSIRO’s overview of “global megatrends”.  Some mention is made about scarcity and resources, the issue of water, mineral and food resources.  Climate change is briefly mentioned as part of the changes in earth systems “from global to microbial”.  (Such vagueness is typical in business speak.)

Economic worth makes a far more prominent appearance, to such an extent there is a mention of the “silk highway” (an insertion of Chinese influence?) seeing fast “growth of emerging economies, urbanisation, geopolitical change and the transition from industrialisation into technologically advanced service sectors.”

Employees of CSIRO have also been caught off guard by the organisation’s greater insistence that they strap on their entrepreneurial boots and seek out prospects to “partner” with business.  “The CSIRO,” as the organisation statement asserts, “invests in an evolving portfolio of businesses to deliver on our mission.”

Australia’s tertiary sector is also milking this tendency, creating a hybrid graduate interested in both scientific trends and business.  The University of Technology Sydney, the University of New South Wales, and the Queensland University of Technology are among such institutions.

The assumption here is that such hybrid degrees and combinations are automatic, and while it would be incorrect to ignore that science has economic and social applications, it is also a very narrow way of viewing the world.

Marshall’s money-driven overview is a reminder about how subordinate science can become. It continues to prove central to the military industrial complex. It continues to fund projects of biosecurity that involve mass extermination of undesirable species (undesirable, in that sense, being determined as a matter of agrarian economy).  University departments, strung along by industry grants, have also fallen victim to this cycle of production and discovery.

Farewells have been made to genuine, speculative science. If an Einstein was to appear at the doorstep of CSIRO these days, he would be turned back with disdain.  That is modern innovation for you.

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

Notes

 [1] http://www.csiro.au/en/About/Strategy-structure/Operating-model

[2] http://www.csiro.au/strategy/

Syria is on the front lines against the dictatorship of a globalizing economic ideology that favours the dominance of capital/markets over people and nation-states.

Wahhabi Saudi Arabia., the Gulf Monarchies, Israel, and NATO are trying to impose the hidden driver of imperialism, “International Capital”, on Syria.

Robin Mathews describes our own capture by international capital in “The Trans Pacific Partnership: Canada and Imperial Globalization”:

A characteristic of Imperial Globalization is criminal manipulation of people and events for the profit of a few. It includes massive ‘disinformation’ about equality, benefits, social development, law, improved standards of living, etc.  The disinformation is spread by ‘authoritative’ news sources.  In the hands of gigantic, wealthy, private corporations, globalization is a process which works to erase sovereign democracies and replaces them with ‘treatied’ sub-states, economic colonies ruled by faceless, offshore, often secret, unaccountable powers.

Whereas Canadians are led to believe that we live in a free and democratic society, we are increasingly engineered to accept the dictatorship of transnational capital as expressed through international banking institutions (as opposed to publicly-owned banking) and “free trade” agreements, all of which subordinate elected polties and serve the interests of an international oligarch class, to the detriment of Canadians.  Both domestically and internationally, wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few.

So how did Syria, free from terrorists prior to the pre-planned, criminal, imperialist “interventions”, earn the distinction of being on the front lines against the West?

Syria insists on choosing its own path, as per international law, and refuses to be a vassal of US led forces of predatory capitalism that siphons the world’s resources for the benefit of a transnational oligarch class.

Supremacists, on the other hand, view international law as a disposable commodity.

Countries are opened up for the extraction of human and natural resources.  Transnational banksters pry open previously sovereign countries with usurious loans bundled Structural Adjustment Plans that privatize and loot public assets for the benefit of the publicly bailed-out “private” Market.

When all else fails, when sanctions haven’t killed and demoralized enough innocent civilians – the “other” — non-compliant civilized nations — face Empire’s foot soldiers — the likes of which include ISIS, and al Qaeda/al Nursra Front in Syria.

Zafar Bangath, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), and president of the Islamic Society of York Region, Toronto, ON., explains that Empire is seeking to install a compliant puppet government in Syria; that it is seeking to destroy Syria; and that it seeks to protect Israeli supremacy.  Already, he notes, the aggressors have inflicted about $100 billion worth of damage on the battered country.

His assessment errs on the side of caution. A study by The Lancet, “Syria: end sanctions and find a political solution to peace” indicates that by the end of 2014, the cost of illegal sanctions imposed on Syria stood at US $143.8 billion, and that 80% of the population was living in poverty.

Meanwhile, President Assad is well aware of the imperial forces behind the mercenaries invading his country.  In a speech to the newly elected members of the People’s Assembly, he elaborated upon the modus operandi of the invaders.

• They seek to attack the constitution by means of a so-called  “transition” stage
• They seek to destroy the two pillars of the government: the army, and the diverse national, pan-Arab and religious identity of Syrians
• They seek to rebrand the savage terrorists as “moderates” and then to eternally provide them with a cover of legitimacy
• They seek to create chaos, sectarianism, ethnic enclaves that turns the people’s commitment from the homeland to conflicting groups that seek help from foreigners against their own people
• They seek to be branded as “humanitarian” and “protectors” to save the people from (externally engineered) conflict and misery.

By imposing economic and armed terrorism on the people, by waging a phony war against their own proxies, and by destroying a countries infrastructure, the imperialists seek to be seen as saviours, humanitarians, protectors, who can then introduce the “free market” of international capital, which will be the coup de grace to effect the final destruction of the host country.

We’ve seen the same script play out most recently in Libya and Iraq.

Stephen Gowans explains in “Aspiring to Rule the World: US Capital and the Battle for Syria”:

Significantly, every country in which the United States has intervened militarily either directly or through proxies, or threatened militarily, since WWII has had a largely publicly owned economy in which the state has played a decisive role, or has had a at democratized economy where productive assets have been redistributed from private (usually foreign) investors to workers and farmers, and in which room for US banks, US corporations and US investors to exploit the countries’ land, labor, markets and resources has been limited, if not altogether prohibited. These include the Soviet Union and its allied socialist countries; China; North Korea; Nicaragua; Yugoslavia; Iraq; Libya; Iran; and now Syria. We might expect that a foreign policy dominated by a wealthy investor class would have this character.

Syria, then, is opposing international forces of Capital that threaten its very existence. These imperial forces are trying to impose a globalized dictatorship of Capital that expresses itself externally in the economic sanctions and the invading terrorists ravaging Syria, even as expresses itself through “internal imperialism” in Western countries such as Canada, where public resources are increasingly looted for the benefit of international investors, and oligarch classes, foreign and domestic.

Instead of worshipping at the altar of transnational predatory capitalism, which is spreading war and poverty throughout the world, we should be embracing “Life Capital”, and the forces of economic and political democracy that accompany it.

The 13th report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights situation in Ukraine between 16 November 2015 and 15 February 2016, when the Minsk Agreements were in force, has come as a shock to Kiev.

According to the UN, more than three million people live in the areas directly affected by the conflict. The exact number of people who have left Ukraine-controlled territory is still unknown, although rough estimates range from 800,000 to 1,000,000 people. The Ukrainian government has estimated that more than a million people have left southeast Ukraine for Russia, Belarus and Europe. This figure does not match that of the Russian federal migration service, however: in 2015, around four million Ukrainians crossed the border, with nearly 2.6 million settling in Russia. More than a million people have arrived from southeast Ukraine. Residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are permitted to live freely in Russia.

The discrepancy in the figures clearly shows that Ukraine is not interested in keeping track of its citizens, whether within the country or abroad. This means that one of the aims of the military campaign launched in the east of the country is to displace the population from the area of conflict, predominantly to Russia. Given that refugees from the republics to Ukraine are facing discrimination in access to public services, according to the UN report, the authorities in Kiev do not seem to want the residents of Donbass either.

The UN also states that those living close to the contact line (nearly 800,000 people) are particularly suffering, and the lives of these people are constantly at risk. The UN mission believes that the assistance being given to the residents of Donbass is insufficient, even given Russia’s humanitarian convoys, although the fact that it was Ukraine that shut down all the social programmes and introduced the ‘blockade’ unfortunately remained beyond the scope of the report.

The UN believes that the permit regime introduced by Ukraine and the disorder at checkpoints are negatively reinforcing the isolation of those living in the DPR and LPR. Queues of up to 300-400 cars waiting on either side of the checkpoints are observed on a regular basis and this recently ended in tragedy. Due to the fact that the Ukrainian checkpoint is not open at night, civilians who had been queuing in their cars overnight were fired at by the Ukrainian side using illegal-calibre weapons (122 mm), resulting in the deaths of five people, including a pregnant woman.

During the period covered in the report, the Ukrainian armed forces have advanced even further into populated areas and the numerous attacks on the residential areas of Horlivka, Shakhtarsk and Debaltseve are also mentioned in the report.

Since the Minsk ceasefire agreements entered into force (i.e. since 15 February 2015), there have been 843 civilian casualties – 235 killed (216 adults and 19 children) and 608 injured (554 adults and 44 children). At the same time, the UN mission notes that it is unable to attribute some of the victims to either side of the conflict. It also emphasises that the real number of those killed and injured could be higher than that given in the report.

The number of people missing is particularly shocking. The Ukrainian side has reported 741 persons missing, while the DPR has registered 420 missing persons. In addition, the UN mission has ascertained that approximately 1,000 bodies held in morgues in government-controlled territory have still not been identified.

And once again the numbers are crying out that the Ukrainian government does not believe people to be important. The number of persons that Kiev has declared missing is a third less than the number of unidentified bodies! And the numbers also ignore the mortal remains in areas where hostilies took place – search operations are virtually non-existent. As the UN report states, there is not even a dedicated mechanism in place to gather statements from the relatives of missing persons.

The UN mission has also not taken into account the number of unmarked graves in cemeteries. The overwhelming majority of missing persons should not be looked for in the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, but among the thousands of bodies that have already been quietly buried or are still lying in morgues. It is possible that the official number of those who will never return has been hugely underestimated.

The efforts of the Ukrainian side aimed at searching for and identifying those killed and those missing are referred to in the UN report using the word «inaction».

Kiev cannot admit that to avoid responsibility, it is secretly carrying out a policy of ‘unidentified bodies’. It is also being suggested to relatives that missing persons are being held captive by DPR and LPR ‘separatists’.

The report concedes that some people recorded as missing may be alive, but are being held in secret places of detention either in the republics or in Ukrainian-controlled territory.

The UN mission has finally figured out that the secret prisons and torture in Ukraine are an established system that has become part of the state and its policies. Of the 1,925 criminal investigations launched into allegations of torture in 2015, 1,450 were closed.

The report has also provided yet more evidence that it is not a civil war. It is a war between those who seized power by means of a military coup and the people of Ukraine, a war that is hypocritically being referred to as an ‘anti-terrorist operation’.

As noted in the report,

throughout the country, OHCHR continued to receive allegations of enforced disappearances, arbitrary and incommunicado detention, and torture and ill-treatment of people accused by the Ukrainian authorities of ‘trespassing territorial integrity’, ‘terrorism’ or related offenses, or of individuals suspected of being members of, or affiliated with, the armed groups.

People are not just being tortured, but are also being executed without trial. In Sloviansk, for example, the basement of the local college is being used for this purpose. A basement used for torture and summary executions was also discovered by UN inspectors in Izium, Kharkiv district. In addition, «a network of unofficial places of detention, often located in the basement of regional SBU buildings, have been identified». The SBU also has such basements in Odessa and Kharkiv. In February 2016, between 20 to 30 people were detained in the basement of the Kharkiv regional SBU building, and the vast majority of prisoners were not arrested in accordance with legal procedures and were not charged.

The report also notes that the SBU obtains confessions of terrorism using torture, and those who sign the confessions are told that should they complain, then their families, including their children, will also be made to suffer. The Security Service of Ukraine refers to such methods as the use of «proportional» and «justified» force.

The 13th report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights situation in Ukraine appeared on 3 March 2016, but it is only now that the information bomb has exploded following an article in The Times, in which Ivan Simonovic, UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, talks about the report and also about five secret SBU prisons that a delegation of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture was not allowed access to, resulting in the delegation cutting short its visit to Ukraine…

The 13th report also completely destroys the myth that there are thousands of prisoners in the DPR and LPR. There is no trace of the thousands – in February 2016, the SBU gave the UN mission a list of 136 people who are allegedly being detained in custody in the republics, but nothing is known about this for sure. The list provided by the DPR authorities, however, looks completely different. «Some 1,110 persons were detained by the Government of Ukraine, including 363 members of the armed groups. This includes 577 people arrested for ‘their political views’ and 170 civilians ‘who have nothing to do with the conflict’», says the UN report. The SBU has gone overboard by essentially creating a system of concentration camps. The UN report likens the actions of the SBU to the seizure of hostages.

It has been impossible to keep the scandal hushed up, but while this regime exists in Ukraine, investigations into its criminal activities will be carried out along the same lines as the investigations into the people burned alive in Odessa on 2 May 2014. Namely that the executioners will remain free or under house arrest while the victims are imprisoned. For years.

Amid rising concerns over global economic growth, global bond prices surged to a record high on Friday in a “flight to safety” as equity markets in Japan and Europe experienced their worst day since the turbulence at the start of the year.

Yields on German, UK and Japanese government bonds, which move in an inverse relationship to their price, all reached new depths, with the yield on the German 10-year Bund, regarded as a benchmark for the euro zone, going as low as 0.01 percent.

The head of sovereign capital markets at Citigroup, Philip Brown, said to see the yield on the Bund so low was “shocking.” “Equities are falling and fixed income is rallying in a flight to quality—there are real fears in markets about global growth.”

The surge in government bond prices came as the European Central Bank began buying corporate bonds in addition to its purchases of government debt of €80 billion a month. The extension of debt purchases, the result of an ECB decision last March to step up its quantitative easing program aimed at pumping trillions of euros into the financial system, has been accompanied by deepening criticism from Germany.

The bond-buying program, which started on Wednesday, had been expected to only involve high-grade bonds. While the ECB has not disclosed which corporate bonds are being purchased, market analysts quickly discerned those involved. Contrary to expectations some of them are of “speculative grade” status.

One of the most prominent was Telecom Italia Spa, whose bonds are listed as below investment grade status by two of the major credit rating agencies and only qualified because of the higher grade status afforded them by the Fitch rating agency.

The new phase of ECB action was greeted with a 12-page report by Deutsche Bank chief economist David Folkerts-Landau denouncing the central bank’s program. The criticisms have been voiced before but the latest report is the most strident yet.

Folkerts-Landau said the ECB had “lost the plot” and its desperate actions—bond purchasing programs and the establishment of negative interest rates—raised the risk of a “catastrophic” mistake.

“ECB policy is threatening the European project as a whole for the sake of short-term financial stability,” he wrote.

“The benefits from ever-looser policy are diminishing while the litany of distortions, perversions and disincentives grows by the day. Savers are punished and speculators rewarded. Bad companies survive while good companies are too scared to invest.”

The report compared the ECB’s mistakes to the German Reichsbank in the 1920s which printed money, leading to hyperinflation and economic collapse. “That was a hundred years ago but mistakes keep happening despite all the supposed improvement in central banking.”

Tracing out the evolution of the ECB policy, he said that after the failure of the lowest interest rates in 20 generations to boost investment, the central bank embarked on a massive program of purchasing euro zone member government debt. But the sellers of that debt did not use the money to invest but just placed their money at the central bank, after which the ECB went to the “next logical extreme” by imposing negative interest rates on deposits. He noted that almost half of euro zone sovereign debt was trading with a negative yield, meaning that a bond purchaser who held it to termination would make a loss on the investment.

Folkerts-Landau also bought into a political row that erupted in April. At that time, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said the impact of the negative interest rate regime on small savers was at least 50 percent responsible for the rise of the right-wing German populist party, AfD, which made considerable gains in recent regional elections.

“The longer policy prevents the necessary catharsis,” Folkerts-Landau wrote, “the more it contributes to the growth of populist or extremist policies.”

These comments point to the underlying reasons for the strident opposition within the German financial system to the ECB policies. A large portion of the German financial system consists of smaller regional banks whose business model, based on investment in secure government debt, is being hammered by negative rates. The operations of these regional banks form a part of the social base of the ruling party, the CDU.

The criticism of the ECB goes beyond Deutsche Bank. This week Commerzbank, which is partly government-owned and second only to Deutsche Bank, indicated it was looking at the possibility of hoarding its cash rather than placing its funds with the ECB where it is charged at a negative interest rate of minus 0.4 percent. As one commentator noted, such an action “would be the most flagrant bank protest against central bank policy yet seen.”

The policy agenda of Deutsche Bank and much of the German financial establishment was indicated in Folkerts-Landau’s indictment. Despite its “good intentions,” he wrote, the ECB had removed the incentive for euro zone government to revamp their policies through “structural reform.” Together with the reference to a “necessary catharsis,” this points to the growing clamour in financial circles for the initiation of further sweeping attacks on the social and employment conditions of the working class across Europe—a deepening of the measures which the French government is seeking to implement through its new labour laws.

The official rationale for the actions of the ECB and other central banks is that lower interest rates are needed to boost inflation and investment. But the euro zone remains in the grip of deflation and the ECB has lowered its own 2018 forecasts for growth in the region.

Opposition to present policies is not confined to criticism of the ECB. This week the Fitch rating agency reported that negative yielding government debt globally had now risen to more than $10 trillion following a 5 percent increase in bonds with a sub-zero yield. This means that the price of the underlying bond is rising, as yields and the price move in an inverse relationship.

Initially negative yields only affected the shortest-term bonds but the phenomenon is spreading and now encompasses seven-year German Bunds and 10-year Japanese government bonds. This is impacting heavily on insurance companies and pension funds which rely heavily on positive rates on government bonds to finance their operations.

Commenting on the $10 trillion mass of negative yielding sovereign debt, Bill Gross, the former head of the world’s largest bond trading firm, tweeted: “Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history … This is a supernova that will explode one day.” This refers to a situation in which interest rates begin to rise, leading to a fall in the price of bonds, thereby creating massive losses for investors who have purchased them at inflated prices.

Gross is by no means the only one warning of a possible financial catastrophe. Capital Group, which manages about $1.4 trillion in funds, has warned that negative interest rates are distorting financial markets and might lead to “potentially dangerous consequences.”

The head of the Los Angeles-based bond house DoubleLine, Jeffrey Gunlach, recently described negative interest rates as “the stupidest idea I have ever heard of” and warned that the “next major event” for financial markets could be when the ECB and the Bank of Japan cancel the experiment.

Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, recently wrote in a note to investors, that there had been plenty of discussion about how low interest rates had contributed to the inflation in asset prices. But, he continued, “not nearly enough attention has been paid to the toll these low rates—and now negative rates—are taking on the ability of investors to save and plan for the future.”

In other words, out of the horse’s mouth so to speak, comes the warning that the parasitic policies which have proved so beneficial to the hedge funds and other multi-billion dollar financial speculators are undermining the central foundations on which the financial system has rested for decades.

Nas palavras da jornalista canadense Naomi Klein, “se olharmos para a história dos primeiros lugares onde o neoliberalismo foi imposto, ele foi imposto exatamente no oposto [do que nos é dito]: foi necessária uma derrubada da democracia para que ele se desenvolvesse”.

Por outro lado, políticas sociais são aplicadas exatamente como socorro às crises profundas geradas pela maximização do livre-mercado. Casos emblemáticos são o New Deal norte-americano do presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pós-Grande Depressãoiniciada pela quebra da Bolsa de Valores de Nova Iorque em 1929, e os Estados de Bem-Estar Social europeus pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Os países nórdicos, berço da social-democracia, sempre foram exemplos neste sentido, nos dias de hoje abrindo-se ao Consenso de Washington ao diminuir a influência estatal, e, como sempre ocorreu na história, tornar as economias mais vulneráveis.

Enquanto tal modelo gera horror em setores reacionários pautados pela mídia predominante defensora dos interesses das grandes corporações que a sustentam, que chegam a ponto (não raras vezes) de qualificá-lo de “comunismo diabólico”, por outro lado a intervenção estatal de Bush filho em 208, maior da história destinada ao socorro aos bancos criminosos, exatamente os geradores da depressão econômica de então (não sanada até hoje), o qual ultrapassou 1,8 trilhão de dólares, e dois anos depois o plano de salvação de Barack Obama à indústria automobilística acima da casa dos 60 bilhões de dólares, acomodam os espíritos mais conservadores das sociedades.

Vale apontar que no atual festival da despolitização tupiniquim que tirou da Presidência uma das únicas políticas sem acusação nem sequer sendo investigada por corrupção, para colocar no poder, nas palavras de Noam Chomsky (intelectual mais respeitado do mundo) “uma corja de ladrões” sob forte influência e aplausos midiáticos, as classes média e alta brasileiras têm apoiado agora e historicamente o model neoliberal, com a típica raiva caçadoras de bruxas anti-comunistas presente na ridícula votação pelo impedimento da presidente Dilma Rousseff (assim observado por todos os meios de comunicação mundiais), e nestas semanas subsequentes.

Apontado neste sentido, da excessiva ignorância baseada na ditadura do mercado que relega todo o aparato do Estado e a própria sociedade à lógica do lucro (que é ilógica) e da profunda despolitização, baseadas em desenfreada competitividade, no ódio às diferenças e nos preconceitos étnicos, regionais, sociais, sexistas e de gênero, é a cara perfeita da sociedade brasileira, de seu estilo e de sua estatura moral e intelectual, este público ataque gospel-reacionário da jurista Janaína Paschoal na Faculdade de Direito da USP, no início de abril capaz de gerar desconforto até em seus colegas e alunos reacionários – portanto, nada dotados de grande senso do ridículo e de consideráveis capacidades intelectuais.

Famosas internacionalmente pela essência corrupta, pela fortíssima discriminação, pela agressividade e pela incapacidade organizacional que, no país do carnaval e do futebol decadente, dia a dia se superam, que se creem sábias ao mesmo tempo que, na ausência de autonomia reflexiva, são capazes de caírem no engodo de personagens como Temer, Sarney, Calheiros, Eduardo Cunha e da mesma mídia sabidamente manipuladora e historicamente golpista, bem como devota das própria retórica de “liberdade” baseada na lei do mercado, as mentalidades elitistas brasileiras (que não escolhem classe social) podem ter a condição de prostração intelectual e de falência moral refletida com perfeição nas palavras de Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Ninguém está mais desesperadamente escravizado, que aquele que falsamente acredita ser livre”.

E em não raros casos, certamente, é ainda mais sofrível ter-se consciência da escravidão econômica, social e política passivamente por medo, por interesse ou por uma patética combinação de ambos. Para os setores reacionários nacionais, imbecilizados pela grande mídia oligárquica pertencente a cinco famílias e financiada diretamente por Washington (fato comprovado documentalmente por WikiLeaks), pode o FMI e todas as evidências, atuais e históricas, apontar contrariamente a suas ideias pré-concebidas que tudo será em vão e tudo seguirá como está. A história mostra isso, e hoje e só esperar para ver.

Edu Montesanti

Debunking the Stubborn Myth that War Is Good for the Economy

The 2016 general election of the Republic of the Philippines resulted in the most widely followed electoral period in Philippine political history. Officially starting on February 9, 2016, a hodgepodge of candidates, political parties, coalitions, and electoral alliances campaigned for multiple levels of executive and legislative government positions across the officially unitary—but in practice semi-unitary—polity of the Philippines on Monday, May 9, 2016. Without question, the most watched electoral races were those for the offices of the president and vice-president.

Aside from the presidency and vice-presidency, heated contests were waged over most of the legislative seats in the bicameral Congress of the Philippines. Half of the 24 seats in the Senate—the upper chamber of the Philippine Congress—and almost 300 seats in the House of Representatives—the lower chamber of the Philippine Congress—were contested. Furthermore, the Cotabato City-based executive and legislative regional government posts of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)—formed by the Mindanaoan provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi—consisting of the ARMM governorship, ARMM vice-governorship, three ARMM deputy governorships, and regional representatives in the unicameral ARMM Regional Legislative Assembly were all campaigned for.

Other local contested government offices were: the gubernatorial executive and legislative posts of governor, vice-governor, and Provincial Board legislator in the eighty-one Philippine provinces; and the country’s mayoral, vice-mayoral, and councilor offices forming the local government units for the highly urbanized component cities, independent component cities, component cities, and municipalities formed by the towns and townships of the Philippines.

The Media Centrality to 2016’s General Election

What made the 2016 election season and its campaigns unique is the integral role that the media played. The 2016 campaign period received widespread public attention and scrutiny due to the intense media coverage and the dependency of the candidates on different modes of communication and mass communication technologies, specifically the internet and social media. From the presence of the electoral candidates on social media to the mammoth advertisement campaigns they conducted and the heavy coverage provided to them by the largest news networks and newspapers in the Philippines, 2016 has been a multimodal media extravaganza par excellence for Philippine politics. From blogs, Twitter, Facebook, the online comment sections of news outlets, and public forums to community spaces and religious congregations across the Philippines, the public sphere has been abuzz. Public discussions focused on political dynasties, corruption, change, patronage, clientelism, constitutionalism, embezzlement, fraud, integrity, morality, the rule of law, and the future of the peoples of the Philippines. Despite the continued societal cynicisms about political corruption, this has led to a renewal of popular interest in Filipino politics. The supporters of all the candidates were active participants replicating the political messages and discourse(s) of those that they supported; even when campaigning was supposed to be stopped, supporters continued campaigning for their candidates on social media and in their daily exchanges.

The series of heated debates purportedly managed by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) that Filipinos and Filipinas from all over the country watched and listened to on their televisions, radios, computers, or smart phones added greatly to the public debate(s) about who should administer the next government of the Philippines. Millions of Filipinos and Filipinas listened and watched the live broadcasts of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates debating one another. The insults and accusations that the presidential contenders—Vice-President Jejomar Cabauatan Binay (the United Nationalist Alliance candidate), Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago (the People’s Reform Party candidate), Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte (the Philippine Democratic Party–People’s Power candidate and the winner of the election), Senator Mary Grace Natividad Sonora Poe Llamanzares (running as an independent), and Manuel Araneta Roxas II (the Liberal Party candidate from Wall Street and himself a secretary in President Benigno Aquino III’s cabinet until September 14, 2015)—hurled and leveled at one another during the live broadcasting captivated and enthralled Filipino and Filipina audiences from Cagayan Valley, Mimaropa and Central Visayas to Zamboanga, ARMM, and Soccsksargen. In Cebu City, the presidential candidates even delayed the debate when they began arguing backstage for approximately an hour over the rules of the debate. Eventually Mayor Duterte and Senator Poe would enter the stage, followed by Mar Roxas and Vice-President Binay; Senator Defensor-Santiago was absent due to her cancer treatment.

Symbolically choosing the three different regional groupings formed by the archipelago of the Philippines, the presidential candidates participated in three different debates, which were called the 2016 PiliPinas Debates. The first installment of the 2016 PiliPinas Debates was held at Capitol University in Cagayan de Oro, the capital of Misamis Oriental, in Mindanao on February 21, 2016. The second 2016 PiliPinas Debate was held at the University of the Philippines Cebu in Cebu City, Visayas on March 20, 2016. The last part of the 2016 PiliPinas Debates was held at the University of Pagasinan in the City of Dagupan in Luzon on April 24, 2016.

In between the second and third legs of the debates by the presidential candidates, their running-mates and vice-presidential candidates—Senator Alan Peter Schramm Cayetano (Duterte’s running-mate), Senator Francis Joseph Guevara Escudero (Poe’s running-mate), Senator Gregorio Ballesteros Honasan (Binay’s running-mate), Senator Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos (Santiago’s running-mate), Representative Maria Leonor Gerona Robredo (the running-mate of Roxas), and Senator Antonio Fuentes Trillanes IV—held their own debate at the University of San Tomas in Manila on April 10, 2016. As an added note, in the interest of full disclosure, this author was among the audience members at the University of the Philippines Cebu Performing Arts Hall during the Visayan leg of the 2016 PiliPinas Debates.

COMELEC appeared to be very hands-off in its approach to the 2016 PiliPinas Debates, instead opting to let private media enterprises do the managing. This not only highlights the important role of the media in 2016’s general election, but also the influence of private capital over state bodies and national institutions in the Philippines. Each one of the different PiliPinas Debates respectively had designated “media partners” from the major television networks and newspapers of the Philippines that played central roles in the management and organization of the debate program and its coverage. GMA Network and Philippine Daily Inquirer were responsible for the first presidential candidate debate held in Mindanao, which GMA broadcasted under its “E16: Eleksyon 2016” (E16: Election 2016) special campaign season programming. TV5, Philippine Star, and BusinessWorld were responsible for the second presidential candidate debate held in Visayas, which TV5 broadcasted as part of its “Bilang Pilipino: Boto sa Pagbabago 2016” (Count Filipino: Vote for Change 2016) campaign programming. In Luzon, CNN Philippines and BusinessMirror were responsible for the vice-presidential candidate debate, whereas ABS-CBN and Manila Bulletin were responsible for the third presidential candidate debate, which were respectively broadcasted by CNN Philippines as part of its “The Filipino Votes” special coverage, and by ABS-CBN as part of its “Halalan 2016: Ipanalo ang Pamilyang Pilipino” (Election 2016: Winning the Filipino Family) special coverage.

Red Flags: Candidates Overspent on Advertisements

During the campaign season, it was reported that the candidates in the Philippines spent sensational amounts on their advertising. It was even reported that Philippine candidates even outspent their US counterparts with regards to their campaign advertising expenditures (Cabacungan and Santos). During the period of January to November, Binay, Poe, and Roxas respectively spent 63.2 million, 63.1 million, and 70.4 million Philippine pesos per month in 2015 (Nielsen cited in ibid.). US candidates like neurosurgeon Benjamin S. Carson, billionaire businessman Donald Trump, and Senator Rafael Edward Cruz respectively spent the equivalent of approximately 33.6 million, 13.5 million and 33.6 million Philippine pesos per month in 2015, during the seven-month period of January to July, whereas Binay, Poe, and Roxas respectively spent an average of 99.4 million, 99.2 million, and 110.6 Philippine pesos per month during a period of seven months in 2015 (Ibid.; figures calculated by author using Nielsen’s dataset).

The spending contrasts between US and Philippine candidates is staggering since the US has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of approximately 17.42 trillion US dollar, according to 2014 statistics (World Bank), and a population of 321.77 million people in mid-2015 (UN 2015) compared to the Philippines, which had a GDP of 284.77 billion US dollars, according to the same 2014 statistics (World Bank), and a population of 100.69 million people in mid-2015 (UN 2015). Citing figures from the US Federal Election Commission to contrast the advertising expenditures of presidential campaigns in the US to the larger advertising expenditures of the candidates in the Philippines, senatorial candidate Walden Belo described this as part of the “corruption of the political process” (Cabacungan and Santos).

What is important to be cognizant about is the pre-election advertisement spending of the candidates and their attempts to circumvent electoral spending laws and COMELEC caps. COMELEC regulations stipulate that every presidential candidate may spend only 10 Philippine pesos per voting citizen. This is a total of 545 million Philippine pesos for the projected fifty-four and a half million eligible Filipino voters that can participate in the 2016 general-election. COMELEC’s spending restrictions are mandated by Article 9, Section 2(7) of the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines to “ensure the enforcement of the fair-and-equal exposure rule for political parties and their candidates” and to prevent “a strong party or candidate from taking undue advantage of the weakness of others” (De Leon 2005:299).

In an attempt to circumvent COMELEC’s spending cap, according to Nielsen Media (as cited by Mangahas et al.), many politicians and parties ran “social concern” advertisements, which cost 7.75 billion Philippine pesos, from the period running from January 1, 2015 to January 31, 2016. The advertisements were aired during prime time on Filipino television and during the timeslots of the country’s most popular programs; 86.7 percent of these advertisements (accounting for 6.7 billion Philippine pesos) featured the candidates that would run in the general-election (Ibid.). Despite their pledges against corruption, many of these candidates disregarded the law with impunity before they even got sworn into office. Binay, Poe, and Roxas all spent approximately 1 billion Philippine pesos on their presidential campaign advertisements. According to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, “even the more affluent” candidate should have become bankrupt because of the costs of their pre-campaign advertisements (Mangahas).

It is worth quoting the inference that Senator Defensor-Santiago made when she heard that her rivals had spent over one billion Philippine pesos in 2015 for their presidential bids before they were even legally allowed to begin their advertising campaigns. She rhetorically asked how these politicians paid for the scandalous amounts of their advertisements, especially since whoever becomes the president of the Philippines will make only 120,000 Philippine pesos a month (or 8.64 million in their six-year term). She then answered her own question for voters. “The simple answer is that they will steal from public funds, or will at least be tempted to do so. An alternative would be to give favors to rich contributors, to the detriment of public interest,” she reacted (Adel).

Although the regulations of COMELEC, which has been described as “a haven for fixers who deliver fictitious votes to the moneyed and the powerful” (Quimpo 2009:348), have been violated, COMELEC has not taken any substantive action. Unfortunately, this is business as usual in the Philippines. As the communications scholar Campbell (2002) points out, the Philippines is a place that is known for ineffective regulatory institutions and controls. Like most the other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), either on their own or collectively as a regional bloc, in the Philippines there is a major gap between declarations and regulations, on the one hand, and performance and implementation, on the other (Roberts 2012).

Electoral Irregularities and Abuses

During voting day there were multiple irregularities, abuses, and infringements. Ahead of the voting on May 9, it is widely known that the governing Liberal Party distributed money to buy votes. The same behavior was replicated with the country’s civil servants by the Liberal Party when government workers were given pay for a “fourteenth month” as a form of enticement to vote for Mar Roxas and the Liberal Party’s other candidates.

At the polls, the names of many voters were missing from the voting lists, while other voters were oddly moved from one voting cluster to another without explanation by COMELEC, which may possibly be part of an attempt to redistribute voters in a de facto form of gerrymandering. The names of dead people were included in the voting lists of different precincts, such as in Manila. The former ambassador of the Philippines to the United Arab Emirates Roy Villareal Señeres—the presidential candidate that died in the hospital on February 8, 2016, just three days before withdrawing his bid for the presidency on February 5, 2016—was kept on the ballots by COMELEC and got at least 22,726 votes by the time the ballots in approximately 87 percent of the precincts had been counted, according to report by Rappler published on May 10, 2016.

Procedural rules were not followed on voting day. As observed by the author in Central Visayas, the polling clerks did not check the identification cards of voters. Candidates did not even stop their campaigning as COMELEC required them to do one day before the vote on May 8, 2016. The voting cards that the candidates distributed to voters had political advertising that, if not outright, in spirit violated the COMELEC regulations requiring politicians to end their campaigning. While on average 33.7 percent or one-third of registered voters in the Philippines will not vote or will never be able to vote (Panao 2016:2), even worse, many Filipinos and Filipinas were disenfranchised from voting because they could not access voting stations or pay for government documents, which they need to register for voting.

Media Filters: Constructing and Framing Philippine Electoral Issues

The media has played an important role in framing the direction and discourse of the election campaigns. It not only has the power to inform voters, but it can mislead and distract voters, which makes it important to material processes (physical action). Media organizations and those operating them directly as owners and managers, or indirectly as sponsors and sources of funding, decide which voices will be ignored, reported, exposed, and given importance. In this respect, the media can function as a filter and inform and distort the perception(s) of voters. This means that the media is not only being constructed, but helping construct the opinions of voters. This process is largely based on the stance of the media, which is based on political and social attitudes and the beliefs of media ownership and those reporting and producing the information that people consume.

Philippine society’s most important issues went largely ignored or have been under-reported by Philippine media. In the process, the 2016 general election was transformed—if not in whole, then in part—into an entertaining circus. The policy platforms of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates were largely overlooked and disregarded by the media, albeit the candidates were mostly indistinguishable from one another in their political platforms and agendas (or absence thereof); the main Philippine political parties “are built around personalities, rather than around” platforms, and “ideologies and platforms are just adornments for them” (Quimpo 2007:277). Laying testimony to this were the cross-cutting electoral alliances that were exhibited by posters of Liberal Party candidates alongside Duterte, such as Cebu City’s Liberal Party mayoral candidate Tomas de la Rama Osmeña.

Trying to compensate for the missing substance, the media focused instead on the personal attacks of the candidates directed against one another’s characters, albeit the candidates themselves in general neither focused on analyzing the shortcomings of one another’s policies nor presented any real policies of their own in their campaign advertisements. Because of this, the presidential and vice-presidential election campaigns largely became daily doses of television dramas or, as they are more popularly called by Filipinos and Filipinas, Pinoy telenovelas and teleseryes.

Aside from the consistent barrage of controversial performances by former professional boxer Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao and Rodrigo Duterte—dubbed as the “Filipino Donald Trump” because of his heated comments during the elections that paralleled those of Donald Trump (Yap and Lopez; Thomas)—and the continuous revelations of corruption among the different candidates, the saga behind Grace Poe’s eligibility was a key focus of the media.

Just as Mar Roxas began courting Grace Poe on the last days of the campaign, Vice-President Binay and his camp tried to court Poe in the heydays of the 2016 general-election. When Senator Poe and Binay did not make any agreement in 2015, Poe’s problems about her residency and citizenship began when United Nationalist Alliance Representative Tobias Tiangco challenged her eligibility for the presidency. Questions about Poe being able to meet the ten-year residency qualification for the presidency were all over the news.

Poe was forced to go on the defensive and get a team of lawyers to defend her. According to Senator Poe, she denounced her Filipina citizenship on October 18, 2001 for a US citizenship. She would then become a citizen of the Philippines again on July 7, 2006, but would continue to enter and leave the Philippines with a US passport until she finally bothered to get her Philippine passport on October 13, 2009 (Rufo). After an electoral campaign for the Senate, Poe then renounced her US citizenship when she took office on October 21, 2010. After a stretched out drama, the Senate Electoral Tribunal and Supreme Court of the Philippines would eventually rule in her favor, allowing her to campaign for the presidency.

Disregarded and Overlooked Issues

The continued land struggle in the Philippines was largely absent from the political discourse at the top. This struggle between the wealthy land-owning economic oligarchs—mostly the descendents of the ilustrados (Mestizo landowners) that collaborated with the US when it invaded and occupied the Philippines (Reid 2007:1007)—and their development companies, on one side, and, on the other side, substantially larger strata of Philippine society—ranging from farmers in rural areas to squatters and low-income laborers in the country’s expanding urban environs—at best received lip service during the elections. Philippine farmers and citizens in poor neighborhoods in the country’s urban hubs frequently face threats, acts of violence, and appropriation of their property. They have become destitute, having their homes demolished, and their livelihood lost. As the country’s agricultural base is eroded, social inequality grows, and social unrest is fuelled by policies of marginalization, in the long-term this will have severe consequences for the economic health and political stability of the Philippines. This trend is epitomized by the tragic deaths and injuries of the farmers in Kidapawan that gathered to protest a lack of governmental assistance from North Cotabato on March 30, 2016. More of this can be expected in the future as desperation grows among the farmers, the urban and rural land struggles inside the Philippines intensify, and socio-economic disparity escalates.

No serious critique or analysis about the economic path of the Philippines was presented either by the vast majority of candidates. According to Japanese financial holdings company Nomura, the dependence of the Philippine economy on remittance from Filipinos and Filipinas working overseas has increased (de Vera). There is also the issue of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI); the increased FDI in the Philippines has simplistically been presented as an indicator of economic growth without any mention of the larger returns and outflows that are expected from the FDIs.

Additionally, largely missing from the political discourse was the subject of the dispute in the South China Sea or, as it is called in the Philippines, the West Philippine Sea and what the ramifications of an escalation of the dispute with Beijing would mean for the Philippines. The winners of the general-elections will have to work with Washington in a time where there is increasing tensions between the US and the People’s Republic of China. The US has a major interest in using the dispute in the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea to justify its so-called “Pivot to the Asia-Pacific” and to isolate Beijing. This could entangle the Philippines in a wrestling match between China and the US. Despite the importance of the subject, there has been little critical coverage about the territorial dispute in the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea and the only politician who publicly admitted that he went to talk about the issue with the US Embassy in Manila was Rodrigo Duterte (Ramirez).

Duterte’s Winning Discourse: Tough on Crime, Anti-Corruption, and Federalism

Instead of addressing serious issues in a direct manner, the politics of blame were used. In this context, the 2016 election season saw a large and frustrated portion of the lower strata of Philippine society unite under the banner of Rodrigo Duterte and his anti-corruption and anti-crime discourse that pledged to be hard on crime and to challenge “Imperial Manila” as the parasitic political center of the Philippines. “What he lacks in policymaking interest or experience he made up for during the campaign with the showmanship that had been absent from national politics. ‘Many Filipinos loved it,’” was how an Economist article described Duterte after his victory.

During the campaigning, Duterte became a conceptual representation (Kress and van Leewen 1996), who no longer was viewed in terms of his actions, but in terms of a representation of the frustrated lower strata of the Philippines. This reached the point where support for Duterte transcended local political loyalties in much of the Philippines; for example, in the Camotes Islands, the resident Liberal Party candidates were elected locally while most the population supported Duterte for the presidency. Even the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to Duterte or the last minute reports about the billions of Philippine pesos in his shared Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) account with his daughter Sara Duterte-Carpio or the YouTube video released by Kilab Multimedia showing Duterte indulgingly speaking to Jose Maria Canlas Sison—the Netherlands-based exiled founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines—over an internet video chat failed to undermine him.

Analyzing the semiotics behind Duterte’s campaigning, the fist it used represents the symbol of the strongman that he represents and his overtly tough on crime position. His anti-corruption and anti-crime discourse, however, falls short of addressing the dilemmas of the Philippines; it is mostly populist rhetoric. Duterte’s campaign failed to address the roots of the problem or even to articulate a clear policy agenda. His rhetoric was also contrary: while Duterte pledged to make the rule of law supreme in the Philippines, he paradoxically disclosed that he intended to do so by working outside of the rule of law.

Duterte’s federalist discourse and demands need further critical analyses. The idea of federalism put hand-in-hand with the Duterte transitional team’s announcements that his administration intends to increase FDI in the Philippines should not be overlooked. Mixing the two together can be a lethal economic cocktail. According to a Philippine Daily Inquirer post-election report (published on May 13, 2016), after winning the election, Duterte said he will increase FDI by removing the protective constitutional barriers that prevent foreign ownership or foreign-owned shares above a figure of 40 percent for nationally important and strategic sectors, such as in telecommunications, aviation, pharmaceuticals, and domestic shipping. Along with federalism, this could equate to the fracturing, de-regulating, and auctioning of the economy by the provincial oligarchs.

Philippine Media as an Accessory to Corruption?

In Bocaue, Bulacan, coin tossing was used to break an electoral tie and decide who becomes mayor. The coin tossing in Bocaue meant that the election results for mayor were ultimately decided by chance, which is an act that can strongly be said to emasculate voting. It was justified, however, by a proviso in Philippine law. This event epitomizes the nature and contradictions of the 2016 general-elections, where undemocratic political traditions have been positioned within a democratic political framework, just like how political dynasties have used political parties and lists to safeguard their interests in a system of non-substantive democracy filled with illusions of democracy that are sustained by democratic rituals that are void of authenticity.

In the last few years the Philippines has increasingly been described as “a patrimonial oligarchic state, a weak state preyed upon and plundered by different factions of the elite, who take advantage of, and extract privilege from, a largely incoherent bureaucracy” (Paul Hutchcroft cited by Quimpo 2007:282) According, to Hutchcroft, “it is not just one person and his/her cronies but the oligarchic elite as a whole that engages in plunder” in the Philippines (Ibid.). Others apply the predatory state description of Peter Evans (cited by Quimpo 2009:337) to the Philippines, which describe the Philippines as a state that “preys on its citizenry, terrorizing them, despoiling their common patrimony, and providing little in the way of services in return.” Others, like Quimpo (Ibid.), began defining the Philippines as a predatory regime under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. This trend has not reversed and instead it has been facilitated by the Philippine media’s pattern(s) of reporting.

The foundations of good governance in a society are established on the abilities of its voters to hold elected officials accountable. One of the tools for this is the media. Analyzing the vocabulary chains used in the 2016 general-election, economic development and fighting corruption were major themes of the different candidates. There were, however, no substantial explanations about how this would be done, which largely means that the discourse was predominately lip service and rhetoric. In many cases the media reported passively about this with declarative reporting that did not probe deeper or challenge the candidates to clarify how exactly they intended to do the things that they promised.

Discourse is much more important in the Philippines and the rest of the world than it was during the past. According to Norman Fairclough (2004:104), “language may have a more significant role in contemporary” sociological, economic, and political developments “than it had had in the past.” In this context, the Philippine media is supposed to play a role in informing citizens, but instead it has largely been involved in sensationalist reporting and the dramatization of Filipino politics as Pinoy telenovelas. By ignoring serious newsworthy issues and refusing to probe deeper into important questions, this pattern of reporting has largely helped keep the oligarchs of the Philippines in power and aided corruption and political malfeasance.

Works Cited

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“Despite his death, Roy Señeres picks up presidential votes.” Rappler. May 10, 2016. Accessed on 10 May 2016: <http://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/132506-roy-seneres-presidential-votes >.

“Duterte team unveils 8-point economic plan.” 13 May 2016. Philippine Daily Inquirer. A1+

Fairclough, Norman. 2004. “Critical Discourse Analysis in Researching Language in the New Capitalism: Overdetermination, Transdiscpinarity and Textual Analysis.” Pp.103-122 in Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis: Studies in Social Change. Lynne Young and Claire Harrison, eds. NYC: Continuum.

Kress, Gunther and Theo Leeuwan. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London, UK: Routledge.

Mangahas, Malou. 9 March 2016. “Net worth vs P6.7-B pol ads bill: Top bets in debt, deficit spending?” Philippine Star. Accessed on 16 May 2016: <http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/03/09/1561207/net-worth-vs-p6.7-b-pol-ads-bill-top-bets-debt-deficit-spending>.

Mangahas, Malou, et al. 7 March 2016. “Pre-Campaign Ads: P6.7B. Bribery, tax evasion, impunity?” Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Accessed on 1 April 2016: <http://pcij.org/stories/bribery-tax-evasion-impunity/>.

Quimpo, Nathan Gilbert. 2007. “The Philippines: Political Parties and Corruption.” Southeast Asian Affairs 2007:277-294.

Quimpo, Nathan Gilbert. 2009. “The Philippines: predatory regime, growing authoritarian features.” The Pacific Review 22(3):335–353

Panao, Rogelio Alicor L. 2016. University of the Philippines Forum 17(1):1-2.

Ramirez, Robertzon. 8 March 2016. “Duterte to meet with US embassy officials.” Philippine Star. Accessed on 1 May 2016: <http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/03/08/1560733/duterte-meet-us-embassy-officials>.

Reid, Ben. 2006. “Historical Blocs and Democratic Impasse in the Philippines: 20 years after ‘people power.’” Third World Quarterly 27(6):1003-1020.

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Rufo, Aries. 13 July 2015. “Grace Poe and Pandora’s box: Legal issues in her candidacy.” Rappler. Accessed on 12 April 2016: <http://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/99144-grace-poe-pandora-box-legal-issues-presidency>.

Thomas, Sylvia. 6 May 2016. “Rodrigo Duterte, the Filipino Donald Trump, favoured to win presidential race.” CBC News. Access 6 May 2016: <http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-1.3566738>.

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Yap, Karl Lester M., and Ditas B Lopez. 25 April 2016. “Duterte Widens Lead in Philippines Race Despite Rape Comment.” Bloomberg. Accessed 6 May 2016: <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-25/duterte-widens-lead-in-philippines-race-despite-rape-comments>.

Would Allen Dulles have resorted to assassinating the President of the United States to ensure the achievement of  his ‘Indonesian strategy’?

This is the central question addressed by Greg Poulgrain in his extraordinarily important book, The Incubus of Intervention: Conflicting Indonesian Strategies of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles.

Two days before President John Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, he had accepted an invitation from Indonesian President Sukarno to visit that country the following spring.  The aim of the visit was to end the conflict (Konfrontasi) between Indonesia and Malaysia and to continue Kennedy’s efforts to support post-colonial Indonesia with economic and developmental aid, not military.   It was part of his larger strategy of ending conflict throughout Southeast Asia and assisting the growth of democracy in newly liberated post-colonial countries worldwide.

He had forecast his position in a dramatic speech in 1957 when, as a Massachusetts Senator, he told the Senate that he supported the Algerian liberation movement and opposed colonial imperialism worldwide.  The speech caused an international uproar and Kennedy was harshly attacked by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even liberals such as Adlai Stevenson.  But he was praised throughout the third world.

Of course JFK never went to Indonesia in 1964, and his peaceful strategy to bring Indonesia to America’s side and to ease tensions in the Cold War was never realized, thanks to Allen Dulles.  And Kennedy’s proposed withdrawal from Vietnam, which was premised on success in Indonesia, was quickly reversed by Lyndon Johnson after JFK’s murder.  Soon both countries would experience mass slaughter engineered by Kennedy’s opponents in the CIA and Pentagon. Millions would die. Subsequently, starting in December 1975, American installed Indonesian dictator, Suharto, would slaughter hundreds of thousands East-Timorese with American weapons after meeting with Henry Kissinger and President Ford and receiving their approval.

Dulles’s Secret

What JFK didn’t know was that his plans were threatening a covert long-standing conspiracy engineered by Allen Dulles to effect regime change in Indonesia through bloody means. The primary goal behind this plan was to gain unimpeded access to the vast load of natural resources that Dulles had kept secret from Kennedy, who thought Indonesia was lacking in natural resources.  But Dulles knew that if Kennedy, who was very popular in Indonesia, visited Sukarno, it would deal a death blow to his plan to oust Sukarno, install a CIA replacement (Suharto), exterminate alleged communists, and secure the archipelago for Rockefeller controlled oil and mining interests, for whom he had fronted  since the 1920s.

Dr. Poulgrain, who teaches Indonesian History, Politics and Society at the University of Sunshine Coast in Australia, explores in very great detail historical issues that have critical significance for today.  Based on almost three decades of interviews and research around the world, he has produced a very densely argued book that reads like a detective novel with fascinating sub- plots.

The Importance of Indonesia

Most Americans have little awareness of the strategic and economic importance of Indonesia.  It is the world’s 4^th most populous country, is situated in a vital shipping lane adjacent to the South China Sea, has the world’s largest Muslim population, has vast mineral and oil deposits, and is home to Grasberg, the world’s largest copper and gold mine, owned by Freeport McMoRan of Phoenix, Arizona.  Long a battleground in the Cold War, it remains vitally important in the New Cold War launched by the Obama administration against Russia and China, the same antagonists Allen Dulles strove to defeat through guile and violence.  Just recently the Indonesian government, under pressure from the army that has stymied democratic reforms for 18 years, signed a defense agreement with Russia for the sharing of intelligence, the sale of Russian military equipment, including fighter jets, and the manufacturing of weapons in Indonesia.  While not front page news in the U.S., these facts make Indonesia of great importance today and add to the gravity of Poulgrain’s history.

The Devil in Paradise 

His use of the word “incubus” (an evil spirit that has sexual intercourse with sleeping women) in the title is appropriate since the sinister character that snakes his way through this historical analysis is Allen Dulles, the longest serving Director of the CIA and Kennedy’s arch-enemy.  While contextually different from David Talbot’s portrayal of Dulles in The Devil’s Chessboard, Poulgrain’s portrait of Dulles within the frame of Indonesian history is equally condemnatory and nightmarish.  Both describe an evil genius ready to do anything to advance his agenda.

Reading Poulgrain’s masterful analysis, one can clearly see how much of modern history is a struggle for control of the underworld where lies the fuel that runs the megamachine – oil, minerals, gold, etc.  Manifest ideological conflicts, while garnering headlines, often bury the secret of this subterranean devil’s game.

His story begins with a discovery that is then kept secret for many decades:  “In the alpine region of Netherlands New Guinea (so named under Dutch colonial rule – today, West Papua) in 1936, three Dutchmen discovered a mountainous outcrop of ore with high copper content and very high concentrations of gold.  When later analyzed in the Netherlands, the gold (in gram/ton) proved to be twice that of Witwatersrand in South Africa, then the world’s richest gold mine, but this information was not made public.”

The geologist among the trio, Jean Jacques Dozy, worked for the Netherlands New Guinea Petroleum Company (NNGPM), ostensibly a Dutch-controlled company based in The Hague, but whose controlling interest actually lay in the hands of the Rockefeller family, as did the mining company, Freeport Indonesia (now Freeport McMoRan, one of whose Directors from 1988-95 was Henry Kissinger, Dulles’s and the Rockefeller’s close associate) that began mining operations there in 1966.  It was Allen Dulles, Paris-based lawyer in the employ of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, who in 1935 arranged the controlling interest in NNGPN for the Rockefellers.  And it was Dulles, among a select few others, who, because of various intervening events, including WW II, that made its exploitation impossible, kept the secret of the gold mine for almost three decades, even from President Kennedy. JFK “was never informed of the ‘El Dorado’ he had unwittingly taken out of Dutch hands with the result that (once the remaining political hurdles in Indonesia were overcome) Freeport would have unimpeded access to its mining concession.” Those “political hurdles” – i.e. regime change – would take a while to effect.

The Indonesia-Cuba Connection

But first JFK would have to be eliminated, for he had brokered Indonesian sovereignty over West Papua/West Irian for Sukarno from the Dutch who had ties to Freeport Sulphur.  Freeport was aghast at the potential loss of “El Dorado,” especially since they had recently had their world’s most advanced nickel refinery expropriated by Fidel Castro, who had named Che Guevara its new manager.  Freeport’s losses in Cuba made access to Indonesia even more important. Cuba and Indonesia thus were joined in the deadly game of chess between Dulles and Kennedy, and someone would have to lose.

While much has been written about Cuba, Kennedy, and Dulles, the Indonesian side of the story has been slighted. Poulgrain remedies this with an exhaustive and deeply researched exploration of these matters. He details the deviousness of the covert operation Dulles ran in Indonesia during the 1950s and 1960s.  He makes it clear that Kennedy was shocked by Dulles’ actions, yet never fully grasped the treacherous genius of it all. Dulles was always “working two or three stages ahead of the present.”  Having armed and promoted a rebellion against Sukarno’s central government in 1958, Dulles made sure it would fail (shades of the Bay of Pigs to come).

Yet the end result of CIA interference in Indonesian internal affairs via the 1958 Rebellion was depicted as a failure at the time, and has consistently been depicted as a failure since that time.  This holds true only if the stated goal of the CIA was the same as the actual goal.  Even more than five decades later, media analysis of the goal of The Outer Island rebels is still portrayed as a secession, as covert US support for ‘rebels in the Outer Islands that wished to secede from the central government in Jakarta’.  The actual goal of Allen Dulles had more to do with achieving a centralized army command in such a way as to appear that the CIA backing for the rebels failed.

 The Need for Assassinations

Dulles betrayed the rebels he armed and encouraged, just as he betrayed friend and foe alike during his long career.  The rebellion that he instigated and planned to fail was the first stage of a larger intelligence strategy that would come to fruition in 1965-6 with the ouster of Sukarno (after multiple unsuccessful assassination attempts) and the institution of a reign of terror that followed.  It was also when – 1966 – Freeport McMoRan began their massive mining in West Papua at Grasberg at an elevation of 14,000 feet in the Alpine region.  Dulles was nothing if not patient; he had been at this game since WW I.  Even after Kennedy fired him following the Bay of Pigs, his plans were executed, just as those who got in his way were.  Poulgrain makes a powerful case that these included JFK, U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold (working with Kennedy for a peaceful solution in Indonesia and other places), and Congolese President Patrice Lumumba.

His focus is on why they needed to be assassinated (similar in this regard to James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable), though with the exception of Kennedy (since the how is well-known and obvious), he also presents compelling evidence as to the how.  Hammarskjold, in many ways Kennedy’s spiritual brother, was a particularly powerful obstacle to Dulles’s plans for Indonesia and countries throughout the Third World.  Like JFK, he was committed to independence for indigenous and colonial peoples everywhere, and was trying to implement “his Swedish-style ‘third way’ proposing a form of ‘muscular pacifism’.”

Had the UN Secretary General succeeded in bringing even half these countries to independence, he would have transformed the UN into a significant world power and created a body of nations so large as to be a counter-weight to those embroiled in the Cold War.

Poulgrain draws on documents from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu to show the connection between South Africa’s “Operation Celest” and Dulles’s involvement in Hammarskjold’s murder in September 1961.  While it was reported at the time as an accidental plane crash, he quotes former President Harry Truman saying, “Dag Hammarskjold was on the point of getting something done when they killed him.  Notice that I said, ‘When they killed him’.”

Dulles sold his overt Indonesian strategy as being necessary to thwart a communist takeover in Indonesian. Cold War rhetoric, like “the war on terrorism” today, served as his cover.  In this he had the Joint Chiefs of Staff on his side; they considered Kennedy soft on communism, in Indonesia and Cuba and everywhere else. Dulles’s covert agenda was to serve the interests of his power elite patrons.

Dulles and George de Mohrenschildt

Poulgrain adds significantly to our understanding of JFK’s assassination and its aftermath by presenting new information about George de Mohrenschildt, Lee Harvey Oswald’s handler in Dallas.  Dulles had a long association with the de Mohrenschildt family, going back to 1920-21 when in Constantinople he negotiated with Baron Sergius Alexander von Mohrenschildt on behalf of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.  The Baron’s brother and business partner was George’s father.  Dulles’s law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, “was virtually the front desk for Standard Oil.”  These negotiations on behalf of elite capitalist interests, in the shadow of the Russian Revolution, became the template for Dulles’s career: economic exploitation was inseparable from military concerns, the former concealed behind the anti-communist rhetoric of the latter.  An anti-red thread ran through Dulles’s career, except when the red was the blood of all those whom he considered expendable.  And the numbers are legion.

“It was through Standard Oil that a link existed between Dulles [who controlled the Warren Commission] and de Mohrenschildt, and this should have been brought to the attention of the Warren Commission but was not made public when Dulles had so prominent a role.”  Poulgrain argues convincingly that De Mohrenschildt worked in “oil intelligence” before his CIA involvement, and that oil intelligence was not only Dulles’s work when he first met George’s father, Sergius, in Baku, but that that “oil intelligence” is a redundancy. The CIA, after all, is a creation of Wall Street and their interests have always been joined. The Agency was not formed to provide intelligence to US Presidents; that was a convenient myth used to cover its real purpose which was to serve the interests of investment bankers and the power elite.

While working in 1941 for Humble Oil  (Prescott Bush was a major shareholder, Dulles was his lawyer, and Standard Oil had secretly bought Humble Oil sixteen years before), de Mohrenschildt was caught up in a scandal that involved Vichy (pro-Nazi) French intelligence in selling oil to Germany.  This was similar to the Dulles’s brothers and Standard Oil’s notorious business dealings with Germany.

It was an intricate web of the high cabal with Allen Dulles at the center.

In the midst of the scandal, de Mohrenschildt, suspected of being a Vichy French intelligence agent, “disappeared” for a while.  He later told the Warren Commission that he decided to take up oil drilling, without mentioning the name of Humble Oil that employed him again, this time as a roustabout.

“Just when George needed to ‘disappear’, Humble Oil was providing an oil exploration team to be subcontracted to NNGPM – the company Allen Dulles had set up five years earlier to work in Netherlands New Guinea.”  Poulgrain makes a powerful circumstantial evidence case (certain documents are still unavailable) that de Mohrenschildt, in order to avoid appearing in court, went in communicado in Netherlands New Guinea’s in mid-1941 where he made a record oil discovery and received a $10,000 bonus from Humble Oil.

“Avoiding adverse publicity about his role in selling oil to Vichy France was the main priority; for George, a brief drilling adventure in remote Netherlands New Guinea would have been a timely and strategic exit.”  And who best to help him in this escape than Allen Dulles – indirectly, of course; for Dulles’s modus operandi was to maintain his “distance” from his contacts, often over many decades.

In other words, Dulles and de Mohrenschildt were intimately involved for a long time prior to JFK’s assassination. Poulgrain rightly claims that “the entire focus of the Kennedy investigation would have shifted had the [Warren] Commission become aware of the 40-year link between Allen Dulles and de Mohrenschildt.” Their relationship involved oil, spying, Indonesia, Nazi Germany, the Rockefellers, Cuba, Haiti, etc.  It was an international web of intrigue that involved a cast of characters stranger than fiction, a high cabal of the usual and unusual operatives.

Two unusual ones are worth mentioning: Michael Fomenko and Michael Rockefeller.  The eccentric Fomenko – aka “Tarzan” – is the Russian-Australian nephew of de Mohrenschildt’s wife, Jean Fomenko.  His arrest and deportation from Netherlands New Guinea in 1959, where he had travelled from Australia in a canoe, and his subsequent life, are fascinating and sad. It’s the stuff of a bizarre film. It seems he was one of those victims who had to be silenced because he knew a secret about George’s 1941 oil discovery that was not his to share. “In April 1964, at the same time George de Mohrenschildt was facing the Warren Commission – a time when any publicity regarding Sele 40 [George’s record oil discovery] could have changed history – it was decided that electro-convulsive therapy would be used on Michael Fomenko.” He was then imprisoned at the Ipswich Special Mental Hospital.

Equally interesting is the media myth surrounding the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, Nelson’s son and heir to the Standard Oil fortune, who was allegedly eaten by cannibals in New Guinea in 1961. His tale became front-page news, “a media event closed off to any other explanation and the political implications of his disappearance became an ongoing tragedy for the Papuan people.”  To this very day, the West Papuan people, whose land was described by Standard Oil official Richard Archbold in 1938 as “Shangri-la,” are fighting for their independence.

Poulgrain offers most interesting takes on these two characters and shows how their stories are connected to the larger tale of intrigue.

This is a very important and compelling book.  Difficult and dense at times, more expansive at others, it greatly adds to our understanding of why JFK was murdered.  With its Indonesian focus, it shows us how Allen Dulles’s sinister purview was wide-spread and long-standing; how it included so much more than Cuba, Guatemala, Iran, etc.; specifically, how important far-distant Indonesia was in his thinking, and how that thinking clashed with President Kennedy’s on a crucial issue.  It forces us to consider how different the world would be if JFK had lived.

The Incubus of Intervention sheds new light on Indonesian history and America’s complicity in its tragedy.  It is essential reading today when Barack Obama is executing his pivot to Asia and promoting conflict with China and Russia.  Although not explored in Poulgrain’s book, it’s interesting to note that Obama’s Indonesian step-father, Lolo Soetero, left Obama and his mother in Hawaii in that crucial year of 1966 when mass killings were underway to return to Indonesia to map Western New Guinea (West Papua) for the Indonesian government.  After Dulles’s regime change was accomplished and Suharto had replaced Sukarno, he went to work for Unocal, the first oil company to sign a production sharing agreement with Suharto.  Strange coincidences, bitter fruit.

Is Poulgrain correct?  Did Allen Dulles direct the assassination of President Kennedy to ensure his, rather the Kennedy’s, Indonesian strategy would succeed?

We know the CIA coordinated the assassination of President Kennedy.  We know that Allen Dulles was involved.  We know that Indonesia was one reason why.

Was it “the reason”?

Read this wonderful book and decide.

Edward Curtin is a writer who has published widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

GR Editor’s Note

Please note that the authenticity of the alleged “Venezuela Freedom” document by US Southern Command has not been verified. Quoted by the NYT, “The document, titled “Venezuela Freedom-2 Operation,” is bogus, a said Col. Lisa Garcia, a spokeswoman for the United States Southern Command.” 

*       *      *

Recently a document from the American South Command was released in which 12 steps for destabilising and bringing about an abrupt end to Nicolas Maduro’s government are laid out: steps which are being carried out now and were begun some time ago.

The uncounted ballots would put the total number of voters at around 8.5 million, or around 47 percent of all registered voters

While the results are unlikely to impact Clinton’s win in the state, Bernie Sanders said Thursday he expected the final tally would show a closer race.

More than 2.5 million ballots from California’s June 7 primary are still uncounted, sparking questions about the results of the presidential contest in which Hillary Clinton emerged the winner and leaving the fate of local races in the air as poll workers continue to grapple with reports of voter difficulties.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the uncounted ballots would put the total voter turnout at around 8.5 million, or around 47 percent of all registered voters. While the results are unlikely to impact Clinton’s win in the state, Bernie Sanders said Thursday he expected the final tally would show a closer race—one more in keeping with polls that predicted a nail-biter.

While the results are unlikely to impact Clinton’s win in the state, Bernie Sanders said Thursday he expected the final tally would show a closer race. (Photo: hjl/flickr/cc)

More than 2.5 million ballots

“I look forward to the full counting of the votes in California, which I suspect will show a much closer vote than the current vote tally,” Sanders said after a meeting with President Barack Obama, who then went on to endorse Clinton.